Managing Special Cases When Packaging Students

Financial Aid provides sophisticated tools to package students. You can manually award students one at a time, auto package students one at a time using a packaging plan, or Mass Package a large number of students using several packaging plans. Manual awarding and Auto Packaging are performed using one of the award entry components. Mass Packaging is performed using a series of background processes, but you can review the results of each step using inquiry and summary pages. After running Auto Packaging or Mass Packaging, you can supplement a student's package by manually entering awards. Using the award entry pages (Student Aid Package page, Manual Student Packaging page, and Professional Judgement page), you can also override default Financial Aid Item Types attributes, such as the disbursement plan and split code. Manual awarding is done by inserting as many Financial Aid Item Types as you want to complete a student's package or by modifying an existing award.

You must validate awards after manual award entry or after making any changes to existing awards. Validation is performed automatically as part of the Auto Packaging and Mass Packaging processes. Validation checks eligibility rules, fiscal limits, aggregate limits, and any other Financial Aid Item Type rules for each award. Validation lowers award amounts for awards that cause an over-award or which exceed fiscal or aggregate limits. When manually awarding Pell Grants, Validation assists you by calculating the Pell Grant eligibility amount for students when you leave the offer field at zero dollars.

To award students for a term you must have a Financial Aid term and a budget associated with the student for the term that you want to award. If the Financial Aid term and budget do not exist for the term you are awarding, you must create a row in the Financial Aid term record and the budget record for that term. The Financial Aid term and a budget must be present for the student because the disbursement record for an award cannot be created without the associated Financial Aid term and budget. For example, if you want to award for a summer term before summer enrollment data—Financial Aid term—is available, you must manually create the summer Financial Aid term and a summer budget.

If you are awarding for an additional term, not previously awarded for, you must use a relevant disbursement plan/split code combination to account for that new term. For example, if the student was awarded based on two terms, fall and winter, and now needs to be awarded for the spring term, you can change the split code if the disbursement plan encompasses all three terms. Otherwise, you must award for the spring term using different Financial Aid Item Types and disbursement plans and split codes that reflect a spring only disbursement.

The system supports awarding Pell Grants for non-standard award periods (NSAP) for Pell Grant Formulas 1 and 3. You can define a Summer term as the leading or trailing term. For Formula 1, the system divides the Pell Grant award by the Pell Number of Terms across both Academic and Non-Standard terms. For Formula 3, the system sums the Academic Base Weeks and Non-Standard Base Weeks to define the Academic Program's Weeks of Instruction for Pell Grant calculations..

See Establishing Defaults.

See Reviewing Pell Information.

See Awarding Pell Grants for the 2010 and Future Aid Years.

Students who have no application data (ISIR, PROFILE, or institutional application) can be awarded. A student is considered to have no application if the student has no application data or if the student has an application that is different to that indicated in Packaging Data Source field on the Financial Aid Defaults page. For example, if you specify Federal for your packaging data source and the student only has a PROFILE application, the student is considered to have no application.

A student who has no application, as previously defined, is considered by Packaging to be ineligible for federal funds, except a PLUS loan. If you try to award federal funds (except a PLUS loan) to a student who has no application you get the message, In NO APP status. Only conditional, No Effect, or PLUS Item Types are valid. When a PLUS loan is being awarded to an undergraduate student who has no application, Packaging bypasses all federal eligibility checks, including the dependency check, and the PLUS loan is awarded.

Generally when awarding students who have no application, a budget is not required. However, students with no application who are awarded a PLUS loan must have a budget.

To award a Financial Aid Item Type to a student who has no application data—except for PLUS Financial Aid Item Types—the Financial Aid Item Type's Meet Need/Cost attribute must be defined as Conditional, No Effect, or Cost Only and the Financial Aid Item Type's Source attribute cannot be Federal. The Meet Need/Cost attribute must be Conditional, No Effect or Cost Only because no need is calculated for the student without an application. The Source attribute must not be Federal, except for PLUS, because when awarding a federal award, Packaging requires ISIR data.

See Defining Financial Aid Item Types.

