FAFSA for 2017

[yeahdisney]

fafsa was able to be started oct 1 2016 for next year's freshmen college class. Can not say I enjoyed it. I googled FAFSA and I picked the first one that came up. Mistake. It is NOT the free .org one. Dang it. So I got to do it again.

This is the first time for us to fill out so I got to stroll around the house to retrieve info. So the site would warn me that I was idle at times.

When I went to retrieve the info from the IRS site, I would get a notice that I was idle for 15 minutes and I was not, I was actually on the site and typing at the time. Then when I was back at the IRS web site to retrieve the student tax info. It said idle again and then made me start all over. I had written some info down so I could go faster.

I tried the help button nothing even popped up for awhile to allow to ask a question.

I called but it was 445 my time so maybe later than 5 pm eastern time so I received no prompt to talk to a human.

Best part ~ done.

I am going to ask one question at a school help session this week and if needed I will go back in and update. The help session is one hour long for all parents to ask their questions in front of everyone.

The schools DD is applying to said each student must complete.

 

[mnrose]

Not sure I need to do this or not? DD is technically a junior, but has enough credits to graduate this year if she wants. She's taking the ACT this month and based on the score she gets, will decide whether to apply for fall 2017 or not. There's not a snowballs chance in hell that she is getting one penny of "needs based" aid, so can anyone tell me whether it's worth my time to fill it out? Ack. Another thing to worry about given her recently announced scheme to graduate early.

Personally, I'm advocating a year in PSEO (post secondary educational opportunity) which is basically college for free for a year. She'd have to go to the local community college, but heck, that's just fine for entry level classes anyway.

 

[Southernmiss]

The schools our kids go to, or are interested in, including community college, require the FAFSA for all students. Our state also has 2 small grants for good students who go to in state schools. To be eligible for those, the state requires FAFSA to be completed.

It gets easier after the first year. Completed it yesterday for ds who is a sophomore in college and ds who will be a freshman next year. Once the info was entered for one kid it pulled in last year's basic info and then used that info for kid #2.

 

[Queen of the WDW Scene]

My sister filled it out for my niece who will be attending college next year.
Took about 30 minutes.
She said it wasn't too bad at all.

 

[Poohforyou]

I'm working on FAFSA and CSS. I'm feeling a bit violated .

 

[Mrs. Ciz]

I'm working on FAFSA and CSS. I'm feeling a bit violated .

CSS is waaayyy worse than FAFSA!

 

[barkley]

Not sure I need to do this or not? DD is technically a junior, but has enough credits to graduate this year if she wants. She's taking the ACT this month and based on the score she gets, will decide whether to apply for fall 2017 or not. There's not a snowballs chance in hell that she is getting one penny of "needs based" aid, so can anyone tell me whether it's worth my time to fill it out? Ack. Another thing to worry about given her recently announced scheme to graduate early.

Personally, I'm advocating a year in PSEO (post secondary educational opportunity) which is basically college for free for a year. She'd have to go to the local community college, but heck, that's just fine for entry level classes anyway.

if she's going to apply for any scholarships she may find that even if they are strictly merit based-proof of completion of the fafsa is a prerequisite to apply. my dd has received about a dozen different scholarships freshman-junior year-none need based, all but maybe 1 or 2 required fafsa be completed (and her university requires it for all scholarships they administer as well).

 

[The Mystery Machine]

Not sure I need to do this or not? DD is technically a junior, but has enough credits to graduate this year if she wants. She's taking the ACT this month and based on the score she gets, will decide whether to apply for fall 2017 or not. There's not a snowballs chance in hell that she is getting one penny of "needs based" aid, so can anyone tell me whether it's worth my time to fill it out? Ack. Another thing to worry about given her recently announced scheme to graduate early.

Personally, I'm advocating a year in PSEO (post secondary educational opportunity) which is basically college for free for a year. She'd have to go to the local community college, but heck, that's just fine for entry level classes anyway.

It is better to be safe than sorry out of gate, that way your bases are covered. As PP stated some scholarships require it. It is not going to hurt you.

My dd has loans that require the FAFSA fill out.

 

[Pea-n-Me]

Somehow this past year ours got royally screwed up when one of my kids' names became misspelled somewhere along the way after it was sent in. FAFSA claims it was the school's doing, the school denies it. We know it was correct when it was sent in. Months went by. DD - who was affected - based on her grades, should've qualified for merit aid, yet she didn't receive any. Getting answers was difficult. Was it because there was a delay when her information was miscommunicated? Or was it because of income, or something else entirely? Who knows. This was our first experience with it so we're still in learning mode. We will slog through it again for both our kids, and keep our fingers crossed for this coming year.

 

[Poohforyou]

CSS is waaayyy worse than FAFSA!

It is crazy but several of dd's choices require it. There's no way we'll qualify for need based aid but the schools still say it's required for merit aid, which dd definitely qualifies for.

