<p>Question to all you guys starting to send in your commonapp that are applying for financial aid- what date are you guys putting for filing your FAFSA? How are we supposed to know this information? Any suggestions? Thanks so much</p>
<p>Fafsa cannot be filed any earlier than January 1st of the year which you will attend.
So if you are applying for 2006-2007 school year- you cannot file your FAFSA any earlier than January 1st 2006.</p>
<p>So should i put 1/2006 for the date that i plan on filing it?</p>
<p>if you think it can be done by then...remember, you'll need parent's tax return to be completed prior to filing fafsa....</p>
<p>well you really don't need their completed tax return
PROFILE has to be completed before people really have final check stubs in and PROFILE can't even be corrected- you just give the changed info to your schools.
For FAFSA it is true that you need tax forms, but with your end of the year tax stub, you should have a pretty good idea of what your info will be.
FAFSA can also be corrected online, and it was our experience that it was better to get it in- as soon as we could, rather than wait for final everything-
It helped psychologically to have it filed- even if it wasn't going to be the final version, and the schools had an idea of what our need was going to be.
Schools often tweak your EFC a tad anyway- and by filing it early, you get an idea of how that is going to play out- if it is to your favor or not.</p>
<p>Most of the schools that i am applying to have a February 1 deadline. In that case submitting in mid janurary versus early february doesn't make a big difference, correct? Is the info on the FAFSA basically the same as the info on PROFILE (I am currently completing that form)? Thanks so much for your help guys!</p>
<p>to be safe- I would make sure that your aid info has plenty of time to be recieve by the Feb 1 deadline-
FAFSA is different than PROFILE because PROFILE also takes into account some expenses and more assets than FAFSA does
try the aid calculator at <a href="http://www.finaid.org%5B/url%5D">www.finaid.org</a>
both the instituitional ( PROFILE) and federal ( FAFSA) methodology</p>