If you are packaging a student who does not have an ISIR or institutional application data in the system, when you enter any of the award entry pages you receive a message that says, "Student does not have application data." This message is informational only; you can acknowledge the message and enter the page.

Federally funded financial aid programs require strict eligibility requirements and borrowing limits. Most grade level limits increase as students progresses in their studies. A student who has already borrowed up to the annual level limit within an academic year can receive additional funds if the annual level limit increases because a student advances or progresses to a new grade level with a higher-level limit. Financial Aid provides two procedural options to accommodate and award for an additional increase due to grade level changes. Option one is to use multiple and/or unique item types with different disbursement plans or split codes to support the additional eligibility. The other option is to select the Multi-Pass Processing check box. The Multi-Pass processing option set at the aggregate area level provides the means to automate mid-year grade level limit increases during the Awarding and Packaging process. This is an optional setting. This option is currently disabled for loan programs processed by the financial aid Loan Origination process (for example, Direct, FFELP, Health, Alternative and Perkins loan programs).

See Setting Up Aggregate Aid.

To award funds that have aggregate level limits defined and do not have the Multi-Pass processing option selected, you must use multiple Financial Aid Item Types and different disbursement plans/split codes to support the additional term. The Financial Aid Item Types must be associated with the same aggregate area to calculate aggregate limits correctly. The following scenario for the Stafford loan program demonstrates how it works.

Awarding Stafford loans across multiple NSLDS loan years is necessary when a student begins the financial aid year at one NSLDS level and then advances to the next level in subsequent terms within the same aid year. For example, you may have a student who is a freshman in the fall term but has enough credits to advance to a sophomore in the spring term. To determine the NSLDS loan year, Packaging evaluates the first nonzero disbursement record dictated by the disbursement plan/split code pattern and uses the corresponding term for that record. Then Packaging checks the student's NSLDS loan year for the corresponding term where the first nonzero disbursement record appears.

The student is awarded initially based on his or her freshman status—NSLDS loan year is Freshman. The student is awarded the maximum loan amount for a freshman—sequence #10. You select a disbursement plan/split code pattern for equal disbursements. You validate and post the award. The following table shows the initial loan award:

Near the end of the fall term the student tells you that he or she has enough credits to be a sophomore for the spring term and would like to receive additional loan money. First, you must change the NSLDS loan year on the student's Financial Aid term record for the term in which the student advances to sophomore status. After changing the NSLDS loan year, rebuild the student's spring budget. Then the additional award amount must be entered as a separate Financial Aid Item Type on the award entry page—sequence #20. To do this, you must have two Financial Aid Item Types set up for the subsidized Stafford loan and two Financial Aid Item Types set up for the unsubsidized Stafford loan. Use one for the initial award and the other for any subsequent (add-on) awards.

You award a subsequent Stafford loan, using a different Financial Aid Item Type from the initial loan award and a different disbursement plan/split code pattern to support only the spring term. Packaging determines the award amount for the add-on loan. Use a disbursement plan/split code pattern that distributes 100 percent of the additional award in the spring term. If there were more than one term remaining in the aid year, you would distribute the 100 percent evenly across the remaining terms. If you are manually packaging the student, you can leave the award amount at zero, and the Validation process calculates the difference between the freshman loan maximum already awarded and the sophomore loan maximum and awards the correct amount (the difference). After validation, the two loans are both shown because they are two separate Financial Aid Item Types. The Financial Aid Item Types must be associated with the same aggregate area to account for all sources that affect aggregate limits eligibility.

The first award is the total freshman loan amount split evenly across both terms and the second award—a different Financial Aid Item Type—represents the additional spring term only amount the student is eligible to receive as a sophomore. The following table shows the awards before and after validation:

* Using the defined Aggregate limits, Packaging determines the student's eligibility to be 3500 USD (sophomore aggregate limit) minus 2625 USD (freshman award) equals 875 USD (maximum sophomore eligible limit).

The system permits you to award additional awards using the same Financial Aid Item Type under the following conditions:

• NSLDS loan year must be the same for both awards using the same Financial Aid Item Type, only if the Financial Aid Item Type is tied to an aggregate area that does not have the Multi-Pass processing option selected.

• Career must be the same for both awards using the same Financial Aid Item Type.

