Welcome
The Office of Student Financial Assistance offers a variety of financial aid options to students. This Web site provides information on how to apply for financial aid, deadlines, and types of aid available.
Financial Aid News and Announcements
Parent and Grad PLUS Loan Applications Available Beginning April 1
Parents of dependent undergraduate students and graduate and professional degree students who are in need of additional funding to supplement their financial aid package, may apply for a Direct PLUS Loan to help cover educational expenses. For more information including the application, visit our Parent PLUS Loan or Grad PLUS Loan pages.
Dollars and Sense Enrollment and Student Services Newsletter. Fall/Winter 2012. Look for each issue, which includes financial aid information, as well as other related articles.
If your federal student loan debt is high relative to your income and family size, you may qualify for Income Based Repayment (IBR). At present, the IBR plan caps monthly federal student loan payments at 15% of the borrower's discretionary income and grants forgiveness for any remaining loan debt once the borrower makes qualifying payments for 25 years. Modifications made by congress shortly after the initial implementation of the IBR plan are projected to reduce the cap from 15% to 10% of a borrower's discretionary income and reduce the years of qualifying payments from 25 to 20 for borrows who take out their first federal student loan after 2014. The "Pay As You Earn" plan is expected to expedite these modifications making them available to new borrowers as early as 2012. For more information on IBR visit the Federal Student Aid Web site.
Need Money? File the FAFSA!
As of January 1, 2013, the 2013-2014 Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) is available at www.fafsa.gov. The FAFSA determines your eligibility for grants, scholarships, loans, and work-study programs, and is the essential first step in receiving financial aid from federal, state, and private sources.
- The sooner you apply for student financial assistance, the better chance you have of receiving the maximum amount of funds.
- You do not need your 2012 income tax return to apply now. You may estimate your taxes using your 2011 tax return and update your information once you submit your 2012 income tax return to the IRS. Once you have filed your 2012 tax return, it is highly recommended that you correct your FAFSA by using the IRS Data Retrieval Tool. The IRS Data Retrieval Tool allows you to import your tax data to your FAFSA directly from the IRS.
- Completing your FAFSA now will allow you to plan more efficiently.
- Many scholarships require you to complete the FAFSA.
The IRS Data Retrieval Process, which is expected to be available in February 2013, allows eligible federal tax return filers to retrieve information from their submitted income tax return while completing the 2013-2014 FAFSA. IRS information should be available three-to-five business days after filing an electronic return and about six-to-eight weeks after filing a paper return. The retrieval process will be available for filers of both the English and Spanish versions of the FAFSA on the Web. Nova Southeastern University encourages students to take advantage of this feature. The Department of Education considers data transferred through the IRS Data Retrieval System as equivalent to an IRS form. This is good news for students selected for verification. If IRS data transferred to a student's FAFSA remains unaltered, the student may not be required to submit tax documentation for verification purposes. Students who are selected for verification and did not use the IRS Data Retrieval Tool will be required to submit a line-by-line transcript of their federal income tax return to be obtained from the IRS.
Due to federal budget cuts known as sequestration, all Teacher Education Assistance for College and Higher Education (TEACH) Grant awards disbursed after March 1, 2013, are being reduced by 12.6 percent. More information about the TEACH Grant is available on our grants and loans webpages.