FAFSA Loan Confusion: Do I Need New Entrance Counseling Each Year?

You're right - the entrance counseling is only required for first-time borrowers. You DON'T need to do it again each year. The screenshot confirms what I already knew. You completed it as a freshman, so you're good for your entire undergraduate career for that school. The Master Promissory Note (MPN) is also good for 10 years. Your financial aid office might be sending out generic checklists to all students, which is causing the confusion.

Actaully its more complicated then that. Some schools do make you redo counseling every year as a school policy even tho the federal rules dont require it. My school made me redo it sophmore year but not junior year. Its weird but they can add requirements

Financial aid advisor here. To clarify: Federal regulations only require entrance counseling once per loan type as a first-time borrower. However, schools have discretion to implement additional counseling requirements as part of their default prevention plan. If your financial aid checklist shows entrance counseling is needed, I recommend checking if your school requires annual counseling or if it's a new loan type (like if you're now getting PLUS loans when before you only had Direct Subsidized). When in doubt, complete the items on your school's checklist to avoid disbursement delays.

This happened to me and turned out to be a mistake on my school's system! The financial aid office had me marked as a new borrower even though I'd been getting loans for 2 years already. Took 45 minutes on hold to talk to someone but they fixed it in like 2 minutes once I got through.

Good luck getting someone on the phone at financial aid this time of year. I spent DAYS trying to reach a human at my daughter's school AND at the Federal Student Aid number. If you keep getting nowhere, check out Claimyr.com - I used it last month to reach a FSA agent after trying for three days on my own. They have a system that waits on hold for you and calls when a real agent is available. There's a demo video at https://youtu.be/TbC8dZQWYNQ that explains how it works. Saved me hours of frustration when we had a similar issue with loan requirements.

lol the whole student loan system is soooo broken. I literally had to fill out the same exact forms 3 different times last year because they kept "losing" them. And my entrance counseling mysteriously disappeared from their system TWICE even though I had the completion certificate. Financial aid office blamed the federal system, feds blamed the school. 🙄

UPDATE: Finally got through to my financial aid office. Turns out they DO require annual entrance counseling as part of their default prevention program, even though federal regulations don't mandate it. The advisor said it's because they have a high default rate and added this requirement to help students better understand their borrowing. So even though the screenshot from studentaid.gov is accurate about federal requirements, my school has stricter policies. For anyone else facing this, definitely check with your specific school rather than assuming the federal minimum is all you need to do!

Thanks for the update! This is a perfect example of why it's so important to check with your specific school rather than just going by federal requirements. I'm dealing with a similar situation at my school where they have additional exit counseling requirements that go beyond what's federally mandated. It's frustrating when schools don't clearly communicate these extra policies upfront, but I guess it makes sense from a default prevention standpoint. At least now you know for sure and can get your loan processed without delays. Did they give you any heads up about what to expect for senior year requirements?