Background for Direct Loans

When you package financial aid for a student, you may find it necessary to package a Direct loan. Anthology Student captures the necessary information for initializing a Direct loan and maintaining a history of the loan. Direct loans include: 

  • Direct Subsidized loans (DIRSUB)

  • Direct Unsubsidized loans (DIRUNSUB)

  • Direct PLUS loans (DIRPLUS)

Origination for Direct Loans

After you export originations, Anthology Student sets the origination status to Batched to Send. When an origination status is batched, you are not allowed to modify any origination information. The award is considered to be originated if the origination status is Accepted (A), Batched to Send (B), or Error/Rejected (E).

After the grant origination records are sent to COD, if changes are made to the data that affect the origination, Anthology Student captures the changes and prepares records to be exported to COD.

When you add a COD grant or loan, the default status is Not Ready to Send or Not Ready to Send (No ISIR).

The conditions under which the origination status can be set to Ready to Send depends on the policies at your institution. If your institution has configured Anthology Student to: 

  • Require a verified ISIR, you cannot add an award or specify an origination status of Ready to Send until the ISIR is received (ISIR Received Date has been populated by Anthology Student.)

  • Automatically update the origination status to Ready to Send if there is a change in the origination amount, the change is automatically sent to COD

  • Originate or certify estimated awards and automatically update the origination status to Ready to Send, the origination status is changed to Ready to Send for awards that do not have a status of canceled when an ISIR is imported or during the ISIR matching process

Anthology Student updates the status of disbursements to Ready to Send to COD when disbursements are approved to pay or paid. In addition, if refunds are made, Anthology Student marks the refund records as ready to be sent as well.

If your institution has not configured Anthology Student to allow origination for an estimated award, the origination status cannot be Ready to Send until the award has a status of Approved.

The status Not Ready to Send (No ISIR) may indicate that the ISIR record is not properly linked to the student record. In this case, the ISIR Matching process can be used to resolve the issue.

ISIR Requirements

The Department of Education requires that a student must have an ISIR on file for the origination of all Direct loans, except a PLUS loan. This exception for a PLUS loan only applies if the student does not have any other Title IV awards on file for the same award year. If there are other Title IV awards on file for that award year, an ISIR is required. The implications for COD Participants are listed in the table.

Type

Implications

Both Full Participants and Phase-In Participants When you save a Direct PLUS loan with an origination status of Not Ready to Send, Anthology Student does not display a message indicating that an ISIR must be on file before a loan can be originated if the student has no other Title IV awards on file for the award year.
Full Participants Anthology Student no longer checks for an ISIR when displaying Direct PLUS loans on the export list if the student has no other Title IV awards on file for the award year.
When exporting a Direct PLUS loan for a student who has no ISIR and no other Title IV awards on file for the award year, Anthology Student creates the student identifier tag from the student's SSN, date of birth, and last name.
Phase-In Participants Anthology Student skips the check for dependency status when determining whether a Direct PLUS Loan should be included in the export file if the student has no other Title IV awards on file for the award year.

Stafford Loans for Eligible Health Professionals

Additional amounts are available to eligible graduate and professional students who are enrolled in Health Profession programs. If you are using CIP codes, a student is flagged as an eligible Health Professional when a student is enrolled in an area of study, program version, or program with a CIP code that qualifies the student. If you are not using CIP codes, the value can also be selected when you add academic years. A student is either:

  • Not Eligible or Declined

  • Eligible for up to $16,667 in additional Stafford loan (HPPA Level 1; applies to CIP Codes 42.0201; 51.0101; 51.0701; 51.2001; 51.2201)

  • Eligible for up to $26,667 in additional Stafford loan (HPPA Level 2; applies to CIP Codes 51.0401; 51.1201; 51.1701; 51.1901; 51.2101; 51.2401; 51.33; 51.3303)

Based on the CIP code that is assigned to the area of study, program version, or program, the default value for the Health Professions option is set when a new student academic year is created using either the: 

  • New enrollment in Anthology Student

  • CampusLink API

  • Completing the academic year sequence on the Academic Year tab (Select the Students tile > select the name in the Students list > expand Financial Aid > select the Awarding tile > Academic Years tab.)

The maximum amounts are for 12-month academic years and are prorated for 11, 10, and 9-month years. Only graduate/professional grade level students are eligible for the higher amounts.

If there is a change to their eligible Health Professions status or a change to their HPPA level and there are direct loans, the change must be sent to COD.

Direct Parent Plus (DIRPLUS) or Parent Plus (PLUS) Loans

Under the Higher Education Reconciliation Act (HERA), graduate students may be eligible to receive PLUS loans. Previously, PLUS loans were made to parents of enrolled students. You can package Grad PLUS under the Direct Loan and FFEL PLUS programs by setting up fund sources with the PLUS or DIRPLUS fund source type. Direct Loan Grad PLUS loans are also COD loans.

The Federal Parent PLUS Dependency Status Conflicts report can display the student details if there is a dependency conflict.

When you package loans, a message is displayed if:

  • The awards include a Direct Parent PLUS (DIRPLUS) or Parent PLUS (PLUS) loan,

  • The student does not have a FAFSA or ISIR on file, and

  • The value for the Dependency Status field is Undetermined.

