Appeals for Reconsideration

Special Circumstances Appeal applications for the 2024-2025 academic year will be accepted beginning April 2024. We understand families may be eager to submit their Special Circumstances Appeal to our office. Under current federal guidelines, initial financial aid offers must be processed before a Special Circumstances Appeal can be considered. With the implementation of FAFSA Simplification, initial offers may be delayed. We know how important financial aid is to many UVA families, and we will work diligently to process all Special Circumstances Appeals as efficiently as possible once we are able to do so.

This page contains detailed information for undergraduate students regarding the process for appealing financial aid eligibility due to a change in family circumstances. If your aid offer feels unmanageable, we strongly urge that before submitting any appeal forms you read all of the information provided below, as much of it is intended to:

  • Assist families in submitting appeals that are successful, and
  • Point out additional resources that might be helpful, even if an appeal may not be warranted
Appeals for 2023-2024

Is My Appeal Likely to be Successful? 

It's important to recognize that even if there has been a significant change in a family’s circumstances, not all changes will result in additional need-based aid on appeal. Below are some fairly common examples of appeals that, while perfectly valid and understandable, do not necessarily result in additional aid. Any tax years noted in these examples relate to the 2023-2024 aid year.

  • A family may anticipate a decrease in income for 2023 – perhaps due to a job loss or business challenges. However, if their income increased between 2021 and 2022, and perhaps again at the start of 2023, sometimes estimated 2022 income (which could potentially include severance and/or unemployment benefits as well) will not actually be less than the 2021 income on which the original award is based. In that case, while the family has certainly experienced a recent reduction in income, no additional eligibility would exist, if we were to use (greater) 2022 or 2023 income as the basis of an award; and we are not able to consider estimated 2023 income until academic year 2024-2025.
  • A family may have a significant decrease in income (which can often be addressed in an appeal). However, they may also have significant assets (which traditionally cannot be adjusted on appeal). In such cases, even if we take into account the loss of income, an appeal may not result in increased aid eligibility if the calculated contribution from assets alone covers all, or a significant portion of, the student’s cost of attendance.
  • A family that’s already living paycheck to paycheck may experience a further loss of income; and their assets may be modest enough that there is no expected contribution at all from their savings. However, based on the original application we may have offered enough aid that the full cost of attendance is already covered in one way or another. As we are not able to offer need-based aid beyond the cost of attendance, there would be no additional eligibility for aid, even though the family’s circumstances have clearly become more challenging.
  • A family member may experience a difficult medical situation and may encounter significant healthcare expenses as a result. However, depending on the year of the expense, the strength of the income in that year, and the extent to which insurance may cover some portion of the costs, it sometimes occurs that the percentage of income spent on unreimbursed out-of-pocket medical expenses does not exceed the allowance already provided within our need-analysis formula, in which case eligibility for aid may not increase upon appeal.

If your situation does not fall into one of the categories above, please continue reading for more information about the formal appeal process.

If you are unsure whether or not your situation may fall into one of the categories above, please feel free to contact [email protected] for guidance. We can help you determine whether or not it may make sense to submit an appeal. 

Prerequisites for an Appeal

Please note that ALL of the following conditions must be met for a formal appeal to be processed:

  1. The student is, or has recently been admitted as, an undergraduate student at the University of Virginia. (Graduate students are eligible only for federal aid and any merit-based offers for which they may be selected by entities other than Student Financial Services, which offers no merit aid at all.)
  2. The student has already submitted a FAFSA and CSS Profile and received an official financial aid offer for the relevant academic year. If you have questions about the steps involved in an initial application for aid, please see this web page: https://sfs.virginia.edu/financial-aid-new-applicants/how-apply-financial-aid-undergraduate-applicants. (The information on that page is generally applicable to both entering and returning students. You may use the drop-down menus at the top of the page to navigate elsewhere on our site, if needed.)
  3. The student’s family submits a complete appeal, including all required documentation as well as one or more of our appeal-related forms, links for which are available below, based on the academic year for which you are seeking aid. Incomplete appeals are unlikely to receive a positive response.
  4. If a student or family is appealing in whole or in part based on loss of current-year income, they will need to submit – in addition to the appeal documents – their completed personal tax return(s) for the prior year. For Early Decision Students ONLY: A family's 2022 estimated income may be considered at this time with the use of end-of-year paystubs as 2022 tax returns have not been completed yet. 
  5. If appealing in whole or in part based on loss of current-year business income, the student or family will need to submit - in addition to the above and to any forms noted on the student's SIS To Do List - their completed business tax return(s) for the prior year, showing all relevant business earnings for that tax year, as well as a Profit and Loss Statement, for any business(es) owned.

