In addition, for students who wish to apply for institutional funds, we ask that they complete a Need Access, which is a supplemental need analysis form that really takes a little bit more into consideration from their earnings and assets. We really hope that people plan well as they apply to business school both for admission and for aid. A lot of the information is going to require their base year earnings and taxes and that type of thing, and the better job they do with getting actual information into those forms, the less adjustment there has to be later on as we're going through the awarding process. We differentiate between first and second years. For first-year students, it's important to have their applications in early, anytime after Jan. 1.
Second years have a little more leeway when they reapply for aid.
We know that they're busy doing finals, so we ask them to file their forms by early May, hoping that we'll have their analyzed reports in to us by June 1, which is the date that I begin awarding aid to second-year students. In addition to that, we offer packages made up of both grants, scholarships, and any kind of free funds that we have here as well as work programs and loan programs to meet your financial need. A lot of our students come into GSIA with maybe seven or eight years worth of work experience and have had a fairly good income up to that point. We realize that we're asking them to leave their full-time employment and lose that salary. Instead, to come up with our offers of financial aid, we basically look at summer earnings as well as any income and assets that students will have during their enrollment period.