• Financial Aid: Statement of Understanding
• Financial Aid: Award Actions
• Financial Aid: Accept Full Subsidized Loan, before Accepting Unsubsidized Loan
• Financial Aid: Cost of Attendance
• Financial Aid: Adding External Resources
• Google Analytics

Access from Menu or Dashboard

When the Financial Aid component is configured to display on the Student Experience Portal, the user can access it from either the Menu bar on the left or directly from the Dashboard.  Selecting the Financial Aid component from either of these locations will open the Financial Aid main page.  

The "Badge" Icon

Both the menu and the dashboard provide a red "badge" icon that will display the number of awards available for the student to take action on.  The number displayed will reflect the number of actionable awards the student has across all Academic Years on the student's Academic Plan.  These may be awards in an Offered status.  If there are no Offered awards, the indicator will not display at all. 

Actionable Awards

"Actionable" awards may be in an Offered status.  Awards are not actionable if: 

• the award is set to Passive Acceptance (the "Initial Status" of the fund is configured as "Accepted" on Regent Award Fund Setup), no actions are available for the award. The active/passive acceptance choice for the fund can be overridden at the site and/or program level.
• the Loan Period End date is in the past (less than today's date), no actions are available for the award.
• the Award has disbursements modified by an R2T4 (either a Refund or a PWD), no actions are available for the award.   
• the award is a Parent PLUS Loan, and per configuration, the student may not act upon it due to its status, no actions are available for the award.
• the award contains a non-zero or non-cancelled disbursement that crosses into another AY, no actions are available for the award. For example, a FAY based fund could have disbursements across two different AYs.
• there are no actionable awards, the badge icon is not shown.

Note:  "Partially" accepted awards are not counted in badge icons or alerts to students.  These awards are in an Accepted status but the award amount is not accepted in full; there is an additional amount available for the student to accept.

What is contained in the Dashboard Tile?

Students can navigate to the Financial Aid component from the Financial Aid Dashboard tile by clicking the 'Review & Accept Financial Aid' link.

If the student does not have an Academic Plan, and therefore does not have any awards, the tile displays the message Check back later to review awards. In this case, the 'Review & Accept Financial Aid' link is not shown.

Current Academic Year Info

The dashboard tile will display information regarding the student's current academic year.

• The current academic year is defined as the academic year with a beginning date in the past and the end date in the future.
• If there is no current academic year and there is a future academic year, the tile displays the future academic year.
• If all of the student's academic years are in the past, the tile displays the last academic year of the student's academic plan.

Award Info

The dashboard tile displays a message containing the total dollar value of accepted awards, and the total dollar value of the remaining total award eligibility (the amount of offered awards that the student has not yet accepted) for the current academic year, if either amount is > $0: You have $#### in Accepted Awards and $#### in remaining eligibility

The dashboard view displays the following message if BOTH the total dollar value of accepted awards AND the total dollar value of the remaining total award eligibility is $0 for the current academic year: You do not have any awards that require action at this time.

Financial Aid Main Page

Several elements will appear when the Financial Aid main page is opened.  This section will cover those elements in detail.  The Current Academic Year is always shown by default.  Funds within that academic year will display if the school has configured the fund with "Display on Financial Aid Portlet" as selected /wiki/spaces/REM/pages/7012936 in Regent Award.  

1. The Financial Aid component supports the display of "container" Academic years that are holding /wiki/spaces/REM/pages/7012721 if they exist. These AYs display just like a "normal" AY.
2. If a school has configured "Hide Awards and Costs when Overlap Exists" as "Yes," and a student has either the "Review Overlapping Loan Period from ISIR" or the "Review Overlapping Academic Year from NSLDS," task, the Financial Aid component will not display any awards or costs for the Academic Year that the task is associated with, or for any Academic Years in the future from that point on. In these cases, the message configured in the "Overlap Message" is displayed to the student.  Otherwise, if a school has configured "Hide Awards and Costs when Overlap Exists" as "No," the Financial Aid component will display the awards and costs as normal (if costs are configured to display) and will not display the message configured in the "Overlap Message."  
3. Loans in Closed Academic Years display but are not actionable.

Title Bar

The Financial Aid component has a title bar at the top of the screen that contains the Academic Year dropdown selection and a Help icon that provides details about the meaning of each award status.  The title bar is "sticky" meaning that, in both the desktop and mobile view, it will remain in place at the top of the screen even when the user scrolls down the page.

Academic Year Dropdown

The Academic Year dropdown is available for students to view previous and future Academic years if they exist on their Academic Plan and are configured (See "Academic Years to Display" configuration option) to be available as an option.  The dropdown should default to the student's current Academic Year.  The Academic Year range displays the Term Display Name from Regent Award Term Setup for the Begin Date and End Date from Regent Award Term Setup, or if no Term Display Name is configured, the Term Name is used.  Nonterm programs will always display the payment period start and end dates for the Academic Year range.

