Important Note: Your acceptance into the Bonner Center's programs is contingent upon successful admissions to Carson-Newman University AND your FAFSA being completed . See below for more information.

The next step in the process involves making sure each of you are aware of the financial aid process moving forward. This will allow our Center and each applicant, regardless if they are selected or not for our programs, to know if they are eligible for a variety of other state or national funds to help pay for their college education.

The first step in the process is that Carson-Newman needs each respective applicant to fill out their FAFSA. Even if you do not have this year's taxes filled out, you can fill out your FAFSA for free at http://www.fafsa.ed.gov/ by using last year's tax retrun, your W-2 form, your last pay stub, or other related documents. In order to fill out the FAFSA, each student and whoever fills out their FAFSA will need to get individual PIN numbers. You can find out how to access a free PIN number at http://www.pin.ed.gov/PINWebApp/pinindex.jsp. Even for beginners, the FASA website should be relatively easy to navigate, and should take no more than one hour of your time to complete. It should be known that other websites such as fafsa.org will charge you to fill out your FAFSA, but the website provided allows you to fill out your FAFSA for free.n Please note that the 2018-2019 FAFSA will open on October 1, 2107.

By filling out the FAFSA, each student will know if they are eligible and qualify for additional aid such as Pell Grants. If you are in the state of Tennessee, the FAFSA will also allow you to see if you qualify for both a TSAA Award (Tennessee Student Assistance Award) and the Hope Scholarship (minimum 21 ACT or 3.0 GPA; more info at www.tn.gov/collepays).

We encourage everyone to fill out their FAFSA as early as possible because in awarding aid, state and federal governments take into consideration qualified need first, and expediency of your application second. What this means is that someone who qualifies and has the exact same need for aid as you will receive aid before you in the event they get their application in first. The early bird gets the worm!

We also need students to list "Carson-Newman University" (code: 003481) in order for us to know you filled out the FAFSA. By listing Carson-Newman as your top school on your form, you also will get preference from Financial Aid, meaning they will send you your financial aid packages and letters first before stduents who did not list Carson-Newman as their top school.

We encourage each applicant and their family to contact financialaid@cn.edu if they have any questions or concerns and need assistance through this process. If you have any Bonner Center specific questions you can also contact our office at bonner@cn.edu or 865.471.3594. We encourage everyone to fill out their FAFSA at their earliest convenience during the holidays, and we also encourage students to continue their commitment to acadmemics throughout the Spring as course results in their last semester are taken into consideration for financial aid. We are here to ehlp each applicant make sure they are in teh best shape possible to understand the financial possibilities available to them for college.

Moving forward, our office will be working in conjunction with Financial Aid to make sure each applicant is filling out and getting in their FAFSA and taking the necessary steps to be further considered to be a Bonner Center student. Because the Bonner Center scholarship are partially dependent on student needs, it is essential we understand the financial realities facing each student, although no financial circumstance necessarily disqualifies a student from consideration for the Bonner Scholarship.