Financial Aid Counselor

Financial Aid Counselor

The University of Washington, Office of Student Financial Aid has an outstanding opportunity for a Financial Aid Counselor.

Student Financial Aid, a unit within the Enrollment Management, supports the Provost as well as the University of Washington community. This position has significant impact on the effective, efficient, and fiscally sound operation of our financial aid programs. The financial aid programs (in excess of $600 million reaching over 31,000 students across 3 campuses) contribute to the University’s overall mission as a public institution.

Without fully functioning aid systems, students would be unable to attend, and the University could experience financial liability and fines, and funds necessary for the operation of the University would not be received.

The financial aid counselor requires a thorough understanding of the federal, state, and institutional rules governing the various forms of financial aid. Federal law is reauthorized every 5 to 6 years with regulatory changes and new legislation inserted within those spans. State aid can change annually with each session of the legislature. Institutional costs and processes may change even more often in response to improvements and limitations to technology, approval and revisions of budget priorities, and structural organizations.

Every counselor will track these changes and the affects on student awards at the University. The counselor must successfully keep abreast of technical applications of regulatory and institutional changes and utilize competent and increasingly complex computer system skills to meet their job requirements. Specific assigned programs may be complex and require specialized training or skills.

Beyond the technical and counseling skills required for evaluation and verification of financial aid eligibility, the counselors must use significant and broad professional judgment and discretion in the awarding of available financial aid. Changes in a family’s financial strength, exceptions to the standard cost of attendance for unusual educational costs, and satisfactory academic progress appeals to financial aid eligible requirements due to unique and special circumstances of the student are some examples of issues that require the use of professional judgment.

These situations require careful review based on a thorough understanding of regulatory as well as personal issues involved. In many cases, the issues involved may be complex and require involved discussions and excellent analytical skills to arrive at a decision that is justified and as fair as possible. All exceptions must be fully documented and made within the limitations of statute.

Our student service structure calls upon counselors to explain, sometimes to defend, professional judgment decisions made by other counselors. Because of the shared workload and working styles of a large group of individuals, successful counselors must be excellent communicators, good negotiators, team players and excellent colleagues who share the goals and the hard work necessary to achieve them.

Bridging the gap between the expectations of students and parents and the reality of what financial aid will provide can be stressful. Counselors deal continuously with the dissonance between a family’s perceived need and the help available to the student. In this position, they may be the “bearer of bad news” sometimes accused of telling students they “can” not attend the University.

They must be able to deal effectively with the dejection that some students feel when confronted with limited resources to make their educational dreams come true as well as parents and students who may become adversarial in attempts to improve their treatment. To resolve these situations without assistance, counselors are knowledgeable and authoritative while remaining supportive, calm and professional even under highly charged circumstance.

Counselors must also be effective and knowledgeable in communicating to diverse groups and larger audiences regarding the financial aid process and requirements, and willing to contribute whenever possible or needed to outreach…