<p>Yes, I was planning on filing it ASAP after we do our taxes. My question is this: is there any advantage to filing the CSS in October and the FAFSA in early January with estimated information, then updating the information later?</p>
<p>Follow Reed’s advice concerning the fafsa. Complete it early in January with estimated income information and actual asset information. This meets school’s deadlines. Update the income information when taxes are done. You and your parents need to file early, this isn’t the year to delay. </p>
<p>For profile, you need to check each school’s finaid website and follow their instructions to the letter and meet all deadlines. Each finaid website should say whether you need your non-custodial parent’s info. Meet all deadlines, use estimates for the initial filing and follow the instructions on each website as to if and how that school wants updates to the profile.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Yes, that’s the way schools want it done. That’s the only way to meet Feb. 1 deadlines. Follow the instructions and deadlines on each school’s website.</p>
<p>Does the profile have a separate application for each school? I applied to 7 schools that take the profile. Please don’t tell me I’ll need to file a separate one for each school :-S </p>
<p>Looks like I’ll start filling out the CSS profile soon. I’ll do the FAFSA on Jan. 1 because I’m timely. Colleges should know that. I applied to some schools the day their application opened 
</p>
<p>No you just file one profile, you will just pay $16 for each additional report</p>
<p>Ian…just don’t forget to update your FAFSA and Profile when your taxes are completed. </p>
<p>Look at your school deadlines. If the school deadline for the Profile is after the first of the year, and you are applying regular decision, I don’t think there is a benefit to doing it sooner.</p>
<p>You can update the FAFSA online. You need to call each college for their procedure for updating the Profile.</p>
<p>Thank you! I will begin filling out the profile tonight. This entire process makes absolutely no sense. File the estimated profile before submitting taxes 
Just one more way that colleges are screwing the people that aren’t prepared. Thank you, College Confidential.</p>
<p>Ian…are you applying ED or EA to a school? If not, check their Profile deadlines. Many are after February 1. And all are after January 1. </p>
<p>ED or EA applicants sometimes have an early priority deadline for filing the Profile. </p>
<p>At some schools, applicants must file admission applications by December 1 to be considered for certain merit awards.</p>
<p>Your best bet is to check EACH college website. Deadlines will vary.</p>
<p>You don’t fill out the CSS/Profile and FAFSA after you do your taxes. Your parents will likely not get their taxes done until after you have applied to college. We are just using our 2013 taxes scaled based on estimate 2014 pay. You really need to spend some time researching the FA process. But it might be moot because your parents won’t pay at all, and need-based FA is out of the question if your parents make 140K per year together.</p>
<p>Your situation, where your parents say that they won’t pay one dime for college, is uncommon but not rare. Trouble is, colleges don’t give a crap. Unless you get declared independent, your parents are expected to contribute.</p>
<p>You need to ask your parents this: will you pay ANYTHING for my college at all?</p>
<p>If the answer is “absolutely not, not one dime”, you have to go to a community college. Room and board alone will be an issue anywhere else, unless you live at home. Who will pay for books?</p>
<p>It is far more likely that they don’t want to pay “too much” for college. Do they pay for you to play any sports or attend activities? Do some math, and figure out how much they are paying now for having you at home not in college. If they could contribute $5,000 per year, that would be something at least. You say they have “not a single penny saved for your college education” - do you mean that they have no savings, or that they didn’t save specifically for you and won’t allow any savings to be used on your college education?</p>
<p>Of course another alternative is to get a job after high school, at a place that will pay for a course or two a semester and get your degree part-time.</p>
<p>Just a clarification. Although you may submit the CSS profile for all schools at the same time, each school may have different additional questions (just like CommonApp supplements). In additional, each school would use their ways to calculate your EFC even based on the same profile submission.</p>
<p>I believe the deadline for CSS profile at Stanford SCEA is November 15.</p>
<p>A quick question - the CSS/Profile and FAFSA don’t give you an immediate expected decision, do they? You have to submit them and the college, if they accept you, will tell you what the FA package is, correct?</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>These words mean the same thing.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Schools need time to prepare award packages. With estimates they can get started on the process sooner and make adjustments when the taxes are filed. If they waited until people filed their taxes to start the process, there wouldn’t be time to get the packages to admitted students by the end of March for the May 1 decision date. Remember they are preparing packages for all admitted students, not just the ones who decide in the end to attend.</p>
<p>OP, you should go through the interactive profile presentation here to understand the process:</p>
