Aid Applications

Aid Applications presents you with three application-related reports:

Aid Applications gives you a summary of all the financial aid applications for a given aid year.
Application Questions collects all of the questions students have about their financial aid applications and offers.
ISIRs lets you import ISIRs files; in turn, you can update existing students' aid applications or add new people based on the information contain in the ISIRs file.

This report shows all of the aid applications for the Aid Year shown in the drop-down.

Use the filter to show applications that fit certain criteria, including those for students on a certain campus.
Email the students or export the list of applications; both buttons are filter-sensitive.

Application Questions

Application questions let you communicate with aid applicants and store that correspondence right on the application. To start a question, the student (or you) goes to the application's Student View and clicks Ask Question. The correspondence can then occur using the aid application or via email. The Application Questions report shows all active application questions.

Active indicates that the question has not yet been set to Solved. Active questions may be Open or Awaiting Student Response.
Filter the table to show only questions assigned to a particular financial aid staff worker or those with a particular status.
Click the subject to link to the question itself.

ISIRs

Institutional Student Information Records—ISIRs for short—are generated by the U.S. Department of Education. When a student fills out the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA), the DoE's processes the information on it to, among other things, determine the student's Expected Family Contribution (SAI). When combined with your school's Cost of Attendance (COA), you can determine the student's financial need and offer aid accordingly.

ISIRs get into Populi a couple ways:

You can export them from EdConnect and manually import them (see below).
If you've configured Populi to interact with your school's SAIG mailbox, Populi will automatically download them as they become available.

Even if you don't use the rest of Populi's DOE integration, you can still use the SAIG connection solely to acquire ISIRs files.

Regardless of how they got into Populi, you can find them all in the ISIRs report, from which you can review and import them. When you import an ISIR, you'll have options to:

Create and add aid applications to existing students and leads.
Create new leads and start aid applications for them.

Importing ISIRs

Here are the instructions for manually importing ISIRs.

When you receive the ISIRs file from the U.S. Department of Education, export it in a format that uses the .txt file extension. Do not use the version from EdExpress—it does not include key information fields that the Populi ISIRs importer requires.
Click Upload ISIRs. Locate the file on your computer and upload it.
After Populi crunches through the file to make sure it's intelligible:
- Successful imports will list on the screen.
- Unsuccessful imports will give you an error message. If you're able to address the error yourself, try again. If not, contact Populi customer support.

Processing ISIRs

Click the Date Added of the ISIR file you want to review.
Review the information in the file. This information has been gleaned from the student's most recent FAFSA form. The Value to Import column shows what's entered in this ISIR; the Existing Value column lists what is currently entered (if anything) in those fields in the student's aid application.
You have a few options for linking the ISIR to a person:
- Populi may match the information in the ISIR (SSN, DOB, name) to someone already in your system.
- Use the information in the ISIR to create a new person.
- You can also search for a person to whom you wish to link this ISIR.
If the person to whom the ISIR is linked does not have the Student role, then Populi will create an admissions lead info set for this person. Choose an admissions representative to whom this lead will be assigned.
If the person doesn't currently have an aid application, a new aid application will be created. Select the financial aid officer to whom you'll assign it, as well as an aid classification.
When you're ready, click Import.
- Information to Import (as well as any contact information) will be added to the person's aid application.
- Other Information will not materially affect anything in Populi, but will be available for review in the aid application.
You can also Skip this ISIR so you can return to it later.
Navigate through the list using the Previous and Next links, or click Jump to to leap directly to a particular number in this ISIRs file.

After importing an ISIR for a person, you'll be able to work on his aid application.