Understanding Financial Aid at Allegheny

Good afternoon everyone welcome, thank you so much for joining us today. I appreciate you giving us some of your time and hope that for those of you who have been attending multiple of our spotlight sessions that they've been going very well. My name is Meg Ryan. I'm the director of admissions and financial aid here at Allegany Anne. I'm here to tell you guys a little bit about our processes for financial aid and.

Hopefully some general helpful information as you're going through this process with the hopes of really providing some clarity that to what can be one of the most stressful parts of your college search process.

I am going to spend the next half hour or so with you guys, but you can reach out to us at any point. Our financial aid office is a wonderful team here really dedicated to making this an affordable option for you and your family. If this is ultimately your choice, so I'll end the presentation with our contact information here as well, but it certainly encourage if you've got specific questions afterwards or you have any concerns that you might need help with walking through the process, please give our.

Officer call

I want to start today with talking to you about applying for financial aid. So the steps in the process and for those of you who are in your senior year, things that you'll actually be starting or working on, and maybe some of you have even finished today. So let's talk through applying for financial aid, allocating the first thing that you should know is just by applying you are applying for financial aid. You're applying for our merit based financial aid with your application for admission are processes to evaluate every student.

Or a merit scholarship at the time that we evaluate you for admission. There are no additional essays. You have to write. No additional interviews required. Anything along those lines. Your application for admission will help you considered by the Scholarship Committee for eligibility for any of our merit based scholarships as well.

As a reminder, there's no fee to apply to Allegany, and we are test optional an have been for over 5 years, so we really do have this process including merit based scholarships. Well tested in our practices, and knowing how stressful tests are this year. Specially I think that we really want to stress that in fact I expect very few test scores to come through our process this year. It's OK if you haven't taken standardized tests.

When it comes to applying for need based financial aid, then that's when we ask for the facts. Sub this is called the free application for federal student aid. It's the most common form for financial aid, so it's likely that most of the other colleges you're applying to are also asking for this. The FAFSA form is free to fill out. I know it's right there in the name, but there are some websites and services out there that will attempt to charge you for helping you complete it. I don't recommend them because they don't give you any more help than my office will for free or that the help center.

Or at faster will for free and you can rest assured that we have the most up to date information in terms of regulations.

The preferred deadline for filing your FAFSA is February 15th now, for those of you who are early in the process and a lot of you guys going through and watching financial aid sessions in October, probably on top of your checklist, I encourage you to file this earlier as early as you aren't can get this information to us means that if you're going through one of our early processes, early decision, or early action that shortly after you receive an admission decision from us, should you be admitted, your financial aid application would file or.

Award letter would file shortly after that rather than waiting till February 15th because we wouldn't be able to give you a full financial aid package until we have a FAFSA on file, the faster became available on October 1st and again I know there's a handful of you out there who've already done it. So congratulations if you're just starting it, that's OK. It is typically parents who are most involved in the process of filing the FAFSA, though we encourage students to be involved in it as well.

I also want to talk about the thing that we're also sick of talking about, but that's really impacting a lot of our processes, and that's of course the COVID-19 virus that we're all dealing with. This is going to have a lasting impact on financial aid for a few years, so it's something we know we're going to be dealing with, and we certainly understand that many people are feeling that impact of COVID-19 through employment changes today. We know that almost one went to American households, have seen some sort of changed in their employment status, whether that was.

A furlough that was temporary reduction and bonuses, or a total loss of employment. Something's changed, and we understand that. That can be really nerve wracking. What you should know is that when you're filing your FAFSA, you're going to be using income from the tax year. That's two years prior to your enrollment, so that means if you're filing the facet today with the plan to start in the fall of 2020, all of the questions are going to be really related to what happened in your 2019 tax year.

Now that might not be the same right of what's taking place right now, and so if that's the case and you've had a change in your employment status, then we have a process in place. In fact, most and all I would say all institutions have a process in place that you can contact the financial aid office and you go through that with the individual financial aid offices it's referred to as a professional judgment adjustment, and basically it's up to my financial aid team to say, you know, if there's been a large enough change to your income from 2020 to 2019.

