What is the purpose of the financial aid verification worksheet?

Question

I received an estimate of how much aid i will receive. However, the school needed a verification worksheet. Why do they need the worksheet if all my info is already on the FAFSA??? Also, did the estimate they gave me means thats how much aid i could receive? Meaning they just want to verify my info? But i'll still receive the money they estimated right???

Answer 1

I get asked to verify my FASFA app every time there's a significant change on my mum's income tax, but only when it goes down, like I'm lying to get more money or something. The sucky thing is that it takes longer to get aid because they have to verify that your not lying. Thta's my take on verification worksheets.

Answer 2

The US Department of Education randomly selects 30% of all FAFSA forms every year for verification. The fact that yours was selected does not mean that they doubt the information that you provided - however, when your application is chosen, you must respond to the Department's request for documentation of some of the information you provided on your FAFSA.

The most important of these verification matters is income verification. The worksheet that you received explains exactly what forms of documentation you and your parents must submit.

Keep in mind that all of the information you filled in on the FAFSA was "self-reported" - they asked you to refer to various tax forms (for example), but they didn't require you to document any of your figures. You can imagine, then, that some people are tempted to lie, particularly when they realize that the income they report is going to play a major role in determining how much financial aid they qualify for.

Verification is the Department's way of keeping applicants honest.

If the documentation that you provide supports the information you submitted on your FAFSA, you will receive exactly the amount of financial aid that you were offered by your financial aid office. However, if you can not properly document some of your responses, this may result in a lower award.

If an applicant's FAFSA answers are way out of line with reality, that applicant may be barred from receiving aid of any kind. (The government isn't all that anxious to help applicants who start out by trying to scam them).

I hope that helped - but don't worry - if your answers were accurate, you shouldn't have any problem satisfying the verification requirements. Good luck!

Answer 3

1. Yes, the amount that they said they'll give you, they will give you.

2. The financial aid verification sheet is paperwork that they will file in their offices, since the FAFSA is Federally-owned, and they will need their own copies of your info. Also, FAFSA doesn't check if the tax documents you wrote down in your FAFSA report are real or not, which is why they'll ask you for your ITR's, or your parents'.

So yes, they just want to put you on file, as well as for you to prove you're not lying. But yes, they'll give you the money, every single cent that isn't going to your tuition.