If there is a discrepancy on the 2 forms about a key piece of information (i.e. assets, household size, etc.) and a school doesn’t receive clarification from an applicant after asking because the student already declined admission, is the school likely to dig further and/or report this discrepancy to the gov’t?
Hypothetical so no moral judgements please.
The CSS profile and the FAFSA looks at different information. THe fafsa is only used to determine eligibility for federal aid. Schools that use the CSS profile use it to determine how they give out their own institutional aid and take a deeper look at the family finances. It is not unusual for there to be a discrepancy in the EFCs of the FAFSA and the CSS Profile.
If the student declined admission, the school won’t further analyze their financial aid data.
However, that does not mean that current school will not find discrepancy and adjust the financial aid package accordingly. Remember you will not get any actual money until everything is verified by the IRS using the data retrieval tool through the fafsa or the actual IRS transcript (some schools do both).
Assets could differ because if you were to file FAFSA on Jan 10, and have to report $15k in the bank, but then on Jan 20th, you buy a car and that money is now gone, then you might file CSS Profile and say that you have no cash in the bank.
I don’t see any problem and why would that matter?
Agree with post 5. What matters is that you were honest when you did your forms, and that the school in which you are enrolling has what they want.