<Click each question below for the answer>
- Work-Study is a federally funded, need-based program in which the government and the employer share the payroll cost of employing a student. Students must apply for financial aid to be considered.
- The dollar amount a student is awarded in Work-Study will NOT be distributed to the student directly nor will it apply toward tuition. Instead, the amount is earned by the student through his/her job.
- Our Work-Study Office can assist students in finding a job, but most students find one on their own. The student can search our job center website at http://jobcenter.wisc.edu/ for current openings. Once the student is working he/she receive paychecks that will decrease the Work-Study amount set aside for that student (the hourly wage and number of hours worked is worked out with the employer).
- One advantage for the student is that work-study income from the previous year is ignored when we calculate a student’s aid eligibility. This sometimes results in a more favorable aid award. Students should NOT begin a work-study job until they’ve been awarded work-study AND have accepted it.
- For more Frequently Asked Questions regarding Work-Study check out the Work-Study Frequently Asked Questions Page
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Financial aid is awarded on an annual basis so you must reapply each year. Initially we ask that you file the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA). It can be completed online at www.fafsa.ed.gov . It can be completed anytime after January 1 st for the next academic year but you may want to wait until you have completed your federal tax returns because the form does ask for tax information.
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Once we receive your FAFSA results, we will notify you if we need any other forms. We will be requesting prior year tax returns from some families, along with other forms.
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When we begin processing the information you have provided, we may have other questions and will contact you separately by mail.
- A subsidized loan is awarded on the basis of financial need as determined by our office. The federal government pays the interest on these loans while students are in school at least half-time and during certain periods, such as grace and deferment.
- Unsubsidized loans are awarded regardless of financial need but you will be responsible for the interest from the time the loan is disbursed until it is paid in full. You also must apply for federal financial aid to receive this loan.
- If you are a dependent student, your parents can apply for a federal Parent Loan for Undergraduate Students (PLUS). If they are denied the loan because of the mandatory credit check, you may be eligible for additional unsubsidized Stafford loan. Parents can apply for a PLUS by completing the PLUS Request Form and the PLUS Supplemental application. These forms may be downloaded from our website here, completed and mailed or faxed to our office.
- If you are a graduate or professional student, have completed the FAFSA and have been considered for the maximum Stafford loan, you may want to consider the federal GradPLUS for additional assistance. Click here for additional information.
- Another consideration for any student might be an alternative loan. Alternative loans are offered through private lenders and are meant to provide additional funds for education only after a student and his/her family has exhausted all other sources of federal and state funding. These loans are not guaranteed by the federal government so terms are set by the individual lending institution and are usually not as favorable as federal loans. These loans require a credit check and most will require a co-signer if the borrower has little or no credit history. You can find more information on these loans at http://www.finaid.wisc.edu/alternloadchart.html.
- Were you born before January 1, 1985?
- During the school year 2008-2009, will you be working on a master's or doctorate program (such as an MA/MS, MBA, MD, JD, Ph.D., Ed.D. graduate certificate, etc.)?
- Are you married?
- Do you have children who receive more than half of their support from you?
- Do you have dependents other than the student's children or spouse?
- Are you an orphan, or were you (until age 18) a ward/dependent of the court?
- Are you currently serving on active duty in the U.S. Armed Forces for purposes other than training OR are you a veteran of the U.S. Armed Forces (with a discharge other than dishonorable)?
- a U.S. permanent resident and you have an Alien Registration Receipt Card (I551);
- a conditional permanent resident (I551-C); or
- an other eligible noncitizen with an Arrival-Departure
Record (I94) from the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization
Service showing any one of the following designations:
- “Refugee,”
- “Asylum Granted,”
- “Indefinite Parole” and/or “Humanitarian Parole,” or
- “Cuban-Haitian Entrant.”
- I will be on a UW-Madison sponsored study abroad program. How and when will I receive financial aid?
- Special students returning to school for teacher certification (EDCS) will be considered for the Federal Stafford Loan and Federal Work Study. Only classes that are required for certification are eligible for funding from our office. We will review your classes each term before any funds are disbursed to you to ensure that you are enrolled for the courses designated as teacher certification from the School of Education.
- Students who are taking courses that are designated pre-requisites for admission into a graduate or professional program (UNRS) may be eligible to receive aid for a maximum of 12 months. The admitting graduate or professional school, Program or department, must provide this office with a letter indicating that, the student is required to complete certain courses in order to meet admission pre-requisites for the particular program. This letter does not guarantee admission. This information must come from the admitting department, not from the Special Student office. We will review your classes each term before any funds are disbursed to you to ensure that you are enrolled at least half time (6 credits per semester) from the approved courses.
