If SAI is not currency, then why is it used in the over award formula?
Federal Student Aid website states:
Your SAI is not
- a dollar amount of aid you’ll receive,
- what your family is expected to provide, or
- your final financial aid offer.
But also says:
An overaward exists when a student’s aid package exceeds their need or overall cost of attendance (COA). Remember when packaging subsidized or need-based aid, the basic formula is COA minus Student Aid Index (SAI) minus Other Financial Assistance (OFA) equals need. When packaging unsubsidized or non-need-based aid the formula is simply COA minus OFA (unsubsidized aid can replace all or part of the SAI). While your school must always take care not to overaward a student when packaging their aid, circumstances may change after you have packaged the student’s aid that result in an overaward. For instance, the student may receive a scholarship or grant from an outside organization.
So it IS a number that your family is expected to provide. It might not be ALL your family is expected to provide, more like the bare minimum.
The number was just renamed, but is still displacing scholarships, even worse now for families with two or more in school.
Thoughts?
Comments
-
I think scholarship providers are still working to understand the EFC vs. SAI change. This is a great place to gain insight from other scholarship providers.
Students First Consulting also has this great article on how scholarship providers can adapt to the 'better FAFSA'. It's a great read:
1
