Verification

The U.S. Department of Education selects students whose FAFSA data must be verified. Generally, if selected for verification, students seeking federal need-based student aid will be required to provide copies of parents’ IRS tax transcripts; student’s IRS tax transcript;and a completed Verification Worksheet (available on the forms section of our website). Tulane may also select a student’s FAFSA for verification if it is determined that such action is warranted.

IMPORTANT: All verification documents must be received by Tulane before we can initiate a review for federal need-based aid!

Documents Needed to Complete Verification

IRS Tax Transcripts

If selected for verification, IRS Tax Transcripts are required from all students and from all parents of dependent students; HOWEVER, this step is not necessary of all FAFSA income data was reported via the IRS Data Retrieval Tool during the completion of the FAFSA. Request an IRS Tax Return Transcript by visiting theIRS website. If a parent or student did not file an IRS tax return for the specified calendar year (as detailed on the FAFSA), then request a Verification of Non-Filing Letter from the IRS. The IRS DOES NOT charge for IRS Tax Transcript requests.

Per federal regulations, copies of tax returns used for Tulane’s validation of CSS Profile data CANNOT be used for federal verification of FAFSA data. Only IRS Tax Transcripts are acceptable for the federal verification process, thus we regret that there will be some situations whereby Tulane must collect both copies of tax returns as well as copies of IRS Tax Transcripts.

Verification Worksheets

If selected for verification, an appropriate Verification Worksheet must be completed, signed, and submitted to Tulane for the year specified. There are Dependent and Independent versions of the worksheets as applicable. Tulane’s Verification Worksheets are available on the forms section of this website.


Preferred submission of any required forms or documents (only in a pdf format, 2mb file size limit) should be directly and securely uploaded to our processing system using our File Upload feature. Please include student identifying information on all documents and communications.

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