When you change the status to Dependent, the loans can be packaged. If you do not specify Dependent, Anthology Student does not package the loans.

After the loan has been awarded, Anthology Student compares the status to the FAFSA or ISIR when it is received. Anthology Student displays an alert if the values do not match so that you can cancel or refund the loan. COD export will also export the updated status for the loan.

Estimates for Direct Loans

For estimated awards (such as Direct loans), the values for Net Amount, Bank Fees, and Rebate Amounts are calculated from the Gross Amount of the award. The actual award will have disbursements with the values for Net Amount, Bank Fees, and Rebate Amount calculated from the Gross Amount of the disbursements and summed up for the total. Once the student is enrolled, there can be a variation between the values displayed for the estimated award and the actual award.

Auto Create Loan Period Origination Changes when Student Withdraws or Refund is posted

The origination change record is created in the following scenarios:

  • When a student is moved to a Permanent Out Category after the first payment period and the following disbursements are canceled, an origination change is created to adjust the Loan Period End Date to the end of the payment period that has not been canceled.

  • When a disbursement after the first payment period is fully refunded, an origination change is created to adjust the Loan Period End Date to the end date of the last earned disbursement. Also, an origination change is created to adjust the award amount to reflect the amount for any refund that is posted.

Auto-Create Disbursement Date Adjustments after Posting Payments to the Ledger Card

This option is used to enable Anthology Student to compare reported direct loan scheduled payment dates received to the Anthology Student actual paid dates to assess if there is a difference. If there is a difference, the dates can be corrected to ensure the institution follows Federal Regulations that specify that the dates must match.

This option is only visible when FAA is enabled. Additionally, this option is only visible to users with the appropriate permissions. For Direct Loans, the settings for the Direct Loan tab are applied by the Direct Loan ID.

A process validates disbursements that need disbursement date adjustments after payments have been posted to the ledger card. It validates if the disbursement date posted to the ledger card is not equal to the accepted disbursement date at COD. This process validates the dates for Pell grants, TEACH grants, and Direct loans. If the transaction date of the accepted Pell/TEACH/DL disbursement record [fadldisb.transactiondate / fapelldisb.disbursementdate / FaCODGrantDisb.disbdate] does not match the date of the disbursement's ledger card posting date (satrans.date), a disbursement date adjustment record for the transaction is created and queued for export through the COD Export job.

In each case above:

  • Disbursement date adjustment records are created in a status of Ready to Send, which would be sent to COD after the COD Export job runs successfully.

  • Adjustment records are created at a minimum to comply with our current adjustment creation when adjustments are manually created.

  • Adjustment records must comply with our current COD Export/Import formats.

Anthology Student uses the existing Exception Management framework. Anthology Student does not create a new adjustment record if a pending adjustment exists. Instead, a new exception, CODEXPRT0059, is created that states "Disbursement Date Adjustment Not Created. Disbursement has a pending adjustment. Transmit pending adjustment before continuing."

The following steps resolve the exception: Navigate to Select the Configuration tile > expand Financial Aid > select Automated Job Management. Select the appropriate COD Export Job. Select Run Now.

Automatically update Origination Status to Ready to Send

This option is used to automatically promote the origination status from "Not Ready" to "Ready to Send" when a valid ISIR is on file for the student and the Direct Loan is in Approved status. It also updates the Origination Status to Ready to Send if currently Accepted and the award amount increases without prompting the user.

The Origination record's current status is a consideration in the status update. The following rules apply:

  • N (Not ready to send) can be updated to R.

  • E (Errors/Rejected) can be updated to R.

  • B (Batch) indicates it has already been sent and the school is awaiting a response. It cannot be updated to R.

  • A (Accepted) can be updated to R only if data in the Origination record has been changed.

Create Origination Changes when Loan Dates are Updated

This check box, when enabled, allows you to select the Origination State Type. You can select from the following options:

  • Always create if you want Anthology Student to immediately create origination change records when loan dates are modified by the SPE tool.

  • Create when award is fully paid if you want Anthology Student to verify that the award has been fully paid before creating origination change records. An award is fully paid if all disbursements have been released to COD. Origination changes are created only for direct loans that have an Origination Status of "Accepted" or "Batched to Send".

Entrance Counseling and MPN Data

Entrance Counseling and Master Promissory Note (MPN) data is sent to the school only when that information is completed online and is specific to your school.

If a student does complete that information for your school, it will import and populate the award as long as the award has been added.

If the award has not been added and the Entrance Counseling and MPN data is imported before the award is added, it will be held as an exception that must be cleared/resolved daily in Processes > Financial Aid > COD Exceptions.

Many students complete the Entrance Counseling and MPN data at other schools and are not required to perform this for a new school. In these cases, that data will not route to your school to be imported. Therefore, manual data entry would be necessary.

Removing the MPN parameter at the Approve Disbursements to Pay stage will gather students who do not have this data.

Removing the Entrance Counseling parameter in the DAC will prevent the students from failing. The school will rely on COD to allow the disbursement to be released or not based on whether COD has both an active, linked MPN and an Entrance Counseling on file. If the disbursement is not released, the school will remove the student from the batch and notify them of the missing information required to release the disbursement.