To file for financial aid a student must meet certain Legal
and other requirements:

- You must be a U.S. citizen or eligible noncitizen.

- You must certify that you will use federal student aid only
for educational purposes. You must also certify that you are not in default
on a federal student loan and do not owe money on a federal student grant.

- You must comply with Selective Service Registration.

- You must have a valid Social Security Number (SSN)
(unless you’re from the Federated States of Micronesia,
the Republic of the Marshall Islands or the Republic of Palau).

If you don’t have a SSN, you can find out more about applying for one
by calling 1-800-772-1213. TTY users can call 1-800-325-0778.

Because of terrorism, the social security number is looked at very closely.

Immigration authorization service reviews every student that applies
for financial aid. They match up a name with INS
(Immigration and Naturalization Service) and immigration services.

Some of the things that often come up are…

If the student has a last name that is hyphenated or perhaps a last name
that is in 2 parts, don’t be suprised if it comes back from the Deptment of
Education saying we are not going to give you financial help because we can’t.

Don’t go crazy.
They just need to verify the name and the social security number.

Since the name goes through INS and immigration services, everyone looks at it.
There are cases where a student’s name is hyphenated or doesn’t exactly match.

If that happens, go to the financial aid office at the school and they will
tell you what you need to do. In most cases, it’s just a matter of showing
your social security card to make sure that it is you and the name is correct
and then resubmitting.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 17th, 2007 at 5:23 am and is filed under Student Loans, Financial Aid. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.