Does financial aid work independently of admissions? Our Fafsa and CSS profile are showing downloaded on some school checklists but not others. We applied ED for one school and EA for a few others. Are the profiles downloaded for every applicant or just the ones in the potential admit pile?
Much of the financial aid processing can be done in an automated fashion which presumably calculates financial aid for simple common cases and flags more complex cases for human review, which can be done in parallel with admission processing, so that most of the financial aid work is completed when admissions work is completed.
When admission is done, financial aid may have to make some changes, such as adding merit scholarships that admissions recommends for an admitted applicant, before the admission and financial aid offer can be delivered.
So the fact that a college is looking at your financial aid application does not necessarily indicating anything about likelihood of admission.
Friend worked in financial aid. As noted above, preliminary work was done for most students…with the final work done only if the student is accepted.
Do financial aid offices work separately from admissions? Well…in most cases, yes. If a school is need aware, the admissions folks might know your financial need, but the admissions office wouldn’t be looking at your submitted financial aid forms.
As with so many things, it depends upon the school. The vast majority of colleges are need blind for admissions so that the FAFSA and other fin aid info is sent to that department and dealt with separately from Admissions, coordinating only about timing of notifications.