<p>Curmudg-re the FAFSA, I used a FAFSA calculator which popped up the $81,000 figure using our prior year tax return figures. Our son was then free to mark the no need based finaid box on his applications.</p>
<p>While I have never heard of the term “profile schools”, i suppose they are ones such as Harvard, Swarthmore, etc. Yes, our son eliminated those from the onset because they do not offer merit aid and he was picking up the tuition cost. He also did not want to take any SAT 2’s for iconoclastic personal reasons.</p>
<p>In the end he applied to Case, Oberlin, Rensselaer, Allegheny among a few others. He was relatively certain that he would be accepted by all he applied to, so the choice came down to a decision of academic/ec offerings vs finaid support.</p>
<p>Re his essay, yes he wrote in a few hours but had been mulling it over in his head for a while. That is the way he has always worked. By the time he is ready to put something down on paper, most of the work has already been done, we just havent seen it.</p>
<p>The same with the college application process senior year. He did essentially all his work junior year in his quest for merit aid.</p>