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| Become a Test Center |
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| If your school would like to participate as an SSAT Test Center in 2009-10, please contact SSAT at testgroup@ssat.org |
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| Annual Meeting Review Volume XXIII, no. 2 |
Thursday, March 11, 2010 |
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| Who qualifies for need-based aid? |
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 Gone are the days when you could presume that all families with adjusted gross incomes (AGI) under
$40,000 qualify for financial aid. The constituency of parents applying for aid has changed over the years to
include professionals with high incomes and very complicated tax returns. This session addressed the use
of Federal Income Tax returns to validate and verify the information submitted on the Parent’s Financial
Statement (PFS). Some schools use only a W-2 and PFS, but often these forms will not tell the whole story.
Presenter Mike Szydlowski, Director of Financial Aid, Woodberry Forest School (VA) recommends having
all financial aid applicants complete a 4506-T, Request for Transcript of Tax Return, which allows you to
receive a copy of a family’s tax return. He presented case studies using actual tax returns submitted by
families seeking aid from Woodberry Forest and demonstrated how, if you were to pay attention only to the
AGI on these returns, the family would qualify for aid, but if you look deeper into other parts of the return, you
can see the ways in which savvy individuals hide their assets.
 Mike gave a similar presentation at last year’s meeting, and you can access the valuable advice he gave
at that time at www.memberanda.org/2004XXII_NO2/13.asp. This year’s presentation included more
recent changes to tax laws, and the highly informative handouts are available at www.ssatmembers.org/meetingnotes. Congress makes tax changes that financial aid offices need to know about years ahead
of time so that they can appropriately plan for the impact such changes will have on them. Also, it can
take years to phase in tax changes, so it’s important to stay on top of how certain regulations vary from
year to year until the change has been completely phased in. Financial aid officers should definitely
check out pages 3-4 of the handouts, which detail important tax changes for 2004 that will impact
financial aid awards and changes to look for in coming tax years.
Some other general advice from Mike: 
- Don’t accept tax returns via email. Some people do a huge return and you have to print the whole
thing; you will be unable to print only selected pages. Also, you need an original signature on the
form, which shows that they actually intend to file this return.
- If you do not currently offer financial aid to international students, don’t start, because it’s very
complicated.
- Woodberry uses its website to communicate additional alternatives for financial aid recipients to
acquire needed items (and others to donate them), such as blazer or book exchanges.
- Mike has found it very useful to color code his files with paperclips. For example, a green clip
means a student has a younger brother at the school, another color marks a student who did not
receive aid, but is attending the school, so that family will probably apply again next year.
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