Kelly M. Birkhimer

High School Counselor

FAFSA Completion Night

FAFSA_Checklist-  What Do I Need To Complete My FAFSA?

FAFSA Completion Night will be held at Conemaugh Township Area High School on February 3, 2016 from 6:00pm to 8:00pm in Room #136.  Parents and students will need to have their completed 2015 Tax Return with them to complete the FAFSA.  If you do not have your tax information with you, you can estimate your income until your tax return is completed.  Then you need to go back in and update your information.  A PHEAA representative, Julie Fontana, will be on hand to help complete FAFSA on-line. 

IMPORTANT: All FAFSA applicants (and their filing-parents for dependent students) must now electronically sign the FAFSA. Prior to your FAFSA completion event, steps must be completed by students and parents to create an FSA ID#.  You must do this at least a a week prior to attending this event.  Go to www.fsaid.ed.gov to create your FSA ID.

If you would be interested in attending, please contact me to RSVP at 814-479-7886 or email me at kelly.birkhimer@ctasd.org

 

 

IMPORTANT FSA ID INFORMATION:  

The Federal PIN that students and parents formerly needed to create through a simple process has been replaced by Federal Student Aid (FSA) to what is now the FSA ID.  Creating the FSA ID is not a simple process and requires multiple steps that need to be completed independently by the student applicant and their filing-parent.  A student cannot complete these steps for their filing-parent and the filing-parent cannot complete these steps for the student.  We are strongly recommending that families create their FSA ID prior to attending the FAFSA completion event at your school.  This new FSA ID creation is not easily combined with completing the FAFSA application due to email address requirements, creating unique user ID’s, security challenge questions, issues with the FAFSA application ‘timing out’ amidst the ID creation, etc.

Here are some important highlights about this new challenge:

  •    Students and their parent can no longer use the same email address.  
  •    For both the student and the filing-parent, it can be a challenge to create a valid username and password because the security settings have been increased to be ‘stronger.’  These also need to be unique and not taken by a previous FAFSA filer.
  •    To acquire the FSA ID for the student and their filing-parent, they each will also need to create five security questions and answers.  These are ‘challenge’ questions that must be answered in the event they forget their username and passwords.  Two of these challenge questions can be selected from options that FSA provides but three of them must be completely made up by the applicant and filing-parent.  
  •    Although the FSA ID can be used immediately by first time applicants once it is created that is not the case for renewals.  For those renewing a FAFSA, there will be a one to three day delay between the creation of the FSA ID and the ability to electronically sign the application.
  •    Parents or students who already have a PIN, will need to create an FSA ID and password.  The new ID can be linked to the PIN, but that is a separate part of the process and is completed at the conclusion of creating the FSA ID and password.
  •    Although this is not required, the final step in creating an FSA ID is to confirm student/filing-parent email address. A secure code is sent to the email addresses entered when FSA IDs were created. Once the code is retrieved from the email accounts and then reentered (to confirm the email address is valid), users can use their authenticated email address instead of a username to log in to the five ED websites.

As you might suspect, every aspect of completing these new steps is time consuming and may be difficult for parents or students. This process is best completed prior to attempting to electronically sign and submit the FAFSA because there is also the probability of the FAFSA application timing out while applicants move through this FSA ID creation.  Students and filing-parents who have a valid FSA ID will be able to properly sign and submit the FAFSA which means they will also be able to access the PA State Grant form to apply for it at the time of FAFSA submission.

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