<p>@mom2collegekids, remember, this is an anonymous report about what a child’s roommate’s father (may have) said he did, in an unknown venue (bragging at dinner with his kid & her roommate?). For some of us what we do and what we say we do have greater or lesser degrees of congruence. And after transmission through several steps, even that congruence may be shaky.</p>
<p>@ItsJustSchool, no, this is a first hand report of what a Williams College parent stated in front of his wife, 2 daughters and 2 other sets of parents. As to why the family might have declined the tiny 2K in FA, that was only my speculation. And as @mom2collegekids pointed out they could have taken the 2K for the first year and declined to fill in the CSS profile in future years, so it wasn’t a very good guess on my part. Since I’m not paying 65K/year for 5 kids and I can’t even imagine what it would be like to have that kind of disposable income, I don’t have any idea why he declined the little FA Williams offered. A better guess is that he would be giving money to the annual fund or another campaign anyway so why take the FA and then give it right back to the school. But the CSS profile was the subject of this thread… </p>
<p>@rhandco, I don’t think your question is nosy because I assume the Q’s are simply standard from the colleges. I went back and counted over 50 extra Q’s from 7 colleges. The CSS codes were SQ-101 – SQ-771. I could copy them in here but it’s almost 3 pages. They range in subject matter from vehicle info. to detailed real estate, Trust and corporate ownership and investments, off shore investments, overseas assets, alimony, support to grandparents, inheritances, student assets, 529’s, gifts from relatives, outside scholarships and so on.</p>
<p>@rhandco, here’s a small slice of the SQs:
Please provide any pertinent information regarding the student’s trust fund, including the terms of the distribution.<br>
Does the student have interest in any assets held in another person’s name, including children, relatives, and others? SQ-518
If yes, provide the name and relationship of the person(s).
Enter the total value of assets held in Section 529 college savings plans that were established for the student by someone other than the student’s parent(s). SQ-521
Enter the total value of assets held in Section 529 prepaid tuition plans that were established for the student by someone other than the student’s parent(s). SQ-522
Of the amounts reported in PROFILE Help Codes SA-100 and SA-110, approximately how much of the total cash, savings, and investments was provided by your parents? SQ-524
Of the amounts reported in PROFILE Help Codes SA-100 and SA-110, approximately how much of the total cash, savings, and investments was provided by relatives other than your parents? SQ-525
If the student will receive Social Security benefits during the 2015-16 academic year, indicate the type. SQ-613
If the student will receive an outside scholarship during the 2015-16 academic year, is it renewable? SQ-716
Does the student expect to receive an outside scholarship during 2015-16? SQ-771
If yes, please enter the source and amount of each scholarship you expect to receive. </p>
<p>Depends on what the 2K FA was. If it was a loan, I can see why the Williams dad would decline it if he could afford to pay. </p>
<p>Yikes. Some of the SQ seem like repeats to me, and some seem like you have to call your financial advisor to answer them.</p>
<p>As for refusing 2K - not sure why it would be refused by the family. Maybe someone advised them it would be better to do so. It does seem “small” compared to the 60K COA many schools are at now.</p>
<p>I am trying to figure out if I was dumb, because one college my son applied to asked for CSS Profile one place, and then in other places did not mention the CSS Profile at all, they only asked for FAFSA. Note that on the NPC, they asked for how much equity was in our house (our #1 source of college funding by the way), so that points to CSS Profile as FAFSA doesn’t ask for it.</p>
<p>If a school decided to change from FAFSA and CSS Profile to FAFSA only, but still was listed as a CSS Profile school, would they just ignore the CSS Profile (I hope)?</p>
<p>I was paranoid as they wanted the CSS Profile by the EA deadline according to a few places, so I did submit. Hopefully the $9 was the only thing lost…</p>
<p>Hi folks, I would like to turn this back to one of my original questions. @mom2collegekids you said that if a school requires you apply for FA for merit, you have to do it. So does that mean that my child will not get merit aid if we are not eligible for financial aid?
My D is a very good student, but we will not qualify for any financial aid, other than the guaranteed $5k. I am wondering if colleges that are known for merit aid, such as Clark, U Del, Denison, etc…would not consider her for merit aid unless we have financial need too.</p>
<p>My assumption is that merit aid should be clearly classified as need-based or not by the school.</p>
<p>I do not think it serves the college to say that they offer merit aid and then mean “only if you have financial need” because otherwise, you’d think kids not in the merit aid range would be worried they would not get FA if they didn’t both have scores and need.</p>
<p>To be honest, rich students become rich alumni, and rich students who are smart are likely to become even richer alumni.</p>
<p>The only reason why I would think anyone would turn down $2K in GRANTS from a college, is because that person did not want to go through the verification process. There could be a number of reasons for that. It could also be an estimated PROFILE completed and the real numbers higher so that it was pretty clear that the final award might well be eliminated. Why on earth would anyone turn down $2k offered for a year, an offer made only AFTER the PROFILE was completed for that year? If it was so much trouble, he could simply not apply for aid the subsequent years which is usually easier and requires FAFSA only. With the IRS retrieval system in place and with upperclassmen later deadlines, it wouldn’t be as onerous as the first year.</p>
<p>You can google “need aware colleges” and get a list of sorts of what colleges are NOT need blind in admissions. I would outright ask Admissions if in doubt. If you want to fill out PROFILE for those colleges that are not need aware, you can do that. If you just want access to federal DIrect loans you can check off “no” for the box asking if you are applying for fin aid and just fill out the FAFSA later and that will give you and your student eligibility for those loans. Those are not given out by the college but from the federal government. </p>
<p>Special supplement questions can ask for the value of your cars or other specific items not generally covered by the application. </p>
<p>All the SQ are in the link I posted above. You just need to check the school or the select all box and hit submit, it will show the questions.</p>
<p>@Lindagaf </p>
<p>No, your kid won’t automatically be denied merit-based aid if the place determines that you have no financial need.</p>
<p>Three (surely there are more) possible reasons for a college/university requiring that financial aid paperwork be filed in order to be considered for merit aid:
a) the institution wants to make sure that any federal money is used first before their own for a student who also qualifies for merit aid
b) when money gets short, a student with less need might get less money
c) the institution wants a notion of which students might be attracted with just a little bit more in a merit package </p>
<p>Thanks, @happymomof1, very helpful. Starting to figure it all out now. I can see why people spend thousands on a private college advisor, there is just so much stuff to learn about. </p>
Just want to chime in. With my son, one school gave him a lot of merit (full tuition plus housing) without us giving them any financial aid information. This was a lower tier school. At another school (higher tier) they explicitly instruct parents to fill out CSS to qualify for any type of financial aid whether need based or merit.
