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Ok, let's preface this with the fact that I am female. I have always been female and will always be female. Selective service does not apply to me and I've never had to deal with it before.
However, I've been patiently waiting to get my financial aid packet and the deadline to submit my acceptance and deposit is looming. I finally called the school today and financial aid told me they haven't sent me my packet because they have to verify my selective service eligibility (or lack thereof). I've never heard of this or had this happen before and nobody from Financial Aid told me I needed to do anything. If I hadn't called (and stayed on hold forever), I would have no idea I needed to do anything. Fortunately I live near the school and can handle this, but if I was still at my parent's house, I'd have to mail them my birth certificate (no copies) or they wouldn't release my financial aid info. This isn't some diploma mill or anything either, this is top university that supposedly has a good reputation for financial aid.
Has anyone ever had this happen to them? Shouldn't the federal government (who according to the school are the ones requiring my proof of eligibility) know that I'm a girl since they have my social security number?
Do you have a copy of your student aid report (SAR)? If so, look on the first page and see if there is any information about your selective service match. Maybe you left a question blank or something (FAFSA does a data match, and if something does not match correctly, the school needs to clear and/or document the mismatch, or have the student clear the mismatch).
If it does not look like there is a mismatch, then maybe the school has some sort of procedure they follow for selective service, and maybe it's on their website (can't think of why they would, however, it's been awhile since I have worked in financial aid, so maybe something has changed that I am unaware of).
Good luck and I am sure it will clear up one way or another.
It is a question on the FAFSA form. I would go online and verify that you answered that correctly. DS17 technically doesn't have to register yet and that didn't hold anything up for him.
I did answer female and the next question said to only answer if you said you are male (I double checked my SAR this morning after Reneeme suggested it). When I called the school, they said the government had selected my application for a spot check. My beef is not that I have to do this (I understand the importance of spot checking), but that no one from FAFSA or the school notified me that my application had been chosen to require additional proof. I am just curious if anyone else has ever been chosen for this and how they found out they had to provide proof that they were ineligible for selective service.
If you are male, it is a law to register for the selective service.That being said, did you do an online FAFSA or by mail. There is something wrong here. If you are selected to be spot checked, it is emailed to you if you did it online or mailed to you if you did the paper FAFSA.
So depending how you completed the FAFSA, it's either lost in your email or in the regular mail.
I complete FAFSA's for students- I did about 150 FAFSA's this tear. 2 or 3 days after you fill out the FAFSA, they send an email stating it was rec'd. Probably half my students claim they didn't get the report, but then we always find the reason. They forget the email they used, accidentally deleted it because they didn't know what it was or various other reasons.
I always, always , always tell students to be proactive and follow up. It's their first step to becoming an adult.
Same scenario, different situation. I had a student graduate from HS 2 years ago - actually she walked across the stage, but wasn't given her diploma because she hadn't completed her volunteer hours. She was told when she completed the hrs, she would get her diploma.
Since she was already accepted at college, filed her FAFSA etc, she never did the volunteer hours. It caught up with her last month. After completely 3 semesters of college work, the college discovered she never actually graduated. She had to leave college in the middle of her 4th semester. She has to complete the volunteer hours. The college will not accept her back at their collage. Very unlikely she will be able to transfer the credits elsewhere since she had financial aid, entered college w/o a high school diploma (dishonesty). This was a top notch student but didn't think the rules applied to her.
It sounds like you were selected for verification, which is a standard process (at least 30% of financial aid applicants at each school are selected).
I looked on some school's websites, and I found a school that has a selective service verification form that gets filled out by everyone that did not register for selective service, including females. It sounds like they just use the form as documentation as to the reason someone did not register. So, possibly this is what your school is doing, and you will just need to fill out a form for selective service stating you are female. Because you were selected for verification, they will also have you fill out a verification form, and submit tax returns if applicable.
If your school's website does not have details about verification, I'd suggest searching for information such as ""selected for verification". You might want to check out finaid.org too (they have a lot of info).
Hope this helps!
p.s. I just read the post prior to mine. I was assuming the school received the results of your FAFSA, which means you would/should have received the results as well (SAR). If you did not receive your SAR, you do need to follow up. Also, in general, the FAFSA does not want any blanks unless it specifically states to leave a question blank. I will have to look on line for the current FAFSA details as my financial aid knowledge is a little bit outdated.
Last edited by Reneeme; 04-10-2010 at 08:00 PM..
Reason: needed to add a P.S.
I don't think it's the school's fault, it's the government. I had the same problem when I filled out my first FAFSA form - not only am I female, but I am a veteran, as well (and past the age of selective service, anyway). The form didn't ask me for my gender OR veteran status the first go round (for whatever reason) and when I saw I had an issue, I went back and edited and was able to fill out my gender and the fact that I had served.
I also have a female friend with a traditionally male named (spelled slightly differently) and she has problems with FAFSA in regards to selective service ALL the time, too.
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