News from NASFAA

Department of Education Electronic Announcement

2003-2004 Application Processing Start Up

TO: EDE Destination Points

FROM: U.S. Department of Education, Student Financial Assistance

RE: 2003-2004 Application Processing Start Up

DATE: December 30, 2002

We are pleased to announce the start up of the 2003-2004 Application Processing System. FAFSA on the Web (FOTW) and all related Web sites will be available as of 12:01 a.m. Central Standard Time (CST) on January 1, 2003. The Central Processing System (CPS) will start processing applications on January 2.

Application Processing System
On January 2, 2003, the CPS will begin picking up 2003-04 input records (such as Web and electronic applications) each morning at approximately 2:00 a.m. CST. We will send these records to the matching agencies, receive the results, complete processing, and send ISIRs to your mailbox by approximately 7:00 p.m. CST the same night.

Student Aid Reports (SARs) and SAR Acknowledgements will be printed beginning the same day. Applicants who provided an e-mail address on their FAFSA and Renewal FAFSA will receive an e-mail notice that tells them how they can view their SAR information on the Internet.

As always, applicants must provide all required signatures before we can process their applications and calculate an Expected Family Contribution for them. In 2003-04, a Web applicant who does not provide all signatures, but provided an e-mail address on the FAFSA, will receive an e-mail from FSA explaining that we are holding his/her application until we receive the electronic signature(s) or signed signature page.

You can determine which students have listed your school and have pending signatures by requesting the HOLD04OP file. This file contains demographic data about applicants in the Signature Hold File, including which signatures they are missing and their e-mail address. If you have not already done so, you can request this file from FAA Access to CPS Online.

Status of 2003-2004 Renewal Applications
For the 2003-2004 cycle, we have printed and mailed directly to students more than 4 million paper Renewal Applications and more than 1.4 million PIN mailers. In addition, new for the 2003-2004 cycle, we sent directly to students more than 4.3 million e-mails with encrypted URL's for retrieving student PINs. All Renewal Applications, PIN mailers and e-mails were sent by December 20, 2002.
EDExpress Status
The U.S. Department of Education wants all EDExpress users to know that 2003-2004 EDExpress Version 9.0 will be released in early January on the Federal Student Aid Download (FSAdownload) Web site located at FSAdownload.ed.gov.

To download the software, click on the FSAdownload's link to SOFTWARE on the left side of the page, then select EDExpress for Windows 2003-2004. Most users will want the full download, although the option to download the software onto diskettes is also available.

You may also link to the FSAdownload Web site from the IFAP Web site (ifap.ed.gov) by going to Publications and clicking on "Software Technical References."

EDExpress for Windows Version 9.0 contains the Application Processing, Packaging, and Global modules. The Pell and Direct Loan modules are contained in version 9.1, which will be released in late March 2003.

Pell Grants and Maximum EFC
Note: At this time, the Department's Fiscal Year 2003 Appropriation has not been approved. Therefore, the 2003-2004 Pell Payment Schedule included in Version 9.0 is based upon the current $4,000 maximum Pell Grant award amount. After the Department's Fiscal Year 2003 Appropriation is finalized, we will, if necessary, update the Pell Grant Payment Schedule through a future release of EDExpress. If you use the EDExpress Packaging Module to award Pell Grants, you may want to wait until it is known whether the Pell Payment Schedule will change.
IFAP & Application Processing Materials
If you go to the IFAP web site (ifap.ed.gov) and click on "Application Processing Materials" under "On-Line References," you will see relevant documentation listed in chronological order beginning with the 2002-2003 processing cycle. In addition, these documents are cross-posted under "Other Views/Current Publications/Application Processing."
Wishing You A Good Year
The new initiatives listed in this message were announced on IFAP in November 2002 and during presentations at FSA's Electronic Access Conferences in November and December 2002. You can view a summary of changes by going to the IFAP Web site at http://ifap.ed.gov/eannouncements/1129Summ0304AppProcSysChng.html and/or you can download the presentations in PowerPoint format from the EAC conference Web site as follows:
  • Point your browser to edeworkshop.ncspearson.com/welcome.htm
  • Scroll down and click on the 2002 Electronic Access Conference links to Orlando or Las Vegas as appropriate.
  • Scroll down and click on the link to "Sessions."
  • Find the session in which you're interested and click on the link labeled "PowerPoint Presentation."
We hope the changes we've made will benefit you and your student aid applicants and we look forward to a very successful 2003-2004 processing cycle. Thank you for your support.

Posted January 2, 2003 on www.NASFAA.org, Web Site of the
National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators
Please submit Web Site questions or comments to ask@nasfaa.org




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