<p>Mozika - based upon my limited knowledge, for truly need-blind colleges, it wouldn’t matter. For need aware colleges, it may not matter if you are towards the top of their applicant pool. If you are headed for a wait list or just barely getting admitted, that is where more colleges consider financial need in admissions. </p>
<p>At many colleges, the available pool of financial aid is used up before they get to the wait list.</p>
<p>That group of need aware colleges is really slimey in terms of giving straight answers and doing thing the right way. Second rate seems to equate less reputable than far less “prestigious” schools. Some of them lying about accept rates, SAT scores, whether they are need aware or not, rejecting those students that the admissions directors think are too good for the school, using order of colleges listed, using info on what colleges are on the list. Shame on them.</p>
<p>First of all, I LOVE cptofthehouse’s description of need-aware colleges as “slimey”! :D</p>
<p>Beyond that, get real, folks! You’re going to submit FAFSA to one college at a time? To multiple colleges? With a two to three-day waiting period between submissions (so that the first submission can process before you delete it and start the second one)?</p>
<p>Yeah, have fun with that! And while you’re still screwing around with your individual filings as the end of January approaches, what do you think your student’s place in line will be for grants that have limited availability, such as SEOG?</p>
<p>Talk about cutting off your nose to spite your face . . .</p>
<p>This article was pretty light on data. There is quite a bit of “my gut tells me” and “I believe…” by college enrollment consultants.</p>
<p>Fair enough, to bring my comments above into conformity with the article, I’d suggest that if “your gut tells you” that College A might make improper use of the list of colleges provided on your FAFSA, then file a separate FAFSA for College A only . . . but leave all the others alone!</p>
<p>You don’t do it with every college. You file your FAFSA with your list to those colleges that don’t care, though in some states if you want state money, you gotta put that school first (Sheesh). Then you do Augustana, F&M and some other such schools all by their lonesome and they go last on your list and you only go there if you hit the jackpot in terms of money. Hopefullly, you don’t have many schools on that list. I’d love to get a list of all of the schools that have these sort of practices and send them to all of the primo high school counselors that such school court with the list titled “Second Rate Schools” .</p>
<p>I can’t specify how but at a school I have worked at. We did look at the schools listed on your FAFSA and it would make a huge difference in your financial aid package. It is definitely not a myth.</p>
<p>Is this the same for the CSS profile?</p>
<p>What is the consensus on this guys? Do you submit to each college seperately? or you submit in batches of few? I’m applying to 11 colleges.</p>
<p>Once you have filled out FAFSA, it won’t be too bad just to change the college list. Do you need to create another FAFSA or I assume you pick 3-4 colleges, submit, then go back in change the list and hit submit.</p>
<p>Fortunately, my kids only applied to one college!</p>
<p>As FAFSA just opened up, I would like to hear what other people have to say about this. I submitted mine already randomly making a list of colleges. I’m upset about not alphabetizing them.</p>
<p>Here is my “personal opinion”. Colleges KNOW that most students are applying to more than one school. They also realize that students often apply to peer schools. Just list your colleges and forget about it. Need blind schools (which comprise the VAST majority of colleges), the admissions folks do NOT even see your FAFSA or Profile so would have NO WAY of knowing the order of your schools. The financial aid departments are more concerned with churning out their financial aid awards in a timely fashion, than checking the order of each applicants colleges on the financial aid forms.</p>
I have read in multiple places NOT to alphabetize, so don’t do that. I ighly recommend you read the entire book as it takes you thru every single question.
In the free ebook by Kantrowitz and Levy (paper copy on Amazon is expensive), it says:
“Each college or university must receive the student’s information from the FAFSA before its financial
aid deadline. So, if the student is applying to more than ten colleges and universities, the student should
list the colleges and universities with the earliest financial aid deadlines in the first set of colleges and
universities.
The order in which the ten colleges are listed also matters.11 Colleges can see the full list of colleges listed
on the FAFSA. Some colleges use this information as a form of competitive intelligence. Most students list
the colleges in preference order. Research has shown that students are less likely to enroll at a college that
appears further down the list. For example, while about half to two-thirds of students admitted by their
first-choice college will enroll, only about ten percent will enroll at their third-choice college.
