Buffalo, NY (WBEN) Changes are coming to the Free Application to Federal Student Aid, and one expert says it will help the process along.
Jeff Boron of SendYourKidsToCollege.org says the changes won't be dramatic. "One of the things for returning students, returning parents, etc. they are going to pre-populate some of the data based on your submission from last year, so that will just help. The other helpful thing is, let's say we have multiple children going to college, each needing their own form to be filed. The parents used to have to enter their data in twice. Now they're going to be able to carry it over from one student to another," says Boron. But he says there's one bigger change happening this year.. "We are going to be excluding the value, the asset value of family businesses and family farms with less than 100 employees, and that's a big item for a lot of Western New Yorkers because we have a lot of small business owners in here, and it's always been a difficult to value a small business and put it on the form," notes Boron.
For first time filers, Boron says ti is tricky for certain circumstances for families. "Divorced families or separated families, families where a parent has remarried, or if your parents are divorced, which parents' information do you use because you won't use both. A lot of confusing things that we get quite a few calls on," says Boron.
Could this mean more federal aid available? Boron says yes. "First of all, they've increased all the formulas based on inflation. Second of all, the eligibility for Pell grants has been expanded. So, for some of the families of lower income, they will have much more opportunities. On the flip side of that, due to the one big beautiful bill act, parents who take out loans for their children's educations, known as Parent Plus loans, those are now going to be capped at 20,000 a year, and have a lifetime of $65,000 maximum per child. They've also eliminated what was called the Grad Plus loan. Those are not available for grad students anymore. But as I said, the Pell Grant funding and eligibility and certification programs for workforce development and technical training have been expanded," explains Boron.
Boron says he offers one stop filing for $79, with proceeds going toward a scholarship.
Government to exclude value of small business with less than 100 employees
Government to exclude value of small business with less than 100 employees
