Financial Aid Resources & FAQ

You may request an adjustment to your financial aid package due to a change in family circumstance which has caused a decrease of $5,000 or more in your or your parent’s taxable or nontaxable income.

Some examples include:

• job loss
• involuntary reduction in wages
• loss of untaxed income benefits
• separation/divorce
• death of a spouse or parent
• unusually high medical expenses.

Documentation of the change in family circumstance will be required. Please note that for cases of separation and divorce, if the parents are filing taxes “Married Filing Jointly,” an adjustment will only be made once. Subsequent years will not be reviewed or considered for adjustment.

All students must first complete verification before consideration of an income adjustment. See required Verification forms here. Please contact the Financial Aid office at [email protected] for income adjustment forms.

All parents and students must submit a 2021 and 2022 IRS Tax Return Transcript and W2’s if they worked and filed taxes. We cannot accept the IRS Data Retrieval Tool (DRT) in place of tax transcripts for income adjustment requests.

Satisfactory Academic Progress for Financial Aid Purposes (SAP) is checked in January and June as a part of the college’s participation in Federal Financial Aid programs. The office of Admissions and Financial Aid checks the following aspects of SAP:

• Satisfactory completion of semester contracts and the ISP.
• Satisfactory completion of at least 2/3 of all units attempted (cumulative, including transfer credit).
• Maximum time frame for federal aid: 46.5 units  (cumulative, including transfer credit).
• Maximum time frame for institutional aid: through the 8th contract (including contracts earned through transfer credit, unless the student enters NCF directly from high school)

Yes.

Office staff check in June, after evaluations are due, to ensure that students who receive Bright Futures have satisfactory evaluations for both fall and spring semester contracts.

Perhaps the most common problem is that contract assessments that are “Incomplete” or “Unsatisfactory” will prevent renewal of Bright Futures, and prevent a student from meeting SAP requirements. In order to help avoid this, students should make sure to submit their work on time, and faculty to complete their evaluations by the deadline.

Students with multiple Unsatisfactory contracts should ask about appealing for financial aid; permission to enroll does not automatically guarantee eligibility for aid.