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Using EFC to determine range of financial need

Brittney Gaspari

We are moving to BBAM from a proprietary system and I have a quick question for this community as we build our system. We have historically used federal poverty guidelines to determine multiple ranges of financial need for “merit-based” scholarships that include some need ranking. We would like to move from income/tax returns to using EFC to determine these ranges/rankings (with our undocumented students still using tax returns to generate a sort of EFC).

Are there folks that have ranges/categories of EFC that could share how they do this? This would be more than a single cut off using EFC value, rather 5-10 different categories based on a student’s EFC that might put them into categories like high need, moderate need, low need, etc. How do you account for this with BBAM?

Thank you in advance!

need-category.xlsx

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Comments

Trish Reimer

Brittany,

We ask applicants to upload the first page of their FAFSA - Student Aid Report that shows their EFC value. We also ask the applicants to enter their EFC number on the general application. (Reviewers can confirm that what is on the report matches the value they enter.) We can then use that value as a qualifier for an opportunity. Some opportunities are set at a lower EFC than others depending upon the criteria of the scholarship. For those scholarships based on financial need, we ask our Reviewers to score financial need on a scale of 1-10 with 1 being low financial need and 10 being high. I provide help text on that rubric with a scale to help guide our Reviewers in determining the financial need score. For example, an EFC of 0-2000 would probably indicate high financial need so the Reviewer might score 10 on that rubric. The scale is just a guideline as there may be other factors that the reviewer can consider, such as family hardship or medical expenses, before determining the financial need score.

Trish Reimer

Stevi Parmentier

If you are planning on pulling data from your student information system into BAM, you could always create a query that uses an equation to generate the different need categories you need. That way, the data being imported into BAM is already in the format you need. So, in your student information system, you can pull the student's EFC and then use an equation that evaluates whether or not is should be high need, moderate etc. This would translate into one field in BAM (something like Financial Need or what not) when importing the data.

Erica Seiffert

At Indiana University we have a calculated "Need Category" one our Import Feed. For UGRD this is calculated using a range based on percentage calculation of EFC to Eligibility for High and Medium and to COA for Low and Minimal to No Need. GRAD/PROF is calculated as percentage of applicant's COA. We make the Need Category reviewable rather than EFC. For example, this allows reviewers to know that an applicant my have a "High Need" but without revealing the applicant's EFC.

Attached is a spreadsheet with more detailed information on our calculation formula and how we advise reviewers to think about them when evaluating an application.

Erica Seiffert
Scholarship Application Administrator
University Student Services and Systems

Indiana University

need-category.xlsx

Ivena Sakelarieva

Thank you Brittany for posting this question, and thank you to the others who have contributed.

Brittany, currently, we have two sections for financial information. One is self reported - where students fill in the AGI for the same year FAFSA looks at (2018 for 20/21 school year), how many people are supported by this income, and if the student is dependent or independent. All students are required to fill in the self reported section. The other is part of our nightly import - from BANNER we import the student's dependency status, the EFC, COA, gross need, and how many people are supported/in college. This way reviewers can compare EFC to self reported income to determine if a student who has not filled out a FAFSA or is unable to (international students for example) will fall into a high need or low need category.

I have a question for Stevie and Erica. It sounds like both of your schools are able to create a category of high to low need using your imports into BBAM. Are you BANNER schools? Is this something your IT has worked into your school's import? If yes, what is the language behind it? If no, is this something that you go in and manually update for each application?

Thank you,

Ivena Sakelarieva

igsakelariev@pipeline.sbcc.edu

Scholarship Coordinator

Santa Barbara City College

Brittney Gaspari

Trish Reimer:

Brittany,

We ask applicants to upload the first page of their FAFSA - Student Aid Report that shows their EFC value. We also ask the applicants to enter their EFC number on the general application. (Reviewers can confirm that what is on the report matches the value they enter.) We can then use that value as a qualifier for an opportunity. Some opportunities are set at a lower EFC than others depending upon the criteria of the scholarship. For those scholarships based on financial need, we ask our Reviewers to score financial need on a scale of 1-10 with 1 being low financial need and 10 being high. I provide help text on that rubric with a scale to help guide our Reviewers in determining the financial need score. For example, an EFC of 0-2000 would probably indicate high financial need so the Reviewer might score 10 on that rubric. The scale is just a guideline as there may be other factors that the reviewer can consider, such as family hardship or medical expenses, before determining the financial need score.

Trish Reimer

Trish,

Thank you!!!

Are you able to share the rubric/help text/scale you provide to the reviewers? My e-mail is bgaspari@wsfoundation.org if that is easier.

Warm regards,

Brittney