联邦学生援助免费申请表 (FAFSA) 和大学奖学金申请表 (CSS Profile) 概述

we are here today with Sean Logan director of College counseling at Phillips Academy Sean what I want to talk about today is what are the forms that I need to fill out to get financial aid need-based financial aid so the first form that is going to be very important it qualifies you for any kind of federal funds is a form called the Free Application for Federal Student Aid the FAFSA as you say that's the Free Application for Federal Student Aid or federal student aid and I take it by the name that this is a form that you don't depend write and again you want to be careful about that there are several sites they'll happily charge you money to fill it out for you but it's really something that you can do and is for free and it's found at fafsa.ed.gov great and and what am I gonna find on this one what would exactly I'm going to be putting on when I fill it out so what colleges are looking for is trying to get a sense of the family's resources and how much they can pay towards college the general rubric with financial aid is you know what can the family afford first and then after that what federal funds might be available what's in school funds might be available so they're gonna look at income and this is very much an income driven form and they're gonna look at who lives where the student live who lives in that house and what are the resources of that house and when you say the resource of that what exactly do you mean by that so the income assets of the house has and so forth right and so as a student you know this might not be something that I that I know or have access to so what what do I sort of need to do in order to be able to actually get this information so this form is really going to be a combination of the student working with a parent and there's a part of on this form that is is for the student and the student will fill that out in terms of any money they've made savings they have and so forth and then there's another part of the form that is for the for the person who is living in the house if that's a if that's a husband and a wife great if it's just one parent whatever whoever has the the income in that house they're going to look at that information as well great and it sounds like giving us with a the level of detail that this information requires the parents may need some forms or things on them while they're filling it out what exactly do they need to have filling out this one alright so basically you know the sooner that the parent fills out their their taxes for the year they have their w-2s they have their their taxes that's gonna make it much easier for them to fill out this form so it's a lot of the same questions when when do students and parents need to be filling out this form so this form isn't available until after January 1st but there's a pretty short turnaround time most colleges want this filled out and turned into them probably somewhere between February 1st and the middle of March so this is a year where if you know you're gonna be going to college talk with your parents and let them know the sooner they can you know get on top of their taxes get those done the easier these forms will be to fill out if they know they're not gonna be able to fill out their taxes immediately you can always use estimated numbers or you can use last year's numbers especially if things haven't changed dramatically in your family's financial situation and why exactly do I need to get it in so quickly so again these are the deadlines that college is going to have and it's very important to meet these deadlines it's probably even more important than meeting the admission deadline is the financial aid deadlines because schools only have a limo schools have a limited amount of money and they're gonna use that money you know based on the students they admit and the forms they have in so if you wait until after you're admitted and find that out and then send in your forms they may already be out of money so it's really important to make the deadlines for these okay so once I do have the form filled out and I submit it what happens so all that the FAFSA does is use a formula that sort of crunches your family's resources and comes up with something called an an EFC an estimated Family Contribution and that is a number that colleges will use to help them put together a financial aid package so all that number says is this is how much based on the formulas that the government uses how much they think the family can contribute to their son or daughters education so say you you crunch those numbers you turn them in and it comes back and says your estimated Family Contribution is ten thousand dollars and in the financial aid office then we'll say well if we're school that costs fifty thousand dollars the family can pay ten thousand dollars we're gonna have to put together a financial aid package for forty thousand dollars for that student to make it possible for them to come okay and does the EF does the information from the FAFSA go directly to the schools or does it go to the students how does that actual transfer process occur so you will get back something called a SAR a student aid report and that will again sort of give back to you here's all the information you put in and will also give you what your estimated Family Contribution is that is also sent to all the schools that you put on the form when you send it in the one thing to remember is you can only put ten schools on that on that list so if you're going to apply to more than ten schools once those are submitted you go back in sometime after that you can take some of those schools off and put the other schools on there to make sure that everybody has the schools that has the information they need okay so I fill out the FAFSA it spits out an EFC which is sort of their estimation of what my family can contribute and that is part of the student aid report and that that information gets sent to