FAFSA form for Financial Aid

The FAFSA form for Financial Aid must be electronically submitted. Financial Aid is not allowed to accept paper copies. One computer is available for use in the Financial Aid office, but often students end up in our Information Commons to submit the document. The computers in the Library Information Commons are set to display PDF documents in the full version of the Reader, and not through any IE or FireFox Acrobat "plug-in". If not set properly by default to open the full version of Acrobat, articles do not print from library databases (a far more frequent use of Acrobat in our Commons!)

Where to Direct the Student:
The only computer that is set up to allow the form to submit properly is the Reference Desk (Student Use) computer. This computer has a different setting for Acrobat Reader than the computers in the General Information Commons. The setting is changed by opening Acrobat, navigating to the the default preferences (Edit and Preferences) and changing the way PDF's are displayed under the Internet section, by making sure that the checkbox for "display in browser" is checked. this setting can be changed by the end user, so you may have to reset this if not set properly.

Other Issues:
If a student leaves any field blank on the form, the form can not be submitted. According to Erin, there are two fields in particular that appear to be problematic; the student has to enter a zero or an “NA” if the questions do not apply. They may not leave any field blank. She said that although the students are told this, there are always some who do not pay attention to this detail. Erin said that it is printed in red even but some still goof.