I guess this is a personal problem between my father and I, but what it comes down to is he’s stubborn and refuses to “disclose” our financial information to my colleges. He will not listen to any reason from my guidance counselor nor me. I will certainly be needing financial assistance in order to go to college so I’m really not sure what I should do. Do I call up each institution and explain my situation? I’m still financially dependent on my parents so I’d need to report their information but they weren’t going to pay anything anyway. My dad claims he didn’t have to do this for my brother, but he doesn’t listen when I explain my brother went to a school that did not require CSS. Any advice would be greatly appreciated, thanks.
Disclosing all financial information from both parents is mandatory. Tell him if he does not, than you will not qualify for any aid. It is in his best interest to maximize your aid.
Did you apply to any FAFSA only schools? If not, I’d see if any are still accepting applications and get a couple in ASAP. I can’t imagine that we can convince him if your guidance counselor won’t. I guess the only thing I can suggest is to take screen shots of the pages saying you must submit the CSS profile to apply for FA for your colleges, and print them all or email them to him and ask him to read them. Tell him you can’t find the spot where it says you can get FA without it, and ask him to find it if possible. Or you could ask him to call one or more of your colleges to see if FA can be granted without a CSS profile. Even if he is badly behaved in that call, it is better than not getting the form filled out at all. They will tell him there is no choice – but maybe he has to hear it from them instead of from you or your GC. Is there one of your schools HE likes? Ask him to call that one…
Assuming that he is a divorced non-custodial parent (NCP), he has prevented you from getting financial aid other than federal aid at schools which require NCP information.
You need to make your college list out of the following:
- Schools whose list price without financial aid is affordable.
- Schools where you will (for safeties) or can (for matches/reaches) get sufficiently large merit scholarships.
- Schools which do not require the NCP information to give sufficient financial aid (based on their net price calculators). Most CSS Profile using schools do require NCP information, so most candidate schools will be FAFSA only schools (however, if you are a high-stats non-engineering hopeful, consider University of Chicago as well, since it no longer requires NCP information -- it uses FAFSA and student's choice of its own form or CSS Profile without NCP).
For the first two categories, see the lists in http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/financial-aid-scholarships/1678964-links-to-popular-threads-on-scholarships-and-lower-cost-colleges.html .
If he is actually your custodial parent, then only the first two categories of schools will be realistic options.
I don’t this is a non-custodial situation. I get a sense this is the profile itself he won’t fill out.
If the unwilling father is the custodial parent, then the OP needs to make a list out of schools affordable at list price or with merit scholarships.
ETA…in August, you wrote the following:
It sounds like your dad doesn’t have any financials to show.
Swdasa. Are your parents married or divorced?
If they are married, did your dad do the FAFSA for your brother…or is he simply paying the full cost for your brother to attend college?
If your parents are divorced, the. Your dad would not be on the FAFSA…but some colleges will require his financial information for consideration for their institutional aid.
Which is is…married or divorced?
Also, what about your mom? If your parents are still married, will SHE complete the Profile?
There is no point in calling the colleges. Clearly, you know where your dad is, and he is simply refusing to complete the form. The colleges that require the Profile, and his information will simply NOT process your application for institutional aid…because your application will be incomplete.
My parents are still married, but my mother would never go against his wishes. I’ll continue to try to reason with him, and worse comes to worse I attend my local state school which only asks for fafsa. Thank you for all your inputs, I just wasn’t sure if it was possible to get around submitting CSS.
He must have done the FAFSA for your brother yes? And is he doing FAFSA for you? If he is, CSS isn’t that much more information if he is unemployed. You can fill the FAFSA yourself likely and he can sign it.
The CSS will qualify you for ‘free money’ from the college, grants that do not have to be paid back. The colleges with the most money to give ask for the CSS profile. And if your income is low, then you can qualify for the grants. If you don’t fill it out, then your financial aid file is incomplete and won’t be processed at all. You will have to pay the full price. Does he understand that part? No, there is no getting around the CSS for schools that ask for that. I suppose if you do the FAFSA only for them, they may process your federal aid, which would not be enough to attend (Pell grant and student loan basically.) They will not give you the college/university aid that it sounds like you would need to attend. After all, you might have a million dollars stashed somewhere that doesn’t show on FAFSA. Then they would not want to give the money to a millionaire-- they will save it for someone who needs it. But the less you have the more you get at ‘meets full need’ colleges.
For the CSS schools:
FAFSA - gets you federal money
CSS - gets you university grants
Does he understand it does’t obligate him to pay anything? It is only used to determine how much they will give you.
So if he won’t fill it out you can’t go to that school, you will have to go somewhere else. There is no point in calling them. Do you know why he won’t fill it? What is the reason? What does he think disclosing it does except to show that you need money and they can then give it to you?
Isn’t the CSS filed by the student? If you filled out the FAFSA & don’t have any other assets than the ones reported on it, you can just copy/paste the info. If you have your own debit card or savings account, pay the fee from there. Or explain situation to a close friend/friend’s parent & ask them to lend you $ for the fee & pay them later. Or a teacher who likes you.
Lilliana330. The FAFSA is supposed to be filed by the student as well. But the reality is…you need a lot more information to complete the Profile…things like the values of your home, the amount remaining on your mortgage, and some schools ask for balances in retirement accounts.
My guess is THESE are the things the dad does not want provided to others.
And the FAFSA is free while the Profile has a fee for submission. How many schools require the Profile? Is it possible that the cost of submitting is a part of the reason for not wanting to do the Profile?
To the OP…your dad is willing to complete the FAFSA. He is giving much of that financial information on the FAFSA anyway. What exactly does he NOT wish to provide on the Profile? Ask him.
Did the dad fill out FAFSA ? If so, and the family really has little money and likely no assets, then filling our CSS won’t really require more info, would it?
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worse comes to worse I attend my local state school which only asks for fafsa.
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This makes no sense. If your Dad will fill out FAFSA, then he is “disclosing his financial info to colleges” which he’s claiming that he doesn’t want to do!
Maybe your dad is naive and is thinking that only the fed gov’t sees your FAFSA results? IF so, then you can’t tell him that the schools see the info, too, otherwise he may suddenly refuse to do FAFSA.
I wonder what his beef is with having “colleges see”??? Maybe he’s embarrassed about his job situation? But even so, it’s not like the school is ever going to see him and declare, “hey there goes the guy who isn’t working.”
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Both of my parents are college educated, my dad has his MBA,
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Is your dad unreasonable abut other things as well? I’m asking because the whole “can’t find another job” in the last 12 years and “has an MBA” suggests something else is wrong.
Where all did you apply? What FAFSA only schools did you apply to? do you have the stats for huge merit elsewhere? Are you a NMSF?
You might be eligible for a lot of aid if you can get him to do this. Your mom might not go against his wishes, but can she help you to convince him? Or do you have any aunts or uncles who might have more sense on this and help you convince him?
However… sometimes parents don’t want to fill the forms out because they think it will reveal something unsavory about their finances… maybe something in the Profile that isn’t asked in the FAFSA. But maybe he hasn’t looked that close and just doesn’t like the idea.
Is he trying to maybe keep you closer to home? Does he approve of the Profile schools you applied to? Did he pay your application fees for those schools? You might point out to him (or your mom and ask her to point out to him) that if he did that it was wasted money, as these schools will not give any need based aid without the Profile. Could you convince him to let your mom call whatever school they like best on the list to ask aid can be given without the CSS Profile? Maybe if they hear it right from the school it will sink in.
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but can she help you to convince him? Or do you have any aunts or uncles who might have more sense on this and help you convince him?
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Good idea!