• The Net Amount of the disbursement will display for each term/payment period.

On the mobile view, the Academic Year selection is a swipable widget. Swiping left to right selects the previous year if available. Swiping right to left shows the next year if available.

• Academic Year 0 is available if configured  (See "Display Academic Year 0" configuration option). 
• The dropdown will display either the current and one immediate future AY or all AYs. (See "Academic Years to Display" configuration option)
• The AY will be identified in the dropdown using the Academic Year start and end date (e.g. use the data format MM/DD/YYYY - MM/DD/YYYY)
• A red badge icon is displayed next to the Academic Year start and end dates, showing the number of actionable awards in each Academic Year.

Program Information

Students in term-based programs will be presented with the following information about their program if the section is configured to display. 

• Term
• Registered Units
• Program Applicable Units
• Program Name

Help icon

On the Financial Aid component title bar, a "Help" icon () displays on the far right. When this icon is clicked, a "pop-up" screen appears displaying the following content: 

• Where the text above refers to "Financial Aid Office," the text configured by the school for "Office Name" will be shown.
• If the school is configured to not display awards in an "Estimated" status, text for that status is not shown.  
• If the school is configured to not display awards in a "Cancelled" status, text for that status is not shown.
• If the school is configured to not display awards in a "Declined" status, text for that status is not shown.

Instructional Text

Schools may configure Instructional Text to appear at the top of the Financial Aid component.  The text can be set up with a header, formatting, and even hyperlinks on the Financial Aid subtab of Portal setup.  If a large amount of text is provided, only the first three lines will appear on the screen, accompanied by a "Show Full Info" link that will allow the message box to expand to show the full text provided.

The text configured in the Office Name, Office Phone and Office Email fields can be inserted into the text configured here.

Call to Action 

When the student has actionable awards in an Academic Year other then the default AY displayed on the Financial Aid main page, a message is displayed to the student at the top of the Financial Aid main page, notifying the student of these awards.  The message will provide the Academic Year(s) in which there are actionable awards, as a hyperlink that will refresh the Financial Aid main page to display the selected Academic Year.

A button labeled "Ok, Got It" displays below the message that, when clicked, causes the message to disappear.  The message will reappear each time the student accesses the Financial Aid main page unless there are no actionable awards in AYs other than the default displayed AY.

Organization of Award Data

There are four categories of aid that display on the Financial Aid component in the following order:

• Gift Aid:  Funds from Regent Award Fund Setup display in this category when the Fund Type is "Grant," "Waiver," or "Scholarship."   
• Work-Study:  Funds from Regent Award Fund Setup display in this category when the Fund Type is "Work."
• Loans:  Funds from Regent Award Fund Setup display in this category when the Fund Type is "Loan."
• Other:  Funds from Regent Award Fund Setup display in this category when the Fund Type is "Other," "Exempt," or "None."

If the student has no awards in one of the categories, that category heading is not displayed at all.  A red badge icon displays next to the category heading representing the number of actionable awards in that category for the displayed academic year.

Awards with the following Award statuses will display only if configured:

• Declined
• Estimated
• Cancelled

Multiple Awards

It's possible that a student may have 2 or more awards of the same Fund type in a given Academic Year.  Each non-loan award will display on a separate tile, as illustrated in the screenshot below.  The awards will also be listed separately in the COA.

For multiple Federal Direct Loans of the same fund type on the same loan period, the Student Experience application will display a message on the expanded award tile:  Contact your [configured FA Office Name] at [configured FA phone] or [configured FA email] to obtain assistance with accepting this award.

• The message displays in place of the award actions; no actions will be available.
• Awards in Estimated status, Cancelled status, or with the "cancelAndRecreate" flag set on the award, are not considered for this validation.
• These awards do count in the number shown as a “badge” throughout the site.

FAY-based Awards

The Financial Aid component displays only the portion of a FAY-based award that falls within the displayed AY.  In other words, only the award disbursement amounts associated with the payment periods of the FAY-based award that fall within the Academic Year the student is viewing, will be displayed to the student.  No actions are available for these awards if any portion of the award falls outside of the displayted AY. For example, a FAY based fund could have disbursements across two different AYs.  See actionable awards.