- After completing the FAFSA and submitting it to the federal processor you may notify us at the financial aid office if you have exceptional special circumstances that you believe should be considered. If you are required to submit tax returns to our office, use the space provided on the Parent Tax Cover sheet or Student Tax Cover sheet to alert us to your special circumstances. If you already submitted those forms and didn’t note your special circumstances or if you are not required to file tax returns with us, follow the directions at the end of this question. Please understand that to ensure fairness and compliance with federal, state and university regulations there are limits to the circumstances we can consider.
- Special circumstances may include (but are not limited to):
- Death of a parent/spouse
- Parent loss of job/income
- High medical/dental bills not covered by insurance and/or high cost of insurance premiums
- Reduction or loss of untaxed income such as child support or social security benefits
- Student loss of income resulting from return to school after ceasing full-time employment
- Child care costs for student's dependent(s)
- Circumstances we are not able to consider include (but are not limited to):
- Car payments
- Consumer debt
- High mortgage payments
- Tuition expenses for parent in college
- Weddings
- If your circumstance doesn’t meet the above parameters and you would like information about additional funding sources, please refer to the question on this page titled 'I need more money for educational expenses. Would I qualify for a PLUS loan, a GradPLUS loan or an alternative loan?'.
- To inform us of your special circumstances send a written statement explaining your situation along with supporting documentation to us at: Office of Student Financial Services, UW-Madison, 432 N. Murray St., Madison, WI 53706; fax it to us at 608/262-9068, or e-mail us at finaid@finaid.wisc.edu. Be sure to include student name and campus ID. Upon review we may find it necessary to request additional information. We will notify you as soon as possible of any change resulting from your special circumstances. Because of funding limits, please be aware that a recalculation of your financial aid eligibility does not guarantee that any additional aid will be offered to you.
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| You can check your financial aid status from the My Info site at http://www.myinfo.wisc.edu or, if you have a NetID, from My UW at https://my.wisc.edu. |
| After all your forms are received in our office we will review them. If we have questions or there are discrepancies, we will send an Information Request letter to you. If no additional information is needed, we will send an award notification. You should receive either an Information Request or an Award Notification 2-4 weeks after we have received all of your forms. You can check your status from the My Info site at http://www.myinfo.wisc.edu or, if you have a NetID, from My UW at https://my.wisc.edu. If by your tuition due date you have ACCEPTED enough aid to cover what you owe for tuition, you will not be assessed a fee for late payment of tuition even if the funds are not yet available. But if your application for aid is not fully processed or you have not accepted sufficient funds to cover what you owe, you are resonsible for on-time tuition and fee payment to avoid a late fee assessment by the Bursar's Office. |
| We send email reminders on a rolling basis depending upon when you apply for financial aid and when you turn in forms. It is important that you have either a current email or mailing address. If you don’t have an email address our computer system will automatically send a letter to your mailing address. You can check the status of your aid application online from the My Info site at http://www.myinfo.wisc.edu or, if you have a NetID, from My UW at https://my.wisc.edu. If you prefer, or don’t have online access, you can contact us at (608) 262-3060. |
| If your parents are divorced or separated, you should provide information about the parent you lived with more during the past 12 months. If you did not live with one parent more than the other, use the parent that provided more financial support during the last 12 months, or during the most recent year that you actually received support from a parent. If this parent is remarried as of today, provide information about that parent AND the person whom your parent married (stepparent). |
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| All financial aid is first applied to your student account at the Bursar's office to pay tuition. Any excess is mailed to you at your mailing address, to be used for other educational expenses. During the academic year, the first refunds will be mailed to students during the week before classes start. For summer, funds are disbursed to student accounts no earlier than 5 days before the student's first class begins. |
| Any aid you receive from your other school will not transfer to UW-Madison. You must apply for aid here. You should go online to your FAFSA and add UW-Madison as a school (code 003895). Once you are admitted and we receive your FAFSA, we will contact you, either with an award or a request for additional information (like tax returns). Be aware that some funds may be limited if you are a Spring term transfer because of the late date of your application for financial aid. |
| It is possible to apply for aid anytime during the academic year. However, it can often take in excess of 4 weeks to complete the processing of your application in our office; therefore, it is best to apply as early as possible. It is a federal regulation that we cannot award financial aid after a term has ended so even if you have all your forms in before the end of the term, we may not have enough time to process your file and award you aid before the last day of classes. The same is true for summer. Once your class has ended, we cannot award you financial aid. In particular for summer, we urge you to have a completed file with our office no later than May 1 to assure that we will have enough time to complete our evaluation and award you before your class ends. |
