Mark Your Calendar: College Goal Sunday

(FOX Providence) - Every year, financial aid administrators and higher education officials come together for College Goal Sunday. It's an event designed to provide students and parents with free assistance in filling out the Free Application for Federal Student Aid, otherwise known as the FAFSA form.

Peter Kerwin from the Rhode Island Higher Education Assistance Authority joined The Rhode Show to talk about the the 2010 College Goal Sunday.

Who needs to be going to this event?

If you’re the parent of a high school senior who is going to be looking for federal financial aid, you want to mark your calendar for this. College Goal Sunday will take place on Sunday, January 31st beginning at 1:00 p.m. It’s sponsored by the Rhode Island Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators (RIASFAA) and the Lumina Foundation for Education . In their infinite wisdom, they have scheduled this event on Sunday before the Super Bowl, so it’s a perfect time to come out to one of the six locations throughout the state where volunteers are going to be to walk you through the FAFSA form.

We’ve talked about the FAFSA before…it’s the mother of all of financial aid paperwork. It’s the document you fill out which determines how much your family is expected to contribute to your student’s college education. This is what colleges use to determine loan packages, as well as grants and work study. You also have to file the FAFSA if you are going to apply to the state grant program.

The Obama administration’s education team came in with a plan to simplify the FAFSA and they’ve managed to use “skip logic” to reduce the number of questions you have to answer when filing the form online, but it’s still a complicated process. There are a number of outfits out there charging people to help them fill out the form, but College Goal Sunday brings financial aid administrators together with officials from the colleges, and agencies like RIHEAA and the Rhode Island Student Loan Authority to provide free assistance.

Where are the sites for the event this year?

There are going to be volunteers at six different locations throughout the state to help people complete the FAFSA. Those locations are the CCRI campuses at Lincoln, Newport and Providence . In addition, there will be volunteers at the high schools in Central Falls, West Warwick and Woonsocket. Students should attend with a parent or guardian and bring their 2009 tax returns or their 2008 returns if not yet filed, along with their 2009 W-2 form or their last pay stub from December 2009.

You can register online and learn more about the event at www.collegegoalri.org . It’s a great opportunity to get free assistance that will really make the financial aid process a lot easier. So mark the date down—January 31st—get this work out of the way and enjoy the Super Bowl the following weekend.