Income Adjustment Petition

2011-12 Parent Income Adjustment Form (for dependent students) PDF

2011-12 Independent Student Income Adjustment Form PDF

2012-13 Parent Income Adjustment Form (for dependent students) PDF
2012-13 Independent Student Income Adjustment Form PDF

Financial Aid forms may be available in a variety of downloadable formats. If you want to view a form as a PDF document and you do not have Acrobat Reader installed on your system yet, please download the free version now. If you fill out a form on your computer, please remember to print it and sign it before submitting it by mail or faxing it to 360-867-6576.

Financial Aid Eligibility Adjustment to Income Changes

The calculations used to determine a student's eligibility for student financial assistance generally take into account the family's income from the previous tax year. For the dislocated worker's family, or in the case of a death or divorce in the family, the income from a previous year is often much higher than the income expected in the current year. Families sometimes must adjust to other unexpected household and income changes, too.

The good news is that financial aid administrators have authority under the law to exercise "professional judgment to adjust these data items to account for families with special circumstances.

This authority must be used carefully, and any adjustment of data requires a documented case-by-case review of the family's entire financial situation. However, reduction of income, loss of a job or a change in the number of family members can often be considered a special circumstance that warrants the use of professional judgment to increase a student's eligibility for financial assistance.

If the information you provided on the FAFSA does not reflect your current circumstances, and you would like us to consider revising your expected family contribution for the current year, please let us know by completing and submitting the Income Adjustment Form.

Attention dependent students!

For dependent students, we can only consider parental income changes.

What You Must Provide

Please submit a letter of explanation with your Income Adjustment Form. Tell us what has happened to change your circumstances.

If you are petitioning for the current academic year and it is after January 1, please include a signed copy of your tax return; if it is not yet January 1, you may need to project tax information to the best of your ability. Then, if your petition is approved, we will request that you provide us with a signed copy of your tax return during the Winter term.

Please note that we can only consider the taxes from the year that succeeds the one provided already on your FAFSA. For example, if you filed a FAFSA for the 2011-12 Academic Year, you provided information from your 2010 tax returns. In the process of reviewing your 2011-12 Income Adjustment Petition, you must provide us with information about your 2011 income.

If you have questions about this process, please contact us for more information.

Timing

If you are petitioning for a coming academic year, please wait until July 1 of that year to submit your petition. We will ask you to project your income for the current year and we feel that your projection will be more accurate if you can see what has happened during the first six months of that year.

Special Information for Students with Approved Dependency Overrides

 If you have petitioned for and been approved for independent status, the Income Adjustment Petition will not be approved.