<p>My ds competed for a presidential scholar award at his first choice college. At the parent financial aid session we were told to let the office know if we were not going to file the FAFSA. We are not going to file the FAFSA because our EFC is just about at the cost to attend the school. That said, our son can ONLY attend this school if he receives a decent scholarship to bring the cost to the price to attend our in-state university. I need to send a letter/email to the financial aid office letting them know we won't be filing the FAFSA, but I don't want them to think he doesn't need scholarship money. </p>
<p>I have composed a short email. Would someone mind editing it? When ds is in the 6th year of his program, we will have 4 of our 5 children in college. Would this information help or hurt his chances for scholarship money? Should it be included in my email?</p>
<p>Thanks for any help offered!</p>
<p>I am writing to inform you that we will not be filing the FAFSA for our son, XXXXX for the 2011-2012 school year.</p>
<p>XXXXX is a high school senior who was admitted into the XXXXX School of Pharmacy. During the Presidential Scholars Day parent financial aid session, Jane Jones said that we should let you know if our student was not planning to file the FAFSA. </p>
<p>We hope that our decision to not file the FAFSA will not affect his eligibility for a merit scholarship. XXXXXXXXXXXX's ability to attend XXX is based on scholarship aid that he receives. We will reconsider filing the FAFSA for the 2012-2013 when we have 2 children in college. </p>
<p>I don’t quite understand why you don’t want to fill out the FAFSA–do you think it will hurt your son’s chances for a scholarship? As I understand it, the FAFSA will at least qualify him for federal loans.</p>
<p>I am not sure if it will hurt his chances for a scholarship. I don’t want him to have to take out any loans this 1st year. This is a 6 year program and it would be nice not to have to take loans until later years. </p>
<p>Does my letter sound okay? I want to maximize his chance of a scholarship award.</p>
<p>There are schools that require the FAFSA filing for merit scholarships so check. I still don’t understand why you don’t want to file. They can’t make you take loans.</p>
<p>I think the letter is clear and gets across your point. You might want to consider changing “scholarship aid” to “merit aid” in the last paragraph. You and I know what you mean, and the financial aid officer probably knows what you mean, but so many people say “scholarship aid” to encompass both need and merit aid that it might be good to make it crystal clear. Also, add “school year” after 2012-2013 in the last sentence.</p>
<p>To answer others: reasons not to file FAFSA include the fact that it reveals to all colleges that you list the names of the other colleges you’re considering, and the the fact that even estimating income can be a huge hassle when it includes partnership income, trust income or foreign income, or when the accountants can’t provide the information you need in time. The two years that a top-ranked professional firm prepared our taxes because we lived overseas, we provided all our information on time, but the tax forms were not ready until 20 months after the tax year ended in one case and 9 months after the tax year ended in another.</p>
<p>I do agree that it is important to check with each college to make sure FAFSA is not required even if one is interested in only merit aid.</p>
<p>I am assuming they don’t require the FAFSA for merit scholarships since they told us to let them know if we wouldn’t be filling it out. </p>
<p>I don’t understand why we should fill it out if we know we won’t be eligible for financial aid and we don’t want to take out loans. Plus, award letters are suppose to go out in March. Our taxes won’t be done until April- I don’t want to estimate. Is it so unusual to not file the FAFSA?</p>
<p>Thanks Schokolade for editing my message to the financial aid office. I really wish that they sent out merit awards separately from financial aid awards so I didn’t have to worry that they would think we can afford their school without any help what so ever.</p>
<p>Are you sure that is true…that was not my understanding.</p>
<p>Definitely check with the college if you need to fill it our or not for the merit money. If you have to fill it out it’s really no big deal and doesn’t take that long plus you’ll be in line to tap Staffords easily should something unforseen occur.</p>
<p>the schools don’t know what other schools you are applying to and even if they do, who cares? In the time it took you to write and edit this letter you could have done the fafsa. I can do one in 10 minutes and yes, it is unusual you aren’t filling it out when someone isn’t paying cash to attend. Most scholarships REQUIRE the fafsa to be filled out. I would hate for him to miss the opportunity because your son wasn’t paying attention to the “fine print” of the scholarship requirements… again, you could have it fill out by the time you finish reading this thread!</p>
