I’ve heard MANY different things concerning this. Some say colleges may not accept you if you put their college near the bottom or at the bottom of your list. Some say colleges will give you less aid if you put their college first/on the top. And I’ve heard two solutions. One is to alphabetize your list, but a counselor told me colleges don’t see your entire list? Another solution is to send your FAFSA to 1-2 schools at a time. But apparently everytime you sent your FAFSA to another school, your previous colleges get notified?
I’m REALLY confused over all these conflicting things. It seems there’s no way to win! If someone knows what happens behind the scenes and can help me, that would be greatly appreciated!
Yes, schools can see the order in which you list the schools on FAFSA. For those schools where admissions and financial aid offices are linked, it, the admissions folks can see the listing. For the most part, admissions does not see the FAFSA lists or have any idea what your financial situation is, but there are some schools that do scrutinize the info. Augustana College apparently is one of them. If you see the fin aid and admissions office staffed with the same people, that is a tip off.
If it 's a concern, you can alphabetize or send your the FAFSA multiple times 1-2 schools at a time. I don’t think prior colleges get notified when you send FAFSA to other schools==they do not get the new list of schools.
I am no expert on this by any means, but I have read several articles about the topic from websites as well as a couple in Forbes. Based on my reading, my understanding is that yes all schools can see all the schools to whom you have sent your FAFSA and that yes, indeed it can impact admission decisions and aid. Apparently, at least some schools will not admit students when they see they are at the bottom of the list. Likewise, apparently some schools will offer less aid if you list their school at the very top of the list because they know you really want them. There are mixed opinions in the literature whether alphabetizing and/or listing schools by FAFSA due date does or does not help this situation. Here is what we did: we put the selective schools that don’t notify you of admission status until March/April at the top of the FAFSA list; we put the state schools and less selective private schools that had already admitted DS at the bottom of the list. We put the DS top 3 schools at the top of the list because at least some literature suggests that after 3, schools really don’t care. I guess we won’t know until April if this worked or not…