<p>Hi -
Today is April 18th, meaning my daughter has 12 days to make a decision as to which college she'll be attending.</p>
<p>As of today, out of the 5 colleges she was accepted to, we have received only 2 official offer letters. We did receive "estimated" letters from the other institutions or have been afforded the opportunity to see "estimated" offers via their web sites. But we've gotten nothing official from 3 of the 5 institutions.</p>
<p>I called one of these colleges last week and was told, "Don't worry, they'll be going out later this week." Apparently that didn't happen because I would have gotten it by now.</p>
<p>My point and question is - shouldn't we have received these letters by now? My understanding was that they would normally be received by or around April 1st.</p>
<p>While we can certainly use the estimated offers to start the discussion, she obviously can't make a final decision until we see the official letters? So - where are they??</p>
<p>Just wondering if anyone else out there is still waiting for official letters?</p>
<p>I read posts here about people who waited and waited for their finaid info and did not get any. Parents called finaid offices only to find out that their file could not be processed because college needed some clarifications or extra documents (proof of citizenship, some missing part of FAFSA that FAFSA did not require but university did, different middle name spelling on SSN card and FAFSA etc) or just some glitch in the system.
Some parents even had to contact Ombudsperson to get help and speed up the process.</p>
<p>You should both call and email the colleges (to make it more official and have email for a record) ASAP because it might be something like this and they are not going to process your D’s file until it’s fixed.</p>
<p>We’re in the same situation. I was told that the colleges need to receive copies of our 2011 income tax forms to confirm that the FAFSA and PROFILE were accurate. This doesn’t make sense, since we linked our 2011 tax returns to the FAFSA in early February, so the colleges should all have made their aid packages based on our up-to-date info. </p>
<p>I was told that we wouldn’t get our final confirmed aid package until after May 1st! I wonder whether the colleges are checking out how many people with aid will actually attend and then might adjust the numbers? This is a scary thought since our aid packages are already above our EFC, and we’re trying to keep our son’s loans to $5K a year…</p>
<p>Anyone have experience with this from last year?</p>
<p>My D is a freshman in college this year, but it seemed easier last year to go through the whole process. This year, the University notified us in April that we would have to use the data retrieval tool. I had already submitted my carefully done FAFSA in February. So, then, because we had just mailed my D’s tax return, we had to wait until just this week for her financial stuff to show up on the IRS data retrieval tool. Now, we’ll be able to get her financial aid package in about a month. Last year, we just submitted the FAFSA, and then sent a copy of the tax return to schools that requested it. That was much easier in my opinion. I think there are going to be many, many people getting their fin. aid. packages quite late due to the usage of the data retrieval tool.</p>
<p>^^Returning students often get their finaid letters in late spring or summer. Most college will process and package up the incoming freshman first, then move on to rising sophomore,juniors, seniors, etc.</p>
<p>This is only my opinion after 6 years of writing checks to colleges, but I would never “pick” a college where the budget was so very tight that an estimated finaid letter made me nervous. Sometimes the college’s budgets for tuition, room and board are not even set until spring. Costs are a moving target.</p>
<p>UPDATE -
Everything seems to have cleared itself up.</p>
<p>One School (LMU) informed me that despite what I had been told previously they NO LONGER send out official letters. The FA package listed on their site thru the “my aid” portal is the official award.</p>
<p>We received the letters from the two other schools (Pitt and Emerson) on Friday.</p>
<p>FYI - (Re; Adele Rose) all of the official awards matched the estimated awards - there was no decline or increase.</p>