• Disbursement plan must be the same for both awards using the same Financial Aid Item Type.

• Split codes can be different for the awards using the same Financial Aid Item Type.

Given the previous conditions, the Posting process collapses the two awards with the same Financial Aid Item Type into one award. The split codes are combined and a custom split code is returned. For example, if you have disbursement plan 01 and split code 02 for one award and disbursement plan 01 and split code 03 for the subsequent instance of that award, the combined award has disbursement plan 01 and split code XX.

When you are awarding for an add-on term, such as summer, you must follow the previous rules regarding NSLDS loan year.

If you have different careers with different NSLDS loan years, you can use the same Financial Aid Item Type because the Financial Aid Item Types for different careers are not combined.

Here is a list of the fields that are affected by the Award Merging process that occurs when the Posting process encounters two or more instances of the same Financial Aid Item Type:

The following attributes are not affected by the Award Merging process that occurs when the Posting process encounters two or more instances of the same Financial Aid Item Type. The Posting process preserves the value of the highest sequence-numbered row for each of these attributes.

• Sequence Number

• Disbursement Plan

• Professional Judgement override

• Need Override

• Lock override

• Charge Priority List

In some instances you may want to re-award or repackage an award for a student after it has been canceled or declined.

You can use the same Financial Aid Item Type as long as authorization and disbursement amounts are set to zero. If the Financial Aid Item Type is a loan and originated, before re-awarding, you must ensure the loan record’s initial award amount is $0 and all actual disbursement amounts have been processed and accepted to $0 with the COD system.

Otherwise, you must use a different Financial Aid Item Type. In addition, you can use the same or different sequence number when the conditions have been met. Using a different sequence number of a Financial Aid Item Type permits you to package the student in batch or online using the Auto Package function with the same Financial Aid Item Type after you have canceled the award.

For example, a student was awarded a non-loan Financial Aid Item Type such as a University Grant for 1,000.00 USD with a sequence number of 10 and a loan Financial Aid Item Type for 5,500.00 USD with a sequence number of 20. If the student originally declined both awards and later decided to attend spring term, you can use the same Financial Aid Item Types provided authorization, disbursement, or loan origination has not occurred. If the University Grant was disbursed for 500.00 USD for the fall term, you must set this disbursement down to zero—authorization and disbursement amounts must be backed out. You can then use the same Financial Aid Item Type and sequence number or insert a row and use a new sequence number for the same Financial Aid Item Type. If loan origination has not taken place, you can use the same Financial Aid Item Type and sequence number or insert a row. Otherwise, you must use a different Financial Aid Item Type and sequence number.

Packaging does not contain any edits to prevent you from canceling awards for which you have already made disbursements for a student. After you cancel a student's award that has associated disbursed amounts, Packaging retains a record of those disbursements—including the associated disbursement plan/split code pattern. This causes a problem if you attempt to award the student a second instance of the same Financial Aid Item Type for the award period but use a different disbursement plan than the disbursement plan associated with the canceled award. Packaging cannot reconcile the disbursement plan for the canceled award that has been partially or wholly disbursed with the disbursement plan called for by the new award. This situation can occur for Financial Aid Item Types whether or not disbursement protection has been activated for that Financial Aid Item Type.

For example, you offer an original award of the honors scholarship for 1,000.00 USD to a student. All amounts in the following table are in U.S. dollars (USD):

You then decide to cancel the original award, and offer the student a 900.00 USD honors scholarship with a different disbursement plan. The following table shows the retained canceled award and the new award. All amounts are in USD:

Packaging cannot reconcile the existing 500.00 USD disbursement from the canceled award with the new scheduled monthly disbursements of 100.00 USD.

The Validation process contains logic to prevent this situation from occurring. When you validate a student's award, the Validation process checks to see if multiple instances of the same Financial Aid Item Type with different disbursement plans exist. If this is the case, the Validation process then checks to see if the first instance is a canceled or declined award. If it is, the Validation process then checks whether the award has been disbursed, partially or wholly. If disbursements have taken place, then the Validation process cancels the second instance with reject message 9581, "You have a disbursed award that is either canceled or declined that contains a different disbursement plan than your newest offer."

