Although our household income is low right now, we know that our assets disqualify us for financial aid. Nonetheless, we were advised by an expert that we ought to still file a FAFSA - precisely to show colleges that we can pay full freight. According to him, this makes our child a more attractive candidate for admission, because colleges will know that our child can attend all four years without aid. Has anyone heard of people doing this? To us, it seems like we’d look foolish to the admissions office for filing when it’s pretty clear we don’t qualify.
Welcome to CC
File the FAFSA so that your child will be eligible for a student loan.
what constitute low income?
Is your income from salary?
Are you business owners?
I think your friend is wrong. Most schools are need blind for admissions and the admissions office makes the decision to admit or deny without knowing your financial status.
Some merit aid requires you to file the FAFSA. A few schools even get a bonus if you file it. If your income is very low, your assets may not even be included in the calculations of EFC. If your assets are in protected retirement accounts, the corpus is not reported on FAFSA. Too many variables to know how your EFC will come out, but it rarely gives you bonus points with the admissions office to file or not file.
You should run the FAFSA4Caster to see what your EFC actually is
https://studentaid.ed.gov/sa/fafsa/estimate
If your EFC is more than the cost of attendance, there is no need to file it for real. Simply check the no box on the college application where it asks if you are applying for aid.
If this is an elite school you are trying to game, you would need to file the FAFSA, Profile, and any school-required additional documents to actually apply for aid.
As mentioned above, getting federal loans would be a good reason for filing FAFSA no matter what the EFC and no matter what the school might do with institutional aid.
Some schools award merit aid and they require FAFSA regardless of your income, so make sure if you think you might qualify for merit aid, fill it out. Some require the CSS.
@BelknapPoint I was assuming OP was not taking loans since they were only interested in not getting aidmfrom a need-aware school.
Yes, the FAFSA is the first step for the federal education loan programs.
I wouldn’t consider federal direct loans to be “aid from a need-aware school.” Such loans come from the federal government, not the school. If the idea is to not spook a need-aware school when it considers an application for admission that has a FAFSA attached, it’s easy enough to make it clear that the only intention in filing FAFSA is to qualify for federal loans. Or, you can simply file the FAFSA after an admissions decision has been made in order to qualify for the loans.
The best way to prove to a college that you don’t want or need any financial aid is…do NOT apply for any aid. Don’t do a FAFSA…don’t do the Profile. Just don’t apply.
The college will know that you are full pay…because you didn’t apply for any aid!
Some colleges won’t give aid in future years unless a student has applied in earlier years. If there is a chance that a job could be lost or any other economic downturn makes it hard to pay in the future, you should consider filing this year. But your advisor sounds pretty clueless – for admissions, anyone who says they don’t need FA is assumed to be able to handle full pay.
For U.S. Citizens…there are only a handful of colleges that won’t award institutional aid in subsequent years…or have restrictions of you don’t apply as an incoming freshman. But do check.
You can file a FAFSA at any time during the academic year to get the federally funded loan.
Thank you all for your input!
We were required to complete the FAFSA for merit aid. The school wanted proof that we weren’t eligible for a PELL grant. If we were, then the school would have used that towards the merit aid award. I wished I could have just sent in tax returns as proof, but it was worth filling the form out every year to get the substantial merit award.
I think you need a new “expert”. The above posters are correct.
For need aware school, it may be a good idea.