We're going to use that information instead and could potentially lead to more financial aid.

Because we're giving away federal and state dollars, you should know that it does require a lot of documentation, and so I definitely encourage you to have these conversations. If this is impacting your family, it's likely something that you'll only go through at the point of after receiving an admission decision so that you're not doing unnecessarily the paperwork you know. If that's ultimately not a place you're going to apply to, but that's something to keep in mind that this is an option, and it's always an option. It's something that we use the two year old tax information because it's been assumed.

But that is similar from year to year for the majority of families, and so when something happens like a loss of employment of retirement, a death of a parent that changes the situation, we have this process in place. We are just really processing a lot more of them this year. I also like to stress that the financial aid office is available to you and it's our job to help you finance and education. We send a lot of reminders and reach out to folks a lot. And sometimes I know that that can be overwhelming, but our job is to help you pay the bill.

There's actually at Allegany. We have a separate office. That's our financial services office that collects the bill, so please don't be afraid of us. Please contact us and reach out to us anytime you have a question an I really recommend that you go straight to the financial aid office. I hear a lot of people saying, You know, we talk to our neighbors. This is what their situation was. This is what happened with them. You never fully understand their financial situation and less. You're their accountant. And so using you know antidotal experience is not as great as just going straight to the financial aid resource.

So let's talk about the different pieces of financial aid that will come in part of the process, and the first is the merit aid. So we talked about the scholarship process, so applying for your application for admission is what we're going to use, and I want to you to recognize that at Allegany we don't have a neat little chart like some of our colleagues have on a website. They might have a website that says if your GPA is this and your test score is that, then this is your merit scholarship and I know that that's frustrating and sometimes can feel like.

Little confusing as you're looking for what's my scholarship going to be? But the reality is we think you're so much more than just a GPA or a test score. We value strong community members and we look for strong community members that have accomplishments in an out of the classroom. So that means for part of your merit scholarship evaluation, we're taking into consideration things like your dedication to others. Are you really service minded? Are you taking care of family members? Are you very involved in your school, in your community, in your church, in your temple?

Do you have a passion for learning? Have you demonstrated interest with Allegany? Like coming to a session like this? Those are all parts of a very big puzzle that comes to determining your Merit Scholarship. We always have students who are test optional who are receiving our top scholarship, so again, I'm stressing that our process is not reliable, only on test scores. This is a practiced committee that really awards the Merit Scholarship based off of your full application.

You should also know that if you're awarded a merit scholarship at the point of admission, your scholarship is yours for all four years. All merit scholarships are awarded for up to 8 semesters. So assuming you're on the traditional four year eight semester graduation path, you get that scholarship every semester. There is no minimum GPA requirement, so a lot of students might have that stress and we get that question a lot. What do I have to do to maintain this scholarship? If you get it, you have to stay enrolled full time at Allegating, so that's not to say that there's not a minimum GPA expectation to stay enrolled. There's a whole academic.

Process here you do have to continue on a path and graduate and you know not not fail X number of classes so our register runs that policy. As long as you're making academic progress and you're continuing towards graduation. If you have a bad semester or take a class that's more challenging than you expect, you're not risking your merit scholarship. And this goes really to our educational philosophy. This is a really important piece of what we think is is why alleghenys unique?

That's that we really encourage exploration in your academics. You should not feel like you can't take that computer science class because you've never coded before because your scholarships at risk or on the opposite end. Something really creative in theater driven or Fine Arts driven because you are more on the technical side. This is the time to explore and figure this out. Take those classes you know not, don't stress about the GPA. Is the be all and end all and know that your financial award is going to stay the same.

There's also one scholarship that we do want you to be aware of that does require additional aspects, so our creative and performing arts scholarships do require you to actually go through a process to apply with either an audition or portfolio or electronic submissions that can all be done electronically with these department's it's up to an additional $1000 in Merit Scholarship that is available for folks who are interested in participating in these areas. And so if you're if you.

Are involved in art or dance or music or theater would encourage you to think about our creative and performing arts scholarship as something that you might want to apply for. It engages you with the faculty and gets you a chance to really show your stuff to faculty before you're even admitted here. So that's really a great opportunity, and also up to an additional $1000 now. It's anyone who plans to participate, so there is some expectation that you're in a dance ensemble every semester or that you're involved in music, but you don't have to be a music major or minor.

