I have been reading many of the threads in this forum regarding the significance of ordering the schools in the FAFSA submission. I have seen many responses ranging from “not to be concerned with order” to “submit one application at a time”. There was much conjecture whether colleges actually look at the order of the colleges. The other day I received a letter from the admission office of one the colleges my son is considering. The letter was reminding me to submit my FAFSA but it also said to “make sure to list our college first on your list”. Prior to this letter I was leaning toward the alpha method but now I am reconsidering and my go the individual submission route. If anyone has any other suggestions I would greatly appreciate hearing them.
I’ve never heard of submitting one at a time. That sounds very extreme. I did alphabetical order and everything worked out for me. Good luck!
Just be careful as some states want their publics as the first listing for state aid…check that before you start worry about the order to add schools
The whole FAFSA order thing is one of the sillier concepts I’ve run across. It honestly doesn’t really make any sense, but I would go ahead and try to comply with as many rules as you can (bear in mind that some of them won’t really match up).
I haven’t read anything about any kind of order for FAFSA. We haven’t submitted ours yet, but will by tomorrow, and I listed the schools based on which order they came into my head.
I did alpha order. No instate schools on the list. One at a time won’t do it, I don’t think, as all schools get the list of schools submitted to. I suppose you could do it in one order one day, the next order the next day, another order the third day…maybe we’d all overload the servers and then they’d stop this stupid practice of letting every school see your school list.
In the meantime the conventional wisdom seems to be alphabetical, if you don’t want to tip your hand.
If the goal is to game the order, why not put the schools that use level of applicant’s interest first? Of course, pay attention to whether your state wants its schools listed first.
When Happykid was applying to college, the software that pulled up information about state residents for state aid in MD would only pull that information from the first filing of the FAFSA, so everyone was advised to list at least one MD institution just to be sure they got into the system. Do check with whoever would know about that kind of stuff in your home state. It might matter.
It’s not silly if your kid is on the line. Mount Holyoke admissions told me point blank they go and look at the FAFSA orders if they aren’t sure if they should accept the kid or not. Blech. I think that should be illegal.
Also, it can work against you financially to list a school first–if they think you’d do anything to go there, they’ll give you less money as incentive to come. This also should be illegal. They shouldn’t be able to see anything but themselves on any form.
It should be illegal for private colleges to set tuition so high that they use tuition discounting to lock in students IMO. It’s no better than selling cars the way they do this. They might as well just have the students say how much they are willing to pay and chose them that way. Would be a whole lot more transparent.
Heh. My S was interviewing this Fall for a particular school. I went to grab him at the end, and the College Rep wanted to talk. We discussed S’s interest, and finances came around. I point blank told him that merit aid was going to be a necessary element, and basically gave him a threshold we would not cross for COA.
I think he actually appreciated the candor. We will see what happens when merit aid is issued for that school!
So, essentially, I did what momofthreeboys suggests: I gave him a max offer. 