Money @ MIT (The Archives) : 7. News

The Blog is Dead. Long Live the Blog.

barkowitz — Thu, 30 Jun 2005 23:22:00 GMT

This blog is officially closed and will now only exist as an archive of past posts.

Please visit the new blog at http://daniel.mitblogs.com.

Sometimes You Get What You Don't Pay For...

barkowitz — Tue, 14 Jun 2005 15:56:00 GMT

What a warm weekend in Boston -- humid, hot and sticky. It's nice that summer has arrived, but I would prefer to have my heat without humidity! This weekend was my choir's end of year performance. We were in a room with no A/C; and I had six or so costume changes (some including a woolen tuxedo and another with a heavy leather jacket). I'm ready for a break in the weather!

One event I happened to miss during my visit to Aspen last week was the annual Dean for Undergraduate Education Infinite Mile Award Reception. The Infinite Mile award is to recognize staff who undertake “outstanding achievements” in their support of students, staff and faculty. Take a look at this year's award winners; you may recognize some of the recipients (especially the three named at the end of the page).

Off to the main purpose of the post: for those of you who may be looking for ways to limit your out-of-pocket expenses, may I suggest you consider “Student House” as an option?

Student House is one of the members of the FSILGs (the Fraternities, Sororities and Independent Living Groups) at MIT. The FSILGs as a group are residence alternatives for upperclass students (Sophomores, Juniors and Seniors) who want to live in an independent residence, but with MIT presence (in the form of a residence-based advisor). While each of the FSILGs represents a great opportunity to form a close-knit, cohesive bond with a group of MIT students, I want to focus this particular post on Student House because of its unique history and its relevance to the work we do in Student Financial Services.

Student House was originally established as a residence for students with financial need. In its organizational structure, it is established as a cooperative residence; students do work (light cleaning, cooking, etc) during the semester in exchange for a significantly reduced living expense. There are about 30 students who live in the residence, both men and women, and the student rooms vary from singles to doubles to triples.

So, financially, what is the benefit? Since your monthly rate to Student House (at least for 2004-2005) is about $350 a month, and that figure includes room and board (dinner every day, lunch and breakfast available for you to take with you, combined shopping list for food), by living at Student House you wind up reducing your out of pocket expenses by about $5500 (coincidentally the amount of the student self-help award). Since we don't reduce your financial aid budget if you live in less expensive housing, you can certainly save the cost of your annual self-help by living at Student House.

If you are interested, you certainly do need to be willing to be an active participant in the maintenance of the house, but in this case, if that appeals to you, you can certainly get what you don't pay for. Rush will occur during the Fall of your Freshman year, although Student House is pretty flexible about Rush (I think they even still have a very small number of vacancies for this Fall for current upperclass students who may be interested).

Do any current or former residents of Student House want to comment on their perspective on Student House? Any comments about other FSILG residences?

Waive and Cosign (or is it Wave and Cosine)?

barkowitz — Fri, 10 Jun 2005 16:07:00 GMT

Hey all! Several items of update.

First off, I am back in Cambridge, having arrived during an eventful Wednesday evening thunderstorm. It was great to be in Aspen, but it is even greater to be home. The presentation in Aspen was a great success, and I even did a live demo of the blog highlighting some of your comments. I'll be doing another presentation on the blog to a different audience in the beginning of July (I'll post an update on that as we get closer).

So, to the message.

Waive: I have been receiving many questions about when you can start to provide health insurance waivers for the Fall. I called over to MIT Medical and was informed that the online waiver process will begin no later than July 11. As you all are aware, I'm sure, MITPAY statements will be produced by July 8 (the last workday before the 10th of the month), so you will all see health insurance charges listed on your bill. Once you waive the charges (by filling out the online waiver), you should deduct the amount of the health insurance from the bill you owe by August 1. Remember that you only need to waive the health insurance annually (based on what you choose), so once you have done this for the Fall, you should be able to see the credit on your account (using WEBSIS) and not need to submit a waiver for the Spring.
Cosign: In the next several days we will begin processing self-help forms for domestic freshmen and all upperclass students. As part of the process this year, we will be awarding (depending upon your eligibility for these programs) one or more of the following loans (in this priority order): Federal Subsidized Perkins Loan, Federal Subsidized Stafford Loan, Federal Unsubsidized Stafford Loan, and/or a subsidized MIT Technology Loan. If you request work funds, we will award (again in the following order and based upon your eligibility) one or both of these programs: Federal Work Study, MIT Work Study. The MIT Technology Loan does require a cosigner and the terms have been changed since the publication of Making MIT Affordable. The MIT Technology Loan now features a 7% subsidized interest rate for the life of the repayment period, and standard deferment and forbearance provisions (all of which will be in the promissory note you receive when you sign for the loan). You and your cosigner will need to sign an application for the MIT Technology loan (they are not available at the present time). We will send you an application in a separate mailing.

