<p>i just started my fafsa today and i am soo confused! and their website is no help at all.</p>
<p>anyways...</p>
<p>so i heard fafsa is 1st come 1st serve and was told to fill it out asap. what does that mean?? how is it 1st come 1st serve when no one can get their tax returns finished this soon? if i submit my fafsa, i can make changes later but after i submit my 1st version, then do i get considered for fafsa right then? & if i make changes, am i back in line for 1st come 1st serve?? im not sure if im making sense but this whole 1st come 1st serve thing isnt making much sense to me.</p>
<p>also, it says we can only add up to 10 colleges. but we can add more after we finish the form right? or can we make changes after we get our acceptance/rejection letters? are there deadlines for colleges for us to send in our fafsa form?</p>
<p>I think what people mean by “first come, first serve” is that when your colleges receive your information, they process your request “first come, first serve”. That can mean that those that submit their FAFSA’s later, may not get as much aid.</p>
<p>People are advised to do their FAFSAs early because certain pools of money can run out at certain colleges – it just depends on their policies. Generally they will consider financial aid applications as they come in.</p>
<p>HOWEVER, “first-come, first-served” isn’t a great way to put it because it evokes a crazy notion that people who file at 12:01 am on January 1st are going to get something that someone else won’t who files a week or two later. That is a gross exaggeration.</p>
<p>The main thing is to get your FAFSA submitted by the priority filing dates at the colleges to which you’re applying. Do not miss those deadlines.</p>
<p>Yes, you can submit it with estimated figures and then go back in and correct them later after you’ve done your taxes. No, that will not put you “in back of the line.”</p>
<p>You can submit it to your first ten schools, and then go back and change the school codes to the other schools you’d like to apply to and re-submit.</p>
<p>There are website instructions for all this, and, no, they are not useless. They are quite good. Calm down. Read them.</p>
<p>“You can submit it to your first ten schools, and then go back and change the school codes to the other schools you’d like to apply to and re-submit.”</p>
<p>doesn’t that mean i can only substitute schools though? if i wish to add a school, i must replace one of my prior options, right?</p>
<p>The 2010-2011 FAFSA became available for online submission on January 1, 2010. You should do it in keeping with the deadline for the schools to which you are applying. If the school has a January deadline…here’s what you do.</p>
<p>File your FAFSA using a “will file” status which means you WILL file your taxes but have not yet done so. Use the BEST possible estimates based on your end of year pay stubs, interest statements etc. Then submit it to the school(s).</p>
<p>Do your taxes as soon as reasonably possible after Feb 1 when you have all of your 2009 documentation. Go back IN to the FAFSA website and amend your FAFSA to reflect the figures from your 2009 completed tax return and resubmit to the college(s). Change your status to “taxes completed”. </p>
<p>This is the year you want to get your taxes done as soon as possible. It is NOT the year to wait until April 15th to complete your taxes.</p>
<p>A financial aid officer from the local university came to a FA Information Night event at the high school. He said --now this is contrary to everything I have ever heard-- that if you submit your FAFSA “will file” with estimated numbers, do not submit a “completed” version with the actual numbers from your tax return. He said instead to send your tax documents to the college and let them do it. He said when you go in and make corrections and re-submit your FAFSA it creates a lot of confusion and more work in the FA office because FAFSA sends them a whole new application for you, which is a hassle when they already have your aid award in process there at the college.</p>
<p>rent, i saw that on their website too but im still confused. so AFTER we sent in our form to 10 schools, we can THEN add more? and this way, the forms we submitted to the 10 schools before will NOT be deleted/canceled? and does that mean we can not make corrections to form we turned in to the original 10 schools?</p>
<p>'rent. I hope the financial aid officers will weigh in. We were told very specifically by several schools NOT to send ANYTHING they didn’t request. In other words…if they didn’t ASK for tax returns, they didn’t want them sent.</p>
<p>We have filed early and amended MANY FAFSA forms. In both kids’ cases, some of their financial aid awards HAD been processed (as they received early financial aid awards with EA acceptances based on an priority submission of the Profile and for a couple with the initial submission of the FAFSA.</p>
<p>One of our kids is a senior and one has received a masters degree…you would think if they wanted to have the returns and “do it themselves” one of them would have TOLD us that over the years.</p>
<p>I do know that the schools CAN change the FAFSA and parents every year report that this has been done…perhaps from schools that do require tax forms or notice an error on the form. </p>
<p>But I’ve never heard that this should automatically be done. If this were the case…why would you even be ABLE to go in and do it as a parent or student? The schools would just automatically ask for tax returns.</p>
<p>Honestly…do schools REALLY have time to do this for every applicant?</p>
<p>I was surprised to hear it myself, Thumper. This guy, though, he really did not like getting those corrected FAFSAs.</p>
<p>Confusedandlost, if you have submitted your FAFSA with your estimated numbers to 10 schools AND have received your SAR, those reports are already submitted to the 10 schools. They will not go away. The FAFSA computer will not reach into the colleges’ computers and take that report back. It’s there. You can delete those first 10 school codes and add new codes and send it again.</p>
<p>You will do this again when you have a corrected FAFSA. You will send the corrected FAFSA to your first 10 schools, get your SAR, then go back and send the corrected one to the next batch of schools. You’ll end up with different versions of the FAFSA that you can access when you log in.</p>
<p>Please… just trust that if they tell you to do it a certain way, that that’s the way you should do it. If you go ahead and just follow the directions you’ll see how it works.</p>
<p>Thumper and others- thank you for sharing your knowledge! I have a similar question. Can I revise my completed FAFSA twice? Once to add an 11th school, and then again at the end of the month to change from “will file” to “have filed?”</p>
<p>'Rentoftwo- wow you answered my question while I was posting it! I read on another thread that I should only modify the tax information, not the “what’s in your bank account today” question. Is that true?</p>
<p>Yes. You’ll have different versions of the FAFSA. The first two will be the same (with your estimated numbers) except for the different college codes. The next two will be the same with your accurate post-tax numbers, but also with the different college codes.</p>
<p>It works. Not to worry.</p>
<p>Edit: Yes, just make changes to your income figures. The asset figures are just a “snapshot” of the day you submitted the FAFSA the first time.</p>
<p>Rent of answered well. You can amend the FAFSA multiple times. We actually amended one year twice (don’t ask…it was a bad year). You only change the items that are reflective of your completed tax return. The rest stays the same.</p>
<p>When you log on to the FAFSA you will still have both “versions” available. You can open the one you sent originally (with your first 10 colleges on it) and amend that, then resubmit it. You can then open the one with your second raft of colleges on it, amend that one and resubmit it.</p>
<p>It isn’t as complicated as it sounds.</p>
<p>Always wait until you get your latest SAR back before submitting it again.</p>
<p>If you have more than 20 colleges, you have to do 3 versions of the FAFSA. If that was based on an estimate, you have to go back and change them all then.</p>
<p>Do all 10 schools see that it is going to the other schools? Does that go the same for the CSS Profile.???</p>
<p>This time when you send it (not the last time you sent it) no schools will receive it that you delete from the list. In other words, if you were making corrections based on more accurate tax info or something along those lines, any schools you remove from that list will not get those corrections.</p>