This appeal process is initially available only to newly admitted students. Current or continuing students would wait to receive an official offer before submitting an appeal. Official offers for returning students will usually be issued beginning in June, after the admission cycle has closed for the year.

When completing certain of the appeal-related forms, the student/family may need to include the student’s UVA e-mail address. The e-mail address is an extension of the computing ID used by the student for the purposes of logging in to view his/her Student Information System (SIS) To Do List. Questions about the login credentials may be directed to our ITS Helpdesk.

Appeal for Reconsideration Form for Dependent Students

Appeal for Reconsideration Form for Independent Students Please note: most undergraduate students are dependent for financial aid purposes and should complete the DocuSign form just above this one. Whether or not your parents claim you on their tax return has no bearing on whether you are "independent" for financial aid purposes. Students who are independent for financial aid purposes usually know that they are.

Parent Estimated Income Form

Student Estimated Income Form

Profit & Loss Statement

Profit & Loss Statement for Independent Students

Details of the Review Process

By submitting an appeal, families affirm they understand the following:

  • Submitting an appeal form does not guarantee a change in need-based grant aid, as not all appeals are successful, and not all successful appeals result in grant funding.
  • The Appeal for Reconsideration process does not take into account changes in the value of regularly fluctuating assets such as stocks or mutual fund holdings. If a dip in asset values is the sole or primary reason for appeal, we suggest instead the financing options noted below, which can help with cash flow until asset values recover.
  • In certain cases, we may not be able to provide a revised award, or even an assessment of the potential success of a formal appeal, based solely on materials submitted during summer or fall – some families’ financial circumstances are simply too complex to assess without information that would only be available at calendar year’s end. While an unlikely occurrence during the pandemic, if this should occur, we will work with you to determine the best approach until current-year tax information is available.

Formal appeals will be handled in the order in which they become complete. However, due to anticipated volume, as well as our commitment to issuing official awards to all on-time applicants before processing appeals, we anticipate that even appeals submitted in early July will not be reviewed until late summer or early fall. In the meantime, we can offer temporary financing options and other flexibilities; however, it is important to have some sort of plan in place for the coming term, especially understanding that not all appeals are successful.

Information about various financing options can be found in the section below, labeled "Additional Resources Beyond the Appeal Process."

For context regarding our office's processing of these appeals please reference the chart below:

Additional context regarding the processing of appeals are displayed in a flowchart.

Please note that the full appeal cycle can take quite a bit of time, especially given the volume of appeals we have received since the COVID-19 pandemic began. As soon as we possibly can, we will communicate with everyone who submits an appeal, so long as the student remains enrolled.

Additional Resources Beyond the Appeal Process

Given that Student Financial Services offers only need-based financial aid, and recognizing some of the factors mentioned above that may cause an appeal request to be denied, we understand that there are still going to be situations where students and their families will be in need of additional sources of funding.

To that end, we can point toward:

  • Various scholarship opportunities that may be helpful in moderating at least the self-help portion of any previous financial aid offer (that is, job and/or loans); or
  • Various financing options that may assist with the family contribution itself, by spreading payments over a longer period of time. The Parent PLUS loan may be of particular interest in that regard, as deferment and forbearance are options during times or hardship; and the loan can be reduced later in the academic year if additional aid can be provided based on appeal. Be sure to work through Student Financial Services to arrange any loan reductions, though, to avoid paying unnecessary fees/interest.