<p>Must you complete the FAFSA. We don't qualify for FA and I am not sure if it will help or hurt admissions process by not completing FAFSA. Do you know anyone who has not filed FAFSA? If so, what is their experience?</p>
<p>no - not required in many cases. Best to check with your specific school. In our case, DS has not had to file FAFSA for any of his. Of course it doesn’t hurt to do so, for in the event your situation changes, there you have it done.</p>
<p>Check just in case because some schools rely on the FAFSA even for merit aid for some reason, and if you need an unsubsidized Stafford Loan you can get that regardless of if you qualify for aid or not.</p>
<p>If your family will totally fund it all on their own, you shouldn’t need to do a FAFSA, but it’s hard to say that no school would require it for some obscure reason.</p>
<p>We have never filed a FAFSA. </p>
<p>If you don’t qualify for aid, then the only reason to file is if you want your child to take an unsub student loan.</p>
<p>Also, some say you should file in case something happens in the future and your child may need aid. And, some schools ask families to submit a FAFSA for scholarship consideration. None of the schools that my kids applied to ever required one.</p>
<p>It never hurts to apply. You may qualify for some type of grant incentive that you didn’t know existed. Free money is always a good thing. And like someone else said, you can take an unsubsidized loan if you need the extra money.</p>
<p>We filled out the forms for one rolling admit school and one top private EA that gave a preliminary estimate with the early admit. The news was: you are going to pay it all.</p>
<p>After that, we dispensed with the forms. I saw no reason to have the details of our financial lives lying around college admissions offices when there was no upside to it. </p>
<p>NOTE: if you are applying to a school that requires the forms for a merit scholarship, then fill them out. My son and daughter both have merit scholarships, however, that were awarded without filing any financial aid forms.</p>
<p>Just check the web sites of the target colleges.</p>
<p>We have not filed either. DD earned a merit scholarship.</p>
<p>Please note some schools may require you to fill out FAFSA for a merit scholarship. We had to do that for DD1 but only for freshman year.</p>
<p>^ What Erin’s Dad said - I had a merit scholarship in college and I had to fill out FAFSA every year to maintain it, even though it wasn’t at all need-based.</p>
<p>If this is the case for merit aid the college will tell you to do so.</p>