Section H Question : Needy and Non Needy category

[Ranjana Srevatsan]

With regard to reporting in the Common Data Set (CDS) Section H1 (Financial Aid), I would appreciate clarification on the appropriate treatment of aid dollars under the following scenario:

Here is my sample scenario. 

A student is determined to have need, their unmet need = 1500.

The student is awarded a need-based scholarship = 1500 and

the student is awarded a non-need-based scholarship = 1000

In table H1, would you:

Option 1: include the total aid of 2500 in the need-based column because the student had need

Option 2: include the 1500 in the need-based column and the 1000 in the non-need-based column based on the fund aid category.

Thank you,

[John Dennis]

Hello, 

I've included my larger response to a similar question back in February 2024 below but the short answer is technically in your example it would be Option 2 but there is a 3rd step that didn't come into play in your scenario. We do not allocate all aid to need just because the student had need (option 1), but we do allocate as much of their total aid as is needed to satisfy need before reporting only the remainder as non-need based aid, even if the source of that aid was for non-need based. 

Adjusted scenario 

A student is determined to have need, their unmet need = 1500.

The student is awarded a need-based scholarship = 1000 and

the student is awarded a non-need-based scholarship = 1500

option 3: Include the $1,000 in the need-based column and an additional $500 from the non-need based aid to satisfy their need. Then report the remaining $500 as non-need based aid because it was aid awarded in excess of their need. 

This distinction is hidden amongst the instructions "Non-need-based scholarship or grant aid: Scholarships and grants, gifts, or merit-based aid from institutional, state, federal, or other sources (including unrestricted funds or gifts and endowment income) awarded solely on the basis of academic achievement, merit, or any other non-need-based reason. When reporting questions H1 and H2, non-need-based aid that is used to meet need should be counted as need-based aid. "

John Dennis
Assistant Director of Institutional Research & Reporting
Office of Institutional Effectiveness
Columbia College Chicago

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Message from February 27 2024

This may have been addressed privately, but maybe others will be helped in the future if so.

This is certainly the most complicated section in my opinion so you're not alone. If you're involved in or responsible for submitting the IPEDS Student Financial Aid Survey last month then you're part way there as the reporting period and some of the parameters are the same. The biggest hurdle from that side is getting the financial aid data granular enough to group it by aid type and use intention (need/merit).

Essentially we:

• Determine the student's academic year estimated need. The cost of tuition, food and housing, etc. that is used by the financial aid office when putting together the student's aid package. 
• Determine the student's academic year awarded aid amount by aid type and any restrictions or requirements of that money that might inform whether the aid would be used to meet their financial cost of attendance. 
  • Note that the IPEDS Student Financial Aid Survey directs us to report AWARDED aid, not disbursed aid.
    
    •  2023-24 Survey Materials Instructions What to Include - "NOTE: In this component, "aid awarded" refers to grant or scholarship aid that was awarded to students or to loans awarded to students. For reporting grant or scholarship aid, institutions should report on aid that was awarded to students. This amount may be different from the amount that was actually disbursed to students. For example, a student may be awarded grant or scholarship aid at the beginning of the academic year but then leave the institution before the entire amount is disbursed. In this case, institutions should report the original amount of grant or scholarship aid that was awarded. For reporting loans to students, institutions should continue to report on loans that were awarded to and accepted by the student."
• (The hard part) By student: Reduce their financial need value by deducting the aid they were awarded and recording that amount into the reporting "buckets".
  
  • Beginning with need-based award totals listed in Section H1. 
    • ie $10,000 need minus $1,000 in Federal Pell grant, $1,000 in Institutional need scholarships etc.
  • Once all of the need-based aid they were awarded has been exhausted, if they still have a financial need value then we start allocating aid that was awarded to the student that was not exclusively awarded to satisfy need. These could be academic merit scholarships, athletics awards, external merit awards etc.
    • The final page of the CDS Definitions gives us a suggested order for allocating this "merit" money towards their outstanding need.
      
  • So a student who had a financial need of $10,000 and received $6,500 in need-based awards would still be estimated to have $3,500 remaining in need for the year. If that student was awarded non-need restricted awards they would draw on those awards to bridge the gap between their costs and need aid. For the purposes of H1 we estimate and report that bridge money as if it was awarded for need because the student will have essentially used it to pay for what wasn't covered by their need-based aid.
    

At the end of all of this we are trying to estimate how much money a student was awarded but also note whether the aid they received was used to meet their financial needs/cost of attendance, regardless of what the aid fund's intention/purpose was. If the student would still have an outstanding documented financial need at the end of their need-based aid, then they have to pay for that somehow. Realistically we know that most students will get to the end of ALL of their aid and still have more owed out-of-pocket than the awards we recorded for them. This is acknowledged in Section H2 items H and I.

For my part I complete this process through an iterative recalculation of the student's starting financial need. I start with their need value $X, and then reduce it with each aid fund and record that reduction into the appropriate bucket. The starting value $X gets smaller each time I make an allocation, and then when all of their Need-Based aid is exhausted I move on to "re-allocating" the amounts I would have reported for them in the right side Non-Need-Based column of H1 until I run out of aid or reduce the starting need value $X to zero. Anything that remains of that student's Non-Need-Based aid is reported in the right side columns. If the student had excess Need-Based aid it is still reported as Need-Based. You don't re-allocate in the reverse to report excess Need-Based as Non-Need-Based.  In the end, H1 is reporting the total dollar amount allocated to each of these buckets for all of the reported students

Hopefully this will be helpful and I've not gotten it wrong somewhere in all of this.

John Dennis
Assistant Director of Institutional Research & Reporting
Office of Institutional Effectiveness
Columbia College Chicago