| AwardYear: 1996-1997 Edition: PostSecondary Part: 2 - - The application process for financial aid SectionNumber: SectionTitle: Feedback from the processing system PageNumbers: 51-52 The federal processing system identifies changes that have been made by a financial aid administrator (such as dependency overrides and professional judgment adjustments) by printing comments on the SAR and the ISIR. This is helpful if the student has submitted more than one application. In particular, you will need to know if a student's information has been changed by a financial aid administrator at another school. A dependency override can be performed on the FAFSA, renewal FAFSA, SAR, or through EDE. The financial aid administrator should be careful that the correct information is used for the student for that payment period. Only the correct SAR may be submitted for a single payment period for Federal Pell Grant payments, and the dependency status on that SAR must match the dependency status in the school's records for that student. In addition, any corrections made to the SAR information must be made on Part 2 of the SAR or through EDE with the correct dependency status. Also keep in mind that a new student may have applied to other schools as well as your own and may present a SAR that is the result of a dependency override at one of those schools. Before you pay the student based on that SAR, you must determine whether the student would be considered independent at your school, and document that decision in the student's file. The CPS identifies a SAR or ISIR that is the result of a DEPENDENCY OVERRIDE by printing a comment in the eligibility letter to the student (Part 1). In addition, the letter "Y" will be printed next to Dependency Override in the "FAA Information" section of the SAR or ISIR if an override was performed, or "N" if it was canceled. A SAR that has been reprocessed based on a financial aid administrator's ADJUSTMENT OF A DATA ELEMENT USING PROFESSIONAL JUDGMENT will have a comment to that effect on Part 1 of the SAR. The SAR or ISIR will have a "Y" for an adjustment printed in the "FAA Information" section. Please note that a financial aid administrator at another school cannot use this adjustment and must instead make and document his or her own adjustments to a SAR. The letter "C" printed next to the EFC indicates that there are certain comments requiring further action by the school. For example, if the Department determines through the National Student Loan Data System (NSLDS) match that the student is in default on a federal student loan, this flag (C) is printed in addition to the appropriate comment. The flag is printed if NSLDS, Selective Service, Department of Justice, Social Security Administration (SSA) or Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) matches produce information requiring resolution by the school. In 1996-97, the Social Security Number (SSN) Match with SSA is expanded to compare U.S. citizenship status reported by the student with SSA database information. The results of that match appear in the FAA Information Box on all output documents. If SSA does not confirm a student's claim of U.S. citizenship, a new comment #146 is present and the SAR "C" flag is set. The student is required to provide documentation confirming current U.S. citizenship status, or the student will have to correct citizenship status. If the student is an eligible noncitizen, he or she must provide an Alien Registration Number so that the CPS can conduct a match with INS. The comments that are printed in Part 1 of the SAR are identified by numbers in the processing system. Many financial aid administrators are familiar with these numbers, which are listed in the Applicant Data Tape record description provided to schools receiving ISIRs on data tapes, The Federal Student Financial Aid Handbook, the Title IV WAN User's Guide, and A Guide to 1995-96 SARs and ISIRs. As a convenience to these financial aid administrators, the numbers of all the comments included in the SAR will be printed in the "FAA Information" section. |