What is Financial Aid?

Financial aid is available to pay for college from a variety of sources. This includes grants, scholarships, work-study jobs, and loans.  You must fill out the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA®) form to see what you are eligible to receive. 

Evaluating Your Financial Aid Offers

Understand what is in a financial aid package. A college financial aid package will include the different types of aid listed above. Be sure to evaluate how much the school will offer you in scholarships, grants, and loans.

Determining net price for attending the college. Your net price is the total cost of the institution minus the financial aid from your financial aid package. This will be your out of pocket price. Do not include loans because you will need to pay that back.

Total cost includes ALL costs, not just tuition. Your financial aid package might not include all the additional costs related to attending their institution such as: transportation, textbooks and living expenses. You can find all this information on the college's website.

Understand the different amounts offered in your financial aid package. They might mix loan and grant money together and it may be confusing.  A good rule of thumb to determine loan debt is to ensure that your expected first year salary out of college outweighs your loan money offered. You want to be able to pay back your loans without a large student loan debt.  

Fully read and understand the terms and conditions of your scholarships. With your scholarships, you might have to maintain a certain GPA requirement, write a thank you letter or be a full time student. Just make sure that you maintain the requirements of your scholarships, in not doing so will result in losing that funding.

You can appeal. If you didn't receive as much financial aid as you expected, you can consider writing a college financial aid appeal letter to the college you are planning to attend. If you have multiple financial aid offers from different schools, it doesn't hurt to ask the college you want to attend to match your offer, some colleges will. 

Accepting Your Financial Aid Package

Check your student email. Once accepted to the college you have applied to, you will be given an email address from that school. Be sure to activate and frequently check this email, as the Financial Aid department from that college will oftentimes send you information about your award in this email.

Follow Up. Frequently check the Financial Aid tab of your college's online portal (think Infinite Campus for college). If you've completed your FAFSA, sometimes the Financial Aid department from the college will need to verify additional information in order to give you an accurate financial aid package. It is critical that you submit the documents/forms requested as soon as possible, for the college cannot award any Federal Financial Aid until they have the forms.

Unsure what the forms are needed? If the documents needed from your college don't make sense to you, please contact the college, or visit with the College and Career Advisors so you can get help in submitting forms.

Accepting. You have complete control over how much financial aid you accept or decline. When formally accepting your financial aid, there will be an option to review everything. You can also accept partial loans. If they offer you $5,000 in loans, you can decide to only accept $2,000 or decline altogether. Be sure to also accept or decline any work-study funding you are offered.

Questions about the FAFSA & Financial Aid?

Idaho State Financial Aid Contact:

finaidem@isu.edu

(208) 282-2756 

Museum Building. #12, 3rd Floor Lobby

921 S. 8th, Stop 8077

Pocatello, ID 83209-8077

*You do not need to be attending ISU to contact the Financial Aid Office for questions about the FAFSA!