Financial Aid

Many students qualify for financial aid! There are a myriad of aid options to help cover the cost of education, from grants and scholarships to work-study and loans. Parent income and asset information is used to determine financial need in regard to their dependent child’s education, but depending on the college, some assets are excluded from the calculation.  Students will have a responsibility in this process as the primary beneficiary of the education. Financial Aid is there to bridge the gap between the cost of a college education and what the family can afford. 

Most colleges rely on the FAFSA or CADAA as their primary financial aid application, but some colleges (usually private and some out of state public) may also request completion of the CSS profile to determine their institution's scholarships.

Students may also apply for scholarships based on both achievement and need. For some colleges, filling out the FAFSA or CADAA is the application for need based scholarship at the university, and the actual college application becomes the merit scholarship application. Other colleges may require filling out a separate application. Students interested in applying for scholarships should contact their campus's financial aid office for help identifying scholarships and locating their applications. 

Below find a recording from our October 2025 Financial Aid presentation.

Updated terms for the FAFSA

1. Student Aid Index: The new Student Aid Index (SAI) will replace the Expected Family Contribution. This new formula for calculating financial need will no longer take into account the number of family members currently enrolled​ in college, but will consider dependency status. Students can also have a negative SAI as low as -1500. In addition, students from families with an adjusted gross income of more than $60,000 will need to include assets, including farms or small businesses.

2. Data-sharing: Through the Fostering Undergraduate Talent by Unlocking Resources for Education Act (FUTURE) Act, the FAFSA will now pull federal tax information directly from tax returns filed with the IRS in the previous year. Students will no longer need to enter income information, and the automated process will pull family size information based on the number of exemptions claimed. There will be an option to manually update family size in case of any changes.

3. Expanded access: Eligibility for Pell Grants will now be determined using the SAI; family make-up, size and income; and federal poverty information—which will greatly increase the number of individuals who qualify. 

4. An ID for all: Each individual contributing information to the FAFSA will need an FSA ID and multi-factor authentication to access the form. Each person will have an assigned role—like student, parent or spouse—and will only see questions related to their role. They will also need to give consent for their federal tax information to be included. To ensure access for all individuals, there is a new process for obtaining an FSA ID without a social security number.

5. Dependency status: Students who have not historically qualified as independent students may indicate they have “unusual circumstances" preventing them from contacting their parents. They will be able to submit a completed FAFSA without parental information that will be reviewed under provisional (temporary) independent status.

6. Streamlined application: To shorten the time needed to fill out the application, a number of questions have been removed and some untaxed income will no longer be required.

7​. 20 colleges. Lastly, students can now list up to 20 colleges on their applications.

Updates for the CADAA

The California Student Aid Commission has updated the California Dream Act Application—to streamline the process, including switching to the Student Aid Index, removing questions and incorporating the parental signature into the submission process. The CADAA will not have the same data-sharing agreement with the IRS though, and income must still be entered manually.​