New to this forum. Our family income/assets are high, but still not high enough to pay for some expensive (50-60K/yr) private school without some adjustments to our financial/savings plan outside of paying for college. According to Net Price Calc I used for many schools (i.e. NYU, Case Western, American Univ, etc), we have no chance to get any need-based scholarships. My question is, is it still worth filling out the CSS form? Are there any disadvantages to do so (i.e. less favorable consideration for merit scholarships)? Thank you for your help.
Need and merit awards are typically handled by different departments
There may be some schools that require the CSS for merit consideration. Personally, I haven’t run across any, but I figure I should put that disclaimer out there and you should check your schools’ websites. We were in a situation similar to yours and we decided not to fill out the FAFSA or CSS. We figured our financial information is a bargaining chip that could be used by either side. We just didn’t see revealing the information helping us. We already know what we can afford. What the colleges think we can afford is a different story. And their opinion might change (for better or worse) if they know the details of our financial situation. I suppose it’s possible we shot ourselves in the foot and we lost out on some decent merit money, but of all the schools to which our D applied there was only one school - which gives out extremely limited merit - that we ended up not being able to afford. ALL the other schools to which our D applied were affordable with merit.
We were anticipating having to negotiate with the schools. That never happened as initial merit offers were well within our budget. Of course, we were chasing merit from the get go and D was (quite deliberately) a top applicant at all her schools. Without knowing your specific situation and your child’s stats and who specifically in the admissions and FA offices will read your child’s apps, it’s really impossible for there to be one correct answer. Good luck. We were very clear with our D that picking a college was a financial decision in pretty much the same way that buying a car is.
If a school requires you to file the CSS for merit they will tell you so (Denison did so for my D1’s NMF scholarship but only needed it for the first year). Don’t worry about it until that point.
Thanks for the info. I will need to dig in a bit deeper about CSS-merit relationship to see if a school specifically mention anything about it. halfemptypockets, thx for your perspectives. For NYU and CW, D wouldn’t be among the top applicants. D is our first one, so lots to learn about this whole process.
None of the schools my D applied to required financial aid paperwork for merit scholarships. Since we knew that no school would give us need-based financial aid, we saw no reason to provide our personal financial information or spend time filling out FAFSA or CSS. We weren’t worried about our financial information possibly being used against us, as D had applied to schools with guaranteed merit for her stats, but we didn’t think our financial situation was any of the business of a school that would not be providing need-based aid.
The only disadvantage would be the time involved to complete the forms.
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Yes, some places do require that financial aid applications be filed before students can be considered for merit-based scholarships. This makes sense because that way the place makes certain that the student gets any need-based money they are qualified for too.
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Also, some places will not award financial aid in future years, no matter how severe the family’s financial reversal, if the application is not filed for the freshman year. Usually this information is right on the financial aid page, but if it isn’t, ask. If you don’t have that $250,000 locked up in a super-safe place to absolutely guarantee that GuppieKid1 can finish college no matter what happens to your family finances, it can make sense to file the paperwork this year.
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If you want GuppieKid1 to be able to borrow a student loan, be sure to file the FAFSA.
We did end up filing CSS. (DD didn’t receive any need-based as expected, but received various amount of merit
from a few schools). happymomof1’s info was helpful - my husband is self-employed and yes the family finance could change over the next 4 years. Time to fill out FAFSA… I am hoping all the #'s I already gathered (and some updates) for CSS are good enough to complete FAFSA. Thx again.
NYU, CWRU, and American do not guarantee to meet full need for students who HAVE financial need.
CWRU and American do have merit awards for high stats kids. NYU will likely be unaffordable.
My D received merit awards from CW. Will wait and see about AU and NYU (won’t know until well into April since she auditions in Feb). We could afford NYU but 70k/yr is hefty for undergrad drama degree…