<p>Can anyone tell me what the CSS Profile is exactly? I posed this question to my GC and she had no clue.</p>
<p>It’s a financial aid form required by many colleges and some scholarships. You can find the application on the collegeboard website.</p>
<p>It’s a more comprehensive financial aid form similar to FAFSA, it takes into account your parent’s income as well as their assets and what they owe on them. You also have to pay to send it in to the college of your choice, while FAFSA is free. Only a handful of colleges require the CSS Profile. </p>
<p>It is available at: <a href=“https://profileonline.collegeboard.com/prf/index.jsp[/url]”>https://profileonline.collegeboard.com/prf/index.jsp</a></p>
<p>It also causes problems for children of divorced parents, because the non-custodial parent needs to fill out a form too, however if you are unable to contact them, you must contact your school for a waiver.</p>
<p>Also you now have an important clue about your GC.</p>
<p>Yeah, thats a bit of a red flag that your Guidance Counsler had no clue what it was.</p>
<p>^^ Oh, I know. I have been consulting with one of my teachers whos kids are both at Ivies, and then I have a separate college mentor.</p>
<p>As for the divorced thing, I dont think It will make a huge difference. Combined my parents make under 100k, and Im a twin as well.</p>
<p>oh, Also, does the CSS Profile need to be sent in with the FAFSA? Im thinking of having my dad do his this weekend.</p>
<p>If you’re a high school senior, you can’t submit FAFSA until January 2010. You can submit the Profile form now. There’s a way to have Profile information roll over to the FAFSA form that your custodial parent might find helpful.</p>
<p>Im thinking of having my dad do his this weekend.</p>
<p>what no football game?
Some parents will not want to do PROFILE until they have more definite tax information as while you can estimate FAFSA and correct it later with hard numbers, I haven’t seen where you can correct PROFILE</p>
<p>Surely you HAVE to be able to correct CSS Profile. I have only registered so far, but…what if one gets started and can’t answer all the questions and has to come back to it? Here is something from the collegeboard website re: The CSS Profile. Sure hope it means what it says because I intend to “play” in it up until time to hit “Send”. </p>
<p>“PROFILE Online Features
Flexibility: 24/7 access to the application. Start, resume, and submit the application any time.”</p>
<p>Ive heard that you have to update it all manually, can anyone confirm this?</p>
<p>As you work on the Profile form online you can save your work and come back to it later. Once it’s been submitted you can’t make any corrections online. These have to be done on paper and sent to each college.</p>
<p>There are good reasons to submit the Profile form with estimates, mainly because schools that require the Profile in order to give merit or need-based aid have October or November deadlines. But the process of submitting corrections is from the dark ages.</p>
<p>With my volatile situation (own an S corp, profit/income/taxes vary HUGELY from year to year, also can’t find non-custodial parent, etc.), there is no way I’d estimate. But my D’s first schools require it be done by 2/1 and I have no CLUE if my accountant can get my taxes done by then. I mean, one might not even have a W-2 by then, let alone everything else needed. I’m pretty panicky about this deadline.</p>
<p>^ Just file with estimated info in that case and update when you have better numbers. It’s better to get it in on time to be considered for aid.</p>
<p>We weren’t able to correct PROFILE but as it needed to be submitted before the end of the year- the deadline was more important.
ANyway, as the college had their own forms as well & we were selected for verification, we also filled out the college forms and sent signed copies of 1040 & W’2’s every year.
( so in that case- not sure why we still had to fill out PROFILE & FAFSA)</p>
<p>You correct the Profile by hand and mail it. I had to do it one time and it was really no big deal. X’d through the incorrect numbers, printed the correct ones next to the X’d ones, put it in an envelope, and had the corrected version delivered to the school by a uniformed agent of the US Government.</p>
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<p>Love that description btw.</p>