CSU and U.S. Education Department Simplifying Financial Aid Process
February 22, 1999 – The California State University and the U.S. Department of Education have entered into an agreement to make the financial aid application process easier for students who are applying both for federal and state assistance and for those students who use the Web to apply for admission to college.
This pilot project will test the effectiveness of a process in which student information entered into CSU's free CSUMentor system may be transferred to the electronic Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) on the Web.
Current law does not allow data students entered into other electronic outreach and admission systems to be used for FAFSA except under this pilot with CSU.
CSUMentor (www.csumentor.edu), developed by CSU and XAP Corporation and introduced in November of 1997, is the online system that helps students and their families plan and apply for admission to the CSU.
In the first year, more than 618,000 students and counselors visited the CSUMentor site, more than 55,000 students established academic portfolios, and more than 36,000 students applied for admission through online and downloadable applications, accounting for about 15 percent of the CSU application pool.
So far, usage in CSUMentor's second year has more than tripled.
CSUMentor also includes detailed information on CSU admission requirements, costs of attendance for each CSU campus and web links to individual CSU campus websites.
Several data items that an applicant enters into CSUMentor are also required for an application for federal student financial aid.
Under the FAFSA pilot project agreement, the Department of Education will allow selected data items that applicants have entered into the CSUMentor database to be transferred into FAFSA’ s Web application at the request of the applicant.
This would help to create an electronic application for federal student aid and eliminate the need for students to duplicate some of the same information they enter into an admission and financial aid application.
Individuals may use this method of applying for federal student aid even if they do not plan to apply for admission to a CSU campus.
"The Department of Education selected CSU because of its confidence in several aspects of CSUMentor, including its multiple levels of security and confidentiality," said Allison G. Jones, senior director of access and retention at the CSU.
"The use of Web technology will help the Department of Education to increase significantly the number of applicants who submit their financial aid applications electronically."
The pilot project authorized by the Department of Education covers only the processing of information for the 1999-2000 financial aid application cycle, which began Jan. 1 and ends August 31, 2000.
If the project is successful, the Department of Education may expand it to include additional colleges or university systems across the country in subsequent years.