In order to receive the creative and Performing Arts scholarship for music, for example.

Information about this is on our website, so that is something that you would actually need to apply for by January.

So let's talk about the other piece of the puzzle. When it comes to financial aid, and that's need based financial aid, so I'm going to walk you through the formula for calculating if you're eligible for need based financial aid, but I want to start by doing that with breaking down the terminology that's used in all financial aid need based calculations, so hopefully this helps you understand your financial aid from one institution to the next.

So the first term that you need to know is cost of attendance. Cost of attendance is the comprehensive cost to attend the institution from one year, and that includes tuition, fees, room and board books, and miscellaneous expenses and transportation expenses. This full, comprehensive cost of attendance is used in a need based financial aid calculation. It can be very confusing though, because every college displays this information to you in different ways.

So tuition, fees and room and board are things that you're billed for their what's referred to as direct expenses. But we also know you have to have books you have to travel to campus. If you're a residential campus, so there is others expenses out there that we factor into the cost of attendance, but they are referred to as indirect expenses.

This number is important for calculating your eligibility for financial aid, and it is important for applying for loans and applying for scholarships because you can take loans or earn scholarships all the way up to those extra book expenses in those extra transportation expenses. It's common for colleges to display this information and maybe not include the books and miscellaneous or one college does. So don't let that mislead you and think that one college is more expensive than the other. Unless you're able to actually breakdown and say OK. What am I actually going to be charged by the college?

My additional expenses that are estimated and what's the ultimate net price? You know that we should plan for, so you're going to have to read the financial aid letters little carefully to see what they look like. But when we calculate your financial aid eligibility, we're going to use this full number.

The next number in the formula is called the expected family contribution and 'cause everything at a college campus is an acronym. Everyone is going to throw around this term FC to you, so get comfortable with it. The expected family contribution is the amount that a family can contribute over a nine month period of time through a combination of directly contributing from income, drawing down on assets, and borrowing against assets and expected family contribution is expecting that college is financed.

Over a period of time, not just the nine month period of time that is an academic year, but that we are also thinking about drawing down and borrowing against assets. So please consider that as you're thinking about your expected family contribution. But there's a few things I'll tell you about your expected family contribution. The first is that you probably won't agree with it, and the 2nd is that there is nothing that you can do to change it.

The FC is doing a few things. What it is taking into consideration. It's through this formula that's referred to as the federal methodology. It's actually set by Congress, and the formula is the same on the facts of it can be different for other schools who use other forms. But for us we're pretty simple. From the FAFSA, we're going to get your expected family contribution. It's actually delivered to you right when you submit your FAFSA and what this formula is doing is it's trying to take a really complicated process like personal finance.

And say for all of the thousands and thousands of applications for financial aid, here's the things that we know are not a choice. These are things that everybody has to participate in. So parent and student income and asset data is going to be taken into consideration. But then they apply these things referred to as allowances. So protect a certain portion of the income and protect a certain portion of the assets and do that based off of a few different factors. The one factor that is the most important is the size of the family and the number of students in that household that are attending college.

So if you are a family with four in the family and one student attending college, you are expected family contribution is going to be X. Let's say next year now that student, the next student is also in college. So you have four in the family and the number in college is now to your expected family contribution. All other things staying similar would be X / 2 so that really can have a dramatic change. If you imagine an expected family contribution of $20,000 in one year.

It's 10,000, the next year. You know that's a big change. If you're having a student another student enter college, it works the other way as well, so that's something to be aware of. If you've got two students in college at one time, and one of them graduates, be prepared for your expected family contribution to go up. If everything else stays the same. Other examples of what this formula is doing. It's looking at things like income tax and taxes that we pay by state, so we know in Pennsylvania that we pay more tax in taxes than our neighbors in West Virginia, but less in taxes than we do.

In New York and so, therefore, we're going to get more protections in our calculation than West Virginia, but less protections in someone from New York because everybody has to incur those expenses. Those are not. That's not a choice.

