Son has a few 1/1 RD applications with earlier 12/1 deadlines (for full app) to be considered for a scholarship. I have not yet sent FAFSA or CSS to those schools. My hesitation is this: does a request for aid in any way affect how one is assessed for a scholarship? I wouldn’t want our relatively high EFC to negatively influence a scholarship chance.
If it is solely a merit award, your income won’t matter.
But do check…because there are a small number of schools that require submission of the financial aid forms even for merit aid consideration.
@thumper1 Ah. I will double check to see if we must submit the aid forms for merit consideration. I didn’t see anything about that on the sites. They said basically that if you submit your “full application” by a certain date, then you will automatically be considered. Now I am questioning whether “full” means including FA forms. I would hope that they would specifically say it if the forms were required.
In the event that aid forms are not required for scholarship consideration, should I submit now or wait till later? I guess it might not matter if scholarship finalists aren’t announced until January or February anyway b/c by then I’d have to have submitted aid forms anyway.
The FA page should say by what date the FAFSA/CSS profile should be filed
For the schools with scholarship early deadlines of 12/1, the FA deadline is 2/15 for RD, which S would be (just sending a month before RD deadline for scholarship).
We had no financial need and my D1 received a merit scholarship. We were told to file just before she entered school. If you are in doubt ask the school.