parentologist: every one of the quotes above from your posts in this thread is wrong. A student’s money is the student’s money, no matter where it is, even if it is held in a bank account belonging to a parent or anyone else, and the student’s money must be reported on FAFSA as a student asset. What you are claiming means it would be comically easy for a student to shelter from proper FAFSA reporting assets that legally and ethically belong to the student. As you correctly point out, a minor can in fact open a bank account that has the minor’s name on it, and even the minor’s Social Security Number, which means that for tax purposes any interest earned will be taxable to the minor. This is not rocket science. Think about it, especially as it applies to earned income, as is the case here. Do you really believe that a student with high (or any) earned income could magically have the assets resulting from a job reported on FAFSA as a parent asset and assessed at the lower parent FAFSA rate of 5.4% as opposed to the student rate of 20%, simply by stashing the money in a bank account that is titled only in the name of a parent?