Quitting Job in Fall - when to talk to Finaid Office?

[bvang]

Hello all,

I plan on quitting my current job in order to start grad school in the Fall. I've gotten a bunch of acceptance emails but unfortunately a lot of them don't offer funding. So I have two questions:

1) Do schools look at your FAFSA info before offering you funding? If they see that my last year's salary was pretty decent, I wonder if they'll weigh this into whether or not they give me funding.

2) When should I talk to the financial aid offices regarding the fact that I'm planning on quitting? I've already received my FAFSA results with my EFC (much higher than I will be able to afford, especially after quitting). I've read elsewhere that people who expect to have drastically different incomes in 2010 should work directly with the schools' finaid offices... but it just didnt make sense to contact them BEFORE i even got accepted. I guess I should talk to them about it after?? (But then this falls into the category of asking for support when they never offered it in the first place)

I'm confused and unsure of what to do. Any help would be appreciated!!!

[La Voz]

Contact them all now. I've already started filling out "Special Circumstance" forms or whatever they call them. Even now, I think it's a bit late because many have already calculated your financial aid for the next Fall semester. If it was need-based aid, then they probably already used your FASFA EFC. But, better late than never to update that info.

[bvang]

Thanks La Voz. I guess I just wasn't sure if funding for grad study was generally based on EFCs... but I suppose that would make sense if it was.

The unfortunate thing is that some schools' "special circumstance" forms state that quitting a job isn't considered a special circumstance (unless I got laid off).

Oh well -- thanks again...