“If you are one of the parents who had to submit estimated tax and income information on the CSS Profile college aid form to meet deadlines at the colleges your child has applied to, this is what you need to do to update that information in a timely and accurate manner so that the colleges can make an official aid award to your child.” …
Well, the premise is wrong. You can’t update the CSS/Profile. You can supply tax returns and send an email/letter pointing out changes to each and every college to which you sent the original CSS/Profile. That is not even close to updating it in my book.
Updating – that’s what you do with the FAFSA.
Well that was a fairly useless article. It’s not about updating CSS, it’s about sending tax returns via idoc or just directly to the school.
If I were writing that article I’d suggest everyone go to each school’s web site and make a list of all deadlines - CSS, idoc or direct returns, if W2s are also required (sometimes they are), if both parents and the student need to send that stuff, etc. I have a spreadsheet of those deadlines and frankly I don’t see how anyone can handle multiple CSS Profile schools without one.
@arabrab makes an excellent point about the word “update” too - that’s what you do with FAFSA, not CSS. IMO the CSS is the one you have to pay for, it should probably be more functional than the free form, not less. But it is what it is.
I think families new to the process need to be sure they know how individual colleges want the updates. Ours wanted hand-done changes on a print out of the CSS- and was adamant not to fax, as pages could get mixed with others.