<p><a href=“CSS Profile – CSS Profile | College Board”>College Board - SAT, AP, College Search and Admission Tools;
<p>To you, they might mean the same thing, to me, they don’t. </p>
<p>Common is occurring more often than average, more than 50% of the time.</p>
<p>Uncommon is occurring less often than average, less than 50% of the time. </p>
<p>Rare is understood to be less than 5% of the time.</p>
<p>The point of a thesaurus is to show words with similar, not identical meanings.</p>
<p>My opinion is likely because I like birdwatching. It is uncommon to see a turkey vulture near my house. It is rare to see a golden-crowned kinglet, although I have seen one.</p>
<p>It is uncommon to have red hair. It is rare to have alopecia.</p>
<p>Dear rhandco,</p>
<p>I’m dual enrolled at a community college now. Will graduate high school with AA. Community college isn’t an option.</p>
<p>I’m not clueless of naive about my situation; I’m simply asking questions I need to succeed. I hate when people on CC try to give me new ideas. I’m trying to figure out how to afford university A, so don’t tell me to go to university B.</p>
<p>Thanks for everyone’s feedback here. I think I have a more informed idea about financial aid. I’m filling out the CSS profile tonight with my parents.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Hmmm… if we’re putting hard and fast numbers on these words, where are you getting your information that parents refusing to pay “one dime for college” happens less than 50% of the time but more than 5% of the time?</p>
<p>rhandco: The FAFSA will actually give you an estimate of what you qualify for when you are finished. It says something like “You are eligible for a $5730 Pell Grant and a $5,500 Direct loan.” It is then up to the school to actually confirm that these awards are accurate and able to be disbursed to the student. Sometimes students will punch in estimates on the FAFSA, think they are getting Pell - and upon verification by the school they lose it. I don’t work at a CSS/profile school so I can’t speak to that. </p>
<p>Schools may use your FAFSA data to double check your CSS profile. They may also request IDOC to verify your entry. In most cases, the financial aid package is only an estimation until everything is verified. </p>
<p>When will I know 100% for sure what each school will cost?</p>
<p>Laneberle, you will know 100% for sure what each school will cost when you get the final award letter. Even then there are often caveats. </p>
<p>The way it works with PROFILE is that a lot of schools use it for early decision or early read awards. You are supposed to file the PROFILE using best guess numbers fo the 2014 calendar year. The advice is usually to use pay stubs up to the date of filing plus any other income received to that date, and then extrapolate to the end of the year and use 2013 as a guide. </p>
<p>FAFSA does not even become available until 1/1/2015, and it may take some time to compile the info to use on it. Assets don’t matter because you just snap shot them on the day you file (make sure you don’t have earmarked funds in there–spend that money, payday is not a good day to file) </p>
<p>All of this is often verified by tax returns. But in the mean time, estimated awards are put together.</p>
<p>It’s important at many schools to file early and exaggerate the need a bit understanding that it will be cut when actual info is available because certain funds are limited. When it 's gone, that’s it. Schools often have only so much in their own grants as well as what they have from the feds. Even workstudy and Perkins loan money are usually limited. For those schools that do not guarantee to meet full need and don’t for their students, when you are late, you are often out of luck. </p>
<p>The fact of the matter is that info ever comes to the attention of the schools that your income, etc are not as you reported them with aid so bases, an adjustment can be made. The award is as accurate as the info you give the schools.</p>
<p>Nothing is cast in concrete until the college issues a final award confirmation, which can be late spring. Right now, the best source for deadlines and details is the colleges themselves. </p>
<p>Right, if you file for aid before completing 2014 tax forms, you start with best estimates. When you do the CSS it allows you to enter codes for a number of colleges- if a college has supplemental questions (extra info it wants,) those will show up in a supplemental section. </p>
<p>But, you will need to correct any errors between the estimates and your final true tax return. You will need to submit copies of those tax returns (usually this means for 2014 and for 2013,) so the schools can verify. Partly they run you through this to be fair to all aid applicants and partly to meet regulations.</p>
<p>The colleges use their own formulas to process the aid request. No applicant knows until they know (except, in some cases, where you quaify for guaranteed merit.) The NPCs are an estimate for the info you input on that school’s calculator. If income fluctuates you can try different sets of numbers, for some what-if. You may also need the NCP/non-custodial parent forms and different schools can treat NCP and their spouse’s info differently. You say you know some about finaid, but our bits round out the picture for you.</p>
<p>In addn to the schools’ web pages, you can look at “Financial Aid for Dummies” or Finaid.org. You have four adults in the picture, which can potentially add its own complication. So step through this cautiously.</p>
<p>Agree the Fafsa EFC on 140k is going to be substantially higher than 14k. I think you misread what Reed actually says. </p>