CSS Non-custodial profile impact on EFC

NewEnglandMother
Tue, 10 Nov 2009 20:48:23 +0000

The document from the College Board regarding the CSS Profile describes how the bio/adoptive parent and the stepparent information is supposed (recommended) to be used. They DO NOT actually count the step’s income, rather they combine the household’s assets and divide the assets by each spouse’s proportionate income (step & bio) in order to fairly assess the assets and income of each bio parent. It is difficult to describe but they don’t actually expect the step parent to contribute. Each household counts all children in their household, however BOTH households count the child who is applying for financial aid - I know you won’t believe that (I didn’t know that when I filled out the forms last spring) but again I refer you to this document

https://finaidonline.collegeboard.com/fin/VignetteServlet/VignetteServlet.srv?relativePath=/profile/pdfs/ncp_imtreat.pdf

It seems pretty fair to me and nowhere near as bad as I thought it would be. Of course each school can apply the information as they see fit. My experience was that we came out with very close financial aid awards from 6 colleges.