Understanding the Financial Aid Awarding Cycle
The financial aid awarding cycle is a set of recurrent operations used by institutions when they process and manage student data to evaluate, award, and disburse federal, state, institutional, and private funding. The typical financial aid processing cycle may encompass multiple academic years. Institutions process continuing students for the current aid year and, at the same time, process applications for the upcoming aid year.
One of the first steps in setting up your awarding cycle is to define the boundaries of each financial aid year to maintain separate and unique financial aid years throughout a student's educational career. In addition to setting up the aid year, your institution must associate the financial aid year with your school code or codes and identify all possible careers for each aid year and school code. School codes are defined by the U.S. Department of Education and are used to track a student's aggregate aid history. An institution might have separate school codes for a medical school and a law school. Because school codes do not share careers, you must link each school code and academic career separately.
You must specify which academic careers qualify for financial aid and set up valid terms for each financial aid career. Doing so provides the general guidelines to award and process aid within the award year. For example, your institution might have an evening degree program that does not award financial aid or offer financial aid for all of its academic terms.
The actual Awarding process takes place when your institution receives the first Institutional Student Information Records (ISIRs), PROFILE, or institutional application. The ISIR is the need analysis from the Department of Education to establish a student's need for financial aid. PROFILE is the need analysis form the College Board. Institutional applications are institution-specific need analysis forms. For new students, awards are made and notifications are sent on an ongoing basis up to the beginning and sometimes well into the award year for which the students are admitted. For continuing students, the goal is to mail notifications before the close of the academic year. The financial aid process of awarding entails need analysis and, for continuing students, checking academic progress.
In addition to the awarding cycle, the following processes must occur in the financial aid office for each aid cycle:
Loading ISIRs and PROFILE applicant data.
Entering institutional application information.
Verifying selected students.
Handling ISIR corrections.
Processing budgets for the current and upcoming award years.
Tracking requested documents and loan applications.
Monitoring all spending and reconciliation of funds.
Managing origination and disbursement of Title IV/Campus Based programs.
Providing ongoing loan entrance and exit counseling.
Defining aid year rollover.
Before implementing the Financial Aid system, examine how your financial aid office and your institution function. To take advantage of the flexibility of the PeopleSoft Campus Solutions system, decide how you want to implement your operational structure, awarding practices, and institutional procedures within the Financial Aid system.
When you prepare to set up the Financial Aid system:
Decide what data elements you want converted for use in your new system if you are moving from a legacy system.
Identify and decide which academic careers are valid for awarding and processing of financial aid after you establish your institution's academic structure.
The creation and design of academic careers is carried out primarily by the staff that operates PeopleSoft Student Records.
Identify which terms and sessions are valid for awarding and processing of financial aid after you establish your institution's academic structure.
The design and creation of terms and sessions is carried out primarily by the staff that operates Student Records.
Determine all aspects that need to be considered for the setup process.
Consider your institutional and financial aid office needs in broad terms. This plan should include such items as your term structure, the Title IV school codes for your institution, your packaging policies, your disbursement patterns, financial aid fund information, and any business practices that are unique to your institution.