Need Summary

The Need Summary page displays the student's Cost of Attendance (COA), Pell COA, Alternate Pell COA, Expected Family Contribution (EFC)/Student Aid Index (SAI), federal and institutional need, federal and institutional award totals, need-based aid award totals, federal methodology (FM) and institutional methodology (IM) special need/cost aid award totals, unmet need, and unmet COA.

The Need Summary page displays the SAI/prorated FM EFC and prorated IM EFC values for a student used to determine the student's need. When using different application data sources for packaging, it is important to understand how the SAI/FM EFC/IM EFC and need are affected by different packaging data source selections. For example:

Scenario 1: When the packaging data source on the Financial Aid Defaults page equals Fed Only, Fed, Inst, or Inst, Fed and only federal data exists for the student, if you award a financial aid item type with an institutional packaging methodology, the financial aid item type is awarded based on the institutional need. But, if you do not have institutional application data and analysis, institutional need equals institutional COA, because the institutional EFC is 0.00 USD. The Packaging routine awards institutional financial aid item types up to the institutional COA.

Scenario 2: When the packaging data source on the Financial Aid Defaults page equals Inst Only, Fed, Inst, or Inst, Fed and only institutional data exists for the student, if you award a financial aid item type with a federal packaging methodology, the financial aid item type is awarded based on the federal need. But if you do not have federal application data and analysis, federal need equals federal COA, because the SAI/FM EFC is 0.00 USD. The Packaging routine awards federal financial aid item types up to the federal COA.

If your institution uses IM for early awarding—in October, as an example—and you want to include estimated federal awards, set the Packaging Methodology field on the FA Item Type 2 page for your federal financial aid item types to Institutional Methodology. This allows the Packaging processes to use the same need calculation for all the awards; because you have only institutional data you use institutional need. When the federal aid year begins on January 1, you must change the Packaging Methodology field back to Federal for all your federal financial aid item types. You must also make sure that the student has application data compatible with the packaging data source you indicated on the Financial Aid Defaults page.