You Ask, We Answer: I’ve filled out the FAFSA, so why don’t I have a financial aid award yet?

You completed your FAFSA, but you haven’t received a personal offer of financial aid from PLU – or even from other colleges – yet.

Here are a few common reasons (and what do next!):

1. You forgot to add PLU to the list of schools in your FAFSA. Some students and families worked on their FAFSA in the fall, but maybe you didn’t decide to apply to PLU until later. You need to log back on to your FAFSA account and add PLU (PLU’s FAFSA school code is 003785) to your list of schools. That gives us permission to view your FAFSA and consider you for grants, scholarships, loans and work study.
2. You accidentally completed the 2022-23 FAFSA instead of the 2023-24. It seems like the right thing to do. We are in the 2022-2023 academic year and it may have been 2022 when you completed the FAFSA. BUT, you need to complete the 2023-2024 FAFSA since that is the year you will be in college.
3. You or your parents did not sign the FAFSA. So many students answer every single question asked but fail to sign the FAFSA form with their FSA ID and submit the form. This happens for many reasons—maybe you forgot your FSA ID or your parent isn’t with you to sign with the parent FSA ID, so your application is left incomplete. Double check that you and your parents have signed the FAFSA using your (and their) FSA IDs!

After you submit your FAFSA form online, you can check its status immediately by going to fafsa.gov and logging in with your username and password. (Note: Only the student can check the status.)

Once any of these is fixed you should see a PLU financial aid award show up in your mailbox within 2-3 weeks! Your PLU Admission Counselor can try to troubleshoot other reasons, so reach out to them if you have any questions.

Guest Blogger: Melody Ferguson, Associate Dean of Admission