<p>A number given me by the college board to see about sending taxes through I-docs is never answered. It starts by giving an estimated wait time of 30 minutes and then cuts off the caller. I've called starting at 7 in the morning and until 9 at night.</p>
<p>We submitted FAFSA and CSS Profile on time and now the next step is to get some sort of cover sheet that lets us send our 2010 taxes to a clearing house that then scans them and sends them to the colleges that require them. It's very secure, so secure that I can't figure out even how to get into the system for a simple question!</p>
<p>We have 2 colleges that require 2010 taxes, not estimated income, before they will start processing the financial aid forms. It's unbelievable that such an important step seems to impossible to accomplish.</p>
<p>Does anyone have any suggestions? Thank you.</p>
<p>I thought we received the cover letter “in early February” according to the message we got from college board when we submitted the CSS. It seemed we were supposed to wait for this to happen. I’m on safari and my daughter is on firefox.</p>
<p>The Cover Sheet is not in the email, it’s on your child’s IDOC account. You need to go to the IDOC website and log in; you don’t actually need the IDOC number that is emailed to you, you can get in with your child’s birthdate and SS#. Once you get into IDOC you will be able to download and print out the Cover Sheet for your child. I use Firefox and haven’t had a problem.</p>
<p>You’re welcome! Truthfully, I think that FA is the most daunting, circuitous, poorly explained & understood part of the college application process. And for most people, it’s critical that they receive FA to make college doable. Maybe it’s a plot to make it harder to qualify for limited FA dollars ;).</p>
<p>Keep coming back here with your questions, we have some amazing members who know the process forward and backward.</p>
<p>As it turns out, only one of our colleges needed tax returns and they suggested I just send the forms to them directly rather than go through IDOC. I almost fell over.</p>
<p>The IDOC people never got back to me after an automatic reply to my email promising a response within 24 hours. Both the colleges I talked with tried to convince me to relax and “trust the system” but in this whole process we would have missed interviews and financial aid deadlines had we trusted in emails that either didn’t come or were caught by our spam filter.</p>
<p>I don’t know how people juggle 8-10 applications and stay on top of it all. I am particularly bothered about the lack of accessibility of the IDOCs process. I think somebody should look into these people. The schools that require CSS should know that it is almost impossible to get this crucial step accomplished by simply trusting the system.</p>
<p>Anyway, all is well, but it was a pretty stressful couple of weeks.</p>