| If you want to be considered a married student for financial aid purposes, you should wait until you are married to file the FAFSA (we will also need a copy of your spouse's previous year federal tax return even though you were not married at the time you filed your tax return). If you do wait, however, it can mean that you won't have your aid available when tuition is due and will have to make other arrangements to pay your costs until your aid is processed. If you file the FAFSA before you are married, you must report your status as single even if you will be married before or during the school year for which you are applying for aid. You CANNOT re-file later in the year as married. Each student should evaluate his/her own situation to determine when to file the FAFSA. |
| Federal regulations require a school to take a "snapshot" of a student's enrollment at a predetermined time to measure credit load eligibility for the federal Pell Grant. We run a program at 5:00 p.m. on the first day of classes to check for credit loads. Our research has shown that using the first day of class for this "snapshot" is to the advantage of the majority of UW students. If a student is less than full-time when this program is run, the Pell Grant must be reduced to correspond to the level of enrollment (half-time, three-quarter time) even if students are on a class waiting list or if circumstances beyond their control caused their less than full-time enrollment. This cannot be appealed, even if it is not the student's fault, although it may be possible for us to increase a student's loan to make up for the Pell reduction. |
| For both of these loans you will sign a Master Promissory Note. As long as you stay with the same lender you will not need to sign another note for any subsequent loans for up to 10 years.
The Federal Student Aid Ombudsman of the Department of Education offers a free service to, assist students attending college, resolve disputes and/or problems associated with federal student loans. For more information you may contact the FSA Student Loan Ombudsman's office at any of the following sites. Via e-mail: fsaombudsmanoffice@ed.gov Via on-line assistance: http://www.ombudsman.ed.gov
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If you cannot answer yes to at least one of these questions, then you will be considered to be a “dependent student” for financial aid purposes. If you do not qualify for independent status according to the above but you have special circumstances that you believe make you an independent student, you can submit an appeal to our office. Parents’ unwillingness to help with educational expenses or the fact that the student is not claimed on the parents’ tax return does NOT qualify a student for self-support status. |
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If you want scholarship check(s) to pay your UW Housing or private residence hall bill and the check is made out to UW-Madison, your check will need to be sent to the Bursar’s Office. If your tuition has already been paid in full, any scholarship monies that are then applied to your tuition account will be mailed to you as a refund check. You can use the money from the refund check to pay for your housing bill. |
If you are not a U.S. citizen or eligible noncitizen, you may be eligible for private loans from lenders. One such resource for international students is the Global Loan. Information about this loan program can be found online at www.globalslc.com. Another resource may be alternative loans although most alternative loans require a U.S. citizen cosigner. A link to these loans can be found on our website under Alternative Loans. You may also wish to check out the UW-Madison office of International Student Services website at http://iss.wisc.edu/ |
If you accept your financial aid award before you leave the U.S. and complete and return promissory notes for loans (if appropriate), financial aid funds will be credited to your tuition account no sooner than 10 days prior to the date your abroad program begins (5 days prior for summer abroad programs.) We cannot legally disburse funds sooner than that. Therefore, it is important that you apply for financial aid long before you leave on your abroad program (at least by March 1 for a summer abroad program and by June 1 for an academic year abroad program – or a fall only abroad program; and by October 1 for a spring only abroad program.) Your financial aid funds will be credited to your abroad program cost(s). If you have more than enough aid to cover the program cost(s), you will be mailed a refund check to the address you list as your mailing address. Depending upon the mailing address you use, you may need someone to deposit the money for you into your bank account. You should be sure to make all appropriate arrangements for this before you leave the country. For more information regarding International Academic Programs (IAP) study abroad programs, you may wish to visit the IAP website at http://www.wisc.edu/studyabroad/ The School of Business has information online for study abroad programs they sponsor at http://www.bus.wisc.edu/international/ |
| It is possible to receive financial aid for summer sessions. The usual funds available are Stafford loan and Federal Work-Study. Information about the application process for Summer 2008 is available at http://www.finaid.wisc.edu/summer.html. |
Contact our office for any additional questions you may have on the process for receiving aid if you have the EDCS or UNRS classifications. |
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| We have developed an estimator which will construct a financial aid package based upon information that you provide and the current packaging parameters and funding levels at UW-Madison. The estimator is in English and can be found at http://www.finaid.wisc.edu/calculator.php. |