Wondering if anyone else has done this? We have one kid who will be applying to EA at a couple of schools, so their financial aid deadline is November and I’ll do his FAFSA and CSS profile then. Our older one is already in college, with aid deadline is in April. Because we have some big bills at the beginning of next year (like college!), seems to make sense to wait until next year to submit our older one’s FAFSA and CSS. It’d be a more accurate picture of our assets at that time.
Is there anything I’m not thinking about that’d cause problems with doing this? If they end up at the same school, they’d have different asset info for each kid. But since the submission dates would be different, I’d think they’d understand why.
We would not be eligible for federal aid, just institutional need based aid. So not trying to submit quickly for that.
I would file the two separately. If kid2 ends up at kid1’s college the aid office there will be able to sort out anything that needs to be sorted out.
I doubt anyone would even notice (except you) that their EFCs are quite different or that the forms were filed on different dates.
It’s fine to submit your two different kids’ financial aid forms on two different dates. And yes, it’s OK for your assets to be different as they are reported as of the date of filing.
ETA…we did the same thing when our younger kid was applying as a freshman. She had some EA financial aid priority deadlines that were in the fall. We didn’t file the older kid’s forms until February or so.
Thanks so much for these answers. I know it’s easy to miss stuff, all gets complicated. So, good to hear that it works. Probably right, I imagine for most financial aid is done by computer, and isn’t looked at a lot unless there’s problems.
I hope you all know that your experienced answers on other threads that I search for have also been very helpful, I recognize the names!