<p>I am forced to answer all these ridiculous questions about my family's financial situation, like:</p>
<pre><code> Enter the amount your parents have in their cash, deposit, savings, and checking accounts as of today.
Enter the total value of your parents' assets held in the names of your brothers and sisters who are under age 19 and not university students.
What is the total current market value of your parents' investments?
</code></pre>
<p>My questions are:</p>
<ol>
<li><p>Since these are very private questions, what happened if I entered wrong amounts of money? Would they be able to see and/or check it? Would I be penalized?</p></li>
<li><p>What official papers from banks/businesses MUST I provide later in the application (if any at all) ?</p></li>
</ol>
<p>1) If you are selected for verification, then yes, the truth is going to be uncovered and you will be loose your financial aid.</p>
<p>2) It depends on what the college is asking you. </p>
<p>P.S. I know you did not ask this, but you know how they say: beggars can’t be choosers. You might think that the questions are very personal, but if you want financial aid from your college, you have to play by their rules.</p>
<p>I am not sure how anyone could expect a college to provide them with financial assistance and at the same time be offended by the college’s request for information to allow them to get a fair and accurate understanding of your need.</p>
<p>Falsifying information on those financial aid forms could not only cost you your aid, but could also cost you your admission to the university. Schools value honesty and really frown on dishonesty.</p>
<p>You do not have to answer those questions. The school would not then be required to process your financial aid application.</p>
<p>At one school, we were asked to provide bank statements. It just floors me that you think it’s OK to falsify this information and possibly get financial aid based on your dishonest information.</p>
<p>When you are asking for other taxpayer’s money or college donor’s money because you ‘need’ it, it is valid to be asked to demonstrate that you truly need it.</p>
<p>“1) If you are selected for verification, then yes, the truth is going to be uncovered and you will be loose your financial aid.”</p>
<p>How could they possibly get this sort of information?? Like about my sibling’s investments and his/her cars, clothes, etc…</p>
<p>Some of the questions are really that ridiculous, for instance, how much do I yearly spend on clothes. What is the purpose of asking this (and ~50 similar) question(s) if there is no possible way to actually check it. Or what cars my parents are driving. This makes 0 sense to me. How would they check whether it’s a Bentley or a Lada…</p>
<p>"2) It depends on what the college is asking you. "</p>
<p>This is just public information. If college is determined to find out more they can ask for all sorts of information, such as bank statements and credit card statements. I am sure it is not done on regular basis, but it is certainly possible to get to the bottom of things.</p>
<p>If you are audited, a request would be made of your family tax forms and a listing of all accounts and assets. A copy of account balances will be requested from the institutions and a check against what is filed as income/dividend is made. A lot of the info can be derived from the tax form which are retrieved from the IRS with the FAFSA filing. They will ask for motor vehicle registration. Really, a couple hundred bucks to a private investigator would reveal all of this, and you are signing that they can verify all of this. They can check your credit report as well which would have info.</p>
<p>No, they won’t know about the cash hidden under the floorboards or any payments that your family is hiding from the government but when statements are ordered during an audit show large sums of money coming in or out, they will try trace the source.</p>
<p>The chances for getting audited are small, but spot audits are done. The chances for verification are quite high. I was selected just last year and it was just for applying for a PLUS loan that did not have a need component. I had to send in actual tax returns and some statements and some other stuff that they wanted. Those who are doing CSS only are usually foreign students and there will be some checking that will be done as unfortunately a lot of foreign students do not fill these things out properly due to an attitude that you may have and the feeling that there is now way one can find out. Also, for foreign students, a lot of things can come into the picture in getting accepted and the honesty, openness of the candidate can be important. For a lot of schools, the process is not need blind and the admissions officers do get a look at the financials, unlike for US students.</p>
<p>You want money, they want info. Get caught lying, the money goes.</p>
<p>One of the points is to discover your family financial position. The sister goal is to understand your discretionary spending. It kind of boils down to- if your are spending it, you have it. As said in finaid.org, finaid officers have seen virtually evey scam you can think of, to hide or minimize assets; they are hip to this.</p>
<p>Never heard of asking about clothes, but they do ask us about vacations, money we set aside, cred card debt, etc. Some schools automatically IDOC you (an avenue for verification.) Others will ask at random for the reams of supportive docs to be sent. I imagine- if you annoy them enough- they could ask for copies of your car registration.</p>
<p>Let’s add one last thought. Govt regulations and guidelines cover how colleges must be fair in distributing finaid. They also, in black and white, allow the schools wide discretionary berth for appplicants who annoy them, are perceived to be using subterfuge or pretense.</p>
<p>OP, my undergrad college is my #1 charity and every dollar I have donated over the last 20 years has been targeted for undergraduate financial aid … and I am glad they are asking this “ridiculous” questions to make sure the money I donated goes to families with true need.</p>
<p>Families could do all sorts of gymnastics to lower their positions in financial accounts when they apply … the questions are to there to try to understand a families true financial position. If your family feels the questions are too intrusive or too time consuming there is any easy solution … don’t answer them and forgo the financial aid.</p>
<p>My understanding is the profile questions asked vary greatly school to school so maybe you can find schools with shorter question lists that you find less cumbersome.</p>
<p>For international students, or for US citizens? For internationals, the process is not need blind at most schools, so it an important part of the application. Hopefully, the OP gives it due consideration. There is good reason for the questions and if the answers seem evasive or inconsistent, it could affect admissions. </p>
<p>For most US applicant, they are reviewed after the acceptances. Fin aid offices do not put together packages for every single student that applies, just the accepted ones.</p>
<p>cpt, if your statement, “For most US applicant, they are reviewed after the acceptances. Fin aid offices do not put together packages for every single student that applies, just the accepted ones,” is true, does this mean that at need’s blind colleges they don’t look at the CSS until one is offered admittance or actually accepted? If so, why should anyone have to supply this information until that time?</p>
<p>No, FA puts together for an aid package for all accepted students (or admitted ones), not matriculated ones. Admissions decisions may be made as early as mid-March. At that point, the admissions office will forward a list of those students to FA, and FA will calculate packages so that students receive their acceptance and conditional aid at the same time (hopefully).</p>
<p>ExhaustedDad, it’s because it would take MORE time to get the data after acceptances are issued. For instance using Denison U as a typical LAC, they provide admission results on 1 April with the reply requirement of 1 May. Can you imagine the lag time of having students THEN get the financial data together to apply for aid, the college to process it, results to turn around with a package, and then a decision? You wouldn’t have a college class formed until July. Then there are those schools which are NOT need blind. They need the FA info to make their decisions.</p>
<p>They need the info right there. It’s not always the case that decisions are made en masse. There is often a rolling process going where lists of accepted students are sent to FA so that they can put the packages together and have them ready to go. That’s why it is smart to have ones things at Admissions and Financial Aid complete. First folders to be marked “complete” are the first ones done, and at selective schools, it’s easier to get a seat when the room is full than at the back end when there are just a few seats left. With Fin Aid, the goodies tend to go first. If you are at the end of the line, you will most certainly miss out on limited things like merit within need scholarships, limited SEOG funds, limited Perkins loans. There are never enough of those.</p>
<p>To wait until all the apps are done would be tantamount to a restaurant bombarding the kitchen with the orders when all the seats are filled and orders taken.</p>