Does order of schools on FAFSA matter?

I thought the order only mattered for state aid (put state schools first if you want to be considered for state aid, it said something like that on the application)
After I submitted the FAFSA, I found out that colleges can use the order you put schools in as an admissions decision and as a determinant for aid? If so that’s really bad for me because I put them in a kind of a random order since I didn’t know that & I don’t think it mentioned that on the application. Some of my higher schools are lower on the list so do you think I will be rejected or given less aid because of this?

Some schools use that as an indication of interest. I doubt it matters much though.

https://studentaid.ed.gov/sa/fafsa/filling-out/school-list

Not this year.

^ this. Not anymore.

The link above is sufficient to supply an answer to the OP’s question, but I was not settled by it, needing to know the details.

The summary information generated in a report which included school and housing codes has, in the past, been sent to colleges, and served as a source of information about the schools to which a student has applied. The link below simply makes a detailed statement about the exclusion of this information from group discovery.

For that reason, because I needed to see it, I post the link here:

https://ifap.ed.gov/eannouncements/111215ListingOfCollegesOnISIRs.html

That seems like a very good change–glad to see it!

Wow!
Thanks for posting! I was really concerned about that and glad it has been changed for the current cycle!