CSS Profile 2018/2019 Issues

Paying for College
1

I’m trying to finish Profile for my returning student. While the format was easy enough to complete, I do not like that 2018-2019 does not have a printable worksheet to gather numbers before data entry and instructions are sparse at places. I’ve print my responses for proof-checking before submitting.

My problem and question were both asked in the Profile thread by others but not answered.

  1. Multiple questions ask for detailed information but have a low character count. One supplemental question asks for year, make, and model of all vehicles along with purchase date and price and which if any is the student's car. There is enough space to list only one car and that's using abbreviations. I believe all occurrences of space issues were in supplemental section (Harvard).
  2. More problematic is it asks for student military income and benefits as required info. I'm active duty military and provided my info. Student is not and correctly entered as no military service. Entering zero for combat pay is easy enough but the drop-down for benefits does not have a choice of N/A. I can choose "other" and explain no benefits if necessary but this seems to confuse the issue.

I expect College Board is closed on Monday but I will try to call. I would like to submit before Tuesday since all account balances will change when banks/stock market open.

Any assistance is appreciated if others have resolved these issues.

2

I encountered the same annoying issue about student military income as you did. I’m a retired military officer and under my GI Bill, I can’t transfer any of my VA educational benefits to my dependents. We selected “Other” for VA benefits and in the details, we entered “The student is not eligible for any student VA benefits.”

If you run out of space, I would use the 2000 characters allowed in the Special Circumstances Explanation at the very end. Select “Other” and then reference the entries where you ran out of space with additional clarifying information.

When our D was applying for colleges, one of the colleges she applied to asked us to list the cars we own also in their Profile supplement, and we found that highly annoying. Fortunately, that wasn’t our D’s top choice college and the college she’s currently attending doesn’t have its own Profile supplement.