November 1 sounds crazy early as a financial aid deadline. W. Kent Barnds knows that.
To require that financial aid applications be submitted before high school seniors have proofread their application essays or even finished taking their SATs is a serious acceleration of the financial aid timeline. Barnds understands that, too.
But Augustana College in Illinois, where Barnds is the vice president of enrollment, communication, and planning, is merely mirroring the FAFSA timeline it has followed in previous years, albeit three months earlier.
This is the environment high school seniors and their parents will find themselves in this fall as they apply to colleges in a brand new financial aid world, where the Free Application for Federal Financial Aid becomes available October 1, instead of January 1.
Ask any financial aid officer, admissions counselor, or enrollment manager, and almost every single one will tell you they support the intent behind this year’s change. That is, the goal of telling families and students how much a college will cost them well before they choose where to enroll is universally popular.
Where disagreement starts to come in is how best to implement early FAFSA and how much its implementation will domino into other admissions and financial aid changes.
Read more at Time Money: http://time.com/money/4471130/early-fafsa-not-earlier-financial-aid-packages/