<p>Parent here trying to figure out a smart approach to financial aid applications. My son will be applying to highly competitive colleges; some are need-blind and offer no merit money. Others are need-aware and/or offer merit dollars. Based on 17 years of socking it away, and a pretty decent income, the financial aid calculators are showing an EFC of $50-60K, so I'm thinking the chances for need-based aid are virtually nil. For the schools that offer merit aid, my son will probably be a strong contender to receive some. </p>
<p>Question: on applications, should we just check off "Not applying for (need-based) financial aid"? (after ensuring that this wouldn't prevent consideration for merit awards at the particular college.). Or better to apply for need-based anyway, "just in case"?</p>
<p>Any insights on the pros and cons of how this could affect the admissions decision, especially at need-aware colleges, would be appreciated. </p>
<p>It is complicated. 1) If your financial circumstances are such that you might qualify for aid in the future, eg. other kids going to college or unpredictable income, you might want to apply just because some schools freeze out kids who have not applied for aid at the time of admissions from applying for future financial aid for a couple of years. 2) Some of the need aware schools will look at the application for admissions more favorably if you don't apply for aid, so if (1) is not true don't apply for aid. I have heard people, who should know, suggest that some "need-blind" schools actually favor students who don't apply for aid in the admissions process. I have no way of knowing if this is true, but if you have no chance of getting aid why risk it. 3) At the moment most merit aid is need blind but there are some exceptions e.g. Northwestern and, I think, Colby to name two examples, so check it out. Good Luck!</p>
<p>bluejay,
I can tell you what I did. Son is now a college sophomore. Before his freshmen year we did the FAFSA paperwork. EFC was 99,999. His school offered need blind merit aid. Second year I did not do the FAFSA. Knew we were going to get any need based aid. The reasons I did it the first year were the ones posted above. When younger daughter goes to college and we have two in private school, EFC might change.
Also we are self employed and if something drastic changes in our income I wanted to have that first year FAFSA in place.
I would go ahead and do it this year.</p>
<p>The idea of schools "freezing out" students from subsequent aid should situations change is problematical. I'm not sure anyone has actually documented this, or if it is a CC myth.</p>
<p>For the record, a school cannot freeze out a student from any government aid for which the student qualifies, such as federal or state grants, loans, or workstudy. Thus, they have to process FA applications in subsequent years, no matter what their institutional policy is. A school could freeze a student from institutional aid, but whether any do this is a question I haven't seen addressed beyond speculation.</p>
<p>In our S's case, we did not apply till his junior year, when our situation changed. That year, they met our EFC with workstudy and subsidized loan. the next year, when our EFC was far lower, they added a good-sized institutional grant. We feel we got the exact same aid we would have gotten had he applied every year.</p>
<p>I would counsel that you should contact schools and ask them what their policy is toward applying for FA in later years if you didn't the first year. In my S's college's case, they were,frankly, flabbergasted that I would wonder if he qualified since we didn't apply the first year. We got a hearty "of course!" from them.</p>
<p>At least one school that my d applied to said quite clearly on its website that everyone should put in the FA application anyway. Why? Because in subsequent years, when it came to handing out institutional money, the kids were put in this order: returning students previously given aid, freshman admits qualifying for aid, returning students who previously applied but didn't get aid, and returning students who never applied. So at least in the case of that school, it's not a CC myth.</p>
<p>Additionally, if something changes during the year (job loss, parental injury/death, divorce, etc.) and you need to contact the FA office, do you really want to have to get all the information and file the forms then? Won't it be easier if the school already has some information about your finances, and you just have to update them?</p>
<p>Finally, remember that "need-aware" schools don't make decisions just because you've filed an application for aid. They're concerned not with the fact that you want money, but whether they have to give you any. A kid who doesn't qualify for need-based aid is the same as a kid who didn't ask for any, as far as the bottom line is concerned. They consider the amount of need in their need-aware decision making. So there's no downside in applying, even for a need-aware school.</p>
<p>chedva--thanks for that info--as I said, I hadn't heard of cases like that (I'm very glad S's school doesn't follow that paradigm) but it is important for a student and parent to know each school's policy, just in case there should be one like that.</p>
<p>For us, not filling out the form when we knew from past epxerience it would be futile, was an aggravation we were glad to avoid, while being equally glad to avail ourselves of it later on when we needed to.</p>