Well, it is nice to be back. Much more news to come in the next few days.

Departing for "Bluer Skies"

barkowitz — Sun, 05 Jun 2005 02:12:00 GMT

Tomorrow morning, I will be jet setting across the continent as I make my way to Aspen, Colorado for the bi-annual (in this case, every other year) COFHE Financial Aid Director's Retreat. For those of you who do not know, COFHE is the Consortium on Financing Higher Education, a group of thirty-one private colleges who share common interests and concerns.

This year's conference theme is “Blue Skies: Envisioning the Future” and promises to be a great opportunity to network with colleagues and talk about the greater themes in the work we do.

One presentation to which I am especially looking forward is a sort of “Technology Show and Tell” during which I will be making a presentation on blogging as a new outreach tool for financial aid offices to consider. Since Matt and Ben have already done this for NEACAC this may seem “old hat” to you, but this will be the first time I am presenting on the subject to my financial aid colleagues.

As part of the presentation, we will be logging in to the blog to see its organization and purpose, so if you want to leave a message for the attendees, feel free to do so below by commenting on this post.

Besides the log in during the presentation, I will try to log in from under the “blue skies” of Aspen daily (I am taking my laptop with me), but just in case of technical issues, don't expect many updates until after I return (on Thursday).

Con-GRAD-ulations!

barkowitz — Fri, 03 Jun 2005 07:38:00 GMT

To all this year's MIT graduates...

My hat's off to you...

For those of you who want to watch graduation live today, log on here.

Is there Merit in Merit?

barkowitz — Thu, 02 Jun 2005 15:10:00 GMT

Interesting article in the Washington Post on the pros and cons of merit-based scholarships (as you know, MIT does not offter merit-based funding).

Thoughts?

Freshmen housing lottery begins today!

barkowitz — Wed, 01 Jun 2005 21:35:00 GMT

In case you didn't already know! -- See here...

Preparation for graduation!

barkowitz — Wed, 01 Jun 2005 19:37:00 GMT

Some great photos of Killian Court as MIT gets ready for commencement on Friday.

See here for the pics!

Photos were taken by David J. Broderick, Audio Visual Project Technician, MIT AV.

It's STILL not too late to consolidate (although it almost is) / New loan interest rates for 05-06.

barkowitz — Tue, 31 May 2005 20:00:00 GMT

Today is the last day on which 91-Day Treasury Bills can be auctioned prior to June 1. Why is this so important? Because the interest rates for Stafford and PLUS loans are based on this rate.

So with the information available now, it appears that the new interest rates for PLUS and Stafford for 2005-2006 will be as follows:

Stafford Loans: 5.30% interest during repayment and 4.70% interest during grace and in-school periods (for unsubsidized loans). This compares to rates during 2004-05 of 3.37% and 2.77% respectively.
PLUS Loan: 6.10% interest rate repayment. This compares to 4.17% for 2004-2005.

As you can tell, rates are going up. What should you do?

If you are a graduating student, you should consolidate NOW to lock in the lower interest rates for the life of your repayment (see my previous post for more information on consolidation). One concern, if you do consolidate now note that you will more than likely lose your grace period and go into immediate repayment, but over the life of the loan you will save much more by having consolidated!

If you are incoming student, and you are considering the PLUS Loan as your financing option, it is time once again to take a look at the Fixed Interest Rate option of the MEFA Loan program (the fixed interest rate on the immediate repayment option is 6.19% -- and this rate will never rise during your repayment -- see below for more information on alternative loans).

Update on the Federal Budget process for Financial Aid

barkowitz — Thu, 26 May 2005 17:02:00 GMT

Here is an update to where things stand on the Federal Budget end. This also updates you all as to the status of the Perkins Loan action which I know many of you participated in previously (and I thank you for your help there).

This note comes to you via NASFAA (the National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators) of which I am a member. There also is a call to action in this post and I would kindly ask your participation in letting your Congressperson know that you care about the issue of Federal funding of financial aid by acting on this update. (note: The update is written to financial aid administrators and I have not changed or modified it, so some of the language may not apply to you as a student or a parent of a student).