up to ten schools and I can go and add more later and they get that information then they're going to put together some kind of financial aid package for correct and it's gonna you know my family will contribute some amount and then the remainder is made up through what what exactly other things could come from the school so a typical package that at school put together is going to have probably three pieces to it there's going to be scholarships and grant money which is which is good that's money you don't have to pay back there's gonna be loans and loans or things that you will pay back over a period of time and there will probably be a work-study job and that's a job that you will have during the school year probably somewhere between you know eight to ten hours and maybe upwards of 20 hours depending on the school that money will make during the school year okay and so I won't get that financial aid I can't even qualify for that if I don't thought the FAFSA correct so aside from the FAFSA so Shan are there any other forms that our students typically need to fill out to get financial aid need-based financial aid specifically so most public schools only require the the FAFSA the FAFSA form other schools a lot of private schools may have their own internal form and that's in addition to the FAFSA in addition and there's another form out there that's used by a lot of lot of schools called the CSS profile okay and that can be found with a College Board website and the CSS profile you said that some and I fill out the FAFSA I'm also gonna fill out the CSS profile and that's going specifically to private school or it's more often used more often correct okay so so what are sort of the differences between the profile and the fast or what additional information am I going to be providing so first of all the CSS profile does cost money there's a fee to sort of fill out the form and then there's also a fee to send it to different schools there also is our fee waivers that are available for this so you are able to again do this without cost to your family and the nice thing is as you fill out the form it will determine if you qualify for a fee waiver or not that my family's income that sort of thing it's below a certain level right be able to top the one right okay so that tells me you know how much it costs what what actually am I going what specific if you know some specific differences sure so on the FAFSA form that really is only talking about the the family that the student lives with so in that sort of home on the profile they look at the the the resources of both biological parents so even if there's a divorced separated situation they're going to inquire about both families and and their ability and their ability to pay so that's that's a very big difference another difference with the CSS profile is again it's it's used a lot by private schools and they're in for their institutional money they have so they want a broader picture of what's going on in the household so this takes into account things like one of the big things that takes into account is home equity and how much how much money you may have in home equity and that means sort of if I've put money on a house or own a house that get counted in the profile right but that's not being counted as that's correct okay so you know that you know again sort of getting a broader picture of your assets about a broader picture of sort of what you're able to contribute okay and are the deadlines for the profiles similar to FAFSA so they're a little bit different so the college deadlines are very similar so again probably between you know February first and sometime in the middle of March so those are pretty standard but the CSS profile is available in the fall of your senior year and one of the ways of these private schools use the CSS profile a lot of these institutions have early action early decision programs for admission so they use the profile as a way to give students a preliminary financial aid package so if they are again remember in a early program that deadlines usually November 1 usually you find out are at some time in the middle of December and once you get the decision in December they also would like to give you a preliminary package so you can determine like oh not only might have admitted to the school but I have a package that will work for my family and myself so you can use the CSS profile in the fall that will obviously be on last year's tax information because obviously this year's information isn't finished by the fall but for both the FAFSA and the profile you will eventually submit your current year tax documents and w-2 so they can verify everything that's on there great we've got the FAFSA which kind of gets me access to federal federal financial aid mhm and that's pretty much for all schools right when I fill that out it'll be after January 1st I'll get an EFC back and that'll go on to the schools that I am applying to as long as I specify them in the FAFSA correct the profile isn't required by all schools tends to be used more for private schools they'll still require the FAFSA Thals require the profile right and in that case it may ask some sort of additional questions to find out about my home if I have additional assets like how much value is in my home it might also ask about if my parents are divorced what you know the parent that doesn't live with us is making write and these are both to give private schools more information right but also for early action early decision to kind of let me access that financial aid right great is there anything else that I need to know FAFSA about the FAFSA profile before I get started these forms that'll get you started but again the the more organized you are with your tax information going into the going into that year the the easier these forms are going to be the other thing I would say is financial aid officers are always happy to help you with these forms use them as a resource