Academy for Nursing and Health Occupations

Policy & Procedure for Financial Aid Verification

Academy for Nursing and Health Occupations has developed the following policies and procedures for the verification of information provided by applicants for Federal Title IV student financial aid.

A student’s ISIR may be selected for verification. Verification is a process that U.S. Department of Education (ED) requires for certain students in which the student must present documentation to substantiate their adjusted gross income (AGI), tax paid, certain untaxed income, number of household members, and any unusual enrollment history. AGI and tax paid documentation is usually their tax return from the base year that is used on the FAFSA for the award year in question. When a student is selected, it is indicated by an asterisk next to the student’s Student Aid Index (SAI) on the ISIR.
The college’s financial aid staff will use the most current Application and Verification Guide (AVG) in the Federal Student Aid (FSA) handbook for the award year in which the student applied for eligibility. If the student had already provided information to the college at the time of their initial visit, that information will still be verified and the student must complete a verification worksheet. The verification worksheet must be signed by the student and if dependent, by at least one parent whose data was used to complete the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA). There is an independent verification worksheet and a dependent verification worksheet.
If students completed their FAFSA at the college and had their documentation with them to complete it, the college will have the information to proceed with the verification process and will have the student complete and sign a verification worksheet. For those that did not complete the FAFSA at the college, ANHO will give the students notice of what they need to bring in and a deadline to do so.
Title IV funds will not be disbursed until verification is complete.
Students have 120 days to complete verification from their last day of attendance. However, in the interim, the student must have made arrangements with ANHO for payment of all tuition and fees due or risk termination. After the passage of the aforementioned period, all financial aid that might have been due is forfeited.
If the verification process indicates that there are corrections needed to information on the ISIR, the financial aid staff will complete a new needs analysis in the third party software system to see if the student’s SAI is going to change, and if so, does their scheduled award change. For students who are selected for verification and receiving subsidized student aid, changes that result to any non-dollar item must be submitted for processing. If there is no change in the SAI or scheduled award, the student can receive financial aid based on the original ISIR. If the SAI or scheduled award changes, then corrections will be made to the ISIR and ANHO will wait for a new ISIR before disbursing Title IV aid.
There are exclusions where students are not required to complete the verification process:
1. A student who died during the award year.
2. A legal resident of Guam, American Samoa, or the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, a citizen of the Republic of the Marshall Islands, the Federated States of Micronesia, and the Republic of Palau.
3. A student who is incarcerated
4. Students whose parents do not live in the United States and cannot be contacted via normal communication
5. A student immigrant (however, the student must meet the citizenship requirement)
6. A dependent student whose parents cannot comply because of specific reasons (i.e., parents are deceased, are physically or mentally incapacitated, or the student does not know where the parents reside.)
7. If the student is an immigrant who arrived in the United States during calendar years 2011-2012.
8. Spousal information does not have to be certified or signed by spouse if the spouse is deceased or mentally or physically incapacitated, residing in a country other than the US and cannot be contacted by normal communication, cannot be located because his or her address is unknown, and the student cannot obtain it.
9. If the student’s data was verified at a prior postsecondary school in the current award year, verification does not have to be completed if a letter is obtained from the prior school with all of the following information and there is no conflicting information in the student’s file:
  1. A statement that the student’s application data has been verified.
  2. The transaction number of the verified application.
  3. The reasons why the college was not required to recalculate the student’s SAI if applicable.
The financial aid file must be documented with the date that verification is completed.