Selecting Your Application Data Source for Awarding

Specify whether you want to use federal application data (ISIR), institutional application data (PROFILE or an institutional application), or either (indicating which you would prefer to use if both are available). The application data source you select affects the packaging outcomes of Mass Packaging, Auto Packaging, and online manual awarding.

To allow the awarding and packaging of financial aid by using federal application data or institutional application data, you must enter a value in the Packaging Data Source field on the Financial Aid Defaults page, or override the installation level default for this field using an aid processing rule set at the academic career or academic program level. Select whether you want to use federal data, institutional data, or use a preference for federal or institutional data. For example, you could select the Institutional then Federal value for the packaging data source. If institutional application data is not available, the Packaging routine uses the student's federal application data to award monies.

The Packaging routine and the Equation Engine are affected by your selection of application data, either federal or institutional. The Packaging routine includes manual awarding, Auto Packaging, Mass Packaging, and the Mass Actions page. If you select an application type in the Packaging Data Source field that is different from the type of application that exists for a student, you cannot make awards for that student or adjust that student's awards. For example, if you select institutional application data as your packaging data source and the student has only federal application data, you cannot make awards for that student or adjust that student's existing awards.

Depending on the packaging data source selected and the type of application available for a student, the and Equation Engine routines select data from either the federal application data (ISIR_** tables) or the institutional application data (INST_** tables). The data selected is then used to populate fields used by the Packaging and Equation Engine routines. Several fields selected from the ISIR_** tables do not have corresponding fields in the INST_** tables. Because of this, some packaging fields are populated with assumed values when you are packaging using institutional data. For example, database match information is not provided in the PROFILE application, so the student is assumed to have valid values for the database matches.

When the routine packages students using institutional data (Inst or Inst, Fed), it first determines whether an ISIR also exists for the student, in addition to the PROFILE or other institutional application in the system. Previously , if an ISIR existed for a student, the routine used ISIR data to determine federal eligibility and used institutional data for all other selection or eligibility criteria, such as packaging equations. Data for equations was selected when packaging data was selected. Now you must write your own equation to determine what data is selected. If only an institutional application and no ISIR exists for the student, the Packaging routine uses institutional data to determine eligibility—federal, institutional, or other—to package the student.

The following table provides a list of the packaging fields for which a corresponding field does not exist in the institutional application data (PROFILE or an institutional application). The second column tells you how the packaging field is populated when institutional application data is selected for use in packaging.