<p>Yes, I posted this yesterday over in the Financial aid section but need an answer before the mail runs today. </p>
<p>I am seeing many scholarships that want applicants to send their SAR or their parents' tax return or "A copy of the FASFA Form submitted for assistance in college." There is no way I'm sending anyone my tax return or the entire FASFA. Seriously, do these committees really need this? If all they're concerned with is the financial need then they only need to know the EFC. Talk about identity theft! I don't need a scholarship that badly.</p>
<p>Is the SAR report they want the multi page printout of the "THIS IS A COPY OF YOUR 2010-2011 SAR PRINT SUMMARY" which is basically your entire FASFA? Or do they want the short SAR printout which only shows: </p>
<p>I work in a hs college counseling office and have seen some of these scholarship requests - yes - people are sending their tax return and yes - they are sending the 2 page SAR report. I agreee with you about the risks - I am not comfortable with this myself. Certainly it makes sense to call and clarify - see if there is anything less they will accept - but this practice does seem to be fairly typical.</p>
<p>Thank you. I thought I was reading them wrong. This is very scary. The short verification of EFC should be enough for them to see if an applicant is financially needy. There is no reason to give total strangers your income tax or FASFA with all your identifying information.</p>
<p>I’ve called several and left messages but have yet to get a return call and deadlines have passed or they’re due this week. What surprises me is they are legitimate organizations that have been around for decades. After so many hours put into essays and gathering up all the requirements, I’d hate for them to just throw out my applications if I were to send in the short EFC verification. </p>
<p>Good thing I’m working because it doesn’t look like much scholarship money is in my future.</p>
<p>I sit on a scholarship board. Our application asks for both the full FAFSA and the most recent IRS form. The reason is that the FAFSA does not provide a full financial picture. Our process is to separate the financial information and one person on our board reviews all of them and makes a determination of financial need. The full board reviews the rest of the application and makes the determination about who to select after financial need is verified.
It might make you feel comfortable with the process to ask each scholarship program how they handle this issue to protect your privacy.</p>
<p>I would not send the detailed information. I can’t imagine that appropriate steps are taken to make sure the information is not copied and that the originals are shredded. I guarantee the originals will be sitting someplace without security as “backup”. Not worth the risk. </p>
<p>When one of our kiddos was a senior, we also posed this question to a very notable scholarship in our area. They were clear…we didn’t have to send the tax info or the FAFSA, but if we didn’t they would NOT consider our kid for the scholarship. We sent the forms…she got the award.</p>