ATB Fundamentals

This article contains background information and other helpful reminders regarding the ability to benefit process.

What:

• The process of identifying and tracking a student's eligibility for title IV aid based on completing high school or a recognized equivalent. 

When: 

• In the overall time line for financial aid technical processes we currently run the ATB process before budgets are built.
• For more detail see: Ops Calendar

Where:

• Process Financial Aid Years: Menu > Financial Aid > Ability to Benefit

Why:

• ATB is one of the tests used to determine if a student is eligible for title IV aid. It is also a COD reporting requirement. 

How:

• We set up run controls for even and odd aid years so that we can process both years during the transition period between them. It also lets us set-up subsequent run controls without affecting the ones that are currently being used. For each aid year group, we run three sequential run controls every workday. The first run control identifies students enrolled in 2012 or earlier. Due to legislation allowing for grandfathering, these students are assigned an ATB status of “02.” The second run control looks for currently enrolled graduate students and defaults their eligibility status to “06.” Finally, the third run control sets the eligibility status based on the student’s ISIR data by checking for a high school diploma, GED, or home schooling and translating those indicators into the corresponding ATB eligibility codes. There is a criteria in each of the run controls to exclude students who already have a eligibility code assigned.

Who:

• The ability to benefit process is currently run through IT under the SA_SCHED account. System analysts typically will coordinate with IT when run controls need to be stopped, started, or updated.

Other Notes:

• The queries used in the run controls rely on AY_ODD & AY_EVEN tree nodes. They will need to be updated each year.