Hey! I have a question, because I have had people give me different answers. My parents are divorced, so they both have me half. My college is pretty much paid for, but someone told me (college counselor) that I could choose which salary to put on paper. Is this true? Both of my parents are re-married. If this is true, that would be kind of nice, because I could have extra money for grad school, and I could possibly get out debt free with both undergrad and grad school.
By “on paper” do you mean completing FAFSA and other financial aid forms? If so, the answer is NO, you can’t just choose which parent’s financial information you want to use.
The schools that give the aid you want will demand the info of both parents and all stepparents…those schools use css profile
FAFSA only schools usually don’t give great aid but they will require the stepparent’s info too
Does one parent provide more financial support or you
Do you have a college savings acct?
Emory requires info from both parents AND stepparents
@mom2collegekids Yes, I have savings for college. Sounds good! I was just confused. I wanted to make sure, because that’s what I thought the policy was. Not a big deal, lol. 
First…are you now just finishing your sophomore year in high school??
If your college is fully paid for, do you even plan to complete the financial aid application forms?
- Your college counselor is wrong. You can’t just “choose” which parent to put on the financial aid forms.
- For the FAFSA, your custodial parent and spouse will be listed. Your custodial parent is the one you lived with 51% of the time in the year prior to the actual date you file the FAFSA. If, by some chance, you lived exactly the same time with both parents, then the parent who provide the majority of your support would be the custodial parent. This is usually the parent with the higher income.
So…on the FAFSA, you would list the custodial parent and spouse and all of their assets. In addition, if there is any child or spousal support, that would be included as well. If you are doing the 2020-2021 FAFSA, you will need the income tax info and income info from 2018.
- If your colleges require the CSS Profile, usually you use the SAME custodial parent (and spouse) as the one on the FAFSA. If the college requires the non-custodial parent Profile, this will be completed by your non-custodial parent and will include their income as well as their spouse’s income...and assets.
- What kind of college savings do you have? And how much is that savings? This will be listed as an asset on both the FAFSA and the Profile.
- How do you think you will have money for grad school if you complete the financial aid forms for undergrad now? You have to have financial need. Do you? With two working parents...and spouses who presumably work, and a college savings that will fully fund undergrad school, it’s very possible that you would not get need based aid.
- What is the income of your lowest income parent and spouse? If it’s low income, it might be wise to live with THAT parent more than 51% of the time for the year before you file your financial aid forms. But really...it might not matter...depending on what that income is.
- Are you applying to colleges that guarantee to meet full need for all accepted students...the ones that are very generous even to higher income students?
- How good are your SAT or ACT scores, and GPA? Maybe you should be looking at schools that have great guaranteed merit aid for your stats. If you think you could get accepted at HYPSM or the like, you probably could garner good merit aid elsewhere. If that happened, would your parents allow you to use their savings for grad school?
ETA…I found your ACT score of 32. Your GPA is decent, but you only have two HS years of GPA, right…and that is assuming that this school year has ended.
You want to apply ED1 to Emory…fine…and it sounds like finances won’t be an issue. But do remember…life happens, and those finances could change as well.