engineer major = good choice!! my son did enginering and got a job paying 89k right after college and paid off his loans in 3 yrs. whatever u choose its prolly fine if shes in a field with good job prospecks

One more consideration: if your family might qualify for Public Service Loan Forgiveness in the future (requires working for government or non-profit), only the Parent PLUS loans would potentially qualify if consolidated into a Direct Consolidation Loan and repaid on an income-contingent repayment plan. While engineering isn't typically associated with PSLF, many engineers do work for government agencies (DOT, DOE, military, local governments, etc.) Also, the current administration has been exploring targeted loan forgiveness options. While nothing is guaranteed, federal loans have consistently had more relief options than private loans during economic hardships.

That's fantastic advice! I hadn't thought about encouraging them to download that PDF. Do you have any ballpark estimate for how long the complete application should take when done properly? We want to set realistic expectations for our students and parents.

For a student with fairly straightforward finances (W-2 income, standard tax returns), about 45-60 minutes if they have all documents ready. For students with more complex situations (multiple contributors, business income, etc.), it can easily take 1.5-2 hours. That's actual focused work time, not counting gathering documents or waiting for contributor sections to be completed.

my cousin works in financial aid and she says a lot of ppl get confused about this. parent plus is in parents name ONLY. private loans let cosigners get released sometimes. thats probly what that person at ur workshop was talkin about

One thing to consider with private loans: even though they advertise co-signer release, the requirements to actually qualify can be pretty strict. My daughter made 30 on-time payments with Sallie Mae, but she was denied co-signer release because her debt-to-income ratio wasn't strong enough yet as a recent graduate. Make sure to read all the fine print about what's required beyond just making the payments.

this happened to me to lol. my fasfa was there but not there if that makes sense?? turns out i put the wrong school code on the 2023 one but the right code on the 2024 one. double check all ur school codes!!

Just wanted to follow up - did you manage to resolve this? The key thing to remember is that the school's financial aid office and studentaid.gov are looking at two different systems. What worked for us was getting the FSA to give us specific confirmation that the ISIR (Institutional Student Information Record) had been transmitted, not just that the FAFSA was processed. The confirmation numbers are what finally got the school to find the applications in their system.

For National Guard members doing the typical one weekend per month plus two weeks in summer, they generally remain dependents if under 24 and not meeting other independence criteria. The military service that automatically confers independent status is active duty (not training). To directly answer your original question about multiple students: When you log into your FSA account as a parent, you'll see a dashboard that shows all students who have invited you as a contributor. You can toggle between their applications and complete your sections for each one. The system has improved in recent months - initially there were issues with the multiple student setup, but most have been resolved.

BTW tell ur son to check with the URI veterans office too, not just financial aid. My nephew got extra $ for books and stuff through some Guard education program that financial aid didnt even know about