<p>Which schools are you concerned about?</p>
<p>The school’s website will let you know if you need to file FAFSA in order to be considered for merit. Not many schools do. Some of the ones that do take “need” into acct, so those probably won’t work for you.</p>
<p>* just remember that at many schools, if you don’t apply for financial aid in the freshman year, you can’t do so in subsequent years, so if something drastic and unforeseen happens to the family’s finances it could be a problem. *</p>
<p>Actuallly if something drastic happens such as job loss or death of the major breadwinner, then schools do let you apply later. What they DON’T want is people pretending to be full pay to get admitted, when they can only pay for ONE YEAR, then applying for FA for the following years. That’s gaming the system.</p>