I have been asking around and nobody is giving me a straight answer. I have not applied for financial aid anywhere I applied so do I still have to send in my FAFSA and CSS profiles or are they not required at all?
Fafsa and Css Profile are required for financial need. I'm assuming if the school is need-blind, you ARE NOT REQUIRED to send them in. If you don't send them in, you get not financial need. So if you need no financial aid (including loans), then don't worry about them. However, if you're international and the school is not need-blind for them, or if it's not need-blind at all, you might need to fill them out to be accepted.
I think that you may ned to go back to your school's website and read the section on financial aid. If you have not sent any thing in yet you may have passed the deadline which would be more reason to get your paper work in asap.
Almost everyschool asks for the FAFSA (so at minimum you should have sent that in) every school does not require the CSS profile (but most schools that distribute institutional funds wil requesst the CSS profile or their own additional form)
If you are not applying for any kind of financial aid...none at all...I do not believe you are required to fill out the FAFSA. If you are applying for need based aid, you will be required to fill out the FAFSA by most colleges. Some also require the Profile. You would have to check the websites for the colleges. If you are applying for merit aid only, you would also need to check the college sites. Many schools require the FAFSA even for merit aid consideration.
FAFSA and CSS and any other finanicial aid forms are unnecessary unless you are applying for aid. That also applies to internationals. However, many colleges do not provide finanical aid to internationals and many require internationals to submit a form (not an aid form) that verifies, as a condition to admission, that they can can cover the cost of their first year in college.
You are not required to fill out FAFSA or Profile if you are not applying for financial aid. The only other reasons to have them on file are if you think there is a possibility of needing or qualifying for aid later (say you have a sibling coming to college next year or so) and the school requires such student to apply for aid on the onset in order to be considered later, if there are merit awards that require the forms that you want to be considered for, or if there are some internships and jobs that require those forms to be filed.
My understanding is that work-study is part of need based aid awards. DS applied for a job that was a work study job. He could NOT be hired as the fed funds used were for need based work study awards only. As it happened NO ONE was hired for the job the whole year.
