FAQ for USC Financial Aid

<p>Ipfun - USC guarantees to meet 100% of your need if you meet all deadlines. If you miss the deadlines, they no longer make that guarantee. HOWEVER, there have been posts on college confidential in the past from students who miised the deadlines and still received full financial aid, so file the forms as SOON as possible. You may still receive the aid you need.</p>

<p>daisydaisy - the parent you list on the FAFSA is the parent you live with the majority of the time. Yours sounds like an unusual situation, so it might be a good idea to contact the financial aid officers at the schools to which you are applying to ask them specific questions.</p>

<p>Bruen - Filing the FAFSA and CSS/Profile will in no way keep your son from receiving merit aid at USC - merit aid will be based on merit, not financial need. If he will not qualify for financial aid, there is no need to file the FAFSA unless you would like him to be eligible for Federal student loans and for you to be eligible for Federal PLUS loans. The FAFSA is not required at USC for merit aid. (Have you done the EFC estimators to be sure you will not qualify for aid?)</p>

<p>I do not have any knowledge about NYU policies.</p>

<p>Good luck to all three of you!</p>

<p>Dear Alememom
Thank you . Your answer was very helpful!</p>

<p>What is the best way to send in my parent’s tax return forms and W2? It says on the site that I should fax them but I don’t have a fax machine. I can still just send it to them over the mail right? Before March 2nd? I am a transfer applicant btw.</p>

<p>lakerforever24: go to FedEx Kinko’s to fax it. That is what I did for my son. For returning students it says you can send it electronically if all pages are in a single PDF file. I don’t know if this is available for new students.</p>

<p>I still haven’t done the CSS profile. My parents aren’t legally married and I am dependent on my mother, so I filed FAFSA under my mothers income not my fathers who is higher.</p>

<p>Is it detrimental if my CSS is still not filed? It’s WAY too long and time straining.</p>

<p>i’m submitting the “Student Non Filing Statement” since i did not work in 2009. but one of the questions asks for “Other cash received and any money paid on student’s behalf.” if i received $1000 in scholarships from my community college do i have to put that in there?</p>

<p>

Indianjatt, if you only file the FAFSA, you will only receive Federal aid - Stafford or Perkins loans, Federal work/study, and Pell grant (if you qualify). You will not receive institutional aid from USC if you do not complete the CSS/Profile. Institutional aid includes need-based grants. </p>

<p>

If the scholarship was for the current school year - 2009-2010, then yes, you would list it. If the scholarship is for *next school year, 2010-2011, starting in Fall 2010 *, you do not list it. (Even if it has already been paid to you, but is intended for the coming school year.)</p>

<p>-If it was for 2009-2010: Yes, list it.
-I it is for 2010-2011: No, do not list it this year, it will be listed next year.</p>

<p>lakerforever24, Good ideas have already been listed! Any way you get it to them is fine. If it is so many pages to FAX that it gets expensive, you can just put the copies in the mail.</p>

<p>Not sure if you can answer this but… For the 2010-2011 Family Member Listing, do we put only our custodial parent’s househould or both parent’s households?? My parents are divorced but my father is my custodial parent (even though I only lived with him for a month last year, as financial aid tells me!) and my mother is not… So I’m just confused at this point.</p>

<p>Your family member listing would only include those in your household - that is, the household you live in the majority of the time. As I recall, yours is an unusual situation - and it seems you have decided your father is the one to list. For the FAFSA, list the number of people living in the household that you determined was your custodial parent - in your case, just your father’s - do not include your mother or others living in her household.</p>

<p>For the CSS/Profile, use the same information, and then use the space for special circumstances to explain your situation more clearly to them. You might also want to send a letter to the financial aid offices at the schools to which you have applied.</p>

<p>Good luck!</p>

<p>I have recently found that there are corrections that need to be made to the CSS Profile I submitted. I understand that any corrections regarding CSS should be done with the colleges directly, so where should I send the corrected hard copy? Just to the Financial Aid Office?</p>

<p>Yes - I had to print then correct ours and faxed it in. You can correct a fafsa and submit it online but I could not find a way to do the same with the CSS profile.</p>

<p>threetreasurs, you have it exactly right. The FAFSA corrections are done online, and any corrections to the CSS/Profile are FAXed or mailed directly to the school’s financial aid office.</p>

<p>jebsenm, you can find all the financial aid contact info on page one of this thread.</p>

<p>Good luck!</p>

<p>Alamemom: OK summarizing - I completed the FAFSA and CSS/Profile in the College Board website.</p>

<p>I downloaded the covers and faxed the tax form, w2 & schedules.</p>

<p>Anything else?</p>

<p>Do I have to fax the Fafsa application and CSS profile to the university or can I trust that College Board will comply with the March 2 deadline? Thanks for all your help, Alamemom!</p>

<p>i thought that we didn’t have to update our CSS profile? i thought we just update our FAFSA and that since they’re gonna get our tex returns anyway there’s no need to update the css profile…someone explain please. i clearly remember someone here saying that they always only updated the FAFSA and not the CSS but they still got financial aid every yr</p>

<p>Yes, lakers, I am the one who said I have just done my corrections to the FAFSA - never to the Profile - and we have encountered no problems. For those who want to be extra-thorough, sending corrected copies of the Profile directly to the school is the way to proceed. </p>

<p>Greenery, there is no need to FAX hard copies of your original CSS/Profile or FAFSA to financial aid. You can check here <a href=“https://camel2.usc.edu/ESD/IOL/login.aspx[/url]”>https://camel2.usc.edu/ESD/IOL/login.aspx&lt;/a&gt; to see if the FAFSA and Profile have been received under My 2010-2011 Financial Aid Document Status. The Profile usually shows up within 1 business day, and the FAFSA in 2-3 days.</p>

<p>Thanks for the answers. One more… does a NMF need to fill any specific scholarship application?</p>

<p>Nope, no application because if you are NMF, you get the scholarship! NM Corp will inform the schools after you list your first-choice school. When you get your official notification from NM you might FAX it to USC to be sure they know. Include your USC ID#. Congratulations!</p>

<p>So I was going through all of my college financial aid to do lists and I saw that USC asks for the 2009 tax returns by March 2nd, 2010. I thought this was odd as I know that we have not yet filed our 2009 tax returns as we usually do it in mid april. So unless I misunderstand what 2009 tax returns means, how am I to accomplish this task? Btw, I have all the W-2s required and am planning on faxing them but I do not quite know what to do for the tax returns.</p>

<p>^randy, I’m pretty sure the site mentions that you should send in your tax returns by March 2nd, so as soon as possible thereafter. So, file your 09 tax returns now, then send in asap. If the time is seriously a problem, then contact the USC financial aid office.</p>

<p>Randy1991, please read post #1 of this thread for information on that very subject.</p>

<p>Though your parents may usually file close to the deadline, this would be a good year to try to get it done as early as possible. You will not receive your financial aid package until you submit the tax return copies - and it takes some time for the financial aid office to finalize the details - so the problem with waiting until April 15th to file is that you will not know what financial aid you will be receiving from USC before the May 1st commitment deadline.</p>