<p>I just do not get why colleges allow College Board to be the only source for institutional financial aid. Why don't colleges set up their own financial aid worksheets or use some other company. It seems wrong that the company that already makes tons off money of AP exams and SAT can make money off our ability to get financial aid as well. We have to pay 16 dollars per college! That just does not seem right to me. Why would schools allow this? Am I missing something? I honestly cannot understand how College Board's CSS/Profile can be the only way to get aid from most schools.</p>
<p>Princeton uses its own form for institutional aid. </p>
<p>The benefit of the college board processing the forms is that colleges can focus on handing out aid… not supporting its own form. In addition, having the College Board handle things means that families don’t have to figure out a different method to apply for institutional aid at every school. </p>
<p>After this year, the fee won’t be so onerous because you/ your family will only be submitting it to one school. And provided that you receive more than $16 dollars in financial aid each year, the app will “pay for itself.”</p>
<p>There are about 300 colleges that use the Profile (that is what the College Board administers). There are about 3000 colleges in this country. I hardly call that a monopoly. All of the rest use either the FAFSA only OR they use the FAFSA and a school finaid form. </p>
<p>If you are not happy with the Profile, apply to one of the over 2700 colleges that do NOT use it.</p>
<p>Here is the list of schools to avoid if you don’t want to fill out the CSS Profile: <a href=“https://profileonline.collegeboard.com/prf/PXRemotePartInstitutionServlet/PXRemotePartInstitutionServlet.srv[/url]”>https://profileonline.collegeboard.com/prf/PXRemotePartInstitutionServlet/PXRemotePartInstitutionServlet.srv</a></p>
<p>I already submitted CSS/Profile for all my schools (one of them required it early). I don’t have a problem using it, I was just wondering why College Board, a test maker, is the main way to get aid from many of the top schools. I was asking out of curiosity. I do see why they need a single firm to be in charge of aid, but why College Board?</p>
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<p>If you receive only $16 of financial aid or less each year, you’re probably at NYU. Okay, that’s mean! :(</p>
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<p>If you don’t have a problem with it, I don’t understand what’s the big deal. It’s not like there’s a huge market for something like this; most colleges use the FAFSA only, and if they want more detail they just have an additional form (the Profile) which asks all the questions they seem to need. If most colleges only want to deal with a single firm, this discourages more than 1 company from getting involved; after all, if you think about it, CollegeBoard already makes the product and no one has a major problem using it. Another company that wades in will basically be at a disadvantage of marketing a product that isn’t necessary and that no one will use. Why bother?</p>
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<p>You are woefully misinformed as to how the process works. The only thing the college board /CSS profile does is that it is a 3rd partyclearing house to gather financial information for the schools that decide to use this process. So if you apply to 10 schools that use the profile, instead of preparing 10 sets of finanical aid documents, you prepare 1 set and then send them to 9 other schools for which you pay the CB for providing this service. The school benefits because everything is gathered in one place, and is sent to them electronically streamlining some of the process so they can be about the business of evaluating packages and granting aid instead of the tedious process of collecting paper.</p>
<p>The college board in and of itself is not determining anyone’s financial aid. That is totally left in the hands of the individual institution.</p>
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<p>Sybbie makes an EXCELLENT point. The College Board is no a SOURCE of financial aid for anyone. It simply administers the Profile which is a financial aid intake application form that gathers information which is sent to the colleges. College Board doesn’t disburse money.</p>
<p>As far as why College Board administers the CSS Profile, I would think CB spoke with a number of colleges about offering a single form that would provide all the info to multiple schools and made it into a business enterprise. I’m sure part of the reason was to help the students and the colleges (students only have to fill out one form, and colleges don’t have to design their own and can get the data electronically from CB).</p>
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<p>I realize this, but is it not true that if you are applying to a school that uses CSS, you can only get Financial Aid through your school by paying the $16 to College Board? I am not saying that College Board pays. I realize that College Board only sets up the CSS and sends it to the school. I am simply asking why and how College Board is used.</p>
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<p>Thank you for answering my question.</p>
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<p>The schools that use the Profile informationa are using it to determine THEIR OWN institutional need based financial aid awards. ALL of these are in excess of $16. In fact, many are thousands of dollars…not a bad rate of return.</p>
<p>You do NOT have to complete the Profile to get federally funded need based aid. If, for example, you qualify for a Pell grant, all you have to do is complete the FAFSA…and you will get it even IF the school uses the Profile. What you will NOT get is the SCHOOL’S money which is what you really will need as the Pell is a drop in the bucket compared to the costs of attending MOST of the schools using the Profile.</p>
<p>I’m sorry, but I think paying $16 for a form that has the potential to yield you hundreds or thousands of dollars a year is NOT a lot of money. It’s the equivalent of a large pizza with a few toppings.</p>
<p>Both my kids applied to a very small # of schools.