They ask things like the market value of our house and how much we spent out of pocket for medical and dental expenses in 2015 and expect to spend this year.

I printes out fafsa and CSS. Fafsa is 3 pages; css is 12.

 

[leebee]

Somehow this past year ours got royally screwed up when one of my kids' names became misspelled somewhere along the way after it was sent in. FAFSA claims it was the school's doing, the school denies it. We know it was correct when it was sent in. Months went by. DD - who was affected - based on her grades, should've qualified for merit aid, yet she didn't receive any. Getting answers was difficult. Was it because there was a delay when her information was miscommunicated? Or was it because of income, or something else entirely? Who knows. This was our first experience with it so we're still in learning mode. We will slog through it again for both our kids, and keep our fingers crossed for this coming year.

Sorry to hear that your DD got screwed out of merit money. Mine did also- not because of the FAFSA but because her guidance counselor neglected to send in her transcripts. She missed out on $4K per year, or $16K- more than half of her final college education debt! (Her high school has students fill out a form with the school's name and a check-off list of what's required by the school; guidance office then organizes the packet (transcripts, recommendations, essays, etc) and submits them. Her packet was sent without transcripts to the state University, here in our hometown. They didn't notify us about the missing transcript until after the merit deadline.)

CSS is much more in-depth than the FAFSA. I guess the schools with big endowments need some way to sort out who to give money to, and some of their scholarships are need-based. I hated doing the CSS, but got the FAFSA down to a science after the first year (didn't need to do CSS for the school where DD ended up attending, just during senior year of high school when she was applying to colleges).

 

[LynnTH]

I did the FAFSA yesterday. Actually thought it was easier than I thought. I had gotten a book "How to pay for College without going broke" and it has a section dedicated to the FAFSA and everything you need before filling it out. That was helpful. I had everything ready to go and it actually asked for less info than I thought. I like you had the option to link to the IRS site and it would auto fill in the items on your tax returns. Got myself all worked up about filling this out and it was pretty painless.

 

[KAMLEM]

I was surprised at how easy the FAFSA was the first year I did it after listening to all the complaints. The CSS profile was a hundred times worse!

 

[AustinTink]

if she's going to apply for any scholarships she may find that even if they are strictly merit based-proof of completion of the fafsa is a prerequisite to apply. my dd has received about a dozen different scholarships freshman-junior year-none need based, all but maybe 1 or 2 required fafsa be completed (and her university requires it for all scholarships they administer as well).

Interesting, because people I know experienced just the opposite. Their kids received merit-based money with no FAFSA required. I double-checked with the school guidance counselor who said we would not need to fill it out for the merit awards my kid will hopefully qualify for next year.

 

[Poohforyou]

Interesting, because people I know experienced just the opposite. Their kids received merit-based money with no FAFSA required. I double-checked with the school guidance counselor who said we would not need to fill it out for the merit awards my kid will hopefully qualify for next year.

I personally wouldn't rely on a high school guidance counselor regarding college merit aid.

 

[crjack]

My DD is a junior at a college in Boston and none of the schools that offered her merit based money required FAFSA. We know we won't qualify for anything other than student loans so unless she needs one for senior year we have not done it. She has a scholarship that is for all 4 years as long as she maintains a certain GPA.

My experience with two in college is the school just cares that the bill is paid in full when the semester starts. I have one in state school and one in private and neither one required us to do a FAFSA.

 

[AustinTink]

I personally wouldn't rely on a high school guidance counselor regarding college merit aid.

Admissions officers do not need to know our finances at this point in the game. We are not relying on aid of any sort to put our kid through college.

 

[barkley]

I personally wouldn't rely on a high school guidance counselor regarding college merit aid.

My DD is a junior at a college in Boston and none of the schools that offered her merit based money required FAFSA. We know we won't qualify for anything other than student loans so unless she needs one for senior year we have not done it. She has a scholarship that is for all 4 years as long as she maintains a certain GPA.

My experience with two in college is the school just cares that the bill is paid in full when the semester starts. I have one in state school and one in private and neither one required us to do a FAFSA.

based on our experiences it depends on (1) the college and (2) the groups/trusts/organizations...who administer and award scholarships as to if they require fafsa or not for merit based scholarships.

in the case of dd's university (public)-ALL scholarships awarded through the university (including individual departments/alumni association and a huge number of private trusts) utilize the same application as need based which is on-line and can't be officially submitted w/o the student's SAR from fafsa being uploaded into the application. it's just the way their process works. we encountered the same thing with a local $100 million foundation that administers scholarships for 20 counties across 2 states-they have one master application on-line, it requires the uploaded SAR as well, so if a student is applying for a strictly merit based scholarship they still have to do fafsa if they want to apply.

 

[SeeDisney]

I hated filling out the Fafsa!!! It was horribly confusing!!!

 

[punkin]

I'm hoping to tackle this today. I have to fill out for 2. The css is giving me palpitations.