Gear up, because tomorrow, the annual Federal Student Aid, otherwise known as the FSA Training Conference, begins! The conference will once again be virtual this year, and signing up is free! This four-day conference is an integral part of financial aid, as the Department of Education hosts this event filled…

BREAKING NEWS: The Department of Education (DOE) announced on Wednesday that the 2024-25 FAFSA will go live by December 31, 2023.   By law, the FAFSA must be open for students to submit by January 1st  each year. Normally the opening month is October, but the DOE has been consistently pushing…

October 1st marked the return of student loan payments, prompting a flurry of students in search of their ideal repayment plan. There are about 43.5 million Americans who currently have student debt and are trying to pay off their loans. Recently, as of summer of 2023, a new repayment plan…

Join us in giving a warm welcome to our newest FAS team members – Amanda Cooper and Allyson Casey! We are thrilled to have them as part of our team!  We wanted you to get to know more about our team and their amazing personalities, so we asked them each…

Have you ever wondered about the conferences, workshops, shows, and events that FAS showcases at and attends? Welcome to the latest update from FAS! As we dive into the exciting world of higher education events, we are thrilled to announce our upcoming schedule for the remaining part of the 2023…

After three years, including a pandemic, student loan interest will begin to accrue, and payments will be due. It's time for schools to remind and guide students toward making their first payments. On September 1st, federal student loans that are no longer in deferment or forbearance began accruing interest. The…

If you’ve been keeping up with the FAFSA Simplification Act, then you might be realizing that this act is implementing A LOT of changes! Since we already covered three fascinating subjects of the Simplification Act these last few months, we want to explore a little more on how the Pell…

Have you been wondering how the FAFSA Simplification Act has changed the look of the FAFSA form for the 2024-25 award year? A few months ago, we wrote about what the Simplification Act is, now we want to dig deeper into the form itself. Today we are diving into some…

  Two new members have recently joined our FAS family and we want to give them a warm welcome! Welcome, Mariano Santangelo! Mariano has joined our FAS Development Team for our software applications! FAS is grateful for Mariano's expertise and ability to hit the ground running! We are thrilled to…

  Last month we touched upon the FAFSA (Free Application for Federal Student Aid) Simplification Act in our blog “How the FAFSA Simplification Act Paves the Way for Student Success” where we gave high-level insight to what changes the FAFSA Simplification Act is bringing to the world of Financial Aid.…

At FAS, we understand that change can be confusing and navigating through complex regulations can feel like a never-ending maze. That's why we're here to simplify things for you! Today, we want to shed some light on the FAFSA Simplification Act —a game-changer in the world of financial aid. We…

Let's extend a friendly greeting to our newest FAS team members - Amy Davy, Chris Nadeau, and Ryanne Darwich! They're already making great contributions to our FAS offices, and we're delighted to have them as part of our family. Our new team members have kindly answered a few questions about…

Read Time: 5 Minutes 20 Seconds When scheduling Pell Disbursements, some students, known as crossover students, may have their payment periods span two separate award years (2022-2023 and 2023-2024). Because of this, we're often asked - which award year does the student start disbursing Pell in? There are many different…

Are you ready to attend our May the Fourth Be With You Spring Seminar? Stay up to date on session changes, last calls, raffles, photo booths and more with our new phone app! We will be using an online platform called Whova for our event. You can download the Whova app…

Reading Time: 2 minutes What is MFA? MFA stands for Multi-Factor Authentication; this is a layered approach to securing applications and data by requiring users to verify their identity with a combination of two or more credentials. Why is MFA Important? MFA increases data and application security. Since MFA requires…

FAS is excited to announce a new addition to our Genesis and Student Eligibility Review teams: Kelly Kinnett!!!! We've known Kelly for many years now and are thrilled to have her expertise on our teams! Kelly comes packed with 21 years of experience in working for various trade schools and…

The Department of Education (DOE) released the newest IRS Tax Return Matrix for the 2023-2024 FAFSA Award Year. The full publication of this announcement can be found on FSA Partner’s Connect here. What is the Tax Return Matrix? This Tax Matrix can be used to assist schools when verifying tax…

We have you covered with a full year of deadlines listed out by month. We've included both DOE deadlines as well as FAS specific deadlines. Mark your calendar's for the annual FAS conference in May, Verification award year deadlines, FISapp deadlines, Constitution Day and more! Don't worry about losing your…

Financial Aid Services Inc. was brought to life back in April of 1980. We come from humble beginnings, when Albert Gillis started FAS with just 3 family members as employees over 40 years ago. Now, in 2023, the business has now grown to almost 50 employees that we still call…

There have been some new developments since our last blog: “Federal Loan Repayment: Where do you Stand in 2022.” There is no doubt that the Direct Loan Repayment pause, and Student Loan Cancellation can be both confusing and difficult to stay in the know about. With constant announcements, and varying…

Today we are highlighting one of our long time employees, Angelyn! Angelyn has been at FAS for 14 years, and is starting her semi-retirement at the beginning of 2023. We are sad to see her go, and incredibly lucky to have had her with us for as long as we…

As part of our Client Appreciation Series, we wanted to give a warm shout out to a client we work so closely with, Deluxe Barber College! We wanted to say a big THANK YOU for being with us over the years! Thank you for being part of our family!

