** FAFSA - Complete list of applied schools shown on students file and can affect FA

[Cressida]

<p>I thought I read somewhere that a school cannot tell or know of which other schools a student is applying to based on FAFSA information. (However, now that I think about it maybe what I read was about how college board will not show the other schools were you had your SAT scores sent to)</p>

<p>For example, say you had your FAFSA information sent to 7 schools that you were considering. Each school would get the FAFSA information to be used in determining possible FA but within that information would not be the names of those other 6 schools that you had also listed. I think that is how I thought the system worked - - didn't you?</p>

<p>Apparently that is wrong and the FA officer can look at your file and see all the other schools that you had listed on FAFSA so that they can infer to where you want to go and will make judgements on that information that may affect your FA determination.</p>

<p>Here is why I believe this. The current "US News + World Report" dated April 21, 2008 page 64 has an article about paying for college. It talks about a student applying for FA and the FA Director clicks on her computer to bring up the students file. The director notes the student had FAFSA sent to several colleges in the family's home state and that she had listed this University as 7th on the FAFSA, which she believes means it is almost a last-choice school. </p>

<p>It quotes the director as saying "It's subliminal. I know my kid put the school he wanted first on that list"</p>

<p>How can this be avoided? We would hope the FA officers are making decisions on need and not on where else you may go or what position on your list they are at!</p>

[SeniorSlacker]

<p>I had 10 schools, but I just put them in alphabetical order. I don't know how that affected admissions.</p>

[alamemom]

<p>I saw that article, too, and I was surprised they would make that assumption about school preference. I told my D to make sure her first college was a California college so that the FAFSA would be sent for Cal Grant consideration. The rest were listed in the order she found their codes. Her first-choice school was listed fourth.</p>

<p>The article was talking about fin aid appeals, so maybe they only would look at the order listed if it was an appeal.</p>

[VickyDee]

<p>@Cressida</p>

<p>As financial aid deadlines approached this year, the question about a school knowing which other schools a student is applying to based on FAFSA information began to pop up in the forums</p>

<p><a href="http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/financial-aid-scholarships/444756-fafsa-css-can-schools-see-what-other-schools-you-re-sending.html%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/financial-aid-scholarships/444756-fafsa-css-can-schools-see-what-other-schools-you-re-sending.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p><a href="http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/financial-aid-scholarships/459948-fafsas-all-your-colleges-once.html#post1059775257%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/financial-aid-scholarships/459948-fafsas-all-your-colleges-once.html#post1059775257&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p>There was one post in particular which I found the most convincing. The information came from a reliable CC poster who works in a financial aid office at a university:</p>

<p>

@NikkiiL

</p>

<p>School 1 CAN see schools 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6....school 2 CAN see schools 1, 3, 4, 5 and 6, and so on down the line. I am a Financial Aid Administrator's and look at FAFSA's all the time. I can see the other 5 schools listed on each of the FAFSA's I receive in my office. Now, if you list 12 schools in all....I can only see the 5 which are on the same transaction as my institution's code is listed.</p>

<p>Don't know who you spoke to....but they must not have understood your question, because Financial Aid Offices have had this ability for quite some time. In fact, many give preferential treatment to students who listed their school in the #1 spot.

</p>

<p>In the end I chose to split up my schools and submit separate FAFSA transactions for each group, which generated separate SAR’s.</p>

<p>

@NikkiiL

Schools receive a form similar to the SAR, called an ISIR (Institutional Report). It contains all the same information as the SAR. Some schools receive this in hard copy format, while others download the data into software. They can also look at the main FAFSA database and see how many transactions exist for a particular student. However, if their school code is not listed on a certain transaction, then they cannot view the actual contents of that transaction.

</p>

<p>It was a bit more work and probably something most people don’t worry about, but I thought that in my case it might be worthwhile. Now that my decisions are all in I can safely say that I’m happy with my overall results. I guess I’ll never really know if this was necessary or really made a difference, but at least for me, I have no regrets because it certainly didn’t hurt.</p>

[northeastmom]

<p>VickyDee, what do you mean you split by group? I understand that you submitted many times, so that there wasn't going to be the 1-6 list of schools.</p>

<p>I have heard that some students submit in the order of the financial aid deadline (school with the earliest deadline is #1, and so on), in addition to submitting in alphabetical order.</p>

<p>Just editing to say that a couple of years ago we submitted in alphabetical order. The school listed as #1 did offer merit aid, but no additional grants and they were not affordable. Number 2 on the list gave the worst package of son's 10 schools. Hope this helps.</p>

[VickyDee]

<p>@northeastmom</p>

<p>When I first started I intended to group by FA deadline, but what jumped out at me was that some of the schools with the same dates were actually very different from each other (size, type, location). So as best as I could, I grouped them by similarities instead - my own version of "peer schools". Once I broke them down I did list the schools in each group alphabetically. My groups were of 3-4 schools. I did submit one school by itself – but that was a reach school I decided to take a chance on last minute.</p>

[northeastmom]

<p>Thank you VickyDee.</p>

[Sligh_Anarchist]

<p>I think the solution is just listing alphabetically. I plan on doing that with everything app-related next year.</p>

[tiff90]

<p>I think its pretty subjective for an FA officer to judge what schools is the students number 1 when the FAFSA is done by the parent.</p>

[2collegewego]

<p>It bothered me too when I read that. We were told to put the instate public as #1 to qualify for instate grant. But, in the end, I can't say it made a difference for my daughter. Most of the colleges provided similar aid.</p>