<p>We have been trying to meet all the financial aid deadlines. We just found out that a 1099 we are waiting for will not be sent til Feb 16. Smith's response, when I let them know our situation:</p>
<p>" If your daughter were to be accepted, we would need all required financial aid documents to be received by February 15. Completing your daughter's financial aid application after our due date decreases the chance of receiving the eligibility letter along with the Admissions decision letter. A letter of eligibility would be sent once the financial aid application became complete. All financial aid application requirements are due by February 15. You do not have to submit all documents at once, you may send the documents that are ready to be sent now."</p>
<p>Smith's response sounded like "you might be out of luck" to me...and without some aid, we will be out of luck. Maybe they don't really want anyone who needs aid? I just don't see how most people can get their returns done and up on IDOC by Feb 15? Even apart from the errant 1099, we only received most of the others last week and a couple this weekend! Our FAFSA and CSS are done already (of course, I will have to amend both when taxes are done!)</p>
<p>I think if you read the email carefully what it’s saying is that the deadline is February 15, and if you don’t have your paperwork done by then, you run the risk of not getting your financial aid letter at the same time as you get your decision letter. But you will still get a financial aid letter/offer. </p>
<p>Of course it’s silly to say that they don’t really want anyone that needs aid. More than half of Smithies receive financial aid of some form or another. Doing your returns early is a real pain, but Smith isn’t alone in the system for requiring these at this time. </p>
<p>My advice would be to either call and see if you can get your 1099 a little earlier (online maybe?) and also to call Student Financial Services at Smith, since they are the ones that actually make the decisions about Financial Aid (the admissions office doesn’t have much to do with FA except for telling you what forms to fill out. For over 90% of applicants, your need for aid will not enter into your admissions decision at all). You’re not the first person this has ever happened to, so I’m sure they can give you some advice at SFS.</p>
<p>I went through this fol-de-rol last year, and they said that if you could not complete your current-year tax return by the finaid deadline, then you should use the previous year’s tax returns as an estimate and possibly indicate in a cover letter if you expect significant differences. Then you submit amended data when it becomes available.</p>
<p>Of course that didn’t help us because our 2007 financial picture was VERY different from our 2008 one…</p>
<p>We had one form from a new business that was much later than that deadline - small amount of income but they still wanted the form and our financial aid was fine - we let them know ahead of time it was coming. And yes you use the previous years forms. It is better the second year the deadlines are much later!</p>
<p>Smithieandproud, sorry if I sounded snippy re: financial aid. I do know many Smith students get aid. I should perhaps try to get a person on the phone, as you suggest. I’ll try calling them Monday.</p>
<p>We did file the FAFSA and the CSS (using estimated numbers)–did that at the end of January. Smith requires the 2009 taxes to be sent via the IDOC system (through the college board). They told me without the IDOC-submitted tax forms, that our financial aid application is incomplete and they won’t look at it until it is complete. This is all new to us, so…I guess I’m just deadline oriented, and when the site says ‘all forms must be submitted in advance of FEb 15’ …it stresses me out. All the other schools D applied to either just use the FAFSA only, or have til at least March 1 or later for the 1040s, which seems more do-able.</p>
<p>The 1099 I’m awaiting is not available online or anywhere yet. It’s from an investment firm that apparently had some system error or something. They told me they will go out Feb 16. </p>
<p>What will be, will be. I was just wondering if I was alone in having trouble meeting a deadline like this! Thanks for your advice, everyone.</p>
<p>Paperplane, you are most definitely not alone. In my case last year, 2 applicants at once X the number of schools they applied to = 16 sets of financial aid forms that had to be submitted, with these kinds of lunatic deadlines.</p>
<p>The IDOC system was a bit of a nuisance, but much better than having to copy all of that stuff 16 times and send the right combinations of things off in each of 16 envelopes. You just have to follow the IDOC instructions to the letter, and it works pretty well.</p>
<p>It’s bad enough for us, but I cannot for the life of me grasp how the colleges cope with receiving all of this stuff. They have to grind out financial aid package offers to all of the students they accept, which is two or three times the number that actually join their freshman classes each year. I can understand why they depend on a system like IDOC to do some of the physical work.</p>
<p>Wow Randomcoolzip! I can’t imagine doing this for two kids at once. Hats off to you!
I am sure I will live through it–was just having a stress moment when I originally posted.
And you’re right: I would totally hate to be on the receiving end and having to sort through all those documents!</p>
<p>perhaps you could do your taxes with an estimate of the 1099 or leaving it out, file it through IDOC, and then file an amended version once you got the form? </p>
<p>i’m sorry you have to deal with this and that whoever was supposed to send the 1099 is late. Taxes and financial aid are no fun (I’m the oldest of 4 kids so even though I’m all done with school my parents have a few more years of it). But, as I keep telling myself as I figure out paying back student loans and such, the only thing worse than dealing with financial aid, loan repayment assistance, etc…would be NOT having these programs to deal with!</p>
<p>In fairness I should point out that your family financial data is the same for both kids, so the times-16 part was really just generating all the copies, and cover letters, and envelopes, and mailing them, and keeping track of all the sets of deadlines. I used a spreadsheet for all this bookkeeping.</p>
<p>One of the features of being a parent of twins is that you go through every major phase faster but more intensely than people who had the good sense to have their kids one at a time. It’s double the diapers in the first couple of years, and double each big thing after that.</p>