The Financial Aid office operates independently from admissions. It seems counter-intuitive, but they request documents and prepare financial aid packages for all applicants, not just the ones that will eventually be admitted. Sadly, having documents requested cannot be read as any kind of admissions decision.
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Thanks. Read that in the past, Brown and Dartmouth download docs for accepted students. Nothing is sure of course.
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I think thatâs a good sign. We only see CSS and FAFSA on our brown fin aid portal.
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Are you RD or ED deferred?
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Regular
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It really canât be interpreted as any kind of sign at all. Financial aid office does not know who admissions is planning to accept or reject. They prepare a financial aid package for everyone who applies. The request for documents simply means they need more information to prepare the package and they ask this without having any idea of what admissions is planning for this (or any) student.
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I donât think they requested docs from @Jazzy321. More FA documents were downloaded on their FA portal by Brown. That means the school is at least interested in them.
For us, nothing but CSS and FAFSA on the FA portal.
Unfortuately, it really doesnât mean that. It means that the financial aid office is following their mandate to prepare a financial aid package for every applicant who applies, so that the package is ready if Brown decides to admit them. For this particular student, it means that the financial aid office needed those documents to proceed. For another student, where the documents werenât downloaded, it means either that the financial aid office hasnât gotten to them yet or that they were able to prepare a package with just the information in the FAFSA and CSS Profile.
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That isnt true in some cases - Harvard fin aid office told me on the phone yesterday that they dont see applications until they are approved/wailisted
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Then that would be very unusual for how financial aid offices always say they work.
I see online that that is true for Harvard Law School. I am very surprised that they do that for undergraduate admissions as well.
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They have thousands of other students graduate and undergraduate (that have already matriculated) that they are working with as wellâŠ
True. although the financial aid officers that I have spoken to (at my kidsâ two schools) they say they donât even start the process for already matriculated students until after all the new applicantsâ packages have been finalized. Thatâs why continuing students may have to wait until June or later to find out their packages â at least at some schools.
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interestingâŠmy older sonâs school the financial application just opened (beginning of March) for returning students. I guess all schools could be different. Maybe Harvard was just trying to dissuade people from calling again lol
I do not believe the FA office has enough staff to prepare docs for all applicants - which could be 5000 even if you assume only a fraction applied for FA. The FA office scrutiny is sequential to a decision or a near-decision.
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any likely letters yet?
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My financial aid checklist only shows the CSS Profile, is there time for other documents to show up?
Same here
did you send other documents?
Yes I have submitted all documents but they arenât showing up in the checklist other than CSS
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I havenât got an IDOC request from Brown and nor do I see any other documents in my fin-aid checklist. Is this a bad sign?
One thing to note: Iâm an International Student and Brown is need-aware for me (Admissions and Fin Aid work together). So Iâm assuming I got rejected coz well, why ask docs from a rejected student?
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