<p>I will be applying to Cornell, Northwestern, NYU, and USC, among others, and I was wondering if anyone knows whether they offer fee waivers. My family income is a bit less than $30,000 so paying for the application fees for all 10 of the schools I am applying to would definitely be a financial hardship.</p>
<p>I managed to find Cornell's policy on fee waivers, but couldn't find any information on the Northwestern, NYU, and USC websites. </p>
<p>Also, does the College Board Fee Waiver Form (NACAC form) apply to any/all schools, or only certain schools that accept it?</p>
<p>Each college should say on its web site which kind(s) of fee waivers it accepts. There's the NACAC one, which you would get from your school counselor. There's also a College Board fee waiver (different from NACAC) - if you got waivers for SAT tests, then you can also get their college application fee waiver. And some schools just ask you to contact them directly to ask for a waiver.</p>
<p>For the NACAC waivers, the counselor is supposed to follow the NACAC-specified criteria in deciding if you get the waiver. The NACAC criteria for family income were (for 2007):</p>
<p>Number in Family Family Income
1 ------------------------------------ $30,800
2 ------------------------------------ $36,160
3 ------------------------------------ $40,800
4 ------------------------------------ $43,950
5 ------------------------------------ $47,400</p>
<p>"You can apply for an application fee waiver by (1) sending in the College Board Fee Waiver form or (2) submitting a letter from a guidance counselor or representative of a social service/community agency stating that the fee would cause financial hardship."</p>
<p>The link for the "College Board Fee Waiver form" leads to a .pdf file of the NACAC form, so I'm a bit confused. Are they the same forms?</p>
<p>I see why it's confusing. I think the College Board fee waiver program and the NACAC form are different, and they're just putting the NACAC form on their site as a convenience.</p>
<p>Here's a longer description from the CB site:
professionals.collegeboard.com/guidance/applications/fee-waivers
The "you" on this page is counselors, not students.</p>
<p>The way I read the CB's instructions for its own application fee waiver program is that it's only available to students who are already in their system as having used waivers for the SAT. If you haven't had SAT fee waivers, then it sounds like you would stick to the NACAC fee waiver path.</p>
<p>I interpret Cornell's instructions to mean that they take either kind of waiver. Also, it sounds like they would accept a free-form letter from your counselor, if the counselor prefers that to downloading the NACAC letter.</p>