<p>My good dear friend fireflyscout, my part-time partner in admissions crimes and hi-jinks , has saved me tonight. Our kids have similar taste in schools and we have some cross-apps. Both our charges have applied to Hamilton College. For mine at least it is in a favorite's role. I was asleep at the switch and the 1/1 FA Special was boiling down the tracks right at me. fireflyscout pulled me to relative safety. </p>
<p>For some reason unbeknownst to God or man Hamilton's due date for the Profile, their own F/A app, and a copy of the '04 tax return, the business and farm supplement, and a partridge in a pear tree is 1/1. Can you say "cram"? I knew you could. :) This process will be the death of me. BTW folks, double check all your school's timetables. I know from another thread of panicked folk that Cornell has something due also.</p>
<p>No . An all-nighter is what I JUST pulled. This will be an all weekender.</p>
<p>In college and law school I always studied all night in the psych building (without express permission of course). Perfect seclusion as I remember it. This unfortunately is not as perfectly secluded. :(</p>
<p>It's not that bad. Colgate is also due on the 15th and I KNEW about that one, so I have most of what I need here at the ranch and can come 99.44% sure on the rest. </p>
<p>But the bizarre way my financial life is structured , to be precisely correct, I will have to fill out a bus supp for me-solo attorney schedule C man, one for the P.C., and one for the ranch. :( I would prefer to just say I don't make diddly anymore and am a kept man. ;)</p>
<p>Curmudgeon, I'm glad I mentioned the deadline to you, but I'm sorry that's what you'll be doing New Year's Eve! I really have to wonder why Hamilton wants the Profile this early. Personally, I'd love to just tear up all the FA forms for confetti tonight.</p>
<p>Poor Mudge!<br>
Re Hamilton..don't know if you have glanced at the recently published book written by a former Hamilton grad and trustee and Times Magazine writer with a lousy title called Binge. You might flip through it at the bookstore some day. I looked at it because my son applied to three colleges he profiled after long visits and living in dorms and apartments with actual students at places like Dartmouth, UVa, Duke, Berkeley (memory fades..There were several more.) Although it is a bit flawed in the first place with the premise that someone who just retired could blend in with the students for research purposes and draw conclusions, it had some interesting historical commentary..this is what he did after retiring from Time. Although binge drinking is a well documented problem on many campuses that is problematic for administrators, my biggest complaint was the lurid title. Anyway, he wrote a chapter on Hamilton of days gone by and Hamilton today and I thought the school came off very well. He knows it well and loves it. We have a local friend whose son loved it.<br>
dreadful business this estimating value of businesses! good luck slogging through</p>
<p>Curmudge....we had the same "last minute angst" but it was in November. The EA priority date for the filing of the Profile for Santa Clara University was November 15. I received an email about this from them on November 12. I STILL haven't found ANY reference to this priority deadline on the Santa Clara Website...and I looked AGAIN after receiving the email from them. BUT I did fill out that stinking form doing estimate after estimate. It will all need to be redone again once the taxes are done...and submitted by hand to Santa Clara. The Profile is a PITA, in my opinion, because you cannot amend the stinking thing online once it has been submitted. In fact, we will be submitting it to one more school and that school requires supplementary questions regarding the value of retirement accounts. I'm not sure how we'll do that at all...I guess submit what we have already submitted (and pay again, of course)...and then send in a paper amendment to the Profile including the updated info and the supplementary question info. It seems to me that all the Profile is is a "common ap" for finaid with a lot of kinks in the system. Like I said...a PITA.</p>
<p>Lines at the Post Office? Haha, that is for ... amateurs. :)</p>
<p>Jokes set aside, allow me to repeat my little strategy for meeting deadlines that requires "postmark" proofs. It is pretty simple and only involves signing up for an online account with the USPS and print your own labels. You could print your label at 1150 and deposit the forms the next business day without causing an uproar. In this case it gives you a good number of meaningful hours. The postmark will be on the package and you have the proof of mailing with the same information. All for $3.85 </p>
<p>Also remember that financial aid numbers can be estimated and corrected later. The schools ask for completeness and accuracy and prefer to see corrected information, even if it comes a bit later -in the form of an amendment. </p>
<p>Lastly, as far as mailing deadlines, it is good to remember that the mail won't be processed for several days and that a little delay should not matter at all. </p>
<p>PS I am wondering if the Pony Express still services Cur's goat ranch?</p>
<p>Note re deadlines: in helping theonekid re Cornell fin aid deadline, I discovered that the school's own form is due 1/1, but the Profile, BUFS etc are due 2/10. So double-check the schools' websites to be sure whether it is <em>some</em> or <em>all</em> fin aid forms due tonight/tomorrow.</p>
<p>I spent a couple of hours yesterday figuring out when all the FA info were due for my S's schools. I actually created a spreadsheet. Whew! You really do need to read the fine print carefully as each school requires a different set of paperwork. </p>
<p>An important note for those that need to file the PROFILE:</p>
<p>-Register at least two weeks before the earliest priority filing date specified by your colleges.
