<p>Our household income is around $300,000. We did the estimate and there is no way we will qualify for any "need" based aid. But some schools do offer loans or work study. Should we still pay collegeboard to fill out the CSS profiles and then fill out the FAFSA forms?</p>
<p>If you want any federal student loans you will have to do FAFSA. Federal WS is need based, so you will not qualify for that (though some schools may have their own non need based work programs). Some schools may require FAFSA to be considered for merit aid. Check with the schools.</p>
<p>Some high income families apply for financial aid “just in case” something happens down the road. (This is because some colleges do not provide need based aid in future years if students didn’t apply for it the first time around).</p>
<p>You also need to check your college list. Some schools REQUIRE that the financial aid application forms be completed for merit aid also. The colleges both of my kids attended required these forms for ALL kinds of financial aid…need based and merit…for incoming freshmen.</p>
<p>Work-study is “need-based” aid…you won’t qualify for work-study. Work-study is heavily subsidized by the govt’ which is why those without need wouldn’t qualify.</p>
<p>For those schools that financial aid application forms be completed for merit aid, is it really true merit aid? Or are they really trying to pick out the strongest candidates with need? </p>
<p>Are there schools with true merit aid that require these forms? How rare/common are they?</p>
<p>MisterK, my son got TRUE merit aid. His merit money was a performance award based on his audition for the music performance program at his school. We didn’t have any financial need at all when he was a freshman, soph or junior as our EFC was HIGHER than the cost of attendance at the school (little sis was in college when he was a senior…woohoo…he still didn’t get need based aid). Anyway…his school REQUIRED the Profile, FAFSA, TWO years of signed tax returns and W-2 forms…for ANY money they awarded to incoming freshmen. He did NOT have to complete the Profile for subsequent years for renewal of his merit award but did do the FAFSA to get the Stafford loan.</p>
<p>thumper - That’s very interesting. Is there a way to determine whether a school truly offers honest merit aid or only dressed-up need-based aid? I hate the thought of disclosing personal financial data for no reason. To my mind, a request for personal financial data for merit consideration is a huge red flag that says “this isn’t really merit aid.” But you seem to have found an exception.</p>
<p>I don’t have the numbers, but yes, some schools do require submission of FAFSA and CSS for merit consideration, but I would estimate that most school scholarships do not require submission of FA paperwork. At all the schools that offered my boys merit, none req’d submission of FA paperwork (and we’ve never submitted a FAFSA ever). </p>
<p>I imagine that the ones that do require FA paperwork have their reasons…maybe they don’t want to give merit to a “Bill Gates’ Kid” or maybe they want to see if the student can get Pell grants or state aid instead. Who knows. :)</p>
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<p>Two exceptions…DD got her merit aid her senior year despite having NO financial need that year. Of course, it was contingent on a continued GPA requirement which she met…but she had NO need. We had to file the FAFSA AND Profile for her for all four years.</p>
<p>Scripps required the Profile for merit too.</p>
<p>Of the some 19 or so schools my daughter has applied to (theater major - sigh) every single one of them has told us that in order to be considered for merit based scholarships, she has to fill out the FAFSA. We know we won’t qualify for any federal need based aid (though we make less than 1/5 of the OP and average state tuition is over one third of our take home, and average private school is well over half so why we aren’t considered to have any “need” is a mystery but oh well) but even so it’s just part of their procedure.</p>
<p>Since we dang sure will require SOME aid and all that is available to her is apparently going to be merit based aid, if they say they want her FAFSA for it, that’s what we are doing. Yup.</p>
<p>I got a true merit award - I hadn’t even submitted my financial aid forms yet, but I got a call in early February telling me I was awarded the scholarship - and I was still required to submit the FAFSA and all the verification forms in order to get the scholarship.</p>
<p>MisterK…another one for DD…she got a great scholarship from one school based on her admissions data only. She had not sent in ANY financial aid forms up to that point. BUT had she chosen to attend that school, the FAFSA would have been required.</p>
<p>I once asked about that with a friend who is an finaid officer. She said that the FAFSA is required of all merit recipients at HER school because if the student is eligible for any of the entitlement programs (e.g. Pell Grant), the school will use the Pell as part of the finaid award and that frees up a bit of THEIR money for some other merit award student.</p>
<p>Any scholarship that is based on being a NMF is a pure merit scholarship. DD1 has one (contingent on maintaining grades). We had to fill out the FAFSA only for the first year. One semester to go, then out in the big wide world.</p>
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<p>I suppose that’s possible but it really doesn’t hold water for me–can’t they say if your income is >$X, we can tell you aren’t Pell-eligible? If families are already confident they don’t qualify, just a self-reported income and ballpark self-report of assets should probably be sufficient. And the schools that require CSS Profile, even from families that know they are not eligible for need-based aid…what possible explanation could there be for requiring that level of detail from families who are willing to self-identify as ineligible for (and not seeking) need-based aid?</p>
<p>Deskpotato, I don’t have an answer for you…we completed the Profile a LOT and our kids only qualified for need based aid ONE year. The rest was merit. It was the school policy so we did it. One kid would NOT have gotten $10K per year and the other $6K per year if we hadn’t completed the Profile (and FAFSA) at their colleges. It was worth it to us to do this.</p>
<p>There ARE schools that do NOT have this requirement. I would suggest that folks do their research and if they do not want to complete these forms for merit aid…then apply to schools that do not require them.</p>
<p>Ditto the Profile…if you don’t want to complete it and want only to do the FAFSA, there are approximately 2700 colleges that are FAFSA only schools.</p>
<p>At DD2’s school (which requires the Profile) I called and spoke with the FA dept since I knew we would not qualify for FA but wanted to get the Stafford Loan. They said I had to do the Profile as well. When we visited I spoke with the FA head and was told I did NOT need to fill out the Profile for Stafford alone and that answer must have come from a person just parroting the standard answers (fill out all the FA documentation, etc). Since then I’ve only filled out the FAFSA. YMMV depending on the school.</p>
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<p>Perhaps kelsmom will weigh in on this, but I’ve never heard that any participating school can require Profile or any other such documents for the purpose of awarding FEDERAL student aid. Federal aid is awarded under federal law and the DoE guidelines. I have run into several issues where schools say they don’t/won’t award certain types of aid in certain situations (ie. summer ACG) but then, when asked where in the regs it says that they are allowed to make this choice, they back down and end up awarding it! It’s ridic and a complete waste of time…the bottom line is that it’s not their money and they should not be self-amending federal aid policies!</p>
<p>While my family didn’t have to submit the FAFSA for merit aid consideration at my alma marter, they did require some basic family financial information the first year (AGI, number in family, assets, untaxed income), likely in order to check for Pell eligibility and for scholarships that have need components in addition to merit components. However, it appears that they no longer require this for entering students, just current students applying for scholarships, which seems a bit odd.</p>