So I really, really stressed that it's it's a number that's hard to come to terms with sometimes, but it's really the best attempt that we have right now. Well, it's imperfect to try to make a really complicated process as equitable as profit possible.

What these formulas are not doing? It's not a cash flow analysis so well. I also recognize you know, we talk about this choice and financial circumstances. There's a lot out there. That's not a choice, right. Like health care bills. Maybe you're paying for a grandparent in another country that you can't actually get protection for 'cause they're not in the household. And that's not really a choice, right? That's something the family has to do. It's not an expense that every family has to incur, and so it's not considered in a formula like this.

Because it's really hard for a formula at this to tell the difference between like a really valid real expense, like some of the examples I just gave, and credit card debt that might have been a little bit less necessary, so it can't look at incoming and outgoing cash. It's basically a snapshot of your financial situation on the day that you're filing these forms. It's also not assessing a family's willingness to pay ability to pay for college and willingness to pay for college.

Might be different things. This is coming up with the number. It's not necessarily what you're actually going to be billed for. Your what you're billed for from a college could be higher or lower. It's a number that goes into a formula.

And the formula for calculating your financial need is taking that full comprehensive cost of attendance, subtracting your expected family contribution. What's leftover after that is referred to as your financial need.

Then Allegany College will award a combination of Merit and need based financial aid to any student who completes the FAFSA. If your complete the FAFSA, we're going to consider you for everything that's available to us.

To be eligible for need based financial aid you have to have remaining need after your merit scholarships. So I'm going to use round numbers for an example.

Institution that cost 60,000. You are expected. Family contribution is 30,000 if you're eligible for our top scholarship of 38,000, you now have more financial me or aid than what you need, which your need was 30,000. So that means that you're not eligible for any remaining financial aid of the need based financial assistance, but your merit scholarship is yours and you get to keep it, so that's available to you.

So there are other types of aid, and then I want to make sure that we just highlight some of those outside of the institution that we're also going to be considering you for as we go through the process and the first are the grant programs. So by filing a FAFSA you'll be evaluated evaluated to see if you're eligible for a federal Pell Grant or federal Saoji Grant. The federal Pell Grant is the same from one institution to the next. There's in a certain expected family contribution numbers that are eligible for it. $1 more, $1 less. That can change your eligibility.

So that's not really anything that fluctuates the federal ECOG Grant can change from one institution to the next. The federal government basically gives every institution of a bag of money and says, you figure out how to award this to the most neediest students so you could earn the Pell Grant at every institution you apply to. But maybe only see the ECOG Grant at a couple of the ones that you apply to.

We also have the state grant here in Pennsylvania. The state grant is run by a program that we refer to as fee a filing your FAFSA prior to May 1st is required for FIA and that's required every year and if you are one of our six states that we have a reciprocity agreement with, you can take a state grant with you to another institution and you could bring in a state grant from another area. So we do have a reciprocity agreement with Ohio so you can bring in a small state grant if you earn that from an outside state.

But again, our neighbors to the North in New York, we don't have a reciprocity agreement that reciprocity agreements made at the state government levels. It's not an Allegany choice, but it is something that could be a resource that we use for financial aid.

Then of course there are loans. A lot of students ask about loans and the most common one you're going to hear about is the federal direct loan. This is often an in Alleghenys case as well will be included in a financial aid package as because this loan is directly to the student, it goes to the student. It does not require an additional credit check at other than filing a FAFSA, so that's the only requirement, and then you are eligible for $5500 in loans in your first year, and that amount will increase each year. A portion of the loan could be subsidized.

That means that your interest rates do. It's not earning interest until after you graduate.

But then another portion or all of it could be unsubsidized, because subsidized requires that you have demonstrated financial need and the example I gave earlier or unsubsidised is available to everybody, regardless of whether you have need that's demonstrated or not. This is a low interest loan as well, and it, like I said, it's directly to the student, so no parent, no collateral, no credit check required.

