<p>I am 100 pct positive that I saw such a question when I filled it out in Nov for an ED school. Now that I am re-submitting this to other schools (did not get in to the ED school), I do not see this bucket. I wanted to update the credit card debt amt.</p>
<p>I saw this on a google search. YEs, we have extenuating circumstances (job dislocation).</p>
<p>
[quote]
Consumer debt is not taken into consideration by colleges in their financial aid formulas UNLESS there is some extenuating circumstance (loss of income, high medical expenses, etc).
[/quote]
</p>
<p><a href="http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/financial-aid-scholarships/654437-debt-efc.html%5B/url%5D">http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/financial-aid-scholarships/654437-debt-efc.html</a></p>
<p>maybe it was in the special supplemental questions portion of the css and not in the main css. maybe the ED school cared about credit card debt?</p>
<p>Yeah, the credit card debt question is supplemental. A few colleges do ask about credit card debt, but I believe most do not.</p>
<p>My son’s college always has that question in their supplemental section of the Profile.</p>
<p>If you’re not seeing it for the colleges to which you’re now submitting the Profile, you can include the information in the space for other comments or explanations. Hard to say what a school would do with the information, but you should certainly tell them if you think it’s important they at least know.</p>
<p>The credit card and installment debts are addressed in supplemtal question SQ-211.</p>
<p>But supplemental questions vary by school. If the OP is not applying to schools that have selected that supplemental question, he won’t see it.</p>
<p>If you are applying to five schools and one of them wants to know about your credit card debt, then you will see that question. The one school that wants your answer will see it, the other four schools (that did not add that to their supplemental questions) will not see your answer.</p>
<p>It sounds like your ED school was the only one using that supplemental question. It only comes up if one of the schools you are sending the Profile to has asked for that information.</p>
<p>At the very end of your Profile, you will get a chart that shows for each supplemental question which of your schools have requested that information.</p>
<p>There are a lot of supplemental questions that might be included for specific colleges. BUT no one really knows how that information is used when determining eligibility for need based aid. </p>
<p>That quote above is mine regarding debt not being considered. In most cases, it is not.</p>
<p>If job loss is a consideration for debt consideration on a supplemental…would the family have to demonstrate that the debt was incurred solely after the job loss? I would think that if the family had long been carrying a credit card balance, then that wouldn’t be related to the job loss, right?</p>
<p>As I said, my son’s college always includes that credit card question in their supplemental questions. It isn’t really possible to tell what they do with that information, but I assume they do something with it or they wouldn’t specifically ask. I would be very curious to know. There are no follow-up questions (at least for my son’s college) about what the credit card balance might be due to such as unemployment, medical costs, etc. (They ask about medical costs in a different question and also require an itemized breakdown of those.)</p>