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Student Services

Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) & Financial Aid

The FAFSA is your all-purpose gateway to all federal student loans and other forms of financial aid for college.

What is the FAFSA?

What is Campus-Based Aid?

Understanding a Financial Aid Package

Sample Financial Aid Package

What is the FAFSA?

What is the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA)?

The FAFSA, short for Free Application for Federal Student Aid, is the nationally standardized application form used by the U.S. Department of Education for assessing a family's finances and its ability to support a student's post-secondary education. It is the cornerstone of the entire federal financial aid system for students attending colleges, universities and other post-secondary institutions in America.

More importantly, you and your family cannot apply for any federal student aid, either federally guaranteed loans or grants, without completing the FAFSA form.

New Year. New FAFSA.

The FAFSA should be filed every year you’re in school after January 1 for a college term that begins that fall. The application can be accessed and filed online, at www.fafsa.ed.gov. Applicants and their parents can also check the status of their application and make corrections online.

After you file the FAFSA

After processing, the information collected from the FAFSA is shared with the applicant and their family, as well as with the financial aid offices of the institutions to which the student has applied and listed on their FAFSA.

Schools will use the information from the FAFSA to determine eligibility for other types of financial aid provided by the federal government, from your state, or from the school itself. This aid can include grants, scholarships and work opportunities, so it’s important to file your FAFSA as early as possible.

The Student Aid Report (SAR), which is generated from completing the FAFSA, shows your Expected Family Contribution (EFC), which is the amount of money your family will be expected to contribute towards your education. The lower your EFC, the more financial aid you may qualify for.

What is Campus-Based Financial Aid?

Campus-based aid: One more piece of the financing puzzle

When investigating financial aid, don’t overlook campus-based aid. For many students, it can mean the difference between attending college or not.

Campus-based aid is a broad category of support funneled through the individual institution and administered by the school's financial aid office. It includes such forms of aid as work study, loans and grants:

Federal Work-Study provides students part-time jobs, generally on or near campus, to help defray their college expenses. This encourages both community service and work related to the student's major course of study with an hourly rate of pay that’s at least minimum wage, but sometimes higher.
Perkins Loans are needs-based, low-interest loans offered by the federal government to undergraduate (up to $5,500 a year, or a lifetime ceiling of $27,500) and graduate students (up to $8,000 a year, or a lifetime ceiling of $60,000).
Federal Supplemental Educational Opportunity Grants (FSEOGs) are awarded to undergraduates with exceptional financial needs. These grants don’t need to be paid back.

Apply for your campus-based financial aid early

The sooner you apply for these forms of financial aid, the better. You can apply by completing the FAFSA Form.

Financial Aid Packages

Make sense of your financial aid package

Financial aid packages outline all the financial support that a college or university can offer once you've been accepted for enrollment. They are a direct response to demonstrated financial need as outlined in your Free Application for Federal Student Aid, or FAFSA.

Your financial aid package is generally quite detailed and full of information about any grants, loans, scholarships, work-study opportunities and other awards that can help defray the total cost of tuition, room and board and other fees.

Understanding this document is essential in helping you choose the right school, and the one that best fits the family budget. Compare and ask questions about anything that's unclear before the acceptance deadline.

Tips on comparing college financial aid packages

Most students apply to more than one school, and your decision may be based on the award packages. Here are several things to keep in mind as you review and compare these financial aid offers:

Ratio of grant-to-loan. Packages with a higher proportion of grants (which do not need to be repaid) to loans are generally preferable.
Loan terms. Compare the various repayment terms of all loans, including the interest rates.
Future packages. Ask whether the terms outlined for the first year of attendance are renewable for subsequent years.
Outside scholarships. Find out what effect earning outside scholarships will have on the financial package. Some schools reduce the institutional award by an equal amount.

Sample Financial Aid Package

Take a quick glimpse inside a student financial aid package

While the much-awaited acceptance letter from your college of choice gets most of the attention, the award letter may carry more weight in your ultimate decision.

The award letter, which arrives sometime in the spring (for students who are enrolling in the fall semester), outlines the complete financial aid package the school offers you. Broken down by academic semester or quarter, the letter typically includes amounts offered for:

Federal Perkins Loans (need based)
Federal Pell Grants (need based)
Federal Work-Study (need based)
Federal Direct Loans (Subsidized and Unsubsidized)
University assistance (aid that comes from private institutional donors)
Other grants, scholarships and external aid

Study your award letters closely. There is no uniform format for these letters, and schools may use different terminology.

View and evaluate a sample award letter

Below is a sample financial aid award letter:

A few key questions you should always consider when reviewing financial aid packages are:

What's the official cost of attendance for the school?
How well does this offer fill your financial gap? That is, the difference between your family's expected contribution and the total cost to attend the institution.
Is the aid front-loaded? Will the aid continue beyond your freshman year? Or is this a one-year-only deal?
How much of this aid is in the form of grants and how much is in loansThe key difference: grants do not need to be repaid. Loans will be the responsibility of the borrower (student/parent) and need to be repaid.
What's the rate on all these loans? And how does that impact your ability to repay them?

After you've reviewed your financial aid package and determined how much financial aid is available, consider a private student loan to fill the remaining gap.

Helpful Tools & Information
Filing the FAFSA Tips	Advice to help you with the very first step in securing most types of financial aid.	Learn more
Student Loan Glossary	A quick guide to various terms you’ll encounter in the student loan process.	Learn more
Understanding Financial Aid	This overview will help you sort out the various types of financial aid.	Learn more

Have student loan questions? Call our Student Services team.

1-800-708-6684

Student banking questions?

1-888-400-5670

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Citizens Bank is a brand name of RBS Citizens, N.A. and Citizens Bank of Pennsylvania. Deposit accounts held at RBS Citizens, N.A. and Citizens Bank of Pennsylvania are separately insured.