Just reading over all this again. With the passage of a few months, I have new questions. Is it true that any accounts in your child’s name are included when tallying up how much money must come from the student? A group of parents were advised at a big meeting to be sure that any money in your child’s name is moved to someone else’s name, such and an aunt or uncle. Also, when offers of merit aid are made, is it acceptable to call the financial office at the college and ask them to make a better offer? I have heard of peolple playing colleges off each other to get more money.
On Need-Based Aid:
Money in the child’s or parents’ names that is not in retirement-type accounts is considered to be available under the FAFSA formula. The FAFSA formula assesses the child’s money at 20% and parent money at 5.6%. Colleges and universities that use the CSS Profile or their own financial aid formulas can take retirement-type accounts, home real estate values, etc. etc. into account, and assess them at whatever rate they feel like. You need to run the Net Price Calculator at each institution’s website to get a general notion of what it might cost you.
If your child’s money is in a regular checking/savings account and one of the parents is already on that account, it can make sense to make certain that that account is reportable under the parent’s, rather than the child’s social security number. Money in a 529 college savings account that is in the child’s name is reported as a parent asset under the FAFSA so nothing special needs to be done about that. Shifting money into the hands of another relative is risky. Once they have that money, they can do what they like with it. It also borders on the edges of financial fraud. I’m surprised that your group was even told to consider this.
It is important to remember that if any money is put into someone else’s hands so as not to appear on the FAFSA or CSS Profile, if that money is then used to pay for the kid’s education, it will need to be reported in the following year as money coming from another source for the kid’s education, so the next year’s aid package won’t be as good as in the first year.
Need-based financial aid is primarily dependent on income. So moving everyone’s money around may not produce the results that you’d like. Here is the FAFSA formula. Print it out, and work your way through it with various scenarios for savings. Chances are that you can’t get your EFC low enough to receive more than the Stafford loans. Most people can’t. However, if your income is low enough your assets aren’t included in the FAFSA calculations, so your kid could have a million dollars in his or her own accounts and it wouldn’t matter at all.
http://ifap.ed.gov/efcformulaguide/attachments/090214EFCFormulaGuide1516.pdf
The CSS Profile is another beast altogether. So run those Net Price Calculators. Remember, if you have divorced parents, or own property other than the family home, or own a small business, all bets are off with the calculators. They probably won’t give good predictions for what you really will be expected to pay.
On Merit-Based Aid:
Some colleges and universities will reconsider a financial aid package if you ask them to, and if you can produce an aid package from an institution that they consider to be a peer. This works best when the institutions do indeed consider each other to be peers, and when their aid policies are similar. If one offers merit-based aid, and the other doesn’t, it is unlikely that the second will change a package to more closely match the first. So don’t count on this at all.
Truly, the best thing you can do for your kid, is to get real about how much you can pay for your kid’s education, then look for places that fit inside that budget. Take your kid to visit the affordable colleges and universities. Be honest about the money. And don’t let yourself (or your kid) get caught up in the notion that somehow it is someone else’s responsibility to pay for your kid’s education and that your kid deserves a boat-load of financial aid just because someone else got a boat-load of aid.
Yes, that is true.
Unless the child is making an unrestricted gift to the owner of the account to which the money is being transferred, the money still belongs to the child and must be reported for financial aid purposes. Simply putting it in someone else’s account doesn’t magically make it not the child’s money.
It doesn’t make any difference under whose name or SSN the money is reported. If it belongs to the child, it belongs to the child, and should be reported as such.
Thanks all. We were told to move our children’s money at a FA presentation, by the chief FA officer of a college. Hmmm. I think i need to really read up more on this. Appreciate all the feddback.
Funds in the child’s name are generally assessed by colleges at a higher % than parental assets- that may be the confusion here. Some sites legitimately advise parents to have certain savings in their names only. Yes, depending on the amount, it can create some tax confusion. But we’re talking FA. You could secretly move money to another name, sure (I suppose even a kid would need to adhere to “gift” restrictions, but don’t know.) But in some sorts of questions, the CSS asks for this year’s info, last year’s and a projection for next year. Maybe you have time to get your hands on the worksheet, see how the basic questions go.
At our bank, the lead name on the account is the reporter.
Many FA advice sites point out that the Fafsa asks for assets on the day you file- and that you can legitimately pay down a large bill or buy that new car, to work down some assets. If you need to know what forms a particular school expects or something about their policies, go haunt their FA web pages.
Btw, when we speak of retirement funds, it’s “Qualified” plans that are protected. A 401k is a QP. A mutual fund may or may not be.