The following letter from NASFAA President Dallas Martin is an urgent request for Association Members to contact their congressional representatives in an effort to prevent appropriations cuts and program eliminations during in the Fiscal Year 2006 appropriations process.

May 26, 2005

Dear NASFAA Member:

I am writing with an urgent request that you immediately contact your two U.S. Senators and member of the House of Representatives. The FY 2006 Appropriations bill is starting to move through the legislative process and we need your help to preserve a $100 increase in the Pell Grant maximum award and to prevent cuts or the outright elimination of several Title IV federal student assistance programs.

From our Web site reports, you know the FY 2006 Congressional Budget Resolution made one particularly positive step in a tight budget year: it provided enough funding for a $100 increase in the Pell Grant maximum award for FY 2006 (the 2006-07 award year). However, the Budget Resolution also accepted the overall figure of $843 billion for discretionary spending that was proposed by the Bush Administration. This level is 1% below last year's levels, which could lead to student aid cuts in appropriations bills.

In many respects, a Budget Resolution is not self-enforcing. The House and Senate Appropriations Committee must translate funding provided in a Budget Resolution into subcommittee allocations. The House Appropriations Subcommittee on Labor, HHS, and Education and related agencies has received its allocation, which is slightly more than the President's request, but less than last year's bill. From higher education association lobbying activities that NASFAA participates in, we know that the $100 increase in the Pell Grant maximum award is in serious danger during the subcommittee's legislative markup action, which is expected to take place June 8 or 9.

As unfortunate as this is, we further understand that due to the tight Budget Resolution that translated into this subcommittee's allocation, it is entirely possible that the Appropriations Committee and subcommittee will adopt many of President Bush's budget recommendations calling for elimination of Title IV programs. Those program eliminations include the following programs: Perkins Loans (both FCC and loan cancellations), Leveraging Education Assistance Program (LEAP), Byrd Honors Scholarships, Thurgood Marshal Legal Educational Opportunity Program, GEAR-UP, and the TRIO Talent Search and Upward Bound programs.

I am asking you to write a letter and send it by fax or e-mail (but not by postal mail: see below for the reason) to your member of the House of Representatives (or several members from your state if your school has students from their districts) asking:

      - That the $100 increase in the Pell Grant maximum award to $4,150 (as included in the Budget Resolution) be carried out in the FY 2006 Labor, HHS, Education Appropriations bill, AND

      - That the higher education student assistance programs slated for elimination in the President's Budget Request be restored.

Send a copy of your communication to your member or members of the House and to any member from your state who serves on the House Appropriations Committee (and, especially, members of the subcommittee of jurisdiction, which is the Labor, HHS, Education subcommittee. If your state does not have such an individual serving on either of these committees, then a copy of your communication should go to the Chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, Rep. Jerry Lewis (R-Calif.); subcommittee Chairman Rep. Ralph Regula (R-Ohio); and the Ranking Minority Member on both the full House Appropriations Committee and the subcommittee, Rep. David Obey (D-Wisc.).

Finally, after determining by using the hyperlinks in the previous paragraph that your House member does not serve on the Appropriation Committee or subcommittee, please remember to ask in your letter that the member contact the Chairman and other Appropriations Committee members asking them to provide the Pell Grant increase and not cut or eliminate student aid programs.

Please send your letters ASAP, but no later than June 7. We are asking you to fax or e-mail your letter rather than using the Postal Service because a mailed letter will not be received in time. Delays in the delivery of postal mail of up to three weeks are caused by Congress's mail security system.

NASFAA is doing all we can do and we need your help if we are going to turn this around. I have seen the membership of NASFAA and the other higher education organizations respond at critical times in the legislative process and make a difference that helps our students, schools, and, ultimately, our nation. This is a critical time; please contact Congress now!

Sincerely,

Dallas Martin
NASFAA President

Another call to action... Be a STAR supporter!

barkowitz — Thu, 26 May 2005 16:40:00 GMT

As you undoubtedly know, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology is a Direct Lending institution, allowing you to borrow your student loans directly from the federal government, without the complicated involvement of banks and other lenders. Congress is now considering new legislation called The Student Aid Reward Act (STAR) that if passed will provide significant additional federal grant aid to needy students at Direct Lending schools.

Click here to learn more and take action.