We really couldn’t afford for them to spend $35 X 10 or 15, for an application.</p>
<p>HOWEVER- when you need aid- it is better to have perhaps a few more schools, than too little.
$16- I am sorry to say is NOTHING in the drop of the bucket that college costs over 4 years will be .</p>
<p>I don’t like the College Board anymore than anyone else- it seems to be a monopoly & getting worse- my youngest did not apply to any private schools that required PROFILE & my oldest only applied to one, which also met 100% of need, so we felt the form was worth it.</p>
<p>Considering that an AP exam is about $80- ( and many schools require the test to receive credit), that is as much as a finaid app. for 5 schools.</p>
<p>That PROFILE form could open more doors than one AP exam.</p>
<p>Who would want to fill out a different type of FA form for each school?</p>
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<p>Again, I am not saying that I care about paying the $16. I was just stating that the only way to get institutional aid from certain schools was through College Board.</p>
<p>^^^^</p>
<p>Would you rather have to fill out a very long, unique and multi-page form for EACH college? Filling out one form is like the Common App. Instead of filling out many FA forms, there is a “common app” for institutional aid that many colleges CHOOSE to use (no college is forced to use it).</p>
<p>You ask why colleges “allow” Collegeboard to be the sole source…colleges don’t “allow” collegeboard …some colleges CHOOSE to use CSS Profile…it’s a choice…no college is forced to use it. If you have a complaint, complain that colleges CHOOSE to use it.</p>
<p>If 100 businesses choose to use one accounting service…they’ve chosen to do that…the accounting service didn’t force the choice.</p>
<p>^^You are blaming the messenger. CB has been hired by the colleges to process the paperwork on the colleges’ behalf. The colleges want CB to be the middleman; blame them, if you must. Your $16 is just a processing fee. As a parent, the fee is worth it. </p>
<p>My D applied to a Fafsa school, which also requires more financial detail worksheets. That school could have easily joined CB-Profile and downloaded all of that extra info electronically (and saved their applicants a lot of work). Instead, that college chooses to stay ‘fafsa only’, but then has to hire a bunch of finaid admins to process all of their additional, required paperwork. </p>
<p>And, btw, quite a few of the CSS colleges have their own additional paperwork on top of the standard app.</p>
<p>^^^</p>
<p>I don’t think Collegeboard processes the paperwork for CSS schools - Collegeboard doesn’t determine each family’s “family contribution”. CSS schools STILL have a dept of FA officers having to go over CSS info to determine what each family will get and what the family contribution will be.</p>
<p>CB is a company that proclaims to be “non-profit” but found a a niche. If you dig deep up enought heck ya they are making profits. Put me in the “not a College Board fan” category. </p>
<p>I am no fan of sending personal financial information to a third paty company that can’t even devleop an application form that can be updated, modified with returns truncated with no warning and half a dozen other faults of their application systems that my kids pointed out and are easily remidiated by the most basic of coders and they want me to send financial information? No thank you, I’ll send whatever tax form, monetary information etc. that a particular college wants and send it to a real person at the real college, but not to College Board. Call the college that needs your info, they generally have a workaround. I even asked S2’s one CB college if they needed a check for to fill out their own forms…they laughed…so guess whose pocket that $$ goes into? Not the college.</p>
<p>The worse part is people swallow the Koolaid and spend money filling out forms to ask for money. Stop and think how totally convoluted that process is.</p>
<p>mom2:</p>
<p>yes, I understand that every college runs its own finaid department, but Profile is just like the Common App. It processes paper, including tax returns, on behalf of the colleges; it does not award aid. It may just scan the docs in an ensure that all is correct, but it still performs a paper-processing service that the individual colleges do not then have to do.</p>
<p>IMO, the Profile makes it easier to apply for finaid at Profile schools. I found the process a PIA, but not 'convoluted." But then filling out my 1040 every year is a PIA as well. :)</p>
<p>Regardless, CB would NOT even have such a monopoly if CB did not benefit the member colleges. THEY are the ones that require applicants to use Profile (as processed by CB). They obviously find value in the service, which applicants pay for. If they did not find a value, they would do it themselves.</p>
<p>btw: “non-profit” just mean that they don’t have to pay income taxes. Sure, CB has a huge revenue stream, but so do hospitals, the bulk of which are also non-profit.</p>
<p>Oh I get it. Clearly CB serves the colleges and not the consumers…I’ve never questioned that. Let’s see…CB sells test study classes and guides…CB sells tests…CB sells the branded AP classes…oh and you can pay for the AP tests…for another fee they will gladly submit your college application electonically…and golly they will also collect all your personal financial information…for a fee.</p>