<p>We are eligible for application fee waiver due to economic hardship. At app time, the school sent the appropriate form to the college. Now, incredibly, I see that it actually costs $25 (or is it a fixed $9 and $16 per school?) per school to send this ... css profile FORM to the school. </p>
<p>Does anyone know how to get the codes to waive this fee? THere seemed to be some mention of getting it from the college (kinda nutz since the college does not know our financials- yet!), but it also said that it would automatically waive it based on info contained in the css . </p>
<p>Is it possible that since it is charging me $25 that it found that we were not poor enough ($22k (!) ) to get this waiver automatically, or do we have to contact the college ?
Why would nt there be a consistancy between app fee waiver and css waiver?</p>
<p>and what is ironic is that son hasnt even been accepted yet, and this college is a reach anyway. cd be a lot of work for nada. we'll think 'open'.</p>
<p>doesnt EA give you an admission answer before you go through the FA mess? That seems to be the most logical way of applying to college. It also GUARANTEES need blindness since the college doesnt have the financials at app time. this college claims need blindness and yet requires financial info for an answer. hmmm</p>
<p>There are no “codes” to waive the fee on the CSS profile. </p>
<p>The PROFILE service provides fee waivers automatically to domestic (U.S. citizens or eligible noncitizens) first-time students from families with low incomes and limited assets. (Fee waivers are not available to international students.)</p>
<p>In an effort to reach as many qualifying students as possible, the PROFILE fee waiver process is fully automated based on the family and financial information given in the application. PROFILE fee waiver guidelines are as follows:</p>
<p>• The PROFILE fee waiver program applies the USDA reduced price lunch income guidelines to the CSS Institutional Methodology (IM) definition of total parent income. Total parental income includes both taxable and untaxed income, with the exception of the Earned Income Credit. More information about current reduced price lunch income guidelines may be found at School Meals.</p>
<p>• Parental assets are also included in the fee waiver eligibility assessment. Dependent students whose parents report net assets in the excess of $34,1202 are not eligible for a fee waiver.</p>
<p>• The fee waiver covers the application and six total school reports. First-time students file an average of three PROFILE reports; thus the fee waiver process meets the needs of most entering students.</p>
<p>• Payment is not required until the application is submitted. When students submit their applications, they will be notified of their charges or their fee waiver receipt.</p>
<p>• Students who do not qualify for the fee waiver or who need to submit their reports to more than six schools may pay for their PROFILE charges using a credit card, debit card, online check or a Fee Payment Code.</p>
<p>Lesson 1- Need blindness is an admissions process. The only thing being need blind does is that your having a financial need, whether it is a $1 or the full cost of attendance will not be a factor in admitting a student to college.</p>
<p>Meeting demonstrated need, is a financial aid process. at schools that give institutional aid, you need to submit their forms if you want their money. If the school requires the CSS profile, then you need to submit the profile. I understand in these hard economic times that $25 can be a stretch. However, it is a small price to pay if you are getting somewhere upward 40K in institutional aid. If the college board deems that you are not eligible for a fee waiver, then you have to decide whether you want your son to apply to profile schools. You can contact the FA office explain your situation and find out if there is another way you can send your FA information. But if they only use the profile, then you may be stuck.</p>
<p>The FAFSA is free but the only thing it does is qualify you for federal aid. However, most FAFSA only schools do not meet 100% demonstrated need, so you may not have the $$ that you need.</p>
<p>I saw waiver codes yesterday in the final payment screen. Maybe the codes were being soliciated since I did not satisfy the auto waiver criteria.</p>
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<p>My kids are in the federal reduced lunch program; we recv food stamps, and energy utlility assistance. There was a rigorous checking of lots of info for this.</p>
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<p>Does this include home and 401k assets? Maybe this was the problem. I have 70k home equity (this ia joke, too, since a home is what you can get right now, and under this criterion, I have less than 70k equity; i am using an incorrect def indexing formula for which the css asks data ) and over 34k in 401k assets. all other assets are below that threshold. gosh, I hope I filled out this rather byzantine circuitous form out correctly.</p>
<p>If this were the only school that I was paying $25, and $25 for something that I might not even avail myself of, I might not be as upset. But there are many more schools to apply to. Since the schools are pretty selective , a wide net vs fishing rod approach is a prudent approach to follow to increase the odds of a match; but the problem here is that $25 (or is it $16?) multiplied my many more schools becomes …odd (since the FA comes after admissions, which cd be a reject), and just plain expensive; for someone w/ food stamps, this is apparently nutz. </p>
<p>If we had heard of QB in time, we cd have tried that program which I understand helps w/ the fees.</p>
<p>… I received such codes directly from colleges. I simply told them that I was an international student (ineligible for College Board Waivers) and that paying $ 16 for every university/college I apply to would be highly prohibitive for me and my parents, whose cumulative monthly income is … (very small). I wrote this e-mail to the Fin Aid Offices of many colleges and received either alternatives forms for requesting fin aid or fee waiver codes.</p>
<p>"i was using an incorrect fed indexing formula for which the css asks data ".</p>
<p>ok, booga, </p>
<p>I s/ just ask for the codes from the colleges. see what they say.</p>
<p>sure it telegraphs your financial status , but they’ll find out how poor you are soon enuf - but apparently I am not poor enuf now;gosh, I hope I filled that thing out correctly.</p>
<p>It would be nice to have a preview or model feature to make sure you are on track and things are reasonable. </p>
<p>The college that I was applying to pointed me to the EFC calc tool on CB and to pick whatever method that gave me the greater EFC, FM or IM as my guide. They said that this is very accurate at their school and others on CC corroborated this. But this is hard to fathom since that preview tool just asks for a few items of info vs the real css is something like 20 or more pages it seemed.</p>
<p>Won’t this get some help next yr when the feds mandate having FREE realistic and accurate price preview in place for all colleges that want to continue to recv fed monies?</p>
<p>When I ran the preview tool that the college advised me to use , the EFCs gen’d (both IM and FM) were well under the college’s threshold for full need aid. Then why wouldn’t the fee watching code in css give a waiver, I wonder? Either the preview tool and the real thing have a synch problem, or I put in different data in both. The css has numerous questions that admit to differing interpretations and even with the catch all of ‘other’ - that’s scary when computers are involved… </p>
<p>I have confirmed from css that the 34k in parental assets do NOT include assets from 401k. But does anyone know whether the 34k asset threshold includes assets from home equity ?</p>
<p>There is a way to get a waiver code.When you are prompted for a payment,just e-mail the admissions/financial aid of the particular college and ask them for the CSS profile waiver code.Then enter this code under<<fee payment=“” codes=“” in=“” the=“” profile=“”>>.You will need to e-mail each college you are sending to ask for the code,I believe every college has a unique waiver code.Did this and saved myself 25 bucks the other day.</fee></p>