Navigating Financial Aid…Just a Few Clicks Away!

Have you checked out the Office of Scholarships and Financial Aid (OSFA) website recently? It is packed with tons of fantastic resources to help you and your student learn more about financial aid. Everything from how to apply for aid, types of aid, how to read your Financial Aid Offer and important dates and deadlines.

Here is a sneak peak at some of the information you can find:

Apply for Aid

Targeted towards a student’s career and campus, this section highlights the main steps to applying for financial aid, including filing the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA). It also connects the student to Scholarship Universe, our amazing scholarship matching service that helps students find additional scholarship funding.

Types of Aid

What types of aid will be available to your student? Check out this section to review the variety of grants, loans and scholarships offered at the University of Arizona.

In addition, tuition scholarship terms and conditions are published in this section and are based on your student’s original award offer year. This section is a great resource for your student to make sure they are on track for scholarship renewal from year to year. Information about scholarship reinstatement, deferments, appeals and much more is provided, so it is certainly worth encouraging your student to check out!

Cost

The Cost of Attendance (COA) is an important part of financial aid and an important part of the decision-making process for newly admitted students. Each year, OSFA publishes the estimated COA, approximating academic year costs for tuition, housing & food, books & supplies, travel, miscellaneous expenses (things like laundry expenses and prescription expenses) etc. The COA is a vital piece of information for financial planning so we encourage you and your student to review this information carefully.

Forms

While many of our forms have been transitioned to our online portal, Verify My FAFSA, we do still have some paper forms you and your student may need to submit. This section on the website also covers how and where to submit all required documents.

Policies

We aim to be as clear as possible in relaying information and making it available to students and their parents. Check out this section if you would like more specific details about the variety of policies and procedures that may impact your student’s financial aid.

FAQs

We know financial aid can be difficult to navigate, therefore, we have an awesome FAQ section to answer common questions we receive. Whether your questions are regarding FAFSA, loans, or verification, we hope this FAQ section will save you some time!

Other Resources

Our most recently updated webpage, Other Resources, is jam packed with helpful resources for you and your student including a video library including short how-to videos to help guide users through processes such as applying for scholarships via Scholarship Universe, an Events page that provides details for all the past and upcoming workshops offered by OSFA and a page dedicated to providing transparent information about how a student’s financial aid offer was created and how to read the financial aid offer.

Contact

OSFA’s goal is to provide the best service possible to students and families. To achieve this goal on a daily basis, OSFA has worked hard to offer a variety of ways students and families can use to connect with OSFA. As a result of the pandemic, OSFA has created new virtual options including drop-in and appointments via Zoom. We implemented a new and improved chat feature as well as a new and improved email portal. Lastly, our upgraded phone system offers a call-back feature so you can decrease your wait time on the phone if you happen to call during our busy hours.

OSFA understands how important it is for you to be able to access information about financial aid and get your questions answered. We are hoping that our website can serve as a first point of contact for you but please know that we are eager to help answer your questions and provide you the support you need. Happy navigating J