I wanted to hear experiences regarding the Non Custodial Parent Waiver Petition with Financial Aid departments at colleges by some of you who have been through this. It’d be great if you could share that here including details like the ease or difficulty you had in the process, the talking part where you successfully got the waiver with your defense statements, how accommodating the FA officers were with the case handling, etc.
Also, does anybody here know or have some insider info of colleges which quite easily grant the waiver (or) whose FA dept. is easy to work with and some colleges which very rarely approve them/have extensive process. @mom2collegekids, in one of your reply posts to a thread in 2011, you mentioned someone here on CC had posted a list of such colleges. Have you ever got hold of that post?
Also, is it true that with some colleges, the chances of waiver approval are quite high if the divorce had taken more than a decade ago (keeping on pause the other factors) ?
Really…non-custodial parent waivers are handled on a case by case basis. AND each college has their own criteria for granting these waivers. What might have applied to one student just might not be applicable to another student.
Your issue is you know where your custodial parent is…and seemingly had a way to contact him not that long ago. You will have to find colleges that will grant a waiver to someone who knows where his father is living.
Check the college websites for information about NCP waivers. Contact colleges and ask them what documentation you need to provide to get a waiver.
But remember (this has been told to you on multiple threads)…even with a waiver…and an EFC of $0 you WILL have costs to attend college here. You will. You supposedly have excellent SAT scores…so apply to some schools where the FAFSA only is needed…because your NCP info isn’t required on the FAFSA.
And apply to places where you have a good chance for high merit aid. You have been given that suggestion as well.
If a family does not know where the NCP lives (could be Oklahoma, might be New Hampshire) that will make the process of getting a waiver easier. If a family has not had any contact with the NCP in the last decade (meaning- not a single phone call, check, not a single mention by the NCP’s sibling or parent, etc.) that will make it easier. If the family knows- or believes from a reliable source, like a lawyer-- that the NCP is institutionalized- a long term care facility, prison, etc., that will make it easier.
If these things do not apply- and the family is reluctant to contact the NCP but could with a minimal amount of effort, then your results will vary. It will be evaluated based on YOUR reality, not on someone else’s.
Assume that needing the non-custodial parent waiver makes getting sufficient financial aid at the college a reach (and therefore makes the college a reach, or double-reach if it is already a reach for admission). There is no way for you to know the likelihood of that (and it is probably low at most colleges), so you should not make optimistic assessments on this front.
@thumper1, I don’t get why posters here are replying answers with my case as a frame of reference!
Really… I wanted to hear people’s experiences who had actually gone through this but not judgements whether I’d get one or not. Just stories from people.
I don’t have ANY question, did I say I have a question regarding my case? My original post mentions my intent to hear some stories, that’s all. Do threads need to be created only to ask questions and not hear experiences? It doesn’t matter to me that each situation is unique and hence viewed on a case by case basis, I want to hear just plain experiences… if they’re willing to share them here.
Please, stop pulling up my case when I didn’t ask anything related to it. This thread is intended for some experiences with the waiver petition from people who had gone through it.
Do you have ANY first hand experience with a waiver?
In the interest of veracity, you asked 3 questions in your original post:
@GnocchiB, Just to clarify the record, well certainly not questions regarding my case, but if you argue that I indeed asked 3 questions, then they really are NEW questions which the previous poster wanted.
But really… they all come under sharing an experience.
Posters here, please go through my original post before you reply. It is a call for general responses regarding whatever experience YOU had with a waiver petition. Refrain from answering it in any other way than asked. Just your stories, nothing else.
Perhaps some folks will share their experiences with you. But if they do, I would urge you to take them with a grain of salt. Every NCP waiver is handled on a case by case basis. And each college does them differently. So…you will get stories, but maybe nothing particularly helpful.
- Some folks will tell you that their NCP waivers were granted at every college to which they applied.
- Some people will tell you that some schools granted waivers, and some didn’t.
- Some will tell you that they got no waivers.
Since the information required for NCP waivers is “sensitive” it’s not likely that most people will post them on a public forum.
Also, make sure you ask which colleges from each respondent. Even with that…if another student got a waiver from say Dartmouth, there is no guarantee you will have the same outcome with your request.
Your story is a bit inconsistent here…on one thread you say your dad questioned a broken leg or something at age 16 because he thought you wanted more money. On another thread, you say your dad tried to call you 27 times within two days…and you ignored his call. Neither of those is “no contact”.
I would urge you to apply to the colleges and see if THEY will grant you a waiver.
@thumper1, I appreciate your reply. I’d like to keep my story aside for now since it’s complicated, and yes I’ll take the shared experiences with a grain of salt.
I don’t see why they wouldn’t when everybody’s anonymous here.
Anyways, let’s see if someone chimes in with their story…
A cynical person might think you are asking for details of other posters NCP waivers for reasons that are less than honorable.