<p>*reasons not to file FAFSA include the fact that it reveals to all colleges that you list the names of the other colleges you’re considering *</p>
<p>If you don’t list any of the other schools to receive your FAFSA info, then this college won’t know what other colleges you are considering.</p>
<p>I think if you don’t fill out FAFSA, the school could think that your EFC is a LOT higher than COA. Right now, your EFC is around COA…that doesn’t mean to a school that it is affordable. </p>
<p>I don’t think the school is going to care that you’ll have multiple children in college during the pharm school years. I believe that once your child is technically in pharm school, he’ll be considered “independent” and not count for the other kids (and vice versa). </p>
<p>At what point will your child be in pharm school? After year 2? 3?</p>
<p>I really do not see a downside in filling out the Fafsa:
It does not obligate your child to take out any loans
It does not obligate you to take out any loans
It is only sent to the college(s) you determine
Even if your EFC is close to the school’s COA, it may influence the school to give your child a higher merit award than if your EFC was $99K (the max)</p>
<p>Several schools D applied to required FAFSA to be eligible for merit awards, and her current school requires an annual FAFSA to get the renewed merit award, even though the amount of the EFC has no effect on the merit renewal.</p>
<p>For those of us who are concerned about privacy issues, the downside is obvious. Why would anybody feel comfortable sharing personal financial data with a third party that has no legitimate reason to know? And for no benefit?</p>
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<p>I’d love to learn more about this. Is there really a true “merit scholarship” that requires personal financial information? It seems very sketchy to me.</p>
<p>I read it on CC, so it must be true! Really, I have no independent information about this other than what I’ve read on other CC posts; I checked FAFSA instructions and couldn’t find any reference to this, so if someone knows for sure this is not true, please let us all know and I’ll gladly stand corrected.</p>
<p>Several people have suggested that someone should just go ahead and file FAFSA even if a particular college doesn’t require it for merit aid, stating that it would only take a few minutes. While that is true for most people, it is not true for someone with a complicated financial situation. I’ll give an example so some can see that blanket statements don’t necessarily apply here.</p>
<p>Think of a family with a wage-earner who is also the beneficiary of a trust. The beneficiary received a distribution of $50,000 last year; while the family is high-income, the cost of the autistic child’s private school necessitated taking a distribution. The amount to be included in this family’s adjusted gross income depends on the total amount of trust income and the amount of money the other beneficiaries received.</p>
<p>The beneficiary can’t just use 2009’s trust income to estimate 2010’s trust income because several changes occurred last year, including the fact that the trust’s largest tenant moved out and declared bankruptcy before the year was over and the trust made purchases mid-year that will be depreciated for tax purposes over several years. Once the trust’s accountant determines the trust’s taxable income, it will be allocated for tax purposes among the beneficiaries that received distributions. But even if the beneficiary knew the amount of 2010 trust income, the effect on this family’s adjusted gross income cannot be determined before March 15, as federal income tax law allows the trust until that date in 2011 to make distributions that will count for 2010, and there are several other beneficiaries who could receive a distribution. This family’s additional income for FAFSA purposes as a result of the trust distribution could range from $0 to $50,000. The only way for this family to get an estimate for FAFSA purposes that is even remotely close to the true number is to spend a lot more than a few minutes and pay the trust’s accountant to give a preliminary estimate before all the facts are in. </p>
<p>In this case, the OP asked for help composing a letter explaining that he or she was not planning to file FAFSA. Instead of helping with the letter, some posters have criticized the OP’s decision without having any idea of his or her financial situation. While I am confident that many can file FAFSA based on last year’s pay stubs, for others it could take hours and hundreds of dollars just to gather the information early enough to meet the deadlines.</p>
<p>MisterK also made a good point about sharing personal financial data.</p>