Understanding the Collapsed Award Tile

When the Financial Aid component loads, the student will see a series of "collapsed" Award "tiles" that display a preview of information about the award.  Each Award displays as a separate tile with the following information:

1. Award Name
2. "Amount Available" 
   1. If the award has been Accepted, this is labeled as the "Current Amount."  If the award is in an Offered status, this is labeled as the "Offered Amount."
   2. The amount available is:
      1. The lessor of either the offered or eligible amount of the award or  
         
      2. If the award is manual, and the override eligibility flag is true, it is the offered amount of the award.
      3. If a student has a $3500 award, but has accepted only $3000, the Award tile will show Current Amount $3000, since $3000 was accepted, but it will also show the additional text message on the Award Tile stating 'You can accept an additional $500.00.' 
   3. The available amount is used for:
      1. Determining whether the student has accepted the full amount of their eligible Subsidized loan before allowing the student to accept any portion of any Unsubsidized loans they might have.  See Financial Aid: Accept Full Subsidized Loan, before Accepting Unsubsidized Loan
      2. Determining whether or not to present the student with the message "You can accept an additional $..." award tile.
      3. Determining the amounts that we show/allow the student to accept on award tile.
3. Award Status
   1. Awards in an Accepted status display the status in Green
   2. Awards in an Offered status display the status in Red
4. A 'Review or Update' link displays for actionable awards in order to drill into more detail, accept or decline the award.
5. A 'View Details' link displays for non-actionable awards in order to drill into more detail.

Awards in an Accepted status with an additional amount being offered will also display a message on the collapsed tile, 'You can accept an additional $XXX.00.' 

Once the student has accepted or declined an award, the collapsed award tile will appear as "grey" while Regent Award repackages the student.

Understanding the Expanded Award Tile

Upon clicking on the 'Review or Update' or the 'View Details' link on the collapsed award tile, the user sees additional award details including:

• The Fund Description, if configured in Regent Award Fund Setup. 
• The amount of award available, in both the Gross and Net amounts.
  • If the award has been Accepted, this is labeled as the "Current Amount."  If the award is in an Offered status, this is labeled as the "Offered Amount." 
• The Direct Cost Widget if configured to display.
• Payment Period details and disbursement amounts
  • For term-based programs, the term name will display as the Term Display Name from Regent Award Term Setup, or if no Term Display Name is configured, the Term Name will display.  Nonterm programs will always display the payment period start and end dates in the grid
  • The Net Amount of the disbursement will display for each term/payment period.

Payment Details 

From the expanded award tile, when the user clicks on a Term/Payment Period name/dates, or the net amount for the Payment Period, the Payment Details screen will appear displaying the following information:

• Configurable "Help" Text
• Term Display Name (if configured) or Term Name for term-based programs /Payment Period Start and End Date for nonterm programs 
• Payment Status (e.g., Scheduled, Paid)
• Paid Date or Scheduled Date 
  • This label is dynamic based on the status of the disbursement. If the disbursement is not paid, the label displays as "Scheduled Date." If the disbursement is paid, the label displays as "Paid Date." If the disbursement is canceled or declined, no date is shown.
• Net Amount of the disbursement 

Direct Costs Summary

Within the expanded award tile is a Summary of the student's direct costs, to aid them in making decisions about how much of the award to accept.  An info icon on the widget explains "These are the Academic Year (AY) Direct Costs for the current AY being displayed. Direct Costs are expenses like tuition and fees that are typically billed by the institution.”  If the Direct Costs Summary is configured to display, it is shown for all award types, and shows the students Total Costs and Remaining Direct Costs (labeled "Remaining Costs" to conserve space):

• The Total Direct Costs is the amount of all COA items for the AY configured as Direct Costs in Regent Award.
• The Total Remaining Direct Costs is the total of all costs configured as Direct Costs for the AY minus all resources and the gross amount of awards in Accepted status for the AY.

When the student chooses an award action, the Remaining Costs balance automatically adjusts to show the student the effect that award action will have on the Remaining Costs, prior to the student saving the award action. For example:

• if the student chooses to Accept the Full Gross Amount Available, the Remaining Costs number will decrease by this amount.
• if the student chooses to Decline the Full Gross Amount Available, the Remaining Costs number will remain unchanged.
• if the student chooses to Accept the Gross Amount Available up to the Amount of my Remaining Direct Costs, the Remaining Costs number will decrease by this amount.
• if the student chooses to Accept a Specific Gross Amount, the Remaining Costs number will decrease by the amount entered.
• if the student increases the Amount of an Accepted Award, the Total Remaining Direct Costs will decrease by the net amount of the increase.
• if the student decreases or declines a previously Accepted Award, the Total Remaining Direct Costs will increase by the net amount of the decrease/cancellation.

When the "Remaining Cost" amount becomes a negative number, the Direct Cost Summary will display $0.00. 

External Resources

See Student Experience: Adding External Resources for information on adding Resources on the portal.