And then of course there are student employment programs, so we have federal work study programs. So you do have to have federal remaining demonstrated need in order to be eligible for those that would be included in a financial aid award. Again, I give you the heads up to check to see where this is listed, because at Allegany we listed at the very very bottom of your financial aid. That's because here's all the other financial aid that's going to come directly off your bill. Work study is most often used for those books and miscellaneous expenses, and travel to and from campus.

It doesn't directly reduce the amount that you owe to the college unless you want to set it up. So your paychecks go to your account. Most students don't do that, though, so in all cases, see how student employment is displayed in the financial aid award letter. Know that for us it's going to be at the bottom of your eligible if you're not eligible for federal work study, though you can still have a job on campus. We have campus employment that's available to students and could also be an option for you to have a job on campus.

OK, so the timeline and process what you need to know about, especially for those of you who are seniors and this is the year that you're going through it. The notification of financial aid. So typically you'll receive notification of your eligibility for merit scholarships in your admission decision letter. So read more than that first paragraph. What we're really saying there is, if you're offered admission, congratulations. We're excited, and here's your merit scholarship. That is because that committee is separate from the financial aid process and that has nothing to do with whether or not you're applying for financial aid.

So that is merit scholarship only if you file the FAFSA with us, you can typically receive or expect to receive a financial aid award letter from us about two weeks after you receive your admission decision. The first batch of those who apply really early and get our wonderful early notifications in sometime in November might be a little bit later than two weeks for our first financial aid packages, but typically it's about two weeks after we Mail everything to you at least once.

But we also know that it's best to have things at your fingertips, and so really encourage you to check your Allegany portal throughout the process. You can always get a copy of your admission decision letter there and financial aid information is going to be shared there this year as well. So there is an option for you to get this print out copies and see all of that information on line.

OK, a few last pieces of advice here and then I'm happy to take a few questions to think about other things you should know about first outside scholarships. You should apply for them. They always help you. Every institution has their own different policies. It very rarely impacts your financial aid, but if it does, it's still going to help you. It might help you because you're eligible for a little less work study, but that means you can still have a job on campus. You just have less of a bill, so I strongly recommend applying for outside scholarships. Look for smaller ones. Apply early often.

And until you graduate, don't just go for him for your first year. We have some websites listed here. These are national search engine's and of course a few outside scholarships that are specific to allegating on our website as well.

Then after that there are alternative loans. Once we get to this part of the process again, our office is really happy to help you, so please call us when you have questions. This isn't really something you're applying for now it's something you'll plan for the summer before enrollment, but plus loans, which is a federal loan straight to parents or private loans which could be lent to a student apparent or a combination of student and parents are available to help make those monthly payments or pay for the academic year.

And then of course we also have a payment plan, so we default to two semesters. So one semester, that is do one payment due in the fall semester, one payment due in the spring semester. But many families prefer to pay in monthly installments to be able to make contributions from income. You can do that. We do have options here. Again, we send all this information to you, so no need to feel overwhelmed about this last portion. But these are the things to consider when it comes to OK. Now that I've got my cost of attendance minus all of my financial.

Aid, what else do I? What other options are there for me when it comes to paying my bill so payment plan, private loans, parent plus loan and outside scholarships? Or what I encourage you to consider?

I know that's a lot of information in a 26 minute period here, so I hope it's helpful to you and also will remind you that you can email us at anytime will always get back to you, typically into less than two business days. Give us a call and we'll talk you through the process. Recordings of this will be available for you to check it out later as well. And of course I'll take some questions now. If there are some questions for for the group.

And as you guys might be typing out your quote.

Asians are thinking about things that you want to connect with us about. I wanted to say thank you very much for joining us again today. For those of you who are attending multiple sessions and we do have one more remaining session right after this really appreciate all of your interest and hope that we can be of service as you go through the process. So happy to help anytime.

Great, I'm really glad this was helpful to a few of you guys so.

Alright, so I'm seeing no questions from the group, so for those of you who do have questions and maybe it's more specific to your personal situation, I look forward to connecting with you on the phone. Otherwise, I'm going to say enjoy the rest of this beautiful fall day. I hope it is beautiful where you are and we look forward to hosting you on campus for a campus visit soon, or seeing you at one of our virtual events again soon. Thank you guys so much for the.

Your time today.