Totally agree. If the school requires these forms for whatever reasons…you do them if you want their money!
@thumper1 I am interested in your experience with the merit scholarship at BU since that is one of the schools on my DD’s list. We will be full-pay and do not plan on filing either the FAFSA or the CSSProfile. On their website, they state that “most” merit scholarships do not require that families file for financial aid but then “strongly encourage” families to file for need-based aid so that if you are awarded a merit scholarship you’ll also be considered for supplementary financial aid.
This is confusing to me. Ihey don’t appear to tell which scholarships require the financial aid forms. When your son was awarded the merit scholarship, did BU then tell you that you had to file for financial aid? That would have been late (April/May), right? Did you end up getting additional money?
My son graduated from BU in 2007…so policies likely have changed. At the time, one had to file the financial,aid forms for all merit awards. So,we did. And we did it for his sophomore year too. They then changed the policy re: the Profile and merit awards, and for renewal one did not meet to complete the Profile unless circumstances changed (we did one his senior year when his sis was a college freshman).
You would have to contact them to see what the policy is now.
We did the fafsa all four years for Direct Loan purposes.
I think this is a related-enough question to post it here - forgive me if it should be a separate thread:
We will not qualify for need-based aid, but if any of the schools DD is applying to that offer merit (W&L, Vandy, Wake and the Robertson for Duke) will require the FAFSA, do we fill it out and just send it to the ones who ask for it? I’ve never filled one out or seen the questions, so I don’t know if there’s any reason or requirement to send it to all schools she applies to or just the ones who ask for it for merit purposes. Thoughts?
I suppose that is right. They want to preserve scholarship funds. They don’t want you to come back in May looking for aid, and have to pull it if you get FA.
Now why someone who is taking zero aid gets selected for verification (repeatedly) seems pretty silly to me…
D needed to file for NYU and Brandeis. She recd merit aid from both even though out EFC was high.
@GnocchiB , the FASFA allows you to specify where it will be sent so you wOukd only need to send to schools that did require it for merit.
GnocchiB - We will send it to only the ones requesting it to be considered for any Merit Scholarships. We already know that we do not qualify for any type of financial aid.
We got selected for verification all four years for our son when he was an undergrad. He had a merit music performance scholarship, and the unsubsized Direct Loan. We sent the school everything they asked for…every year.
Rhodes College required both the FAFSA and CSS for merit scholarship consideration. I recall that both Rhodes and Emory University both had scholarships available for a particular religious affiliation (perhaps due to the founders of the colleges) which they might not otherwise know about unless you completed the CSS.
There already is a religion box on the Common App, and they certainly could ask about religious affiliation in the supplemental questions – asking parents to do a FAFSA and Profile and PAY for the Profile just to get religious affiliation sounds ridiculous.
I think some of these schools are just plain nosy.