I keep hearing about FASCA and am 99.9% sure we will not qualify for anything unless my DD gets something for merit or separate scholarships. I’ve heard it is a pain in the butt to fill out and wondering if it is REQUIRED or is there some benefit that I am not seeing???
Jenn
You don’t have to fill it out if you are SURE you won’t get or need need based aid. If you want the government loans, you must fill it out. Some schools or programs require it for merit aid (I think GA does does HOPE/Miller).
For most people, it is not that difficult to fill out. You use your tax returns and bank statements.
You mean FAFSA, right? I would recommend filling it out even though you expect to be full pay because sometimes there are merit scholarships that are not publicized much.
There are three reasons that you might want to file the FAFSA (and other financial aid paperwork when your student is applying to college, even though you don’t expect to qualify for need-based aid.
The institution requires it for consideration for merit-based aid. Quite a few do. They want to make sure that students who will qualify for federal/state need-based aid get that money.
The institution will not award need-based aid in future years, no matter how severe the family’s financial reversal, if the student doesn’t apply for it with the initial admission application. Yup. A fair number of institutions do have this policy.
You want your kid to be able to borrow a federal student loan.
Read the college/university websites carefully, and contact the aid offices if necessary, to verify their specific aid policies.
We don’t qualify for need based aid, but I did fill it out during the application cycle for potential merit. In the end, my 3 attended state school and we did not continue to complete FAFSA during subsequent school years.
We did not fill out FAFSA. Our S19 only applied to private schools that would be full pay for us. I ran Net Price Calculators and we never received any need based aid. I did call all of the schools to make sure they didn’t need it in order to consider him for merit and they all said they did not. I also asked if we could file at a later date for other years down the road if that ended up being something we thought we needed to do and they all said yes. I would call the schools on your student’s list.
Remember that need for financial aid is not just based on income. You will see in the NPCs that non retirement savings is also considered. I ran the NPCs with just one child in college and then again noting two in college to see if our need would change at all when D21 goes to college but we were still full pay. If your student intends to take the federal unsubsidized loans, though, you do need to file. Many of S19’s schools also required the CSS Profile and we knew that giving even more financial info would just make our EFC go up even more (we own our house, etc). We definitely did not want to file that if we didn’t have to.
The FAFSA does not take much time to fill out.
For schools that require the CSS Profile, those take a lot more effort and time.
@CaliforniaMomma I don’t know who told you the FAFSA was a “pain” to fill out, but they were wrong. If you have your tax returns, and your bank statements, you are good to go…and you fill in the blanks.
The Profile takes a little more time, because you need some additional information.
If you are OK with paying the full cost of attendance at the colleges to which your kid applies…you never need to complete a financial aid application form.
But don’t make assumptions…there are net price calculators on all college websites that will give you an estimate of your net costs to attend. Complete those and see what you get for net costs. You might be surprised that your student does qualify for need based aid…maybe.
Oh…if you are self employed or own a business, divorced, or own real estate in addition to your primary residence, the net price calculators tend to be less accurate.
When we toured GA Tech when oldest S was a hs junior, tour guide told us that his parents didn’t think he’d get any financial aid but they filled out the FAFSA anyway and were pleased to get some aid for him and his twin brother who also attended. He advised everyone on the tour to fill out FAFSA even if they didn’t think they qualified for aid. That was the first I’d even heard of FAFSA but made a note to find out what it meant.
I agree with the above and heard of many families very surprised to find out that they did qualify for something
You may not want to fill out FAFSA if your Ds favorite school is a reach. Applying ED without FAFSA is a guaranteed full pay student and might be the separating factor. Some schools are truly “need blind”, so it will not help there: I’m just not sure which ones truly are. If your not going to get any money anyway, its better to use this possible “hook” then to simply give away this possible advantage.
I don’t know why people wouldn’t fill it out. It takes all of 15 minutes.
Interesting to cite GT, my 2014 applicant has just got a letter about their huge data breach.
It really is quick to fill out the FAFSA. Also since it can be filled out in October you might not know every school your student may apply to. It is worth it simply in case merit depends on it.
Thank you for replying! We are spending some time this summer trying to figure out the whole college plan and I kept reading that families said it required a lot of time.
Cross post with above comment.
Agree with posters that once you have your documents ready, FAFSA is straightforward.
Some selected resources for your research:
-https://studentaid.ed.gov/sa/fafsa- opens 10/1/2019 for 2020/21
-Meanwhile use https://studentaid.ed.gov/sa/fafsa/estimate to estimate aid
-https://blog.ed.gov/2018/09/8-steps-to-filling-out-the-fafsa-form-2/ (will be updated when 2020/21 FAFSA is available on 10/1/2019)
And you can always fill out the FAFSA later if you may want a direct student loan or think you may qualify for federal aid like work study or a Pell grant. Schools may have a priority deadline to award any federal aid like SEOG or work study, or its own grants, but even if you don’t file until your student is already in school, if you are entitled to Pell, or if you want a loan, you can file ‘late’ or in a subsequent year.
So are there cases where you would fill out FAFSA but not CSS?
This FAFSA thing is a real question for us.
So far, all schools I’ve asked have said they don’t require it for merit aid.
I don’t imagine that we’d qualify for any need based aid , although we will have 2 kids in college at once and wonder if that makes a difference.
I HATE giving out personal info.
As someone said above, we wonder about the positive effects of applying ED without requesting financial aid. Though also feel like suckers if we volunteer to pay full price.
Lots of questions.
Some colleges do not use CSS Profile at all.
You may, for example, file FAFSA because:
But, even if the above is true, you may find that none of the following apply to CSS Profile: