<p>I don’t know about FAFSA but one school my son applied to stated that we would need to fill out CSS profile in order to get full consideration for merit money. They were pretty insistent about this. </p>
<p>I called CSS and they said that only merit money connected to need are given out based on CSS profile. That if we did not qualify for any need money, there would not be any merit money available to my son through filling out this form.</p>
<p>I tend to think FAFSA may be the same even though everyone is pushed to fill it out. If you are unsure if you would qualify for need based aid, merit connected or not then you should fill out the forms. </p>
<p>However, if you know you will not qualify for any need then why bother. Admissions people keep repeating to fill it out because that is what they are told to tell everyone. .</p>
<p>“I don’t know about FAFSA but one school my son applied to stated that we would need to fill out CSS profile in order to get full consideration for merit money. They were pretty insistent about this.”
-This was exactly the case with my D’s UG but it was FASFA, no CSS. And they were absolutely correct. 15min. every year saved us tons of $$$, full tuition and more, majority were private Merit awards with that carry person/family names (at state public school), D. had close to 10 of them.<br>
If school says so, just do it. Very worthwhile. I do not think though that every school is this way.</p>
<p>“Costco has called (and wrote) twice about potentially contaminated food products we have purchased.”
-Exactly. They called us. But if we used cash, they woudl not have a record. We did not even have a chance to open, it was still sealled when they called. </p>
<p>"And, besides, we get lots of money back (and airline miles) from using credit cards.
It’s silly to throw that money away. " - And $600 was also from Costco American Express last year.</p>
<p>Again, you have to have a sense of whether you would qualify. You can do those calculators to see if you do. </p>
<p>I know someone with 3 kids. They were pushed by the colleges to fill out FAFSA for the first 2 even though they did not think they would qualify. They didn’t.</p>
<p>When colleges tried to push them to do it for the 3rd child, they said forget it.</p>
<p>Lakemom—very few families in the US or anywhere have $150K/year in disposable income to pay for college. It was a reasonable request from the schools.</p>
<p>Oh Stevema, I think it is very reasonable for schools to ask, it is the pushy part I had trouble with with the school that wanted us to do CSS even after I told them we wouldn’t qualify for FAFSA and implied he might be missing out. When in actuality, if they had called CSS they would have known that anyone who does not qualify for need cannot get merit money from CSS required filings. </p>
<p>The other thing people don’t realize though is that it isn’t just your income. It is any money/asset that you may not be putting on your taxes that you must declare for FAFSA. So money your parents left your kids, aspects of your self employed business and many other sources must be declared.</p>
<p>Lakemom–I think your information might be school specific though. Individual schools have control over how they hand out funds, private schools anyway. One school may limit their merit aid to family need but other schools that just isn’t the case. There is more than one way to figure aid too and if a school wants your child badly enough, they will find the dollars for them to attend. Even if they don’t want them all that badly, there is money to be had outside of the FAFSA and CSS at many private schools.</p>
<p>On top of which, every family that completes the FAFSA is eligible for the unsubsidized federal loans. There are a lot of good reasons to take those loans, especially if your child is considering grad/medical/law school.</p>
<p>Lots of interesting comments, many of which (understandably) leapfrog over the basic question of confidentiality of FAFSA data, and go immediately to the wisdom or presumed necessity of filing.</p>
<p>Sybbie719 cites a long, far-reaching list of places the data might end up – a list provided by FAFSA. Kelsmom references a far more reassuring view of a FAFSA filer’s privacy, and it’s far more consistent with verbal encouragement that admissions people offer, but I’m not sure specifically what the narrower view is based on, particularly in the face of FAFSA’s own warnings about how far the data could go.</p>
<p>One might reasonably want to know where the data can go, regardless of whether one expects to qualify for need-based or merit-based aid, or plan to take loans.</p>
<p>One poster mentioned a school that takes a “now or never” approach to requests for aid, from the time of enrollment. The school may not want to admit a student on the assumption that she’s a full-payor and then have money become an issue in subsequent years. Fair enough. But I don’t see how the school can stop you from filing a FAFSA and seeking non-institutional aid or loans.</p>
<p>SteveMA-I’m sure you are right, it may be school specific but like everything else in this process you don’t know until you apply to the school, so they keep you guessing to the very end.</p>
<p>My son was offered merit money at every school he applied, at the privates, about the same amount which I found curious, like they all used the same template. I just made sure he applied early to all the schools that indicated that they needed early apps for merit consideration.</p>
<p>fieldsports, I think that it is implied that if you don’t think you will qualify for FASFA, then why open yourself to any possible confidentiality exposure.</p>
<p>Lakemom,
Nobody in a world can make you to fill FASFA or other doc. if you did not want to do so. In many cases, it is very silly not file though. If you felt that you are not such a case, then do not file. You can always tell “pushy” person that you did file, they really do not care much one way or another, why they would? If one kid does not get what he is fully deserve, the more is left for another.<br>
Here is additional story, not related to FASFA, but related to Merit awards in general. At some schools there are additional awards that they can apply starting with spring of freshman year, there are Returning students Merit awards designated to those with high college GPA. Guess what? Most do not bother and those who apply just get more. D. got additional $4k in one year, they are very substantial and worhtwhile, but she said nobody care to apply. Thank you everybody who “sponsored” my D. by not applying, not filing FASFA, not doing something else. Nobody can make anybody, we are in free country yet!</p>
<p>MiamiDAP, I don’t think one can say how silly or not it is for someone to apply to FAFSA if they don’t think they will qualify. My example of my friend with the 3 kids shows that. </p>
