If you are applying for financial aid, there are two primary forms: the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) and the CSS Profile.
DACA students do not qualify for FAFSA, but could be eligible under specific criteria and should also investigate the CA Dream Act.
The FAFSA is universal for American colleges. The Scholarship Foundation of Santa Barbara will also require a copy for the non-honors application, as does Santa Barbara City College. About 300 private (mostly elite) colleges also require the CSS Profile.
Both use tax information covering January of a student’s sophomore year through December of their junior year of high school, if applying as a traditional first-year student.
The FAFSA is like an optometrist appointment. It takes a little time but is relatively painless. The CSS Profile is like a colonoscopy of your finances. You may need recovery time when done.
And to add insult, you pay The College Board a fee every time you share CSS with a different school. Why The College Board qualifies as a nonprofit is a mystery.
This year, FAFSA underwent a significant overhaul. It is vastly easier! The parent who provides the most financial support and the student will each need a FAFSA ID. Verification takes three to five business days, and you can do that beforehand. Save your login information; you will need it as long as you are in college, and it is difficult to retrieve.
With a FAFSA ID, students can create their account and complete their portion. It will allow the student to invite the parent, linking the student and parent information. Students will not see the parent information.
Parents can likely finish everything in about 30 minutes.
Once submitted, FAFSA provides a Student Aid Index (SAI), formerly known as Expected Family Contribution (EFC). The formula excludes retirement funds and primary home value.
According to the government, this is the amount you can afford to pay for a single year of college per kid. You will probably disagree. And if it crosses your mind, it is difficult for a child under age 24 to file independently; many have tried.
Once you have your SAI, another change may affect you. Under old rules, the EFC would be divided by the number of family members attending college. So, an EFC of $30,000 was divided between siblings.
With the new SAI, each child has to come up with the amount of their SAI. Pell Grant thresholds did increase, and colleges will supposedly chip in more institutional funds to increase their offers if a family has more than one kid in college. But it’s unclear where they will get that money.
The middle class is particularly penalized by this change, as it may make college even less affordable.
Typically, the FAFSA is available on Oct. 1. This year, it came out Dec. 31, and financial aid offices won’t receive the data to process before March.
Be patient. Financial aid offices are doing their best, but the government really botched the rollout. If your child applies to a college that requires the CSS Profile, grab an aspirin and every scrap of financial paper you can find.
The challenging aspect of the Profile is each college decides how to use the data with their own formula. Some may consider primary home value, while others exclude it.
Nothing about this evaluation is transparent, so feel free to ask questions when you get your financial aid offer.
