We certainly don’t have enough cash to pay out of pocket $70K x 2 (TWINS) per year. We have jobs and make total $200K and have an investment rental property but that’s a front asset with some income. I’m told that for needs based they don’t care - perspective being “sell the asset” etc. In which case I don’t want to bother with CSS.
So I wanted to check with all you wise people with experience what you think… I have twins applying now for Fall 2022 (no other kids).
We did the FASFA.
Do the colleges’ net price calculators suggest any possibility of need-based financial aid?
If so, and they want CSS Profile, then not providing CSS Profile will assure that you get no need-based financial aid from those colleges.
If the NPCs for the schools under consideration show you will not get any need-based aid, you may not want to complete the CSS Profile. However, some schools have policies that state if you do not complete it the first year, you might not be allowed to try again in subsequent years. It might be worth researching the schools in question to see if that is the case.
The first time we had 2 in college our income was significantly less than that and we did not qualify for any need based aid (and the majority of our savings was in retirement accounts). We got less than 5 figures for 1 child this year with 3 in college.
Thank you all! This is helpful. My gut feeling was that it’s not worth the time but we will take a look at the NPC and then put this to rest.
Without knowing which specific schools your twins are applying to, it’s hard to provide an answer to a question asking if Profile should be submitted or not. For schools that pledge to meet 100% of demonstrated need, the answer is probably “yes.” For schools that don’t make such a pledge, the answer will be more along the lines of “it depends.” But you should definitely run the NPCs on each school’s website.
Did that show an EFC meaningfully below the cost of the colleges you are applying to? If so then it’s probably worth doing the CSS.
I would 100% fill out the CSS profile.
I would also fill out CSS profile for meet full need schools, or those who are close to it on average. You can look up schools’ average need met (which may or may not be meaningful to your situation) but at least this will identify the more generous schools: https://static1.squarespace.com/static/5d1ad956be52e800010a2502/t/610d8fc3df469359d2716599/1628278745199/Domestic+Financial+Aid+2021.pdf
The NPCs that don’t specifically ask rental property questions are probably not going to be accurate.
However, note that each college can define “need” however it wants, so fully meeting a stingy definition of “need” may mean a worse net price than not meeting a generous definition of “need”.