Professional Judgement

Professional Judgment refers to the authority of a college’s financial aid office to make adjustments to the data elements on the FAFSA (special circumstances) and/or to adjust a student's dependency status (unusual circumstances) on a case-by-case basis. The College does not have the authority to change the need analysis formula itself or to make direct adjustments to the Student Aid Index (SAI). Instead, financial aid staff may make adjustments to the inputs to the formula. The changes to the inputs are dictated by the impact of the special circumstances on the family's income and assets. The standard formula is then applied to the new data elements, yielding a new SAI figure.
Examples

  • Reduction in household income due to layoff, furlough, job displacement
  • Death of a student’s parent
  • Deduction of one-time payments such as a 401k draw
  • Dependency adjustment due to parental abandonment, human trafficking, abusive household

Please submit any professional judgement requests in writing to financialplanning@juniata.edu, and a staff member will be in touch regarding any necessary documentation. Upon review, the Office of Student Financial Planning will make any relevant changes to a student’s FAFSA data, submit the changes for processing, receive an updated FAFSA transaction, and share any resulting financial updates with the student via email. 

Provisional Independence

Students who indicate that they have unusual circumstances on their FAFSA application (answering “Yes” to question 7) will receive a provisional status as an independent student as well as a provisional Student Aid Index (SAI) calculation. Instances in which students would be considered provisionally independent are as follows:

  • You or your parent are incarcerated.
  • You have left home due to an abusive or threatening environment.
  • You have been abandoned by or estranged from your parents and have not been adopted.
  • You were granted refugee or asylee status and are separated from your parents, or your parents are displaced in a foreign country.
  • You are a victim of human trafficking.
  • You are otherwise unable to contact or locate your parents and have not been adopted.

While provisional independent students’ FAFSAs will still process and be shared with the College, the student’s FAFSA will be incomplete, pending further action from the Office of Student Financial Planning and the student:

  • The Office of Student Financial Planning will request documentation of the student via email within two weeks of receiving the FAFSA submission to determine if they qualify for a professional judgment. It is important to note that this is a subjective process based on federal guidelines and is not a guarantee of a status change.
  • We ask that students provide the requested documentation within 30 days for timely processing.
  • Upon receipt of the requested documentation, the Office of Student Financial Planning will notify the student of the outcome of the review, and, if the student qualifies, will submit a professional judgment to Federal Student Aid to bring the FAFSA to completion.
  • Once that professional judgment is processed, the student’s status changes from “provisionally independent” to “independent,” and their SAI calculation is no longer considered provisional.
  • If none of the above unusual circumstances apply and the student does not meet the other criteria for an independent student, students must provide parent information on their FAFSA form or will only be eligible for a Direct Unsubsidized Loan for that award year.

By federal law, the following circumstances do not warrant independent status or a dependency override:

  • Parents refuse to provide information on the FAFSA or for verification.
  • Parents do not claim student as dependent for income tax purposes.
  • Parents are unwilling or unable to contribute to a student’s education.
  • Student demonstrates self-sufficiency and does not live with a parent.
  • Student does not wish to communicate with parent.

Beginning with the 2024-2025 academic year, the Office of Student Financial Planning will be able to presume that any student who has obtained a dependency override for any preceding award year at an institution of higher education to be independent for each subsequent award year at the same institution unless the student informs the institution that circumstances have changed, or the institution has specific conflicting information about the student's independence.