Im submitting my financial aid info for vandy, usc, williams, and boston college. Do I just submit my tax returns to idoc and not directly to the college? I am very confused regarding the process. At the moment from what I have researched on the websites I just have to submit my fafsa and css to these colleges then submit the required documents on idoc. Is this correct? thank you.
Follow the instructions for each school as far as submitting your documentation. IF they ask that your info be submitted through IDOC, then that is what you need to do.
Not all school use IDOC, even if they use CSS. For example, George Washington. A few days after my D applied & I sent FASFA & CSS, I got an email from them saying to email tax returns directly. I also got an email via CSS saying the same thing. They are great at letting you know what colleges need from you.
Yup I agree. when you fill out the CSS, at the end it will tell you which schools want you to do what. They use letters to show what each school wants and there is a key that tells you what each letter means. We had some schools that wanted tax returns via IDOC but one we had to make a copy and mail it via US mail.
@CAtransplant the above is ONLY true if the schools use IDOC…and many colleges do NOT use IDOC.
The OP needs to look on each college website to see what EACH college requires for financial aid application submissions.
@thumper1 well my experience was that the CSS told us what schools wanted us to do what including one that didn’t use IDOC - for that school, as I said, we had to mail a physical copy of tax returns since they do NOT use IDOC. But the CSS still told us that.
The CSS uses letter codes to tell you how to submit items whether through IDOC or mail. Some schools you can email (like George Washington that has an email address just for this purpose) or submit (upload) online with a cover sheet (UPenn). Look at the page on CSS that shows each college and what they require. Then you can look at each school website to confirm. Out of 7 colleges on CSS only two used IDOC and the rest I had to mail, email, or upload.
Also, when you log onto the IDOC page (and if you have a College Board account already you should be able to do this), the IDOC dashboard will tell you which schools want documents via IDOC, and which exact documents.
I think this might only show schools you’ve already submitted your CSS Profile to, because I don’t know how the College Board would know of any other schools you applied to.