One can recognize a unified paragraph when it contains mainly two things: a topic sentence (a sentence expressing the main idea of the paragraph) which is the focus of attention and two or more sentences that support the topic sentence, or that provide more information to the topic sentence.
The paragraph in the question is not unified because its sentences do not support or add information to the topic sentence “Applying for financial aid for college is a complicated process”. The rest of the sentences deviate from the main idea, they add details that are not relevant to understand why applying for financial aid for college is a complicated process or what should one do about it.