The Validation process performs this check on both loans and non-loans. To award a Financial Aid Item Type under a different disbursement plan, you must first run both the authorization and disbursement processes to back out the row contained under the old disbursement plan. If you want to keep the disbursement plan, you can then award a second instance using the same disbursement plan.

When entering additional Stafford subsidized loans or additional Stafford unsubsidized loans—as in the multiple NSLDS loan years in the same aid year scenario—it is important that the subsidized loans come before the unsubsidized loans in the award sequence. Although the student has additional eligibility in the second awarding session, the Stafford logic requires that any subsidized loans be sequenced before any unsubsidized loans. An example is provided below. In the following example, the subsidized Stafford #2 and unsubsidized Stafford #2 are the second Financial Aid Item Types used to award the additional amount the student is eligible for since the student has changed NSLDS loan years:

Award and disbursement details from the Packaging process are used in Loan Origination records to support COD processing of Direct Loans. COD can accept and process up to 20 disbursements for each award with the disbursement number indicated in the COD Disbursement Number field. Therefore, you can allocate up to 20 potential disbursements when setting up any of the Direct Loan Financial Aid Item Types: Stafford (subsidized and unsubsidized) and PLUS (parent and graduate student PLUS). The Loan Origination process updates loan origination information based on award adjustments in the context of an award’s Disbursement IDs as created under the rules set by its Financial Aid Item Type and Disbursement Plan/Split Code Formula.

When a Direct Loan is awarded using the setup recommended above, the Packaging process splits the loan evenly among the first Disbursement ID of a term when the award is initially offered. Then, when award adjustments are made, the Packaging process updates the award disbursement details based on the assumption that the Even among first disb by Term option is used, whether the award has been disbursed, and what Disbursement IDs remain within each term.

If the Direct Loan has been awarded and originated, but not yet been disbursed, an increase to the award reallocates the new award amount using the existing disbursement plan split code. In this case, further loan processing recognizes the award adjustment as an origination award change to the existing scheduled disbursements.

Here is an example of how award increases can affect the distribution of awards and disbursements using the recommended setup and an initial award of 3,000.00 USD:

Prior to disbursing any funds, the award is increased to 4,500.00 USD:

The Fall award of 1,500.00 USD is disbursed, and afterwards, the award is increased to 6,000.00 USD. The 500.00 USD increase has not yet been disbursed:

The additional 500.00 USD for Fall is now disbursed, and, afterwards, the award is increased to 7,500.00 USD. Since there are no remaining Disbursement ID's for Fall, the increase is distributed over the Winter and Spring terms.

CommonLine loans are highly dependent on the Packaging process. During the process of originating, transmitting, and receiving loan information from the loan servicer, changes to the loan award can affect the loan process. Conversely, changes to loan information by the lender can affect the loan award information in the student's package. After a CommonLine item type is awarded and accepted, it is ready for immediate processing by the loan program. The loan is originated and transmitted electronically to the loan servicer. After approval by the servicer, you can update the award in the student's package if the disbursement amounts and fees need to be corrected with the amounts confirmed by the lender. The system performs this automatically by the CommonLine and CRC loan inbound processes. After the loan is guaranteed, adjustments to the loan item type amounts trigger an adjustment to the loan by the loan origination process, and this information is transmitted to the loan servicer.

A problem exists when you change the loan item type while the loan is in transit to the servicer and a response has not yet been received by the school. If this occurs, the notification of the loan guarantee fails to load by the loan inbound processes if the amount of the item type no longer matches the amount of the loan. To resolve the issue, users must determine the proper corrective action. This often requires readjustment of the loan award so that the loan inbound processes can complete their task, and then readjusting again the loan award to the student's true eligibility.

To prevent this problem, Packaging no longer allows loan awards to be adjusted if an originated loan exists for the item type with a loan origination transmission status of Transmitted. Awards can be modified after the loan has been processed by the loan servicer and the approval (or rejection) of the loan has been loaded into the system. In cases where a school must modify the award amount, you can change the transmission status of the loan using the Override Loan Status component. You should perform this action after careful consideration, as additional actions may be required to ensure that the loan is correctly processed to completion.