Federal student aid: ISIRs, cost of attendance and packaging (US)

Import ISIRs, clear verification and C-code tasks, set the cost of attendance, propose and offer a package that never passes the COA, and send the award letter.

1. On ISIR Imports press Import ISIR file, choose the award year and paste the ISIR records (one per line).
2. Each record is matched to a student by SSN, otherwise by date of birth and name. One that matches nobody, or more than one student, becomes a task; match it by hand on ISIR Records.
3. The student's Aid Application for the award year is made or updated (a higher transaction number replaces a lower).
4. Work the Aid Tasks: verification (with its tracking group) and each C-code.
5. On Aid Applications, Assign cost of attendance (chosen from the student's intensity and housing), then Propose package, then Offer package.
6. Open the letter on Award Letters. The student accepts or declines in the portal.

Need is the cost of attendance less the Student Aid Index (SAI, which replaced the EFC from 2024-25; a negative SAI counts as zero) less other resources. The package is Pell from the Pell Schedule by SAI and enrolment intensity, a Direct Subsidized Loan up to need and the grade-level limit, the institutional need grant, and a Direct Unsubsidized Loan up to the combined limit, each cut so the total never passes the cost of attendance.

• The SSN is sealed on arrival, matched by a keyed hash and shown only as its last four. The kept copy of the record has it blanked.
• Any change to an award that would take a student's aid past the cost of attendance is refused as an over-award; lowering a cost of attendance below what is awarded raises an over-award task.
• The seeded Pell Schedule is illustrative and marked so: replace it with the schedule the Department of Education publishes for the award year.
• The Direct Loan limits are the annual limits as known when they were seeded; check them against the FSA Handbook for the award year.