The Direct Loan program is cheaper for the government than the bank-run Federal Family Education Loan Program (FFELP) by about $11 per hundred dollars loaned. The STAR Act captures the dollars Massachusetts Institute of Technology saves federal taxpayers because it participates in Direct Lending instead of FFELP, and gives 50% of that savings back to Massachusetts Institute of Technology for its needy students.

Our 2003-2004 Loan Volume: $19,382,941
11% Savings to Taxpayers: $1,938,294
Annual STAR Reward funds for our school: $1,066,062*

This is the single best chance for Massachusetts Institute of Technology's neediest students to receive a significant increase in federal grant assistance for at least the next decade! Required is additional support and sponsorship in both the House and Senate for STAR to become law. That's where students can make the most difference...

Would you please do the following right away?

Click HERE to learn more and send a letter to your Senators and Members of Congress. It will take only 2 minutes. Your intervention is essential for passage of STAR and increased aid for Massachusetts Institute of Technology's students.

Please act today!

And sometimes the changes you make can have great meaning...

barkowitz — Fri, 13 May 2005 00:14:00 GMT

I just finished dinner with the kids, and am getting ready to watch the last regular episode of Survivor, but before I do, I thought I needed to post a little more on the subject of corrections.

This is me on my soapbox, so if you don't want the preaching, move on... (fair warning)

While we send FAFSA corrections at MIT on all of our financial aid applicants, the Federal government does not require this of us. In fact, most colleges in the country do not send corrections on all of their applicants; most only send corrections for the students whose Pell awards are changing, for whom they are changing the number in family or in college, or for whom they are making a dependency status change. This is all that the Federal government mandates you do as a college processing Federal financial aid. Simply send these changes.

But at MIT we send them all. Why? Well to answer that I need to speak a little to what happens with the data you submit. While the data you file is maintained under strict confidentiality, the government does use aggregate data to make some assumptions about all people filing for financial aid. For instance, the government may use some of the information to estimate average family incomes, average number in family, average ages of parents, and average family contributions of those applying. Well, this worries me. If the data is bad, and I know it is bad since I have verified the information with a copy of a tax return or other information, why wouldn't I want to correct it? I update the information in the CPS (Central Processing System), because to do otherwise would be, in my view, to be knowingly allowing bad data to persist. And if there is something I can't stand, it's bad data.

While we may be out on this bandwagon on our own at MIT, guess what? We won't be for long, more than likely. Why? Well, guess what' s coming down the proverbial pipe for those of us in the financial aid profession, and for you as a financial aid applicant... An IRS match.

Soon, although how soon is anyone's guess at this point, the Department of Education and the IRS will begin to run a match between data provided by you on your financial aid application and data provided by you on your tax return. This match, referred to as the “IRS Match”, will provide a more centralized way to confirm the accuracy of your application data. Sounds OK, no? Well, no. There are a lot of concerns about this, beginning with a problem of timing. IRS Data is generally not available until July or August, financial aid awards need to be complete much earlier that that. Since we do right now (and probably still will be) collect tax returns from applicants much earlier than July or August, we already know what the match will reveal. It only makes sense for us to send our corrections so that our applicants won't fail the match. In fact, this year the FAFSA has taken baby steps toward this process (asking for mother and father's SSNs, sending emails to families who applied saying that their tax status was “estimated“ asking them to correct their information, etc.). There are many other unanswered questions about how the IRS Match would work including concerns around privacy, information sharing, resolution, etc. If you are interested, the presentation made by the Department of Education representative at last summer's financial aid conference can be found here.

So, MIT may indeed just be ahead of the curve. Hmm, us?

Be well, and keep commenting. I would love to see your thoughts on this issue as well.

Sometimes change is meaningless...

barkowitz — Thu, 12 May 2005 15:38:00 GMT

If you are an incoming Freshman student, this message is for you!

No grandiose ideas in the title. I know that change is meaningful and that you will be undertaking major changes soon as you close the book on your high school life and prepare to enter MIT for the next chapter of your saga.

But my purpose in this post is much more mundane.

We just submitted a number of FAFSA corrections for those of you who will be attending MIT next year. What this means is that we made some change to the FAFSA data you provided when you originally applied (maybe your tax information wasn't valid, maybe you left out a sibling, etc.) and we changed your record on our system. We have now reported those changes to the Feds (via a correction file) and as a result the Federal Processor will be sending you a revised Student Aid Report giving you a new Federal EFC and showing you the changes we made.

What do you need to do about this? Nothing.

Will your aid change as a result of these changes? No.

