Effective May 18, 2022, Federal Student Aid (FSA) extended the waiver of certain verification requirements for the 2022-2023 award year in an effort to reduce barriers to receiving financial aid experienced by many students. The good news is that this is nothing new, just an extension of the procedures in place for the 2021-2022 award year. So, here’s a reminder of what exactly has been waived:
- In-person submission of and/or ink signatures on documents
- Verification of applications selected under the V1 tracking flag
- Verification of income/tax information of applications selected under the V5 tracking flag
Due to the timing, you may have already started verification or at least requested documents from your students. You do not have to complete the process or continue to collect documents although you may choose to do so under your institution’s consistently applied internal procedures.
These are the things that still have to get done:
- Verify Identity/Statement of Educational Purpose for students with V4 or V5 tracking flags except where exempted – see Chapter 4 of the 2022-2023 Application and Verification Guide for the list of exclusions.
- Review subsequent ISIR transactions and resolve any conflicting information that may be identified — this includes conflicting information that results from tax or other documents collected before the verification waiver was instituted. See our blog for more information on this topic.
- Report a valid verification status code for every application selected whether you performed verification (V) or not (S). Blank in only acceptable when the application was selected after the student ceased to be enrolled at your institution.
The Department of Education has not provided any detailed guidance about verification for 2023-2024, but has committed to looking for long-term improvements to the process in order to reduce the burden on students and their families.
Feel free to email the Higher Education Assistance Group at info@heag.us if we can help with any aspect of verification, compliance or processing aid this summer.