I see and I replied!
Iâm sorry I didnât include this, but another poster addressed it already.
It doesnât matter when you submit the 2024-2025 FAFSAâŠ.your income from 2022 will be used. For 2025-2026, your income from 2023 will be used.
So, as noted, adhere to the deadlines. That matters a LOT.
@HankCT in 2018 you were posting about a daughter who I think was getting ready to apply to colleges. SoâŠthis isnât your first rodeo with colleges or college costs. What did you doâŠthen?
She has applied to a lot of schools. The full spectrum. Her state flagship, a bunch of state schools where we can definitely afford the OOS costs (think the ones with lower), some OOS with a bit higher OOS cost, a number of varying privates that have been known to give out some merit.
She is casting a wide net and we will see what comes back. If there are some she gets accepted to that are giving no merit, and we get no finaid, and they are expensive, we may have to pass on them. Thatâs fine. As of now we havenât applied to any ânever meritâ private schools that are expensive (schools like Tufts, which she would be a great academic fit for, but we canât afford full price).
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@HankCT sounds like your daughter has cast a very wide and broad net. Iâll 
that she starts getting some affordable acceptancesâŠsoon. Iâm sure she will thrive where she lands.
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Sounds like youâve done it right.
Not submitting docs or timing them wonât change the end result, not for the better anyway. Could be worse if you miss a deadline.
And thereâs many schools where sheâll find her peers. And selectivity is not necessarily a measure to rank one against. Thereâs a current thread, related to Tufts in fact, where the student is potentially looking to move on bcuz they are not challenged.
Good luck.
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This is our third, and each one was a very different experience, and the kids applied to fairly different schools. First child was a 3.8 wgpa student with a 1300. Second student was a 4.4 wgp with a 1350. This one is a 5.25 wgpa with 11 APs and a 1510 sat, and awards. So the school lists have always been different.
As for the Fafsa and css for them, I donât remember in their application year exactly what we did. I donât recall being super early or late. Somewhere in the middle. Probably around now (December)
Looking back at old emails, she had offers and merit already by end of dec and Jan. For some reason my youngest wonât get answers on all
Of her schools until between Jan 15 and April
BeeBee what I meant was that if they look at 2022 they will see much more income than I actually am making now. So that appeal process may be the ticket (although my hunch is they may not budge)
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Strong student! Hoping some of those guaranteed merit schools are in the mix.
No EA applications?
January is very soon!!
If you ran an NPC using 2022 data, would it show need?
It could be even with lower pay you wouldnât qualify âŠ.
But if you would, after admission, itâs certainly worth having a discussion with a school and to follow their appeal process.
Or they could recalculate your need but you wonât get additional aid as a result ⊠because the school doesnât meet 100% of need. State schools donât typically meet need, especially for OOS students.
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You are probably referring to need blind schools that also meet full need.
The majority of colleges are need blind, including nearly all public colleges. Further, the majority of need blind schools donât meet full need, so the fact they are need blind is basically moot. Said differently, most schools are need blind and donât care what a given studentâs need is, because they arenât going to meet their full need.
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Ah yes, you are absolutely correct. I was only thinking of meet-need schools.
The Chetty study showed that .1% have a much higher rate of acceptance but data also shows that the tier or two below (in terms of income) arenât shown the same preference. I think this is probably OPâs concern.
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Since the OP was making more than well more than $200k 6 years ago - Iâm not sure he falls into that income bracket. Or at least, seems like his 2022 tax return doesnât.
OP seems classic donut hole family. Makes enough to not qualify for aid, but most likely living a lifestyle that doesnât support saving for collegeâŠor at least not the colleges many donut hole families target.
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Quote from the article you linked to:
âThe irony in all the hand-wringing is that these students donât actually need Ivies to be successful. The Opportunity Insights team found that attending an Ivy Plus school, compared with a highly selective public university, increased studentsâ chances of reaching the very upper echelons of wealth and prestige, but there wasnât much of an effect on average earnings or kidsâ odds of becoming plain old rich. Plus, many prestigious schools are happy to have them, says Selingo. For example, at Williams and NYU, those in the top 10 percent do well, with the attendance dip coming instead for the top 15 percent. At Clemson, Johns Hopkins, Kenyon, Purdue, and Washington University in St. Louis, kids from the top 5 to 10 percent attend at rates similar to, if not higher than, the wealthiest applicants. These differing patterns stem largely from the interplay between prestige and money, Selingo says.â
OP said his kid isnât targeting Ivy+ schools. His income wonât be limiting factor to acceptances.
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If the top 1% earns (at least) $611K/year âand they are over represented at Ivy Plus (and likely many other private universities), there is obviously a big gap between those making $250K (or even $350K) and over $600K. The attached article provides more charts that show, in fact, that those in roughly the 90-98 percentile see a dip in admissions. The 99+ has an edge with the .1% experiencing the biggest boost (obviously other factors like athletes, legacy, etc. play a role, too).
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You donât have to convince meâŠI totally agree that people donât need to attend an Ivy Plus college to be successful. And while the Chetty study focused on Ivy Plusâand as you note, the acceptance pattern isnât universal and some colleges are still giving high-but-not-highest income families an edgeâthe chart I posted above from the NYT rings true beyond just Ivy Plus.
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OP seems to have two questions that weâre answering in this thread.
#1 - Because weâre a relatively well-off family, is there a strategic reason to hold on submitting FinAid data, in order to improve the probability of acceptance?
#2 - If our financial situation is changing, will schools take that into account for Financial Aid?
#2 is consistently answered in this thread - if what the tax returns show doesnât match current reality for an accepted family, you can appeal, and then something might happen.
#1 still seems like itâs being discussed, so to support @beebee3âs answer - there is no admissions benefit to trying to slow play your familyâs financial situation. The schools are already using application data (school, ECâs, census tract) to make a series of assumptions, and while many schools deliberately make an effort to admit low-income students, theyâre using the data they have in the applications, not waiting for financial information to come in to make tradeoffs on an individual student basis (e.g. @HankCTâs child and BobbyAKâs child are âequalâ but BobbyAK has less income, so letâs take them).
Thatâs how the 20-80 and others can afford to be need-blind in admissions - they know enough about what theyâre doing (e.g. this year we can admit 17% of our students from low-income census tracts) to be able to estimate their overall financial aid costs for the year. When schools that are not need-blind are making those tradeoffs, theyâre doing it to reduce their Financial Aid costs, so youâd want to look like you could pay more.
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Are you both looking at the (unreliable as usual) collegeprep website?
The vast majority of schools are need blind as others have mentioned above. Of these need blind schools, about 50 also meet full need.