What is the Fresh Start Initiative? ED released a Dear Colleague Letter with details of its Fresh Start Initiative which restores Title IV Aid eligibility to students who defaulted on federal loans prior to the start of the pandemic (March 13, 2020). You can find an overview of the program…

As part of our Client Appreciation Series, we wanted to give a warm shout out to a long time client of ours, Hair Expressions! They've with us throughout the years, and we wanted to say a big THANK YOU!   Thank you for being part of our family!  

  DID YOU KNOW – You may be required to implement a "Constitution Day” program? Wait... What? That’s right! If you fit the criteria below, then you should have an educational program in place that pertains to the United States Constitution. WHO OR WHAT ARE THESE REQUIREMENTS? Educational Institutions that…

Since the start of the pandemic back in early 2020, Federal Student Loan repayments have been in a constant state of flux. The much-needed emergency measures taken over the last two years have relieved borrowers, but they've also caused much confusion. To help Financial Aid borrowers understand where they are…

“Fresh Start” Initiative Yesterday, ED released a Dear Colleague Letter with details of its Fresh Start Initiative which restores Title IV Aid eligibility to students who defaulted on federal loans prior to the start of the pandemic (March 13, 2020). You can find an overview of the program here. Through…

NSLDS Professional Access – Upcoming Launch of Modernized Website and Important Deadlines, Outage, and Training Information On July 25, 2022, the Department of Education released Electronic Announcement: General-22-35 announcing that a modernized National Student Loan Data System (NSLDS) Professional Access website will be available for Federal Student Aid’s (FSA’s) professional…

The FASapp Webinar is available! Request the webinar through our training sign ups page. (www.financialaidservices.com/training-sign-up) You'll receive a link to access the video with supplementary handouts in the description, these handouts will be linked. The "Show More" button beneath the video will show you those links when clicked. The video…

We're starting a new series of client shout outs! Watch a short video below to see who  FAS nominated for our first appreciation video and what the FAS staff had to say! Thank you for being part of our family!

Get ready for our newest webinar, coming to you in April of this year! We'll be featuring Sue Barber of the Pell and Compliance Departments. She is going to walk you through completing the FASapp - our application for requesting Title IV Funding. Stay tuned!  

Come visit us at booth 10! Ronda and David from FAS will be at the ABHES Conference in New Orleans in a few weeks!  This is the 18th annual national conference on Allied Health Education. We'll be there March 9th - 10th at The Roosevelt Hotel. Come say hi to…

FAS is hiring for some awesome positions! Are you interested in working in a fun, dynamic, and family oriented work place? We have several open opportunities listed on our Careers Page. Check them out now and apply right on our website to join our family! Click Here to View FAS…

We have you covered with a full year of deadlines listed out by month. We've included both DOE deadlines as well as FAS specific deadlines. Click the image to open the full document in a new window and print or save it so you'll always know when a deadline is…

Change can be hard, but here at FAS we strive to make it easy. That’s why we’re starting the new year with a bang! We’ll be offering a live webinar for our clients to get a good look of our Student Portal within Student File Direct. Our Student Portal was…

This year's FAS Annual Seminar, The Lowdown Hoedown, at the Gaylord Opryland Resort in Nashville, TN, took the cake for one of the most memorable! It could have been because we hadn't seen each other in over a year and just needed to get out. It also could've been because…

The 2021 Virtual FSA Training Conference is officially open for registrants! Every year the Department of Education holds this conference for Financial Aid Professionals. This conference is a great opportunity to see what other Financial Aid professionals like you are asking in the industry. Watch the Secretary of Education, Dr.…

2020 was a crazy year with an unprecedented pandemic that rendered travel questionable, and lock downs were unavoidable. The pandemic first forced us to reschedule our annual FAS seminar, then we had to cancel our physical meeting all together.  We did have a mini virtual seminar, but that wasn’t the…

FAS has made the decision out of an abundance of caution to move up our annual seminar from May 7-8, 2020 to March 18-19, 2021 at the Gaylord Resort in Nashville, TN.  This will allow all attendees who registered/or were planning to register to 'actually attend' without fear of the…