In filling out the FAFSA and CSS forms, I’ve heard that you enter your asset value as of the day you fill out the form. If you are full pay according to NPCs at schools, does it matter what your actual exact asset value is?
If you are going to be full pay and you don’t want to accurately enter your asset value - why not just not fill out the FAFSA and the CSS?
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Oh I will be filling them out, but it’s a lot more work for me if I need to be thorough and exact.
Again, why will you be filling out FAFSA and Profile if you are full pay? What’s the point? And if for whatever reason you are completing FAFSA and Profile, you don’t have the option to not be “thorough and exact.”
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I’ve read that work study is tied to filling out a FAFSA. Are you saying that if a student/family is full pay, then there’s no chance of getting work study anyway? I’ve also read that if you don’t fill out the FAFSA for freshman year then you can’t fill one out for the following college years, thereby nullifying the opportunity to update your financial situation if it were to change. I’ve also read some schools require FAFSA for merit aid.
If I’m mistaken about any of this, I’d love to be corrected.
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If you are full-pay, your child definitely will not qualify for work-study. Work-study is a subsidized program by which the government pays for part of the student’s wage, making it cheaper for the college to hire those students.
So saying, your child can still get an on-campus job. Often times, schools open applications to work-study students first and if there are still jobs available after those students have applied, open those jobs to everyone on campus. There are also usually many jobs on campus not tied to work study at all.
A few specific schools will not allow families to submit FAFSA if the student didn’t submit their first year - but that is only in regards to the college’s institutional funds, and not very many schools have that restriction. You should check if any of the schools your child is applying to even have that restriction.
Any family can filed the FAFSA form any year their child is in college in order to qualify for federal funds and/or loans. No matter if they did or didn’t file freshman year.
ETA: We are a full pay family and did not fill out FAFSA or CSS for any of the schools to which our daughter applied. She was awarded merit aid at every school. Merit aid is often times not at all attached to filling out FAFSA. Again, you should check with the specific schools your child is looking at and not believe generalities you “saw somewhere”.
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@AgeofAquarius are you asking something like how down to the penny you have to be for trading prices for stocks and investments and things like that? I am not sure, but it’s a good question.
My D22 is applying to a school that has a merit scholarship for families that have an annual income of less than $150k, but they do require the FAFSA even though we will not qualify for need-based aid. She will also have an on-campus job if she goes there as that is a requirement and it will pay for part of her tuition.
But I think that is the only school on her list that ties the merit to filling out the FAFSA.
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On the day you complete FAFSA, add up all the assets asked for in whichever particular question and round to the nearest whole dollar. There’s your answer. In this day and age, for most people, getting the amount of your holdings in any FAFSA reported asset is as easy as logging in to your bank or investment firm account to see what the real-time balance is.
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If your student has a work study job or is receiving a merit scholarship, your student is not full pay.
Not filing FAFSA in year 1 will not restrict the student from filing FAFSA in any future year.
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Some people’s finances are complicated. Obviously, I don’t know what @AgeofAquarius is dealing with, but just thought that might be where the question was leading.
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We’re also full pay and also thought we should fill out FAFSA for these reasons. Although I agree with the others that work-study programs are a form of need-based aid.
Some merit scholarships are need-based, but many schools have merit scholarships that are not linked to family need. I think the question OP (and I) have is whether FAFSA needs to be completed in order to receive those non-need based merit scholarships. (And it sounds like the answer is - it depends on the school?).
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Yes, it depends on the school. I think the vast majority of merit awards that come directly from the schools do not require submission of FAFSA or other financial information. And at the risk of appearing nit-picky, a merit scholarship that is need-based is not a true merit scholarship. At best, if there is only a small need-based component in awarding the scholarship, I would still call it a hybrid award. A true merit award is based strictly on merit - no need-based considerations at all.
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You need to be exact. Just go online the day you plan to file and look at your asset balances.
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Federal work study is awarded to students with financial need. If you don’t have financial need, your student will not receive a work study award. It’s a form of need based aid.
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There are a small handful of colleges that do place restrictions on applying for their institutional aid In subsequent years if you don’t complete the forms freshman year….for U.S. residents.
Now…if you are an international student, many many colleges require you to complete the forms year one.
Yes, some people’s finances are complicated. That’s in part why I said “most people.” What situation can you think of where the value of a FAFSA reportable asset, other than real estate or a business, cannot be readily determined with high accuracy? And even the current reasonable values of real estate and businesses, while sometimes highly subjective, can usually be obtained without much fuss.
Yes that’s true, I guess I wouldn’t call those pure merit scholarships either. Hybrid is a good term. 
And I guess I misread your earlier post about a student getting a merit scholarship not being full pay. I guess when I read “your student is not full pay” I thought you meant student is getting need-based. But yes, technically the student getting merit aid is not full pay. I think when I think of our family as full pay it’s because we’re still at the application stage and not knowing if any merit aid might come, we are looking at full cost of tuition and based on all calculators, we’d be considered fully pay.
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Well, real estate and business were two I was thinking of. And obviously the stock market fluctuates, but that’s to be expected and accounted for I guess. I don’t know, we have not looked at the FAFSA yet, so I am learning a lot on this thread.
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Well, for instance, MIL bought multiple EE (paper) savings bonds for D over the years. I don’t know what to do with those, I don’t know how much they’re currently worth, and they’re issued as either $100 or $200 increments. She also mistakenly put H’s SSN on some of them instead of D’s. It’s not that much money, and will have no effect on our SAI, so that’s part of my question about being “thorough and exact.”
Edit to add: I spent most of yesterday figuring out how to access TreasuryDirect since I bought I bonds years ago to help pay for school. It’s just time consuming for little benefit.
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if it were me (and I am NOT in this position!) – if our efc was close to the college’s COA, I’d fill out all forms completely and thoroughly in hopes of some aid. If i knew our EFC was Well Over the COA of the college from just first glance or quick online calculators, I’d probably just use already known balances and estimates for things like the savings bonds, and not spend hours on something with absolutely no payback. I’d also check with the colleges to see if merit scholarships have any need portion attached to them.
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