The financial aid process begins with the FAFSA (Free Application for Federal Student Aid). The FAFSA is the application which UT Austin uses to determine eligibility for federal, state, and institutional awards such as loans, grants, and work-study. The best way to fill out the FAFSA is on-line, at FAFSA on the Web. You can find out more about the FAFSA on our Applying for Aid page. The only additional applications students might want to submit to our office are for UT scholarships.

Once you have submitted your FAFSA, you will receive an email from The U.S. Department of Education confirming that your FAFSA was received and will be forwarded to UT Austin. The most effective way to determine if the University received your FAFSA is to monitor CASH. If you are an incoming student, your FAFSA status can be found by viewing My Status.

All U.S. citizens and permanent residents with proper documentation are eligible to apply with the FAFSA. (In certain cases, students who are residents of Texas but not U.S. citizens or permanent residents may qualify for aid. Please contact our office for further guidance.) As long as such a student is enrolled at least half-time (usually 6 hours in a long term for most undergraduate and graduate students) and is in a degree-seeking program, they will be eligible for some financial aid, based on their FAFSA.

Once UT Austin has received a student’s FAFSA information and submitted any required verification documents, we will offer the student awards by sending a Financial Aid Notification (FAN). Since e-mail is the official mode of correspondence at the University, we generally send students an FAN, or Financial Aid Notification, to let them know what awards they are eligible for. On the FAN, the student can view their awards and then respond - i.e. they can accept or decline the awards offered, or reduce the amounts of loans offered.

Other than applying with the FAFSA and responding to the FAN, students must sometimes complete other program-specific requirements to receive their financial aid. Certain scholarship programs require that a thank-you letter be sent to us before the scholarship can release. Loan programs require that promissory notes be signed, loan entrance counseling be completed, or (sometimes) that a separate loan application be filled out.

As long as all these further requirements have been met, UT Austin will be able to release funds to the student - usually a few days before classes begin. Financial aid funds go to pay university debt (such as tuition and fees owed, or housing payments that are currently due) first, and then any excess funds are sent to the student.