Some colleges want to maximize their yield, the percentage of admitted students who actually enroll at
that school. Accordingly, some colleges are less likely to admit students who demonstrate less interest
in the college. This is an open secret, although the practices at specific colleges are unknown. However,
some private non-profit colleges may be more likely to use the student’s preference order to influence
college admissions decisions, since these colleges place more emphasis on improving their ranking in lists
of top colleges.
Colleges also use the student’s preference order to get more certainty about their incoming class. As more
students apply to more colleges, not only are the students worried about whether they will get in, but the
colleges also worry about whether the students will enroll.
The order in which colleges are listed on the FAFSA can also affect eligibility for financial aid. While the
order does not affect eligibility for federal student aid, it can affect state and institutional aid. For example,
the U.S. Department of Education mentions the potential impact on state aid in its Guide to Completing the FAFSA.”
https://www.edvisors.com/media/files/fafsa-book/filing-the-fafsa-2015-2016-edition.pdf
and more:
"So, what is the best order in which to list the colleges?
Listing the colleges in random or alphabetical order will not do any good, since the colleges will continue
to assume that the first school in the list is the student’s first choice. The aggregate statistics for the
college’s application pool demonstrate a strong correlation between the position of the college in the
FAFSA’s list of colleges and the chances the student will enroll if admitted. This allows a college to use
FAFSA order to improve the college’s yield by admitting only students who list the college in the first few
positions on the FAFSA.
Listing one school at a time and waiting until receipt of the SAR to substitute the next school will
not work, as every college listed on the FAFSA can see which colleges were listed previously and
subsequently.
The first three positions matter most. The order of the colleges listed in the fourth through tenth positions
generally will not have a big influence on college admissions and financial aid decisions.
One strategy that might work in the student’s favor is to list his or her second-choice college first. The
third-choice college should be listed in the second position and the first-choice college in the third
position. A student’s first-choice college is usually a long shot, where the student’s preference for the
college is unlikely to make a difference in the student’s chances of admission. This is especially true of
the most elite colleges that admit a very small percentage of the applicant pool. The student’s second and
third choices may be more reasonable options, where demonstrating a preference for the college may help
influence the admission decision.
But it’s not just the order of the schools that matters. It’s also the set of schools. If a second-choice school
sees several more elite institutions listed on the FAFSA and they believe, based on the student’s admission
application, that the student has a good chance of being admitted to one of those institutions, they
might decide against admitting the student. After all, a student who gets into an Ivy League institution
is unlikely to enroll at a second- or third-tier institution. So, this leads to strange circumstances where a
student is admitted to an Ivy League institution and rejected by less selective institutions.
Note that after the student enters a list of schools on the FAFSA, he or she can change the order of the
schools. It is only the final order of the schools, when the FAFSA is submitted, that is provided to the
schools listed on the FAFSA.
If a college uses the colleges listed on the FAFSA and/or the order in which they are listed for college
admissions decisions, the college is in violation of section 483(a)(3)(E) of the Higher Education Act of
1965 [20 U.S.C. 1090(a)(3)(E)]. The Higher Education Act prohibits using the information collected on the
FAFSA for any purpose other than the “application, award and administration” of student financial aid.
The U.S. Department of Education is thinking about removing the list of colleges from the information
provided to colleges. Any changes, however, will not occur until the 2016-2017 award year. "
I’m still doing it alphabetically. If the school can’t see that the list is alpha then they deserve the yield they get.
did it alphabetically and still think that was the right thing to do. We could second guess ourselves to death on this one.
For the vast majority of schools, it does not matter. Only a very few schools would care. Most aid offices are separate from the admissions office, and most aid offices are far too busy to even realize the order of schools.
This is tricky. If you have three reach schools (say Brown, Princeton, and Yale), it seems like you would want to list these first. I think I will submit in order of preference stratified by reach, fit, and safety. I’ll list the schools where I have already been accepted last. 
For those considering the possible effect on FAFSA order on admission or scholarship decisions by colleges, be sure to check which colleges actually consider “level of applicant’s interest” (see their common data set section C7 or their admissions tab at http://www.collegedata.com ). FAFSA order gaming probably only matters for colleges that do consider “level of applicant’s interest” (other than state universities that want to be listed first).