<p>thumper1–I realize your aid package is new each year but for most people their financial circumstances don’t change that dramatically from year to year.</p>
<p>Oldfort–by applying for aid ALL students are awarded federal loans so they DO get aid. Taking aid is different. I am gathering from your posts that you don’t understand how the FA process works. The college won’t just “look at your taxes”. If you don’t file the FAFSA and send your information to your school, you don’t get financial aid, period. They won’t just take a copy of your tax return and say, oh, her’s some money. It just doesn’t work that way.</p>
<p>thumper1–you can think what you want but if you talk to people in the FA offices, previous award getters will get first consideration for awards the next year…</p>
<p>Previous award recipients are considered, yes. But what I’m trying to say is that a student with new need as a sophomore, say due to parent job loss is also considered. I’m not sure the place in the queue makes any difference as its a new year.</p>
<p>Anecdote…at my son’s university (which did not meet full need), applicants asking for aid for the first time were actually given larger awards than returning students who had lower Efcs for some reason.</p>
<p>And in addition, ALL returning student applications for aid were processed WELL after the ones for incoming freshmen. </p>
<p>I’m quite sure Oldfort knows how to apply for financial aid, if needed. </p>
<p>The reality is that what happens at college A may be very different from other schools. YMMV.</p>
<p>Oldforte, not snippy. Just an indirect way of saying your kid is better than most kids who don’t get merit money.Now that would have been snippy, but not towards you or your kid. </p>
<p>Schools that are need aware have varying ways of seeing if there has been a change in circumstances. Some schools just require multiple years of CSS PROFILE, for instance, just as part of procedure. It does depend upon the school, but, yes, this situation does exist where if you don’t apply for aid when you first apply for admissions, there are additonal requirements and possible penalities. Also filing just FAFSA and taking the loans out that you can get by doing so, is not considered applying for aid at a lot of schools, especially those that require other documentation, particularly PROFILE. It’s applying for THEIR funds that concern them. THey don’t care about you getting money from the government that does not involve cost to them. You have to give these colleges whatever documentation they require for consideration for their money. It could be tax returns, FAFSAs, PROFILE or their own form so designed.</p>
<p>You don’t need to check the FA box when you apply, if all you want is the unsubsidized federal loan. You can apply for that later, all the way up until September if you decide you want one. (At least that is how it worked a few years ago when I looked into it).</p>
<p>I took out a student loan few years ago when my bonus payment was going to be delayed for few months and I didn’t want to take it out of my brokerage acct. The form I filled out was very simple and I think I got the response the same day. I didn’t have to send in tax returns or even pay stubs.
This is really a silly statement. This is like telling someone that when you apply for mortgage it is more than just sending in your tax returns, you have to actually fill out a mortgage application. Tax returns, pay stubs, bank statements are all supporting documents when you want to apply for FA or mortgage (or any kind of loans). It is kind of stating the obvious, so I didn’t even mention that one needed to fill out FAFSA.</p>
<p>socalmom, you can call the school and ask if they award institutional need-based aid to students who did not apply for need-based aid as freshmen. Translation: you’re asking if your kid could get need-based aid from the school after freshman year if she doesn’t apply for it now. </p>
<p>You’re full-pay, so you may be thinking this is totally unnecessary. If you’ve got all four years of tuition safely banked then yes, it’s not going to affect you. But if you are paying college bills even partially out of your current income, you’d want to know what would happen if you lost your job or there was some kind of expensive family emergency.</p>