<p>You clearly have gotten some real benefit but I don’t know how common those opportunities your daughter got are everywhere.</p>
<p>In the grand scheme of things, it seems the colleges hold the cards. If they say they want FAFSA or CSS Profile to consider you for merit awards, then they can do that. </p>
<p>Lakemom – If I’d been the family with 3 kids, I’d be tempted to file for the 3rd kid. You’d assume family savings were down and, if there are multiples in college simultaneously, expenses were up. That can affect the FAFSA calculations. Plus, different schools provide aid at different levels. Filing FAFSA doesn’t take that long once you’ve done your taxes (if you do your taxes a bit in advance of when you need to file FAFSA, then you can auto populate many of the fields by pulling data from the IRS – data flow the other way!).</p>
<p>Your are right but the husband has his own business and is self employed. I know FAFSA asks things that are not on your taxes. I guess after 2 passes he figured he knew enough by then that their situation would not come back with a different answer.</p>
<p>The question of “whether you are likely to benefit from filing” is a completely separate question from “where might the data end up”. Threads on this topic tend to gravitate toward the former, because everybody has an opinion about the former, but hardly anybody seems to know much about where the data might end up.</p>
<p>Sybbie cited FAFSA itself, and it looks like the data could go a whole lot of places.</p>
<p>A person with nothing nefarious to hide, could still want to know where the data might end up, and make a reasoned decision about whether to file, weighing the possibility of future intrusion and identity fraud risk against the likelihood of any benefit. Necessity (or likely benefit) are widely assumed, but little seems to be known or acknowledged about the risks.</p>
<p>You shouldn’t have to provide your financial information if a school is truly giving merit aid. There are very few schools, if any, that are truly need blind when it comes to admission. By providing your financial information could sometimes hurt your kid if he/she is borderline. </p>
<p>Over 50% of students at Cornell are full pay students and that percentage has been consistent over the years. If they were truly need blind then it is interesting to me that they could hit that number every year. If your family is only eligible for few thousand $ FA, I would encourage you to think hard if it would be worth it for you to apply for FA. On the flip side if your family needs large amount of FA for your child to attend then it would be foolish not to apply for FA.</p>
<p>I am always reluctant in giving out any information if I don’t know for sure if I am going to get something back in return.</p>
<p>The risks depend on the actual way the systems are interconnected and how, and whether data is stored at those other agencies, and who has access at those other agencies.
If FAFSA sends a name and SSN to Social Security and gets back a Match or No Match response, that’s actually not much of a risk since SS already has that info. That’s the same sort of query that’s presumably performed when you file taxes.
If FAFSA sends the entire dataset to be validated by an external group, then you’re at a much bigger risk because data from FAFSA is being spread.</p>
<p>There’s no much way to know the answer to all the system interconnections. You’d probably be a Homeland Security risk if you knew. </p>
<p>We know that some financial aid information is available at the colleges. It’s available to the financial aid office and, sometimes, to admissions. It’s likely that the information is available to quite a few people at the college just in those groups. The registrar may have some information derived from the financial aid information (i.e., grant, WS, and scholarship amounts), but not access to the actual financial aid info. However, within admissions and financial aid it will depend on the college’s own computer systems and their account access policies (both as written and as practiced) to know who has access.</p>
<p>The potential for identity fraud seems enormous, given the nature and quantity of the information. If you apply to several colleges, the number of people who might get access to it would be substantial. (Including people who aren’t supposed to have access to it, of course – that’s how identity fraud often works.) The less likely you are to be eligible for need-based aid, the greater your creditworthiness, making you potentially more of a target in an identity fraud situation. And, yes, this is even more true with the Profile.</p>
<p>Very few cases of identity fraud are associated with filing paperwork with the government, be it tax returns or FAFSA. Most are associated with stolen credit card numbers - you know, when the waitress takes your credit card to the register (out of your sight) to ring up your order. She has access to your name, credit card number, and the CVN, which can then be used to place online orders. She may be able to look up your address, and apply for credit elsewhere in your name.</p>
<p>While it is reasonable to be concerned where your information is going, filing FAFSA is not likely to result in identity fraud. I’m sure college aid offices must meet the same stricks guidelines we do in our tax office, regarding client data. If you’re really that worried about protecting your data, much of which is already publicly available, don’t file. But understand that there is a cost to that decision. Perhaps at JHU or one of the other schools that requires you file that first year FAFSA, you might not qualify now, but what happens if there is a sudden change in family finances? The parent supporting the family is laid off, or disabled, or even dies? The student then not only has to deal with the emotional impact, but also the reality that there will be no financial aid, even if the family otherwise qualifies.</p>
<p>If you’re worried about disclosure, look at all the other information available about you. My public library has a disclosure statement, and it lists all sorts of agencies that might want access to my circulation data. In most cases it will not be shared except by court order, but they want to be clear about how it could end up being shared. Does that stop me from borrowing a variety of different books? No, but I do understand it is not anonymous.</p>
<p>Perhaps the better question is not where the data can end up, but how frequently it is shared. Your Social Security number and name are probably shared with just about everybody, in an attempt to collect data from other agencies to verify what you have listed on FAFSA. I doubt much goes the other direction. But it could, if the other agencies had a compelling enough reason to get a court order.</p>
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