 First off, what is financial aid? Financial aid are funds provided to students to help pay for college expenses, and these consist of four categories grants, scholarships, loans, and employment. Grants are typically funded from either federal or state agencies. Scholarships can come from a variety of sources that being the institution itself could come from private resources. A lot of different places that scholarships may come from. Loans, those are either from the Department of Education, Direct Loan Program, or private alternative loans from the lender or bank of your choosing. Employment is what we call work study. Work study is financial aid, but it's not applied directly to the student's account. It's basically an amount of money the student can earn while working on an on-campus job. All students are eligible for some form of financial assistance once the FAFSA has been completed. So as long as a student has completed their FAFSA for the upcoming age year, which is 2021 for the upcoming fall, then they'll be considered for at least some form of financial aid. Internal scholarships, like our endowed scholarships, institutional scholarships that we have, do not require a separate application. The FAFSA submission is all that we need to consider a student for any of the financial aid that we offer. Now let's talk about how you apply. The FAFSA is available each year on October 1st. So for the upcoming academic year of 2021, the FAFSA for that year is actually available starting October 1st, 2019. So likely you may have already completed this. If not, our ECSU school code that you'll need when you complete the FAFSA is 002926. You want to use that to make sure that we receive the results. Starting the FAFSA, you'll need for yourself and your parent if you're a dependent student to sign up for an FSA ID. This acts as your electronic signature and your sign-in information when you need to access and complete your FAFSA. At ECSU, we have a FAFSA completion priority deadline of March 1st, which has passed. However, if you submitted your FAFSA prior to March 1st, and are just now selecting our school to receive the results, you'll still be considered a priority one student and will be considered for the maximum available aid that we can offer based on submitting your FAFSA early. Those students get priority consideration for different awards that we have control over on the institution and we'll use that information when we make our final determination of your eligibility and your financial aid award. So if you need to complete the FAFSA, the photo to the right links directly to the actual FAFSA application. You can begin that process right now. You've completed your FAFSA and submitted the results to ECSU. Now what? Once we begin pulling in results of the FAFSA submissions, some students have to complete verification to confirm the information on their FAFSA is accurate. For this process, we have an online portal that allow you to log in with your ECSU credentials. That's your email and password, and you'll be able to submit any verification documentation online, typically via PDF. That also allows you if you're required to submit tax documents to order them directly through the portal without having to receive or upload any additional documentation. Financial aid offers are made weekly, so as student FAFSAs are submitted as we receive those, as students are admitted throughout the semester, we'll begin reviewing FAFSA submissions and making award offers, and we'll send you an email to both your personal email on your FAFSA and your school email when your award offer is ready for review. New students receive an award offer email that includes helpful links to log in to Banner Self Service, where you'll actually review your financial aid offer, and some additional documents that will give you some information about the types of aid you've received, what your next steps are, and the financial aid terms and conditions, which you'll have to review and accept before you can actually view the financial aid offer. Students do have a 30-day window to accept or decline their financial aid through self-service. That is 30 days to review and accept the terms and conditions. That is your acceptance of the financial aid offer. You do not have to make a decision on your student loan offer by that point. It's just the terms and conditions, because that lets us know that you are interested in this financial aid offer that we've made to you. And it's important to remember that our primary method of communication is going to be email. For new students, we know that you're not yet in the swing of using your ECSU email a lot, so we do send items to your personal email that you submit on your FAFSA and to your ECSU email upfront. But as we get closer to the start of school, we're going to transition to sending those communications directly to your ECSU email account. So it's best practice to get in the habit of using that now. Check it often, and I will say that if we send you something, if you've received an email from financial underscore aid at ECSU or verification at ECSU, that is us letting you know that we need you to take some action on your financial aid. So be mindful. Check your email often. If you see something from us, please read it and take the action that we've asked you to do. And at the end of that, if you're not sure what you need to do or what it might mean, hit reply. Let us know how we can help you through that process because that is what we're here for. We'll let you know what you need to do, but if you're not sure, get back with us, and we'll walk you through the process every time. Our mission in the office of financial aid at Elizabeth City State University is to remove as many barriers to your education as possible. We understand the financial aid is not obvious. It's not simple. So our role is really to educate you on what financial aid is available, what financial aid is, how you can go about putting yourself in the best position to receive it. To that end, we assign students, when they're admitted, to a financial aid counselor. That's going to be your main point of contact, and that counselor is going to have your information at their fingertips whenever you come by, call, or email us so that, a, we build a line of communication directly to the financial aid office with you, try to build some trust so you know you have someone you can lean on when you have questions about whatever is going on and how it might affect your financial aid or when it's time to apply for next year. So what we hope is that you build a relationship of trust that you can ask any questions and even if you come by the office and your counselor doesn't happen to be there at that time or that day, that's no problem. You can speak with any one of us. We're always prepared to answer students' questions and there's nothing that we can't pull up and help you figure out. Our office is located in the Marion Thorpe administration building. That's the same building as admissions, student accounts, and the chancellor's office. We're very easy to find. On the second floor of Thorpe, we have a waiting area right in the main four-year. So anytime you need to come by and see us, please feel free to do so. You can see our hours and our contact information here in the presentation, and we encourage you to also follow us on social. We have a Facebook page and a Twitter feed that we use to communicate information out to students as well. And finally, here's some notes to remember as you complete your financial aid portion of the virtual open house. Be sure to start checking your university email. Like I mentioned before, we will send certain items to your personal and to your ECSU email, but as we get closer to the start of fall classes, we're going to transition to only sending communications to your ECSU email, and that's going to be our main mode of communication throughout the rest of your academic year. So it's important that you get in the habit now of checking that often and responding when the financial aid office reaches out. The FAFSA becomes available each year October 1st, so I know we're just getting your financial aid situation figured out right now for the upcoming fall classes starting August. Two months later, it's time to submit your FAFSA for the next fall. So make sure that you're mindful of that deadline or that as that date approaches. We'll send out some reminders as well. So again, if you're checking your email, you'll know that's coming up and you can complete it early. And the importance of completing your FAFSA early is that March 1st priority deadline, and that comes around each year. So it's passed for this year, coming up for next year. So if you make sure that you complete your FAFSA soon after October 1st as possible, then you're going to be in line to receive as much financial aid as we have available. Our resources are finite, so it is the students who have everything taken care of early that put themselves in a position to receive as much financial aid as is available. Students who wait until June and July run the risk of being eligible for certain programs that we have to offer, but funds not being available because they waited too long to complete their FAFSA. So make sure you're doing your FAFSA early, completing verification quickly on time, and making sure everything's done and ready to go way before March 1st. And as always, if you have any questions, whether it's specific to your situation, something that may be going on, you're not sure how to do a process, you've read everything that we've sent, and you're still uncertain, reach out, talk to us, let us know. We are glad to help. Our entire purpose is to help you navigate through this process. We know that it is not something that students inherently understand on the outset. We're not going to ask you to read volumes to reach a level of expertise that we have already when we can just share that with you when you have questions. So by all means, call us, email us, come by and see us, whatever questions you have, we will answer. And if it's not a question that's for our office to answer, we'll put you in contact with the folks that are. And in closing, I would like to say thank you. It is my pleasure to serve as a Director of Financial Aid at ECSU, and we look forward to serving you for the next two, three, four, five years from now to graduation. Best of luck.