-Submit your PROFILE application to the College Board at least a week before the earliest priority filing date specified by your colleges....It can take up to one week from the time you submit your application for our information to be delivered to your selected colleges.
-Once you submit your PROFILE, you cannot revise your information online. Any changes must be sent directly to your colleges.</p>
<p>We are a farm family (complicated tax returns) but we WILL get everything in by 1/23 (first deadline is 2/1)!!</p>
<p>Fresnomom, a farm family. Great!! What in God's name do they want people like us to put on the value of our "home"? Our home is a small , tiny cabin (1200 feet or so) 4000 feet down a rock road. My nearest neighbor is a good 1/2 mile away as the crow flies. 2 miles by road. How do you separate what is ranch from what is "home" if it can't be cut out (no road frontage, violates deed restrictions, house violates restictions on size if tract is cut) .It has zero Market value. It can't be sold without probably at least 50-100 acres which includes all the barns and out buildings. I'm just going to write it all down, document the heck out of it and wait for the "verification" letter. Sheesh.</p>
<p>And xiggi, I quoted you earlier tonight. That was , in fact, my fail safe (my office has a postage meter). But I found that the local larger post office has a new fangled "APC" (automated postage center) that will print you off a label 24 hr's a day from a credit card, and weighs your package, to boot. It prints a receipt showing when it is was printed and where it was sent (by zip). </p>
<p>"Sgt. Carter, Sgt. Carter- you ain't gonna believe what they got down to Mt. Pilot. A 'Xiggi college application time machine'. Well, gol-l-l-l-l-y and shazaam. What will they think of next?" ;)</p>
<p>Cur,
I think xiggi's point was: Print the label at 2350 hours, then finish (or start!) the forms, drop in the box when done, with the correct postmark!</p>
<p>optimizerdad. Sorry , I was in the barn wailing and gnashing my teeth. Fire away.</p>
<p>Actually, other than each foot being swollen to the size of a Jubilee watermelon and that the fact that they are the color of a 3 day old bruise, I'm feeling pretty good. Sitting a couple of days in a row at a desk ain't good for me anymore. :(</p>
<p>But, interestingly enough-I have managed to put together something to submit and I have done so. Hurrah.</p>
<p>I then ran the numbers through collegeboard's estimator and my previous best guesses were in a $13K range from highest to lowest and I believe it is now in a much more reasonable $7k highest to lowest range depending on how they view "home" equity, or business value, or depreciation or business losses. If everything cuts against me need based only schools are still out, but if I win a partial victory on any of about 5 areas of confusion, there is a fightin' chance. For Fafsa only schools , without business and farm supps and/or their own forms asking the same info and NOT requesting tax returns, I am in like Flynn. Of course, I don't remember her having any of those. LOL.</p>
<p>We own a fish farm and water plant nursery..... you are right, it is so hard to determine the value of our business that will make sense to others.</p>
<p>And the house....well, it is slightly bigger than yours but designed and built by my husband, his brother and a contractor (we've never built a house before but my husband's Peace Corps experience proved to him that we were capable of doing anything once we set our mind on it). It is simple and energy efficient.</p>
<p>I'm not quite sure how we will look on paper. I did one of the on-line EFC calculators last year and it said our contribution was $6,000. Hope the figures match up come April!</p>
<p>Curmudgeon - glad to hear you survived you FA marathon/nightmare. What really bothers me is that I had to estimate many things on the Profile, so I'll have to send *^#%corrections to all those colleges. Very inefficient, but I believe this is the first year that the Profile must be done online and it was obviously created by people who don't have children going to college.</p>
