<p>My dad used the collegeboard's financial aid calculator, but because our income is too high, it said we wouldn't get any aid, so is it still worth it to fill out the FAFSA and CSS profile and submit them and tax documents to schools if we pretty much won't get anything?</p>
<p>“Even if you think your family earns too much to qualify for aid, or too little for the aid to make much of a difference, students are encouraged to complete and submit a FAFSA.
Regardless of income, most families are eligible for multiple types of aid, such as federal loans (Stafford and PLUS), and students are frequently surprised by the amount of aid for which they qualify. Filing is free, and unless you apply, you’ll never know how much assistance you may be eligible to receive.”</p>
<p>From the FAFSA website. It couldn’t hurt.</p>
<p>There are a few schools that give a bonus if you complete the FAFSA (Stetson U is one). Also, I completed them for my daughter and she got an alum scholarship that she wouldn’t have been eligible for it she hadn’t filled it out. You also can take the Stafford loans, and while you can fill in the FAFSA later if you need the loans in second semester, if you have it on file it will be faster.</p>
<p>For some schools, you cannot get merit scholarships without filling out the FAFSA.</p>
<p>Oh, the merit scholarships part is important. Thank you!</p>
<p>I am concerned that filling in the FAFSA for the merit-money schools has the potential for schools to lower the amt of the merit award on the basis of household income, i.e. award a token sum rather than a meaningful sum.</p>
<p>There are some merit-aid schools like UMich & Carnegie Mellon which require the FAFSA for merit aid. We’re not going to bother w those schools.</p>
<p>I don’t think schools are lowering MERIT aid based on a FAFSA. Many schools use a formula and if you have a certain gpa/scores combo, you get $X. </p>
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<p>I’m worried about the same thing. Our D is up for quite a few full tuition scholarships. The truth is we can probably pay up to 35k without any borrowing. If we were to open up our finances, the colleges would know that. Colleges are businesses - if they could have a high stats kid by giving her a 20k scholarship, why would they give her full tuition? In my opinion, you’ll have more leverage if you keep them guessing. </p>
<p>No, you’ll have the most leverage if you get financial aid from several schools who will then compete to get your kid to come there. That worked with our son. We weren’t eligible for aid but he was offered decent merit aid at a couple of schools, which we were then able to use to negotiate with other schools as well. </p>