If you are curious and what to know what we changed, how do you find out? Look on the Student Aid Report. Any changes will be identified with a # sign.

Is change sometimes meaningless? Yes.

Now back to your regularly scheduled program...

Brief update - Award Letters Mailing for International Upperclass Students

barkowitz — Tue, 10 May 2005 21:23:00 GMT

Just wanted to post a brief update for you all!

Today we mailed 112 award letters to International students who are rising Sophomores, Juniors and Seniors. Since we mailed these before the end of the term, the award notices were sent to on campus addresses. Additionally a copy has been delivered to the ISO (International Students Office). We plan on sending another batch of award letters for International upperclass students sometime before the end of the month.

Additionally we are continuing to notify upperclass students of their completion status, by either sending a missing information letter or a notice of completion. At this point, any applicant who remains incomplete will need to sign a Late Applicant Agreement form expressing your understanding of the possible repercussions of delays in your application.

We continue to be on track to send our first round of upperclass complete letters for domestic students sometime before June 15. More information, as always, will appear on the blog as it happens.

Sorry for the quick note... More later!

Update on what we're up to...

barkowitz — Tue, 03 May 2005 18:20:00 GMT

It's May 3rd and hopefully all of you who are planning on attending (new Freshmen, that is) have sent your reply form in. As my friends in Admissions close out their books on the class of 2009, we over here in Student Financial Services are still going strong, and will continue to be working with you during the next four years as undergraduates at MIT (and maybe longer for those of you going on to graduate school here).

As such, I thought I would give you an update as to what is going on in our office, and how we will be keeping busy in the next several months.

Freshmen Reading: Since most Freshmen who will apply for aid have their awards by now, we consolidate all remaining Freshmen processing with one reader, Carmen Velez, who is the manager of our Freshmen process. She will be the person handling late applications, verifications of income, and other matters, while the rest of the staff work on...
Upperclass and Graduate Student Reading: Now we turn our attention to the review of Upperclass Students (the over 1800 or so of you who will apply for the continuation of aid) and Graduate Students (the 1000 or so of you who need assistance from Federal and Private loans). During the next several months, we will be aggressively working with your applications so that you will have an answer in time for the Fall bill. Our first graduate award letters were mailed today. We plan on mailing International Award Letters for upperclass students no later than May 13th and we plan on mailing upperclass Award Letters for domestic students starting no later than June 15th. This will free the calendar for us to begin...
Self Help and Student Information Review Form Processing: In mid-June and July we will process your Self-Help and Student Information Review forms (both upperclass and freshmen together). ***One exception: If you are an International Freshmen, your form will be processed in May.*** At that time, we will determine for which loan and work programs you have eligibility and we will tell you how to complete the necessary paperwork for these loans (or work). At some point in the Fall, we will notify you if you were selected to be funded by a donor-sponsored fund, and we may ask you to participate in writing a letter of appreciation to the donor who provided the funding for your MIT scholarship. After this is done we will begin to...
Work on Next Year's Application and Process: Of course, there is a lot more that will happen between now and then, but we will be doing some thinking and brainstorming about what worked well this year and what could stand some improvement in our processing. This, of course, presents you with an opportunity to offer some feedback. Let me know how you found this year's process -- what worked for you, what didn't work so well. I would ask you for your honest (but constructive) feedback. We want to know if the financial aid process seemed overwhelming, manageable, just right... As one parent who frequents my blog put it succinctly in an email to me (hope it is OK that I am quoting you here), the process [if I can paraphrase] “seem[s] just about right; we can handle it, but we will have to work hard at it. That's how it should be.“ Do you agree?

Edited 1:14 AM, 5/4/2005

Elina has a great test linked to her blog where you can find what chemical element you most represent. I am Phosphorous. No surprise for me. Read the description and see if you don't think it fits me perfectly...

P... Phosphorous
You scored 42 Mass, 42 Electronegativity, 51 Metal, and 0 Radioactivity!
You're high energy... really high. Unfortunately, you don't always put your energy to calm constructive use and sometimes let it all out in intense bursts. If your energy can be harnessed however, you will produce truly great things. I suggest you take up a job that runs you ragged... like opening and closing a Sodium-Potassium pump. Socially you ought to hang with a crowd that is even more social than you. If you don't, well... all those people who spontaneously combusted throughout history... you guessed it, phosphorous people who didn't have enough to occupy themselves. When picking friends make sure most of them rated high on the electronegativity scale... Chlorines, Oxygens and whatnot.