Education
Reading a financial aid form before you fill it in
The difficulty is vocabulary, not arithmetic. A handful of terms have definitions that are not quite the everyday ones.
Enrolment status, dependency, household size, untaxed income and contributor all have specific meanings in this context, and each differs subtly from ordinary usage. Getting one wrong is the usual reason a form has to be corrected later.
The official instructions define every term, and reading the whole form once before entering anything is worth the half hour. The definitions are the part to read closely; the questions themselves are mostly straightforward once the terms are settled.
Whose information is required depends on the dependency determination, which is made by criteria rather than by who supports whom. That determination decides most of what you need to gather, so it is worth resolving first.
Where a question is genuinely ambiguous for your situation, the aid office at any school on your list will answer it, and so will the federal information centre. Both are free.
What to do next. Read the official instructions for the defined terms before entering anything, and resolve the dependency question first.
studentaid.gov outranks this page. Rules, figures and dates change
between academic years. This is written to help you read the official sources, not to
stand in front of them. Start there.
Nothing here is a determination. We cannot tell you what you qualify
for, and no website can. The programme and the office that runs it decide that, after
you apply.
Still have a question?
Describe what you are trying to work out and a member of the team will answer, or direct you to the office that makes the decision.