Any reason to fill out FAFSA when higher income?

[Anonymous]

How many children do you have? It may be over $100K now, but if you have a second going concurrently, that EFC cuts in half and may very well fall under the COA, which might net you fin aid. There are colleges where some families have gazillions and what you think is high income might just be poor in their curve, so why not do it?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:If you live in DC and you are considering public universities, to need to have filled out FAFSA to apply for DCTAG.

Unless also over the DCTAG income limit.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:How many children do you have? It may be over $100K now, but if you have a second going concurrently, that EFC cuts in half and may very well fall under the COA, which might net you fin aid. There are colleges where some families have gazillions and what you think is high income might just be poor in their curve, so why not do it?

FAFSA sibling discount is going away soon, nexy year I think?

[Anonymous]

1- needed for merit at some schools (one of our DC got very nice merit aid at their OOS flagship, bringing the cost down to similar to in-state)

2 - unless you have $350-$400 tucked away in a 529, some schools (one of our child's) requires FAFSA and CSS (which is 10 times worse) be filed before starting if you'll EVER need aid while attending. DCs schools is over $80k, and we will be paying through cash flow for the first 2.5 years and from 529 the last 1.5 (and DC knows they must graduate in 4 years no 5 year plans allowed!). If something happened to the main breadwinner in our home, who's current salary is VERY new for our family, or they lost their job, we would contact the school, explain, and ask for aid. Had we not completed the FAFSa and the CSS, we would be SOL

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:1- needed for merit at some schools (one of our DC got very nice merit aid at their OOS flagship, bringing the cost down to similar to in-state)

2 - unless you have $350-$400 tucked away in a 529, some schools (one of our child's) requires FAFSA and CSS (which is 10 times worse) be filed before starting if you'll EVER need aid while attending. DCs schools is over $80k, and we will be paying through cash flow for the first 2.5 years and from 529 the last 1.5 (and DC knows they must graduate in 4 years no 5 year plans allowed!). If something happened to the main breadwinner in our home, who's current salary is VERY new for our family, or they lost their job, we would contact the school, explain, and ask for aid. Had we not completed the FAFSa and the CSS, we would be SOL

This is very helpful information. Thank you. When filing FAFSA for the purpose of 2 above, do I indicate yes we are seeking aid when applying for college? That is, we are full pay (so, we don't need financial aid) and anticipating being full pay for all 4 years unless suffer an expected financial setback in the future.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:We did not waste time

Well if you applied to a school that requires it for merit aid, you made a mistake. My son was offered $30K a year at a school that required FAFSA regardless of income level. It's not a waste of time unless you have no intention of accepting merit aid at those schools.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We did not waste time

Well if you applied to a school that requires it for merit aid, you made a mistake. My son was offered $30K a year at a school that required FAFSA regardless of income level. It's not a waste of time unless you have no intention of accepting merit aid at those schools.

Which school?

We did not waste time either, 300k HHI but with some assets put us at 250k EFC!!

[Anonymous]

OP here. This is all good info, thanks. Our income ranges from 425k to 550k based on bonus. 2 kids, 3 grades apart, so only 1 dual year. My EFC was in the mid 100s, I just guesstimated numbers.

So, I’m basically hearing that it is simple to fill out so may as well. My only concern is I don’t want schools thinking we need financial aid if we are not going to be offered it either way.

Do I check off that we don’t need aid, but still fill out the FAFSA form because some schools use it for merit and if we have a future job loss? I don’t care about the paperwork, my concern is admissions, don’t want to hurt it if not getting aid regardless.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:OP here. This is all good info, thanks. Our income ranges from 425k to 550k based on bonus. 2 kids, 3 grades apart, so only 1 dual year. My EFC was in the mid 100s, I just guesstimated numbers.

So, I’m basically hearing that it is simple to fill out so may as well. My only concern is I don’t want schools thinking we need financial aid if we are not going to be offered it either way.

Do I check off that we don’t need aid, but still fill out the FAFSA form because some schools use it for merit and if we have a future job loss? I don’t care about the paperwork, my concern is admissions, don’t want to hurt it if not getting aid regardless.

I feel like the common apps for the individual schools will ask if you are applying for aid and there are some cross checks where they will remind you if it hasn’t been received and you said you are applying.

In general I’ve found the following reasons to apply when you don’t qualify for need based aid

1. If merit consideration requires it - as someone mentioned it’s only a few schools. You would need to be applying to a school that offers merit and where you see under the merit details that it’s required. I think schools will sometimes do that if they don’t want to leave any federal aid on the table and if the specific scholarship considers financial need

2. Federal Loans and federal work study - this only applies if student loans and/or campus job during the school year is part of how your family is funding college. In our case, our family did not qualify for federal work study but majority of campus jobs aren’t restricted to federal work study but there are some jobs. We also only qualified for unsubsidized federal loans. When we have two in college, we might be on the edge of qualifying for subsidized loans. Also note, we had to also fill out CSS as well even if we are only being offered unsubsidized federal loans at a school that uses FAFSA and CSS.

3. Schools that say you have to apply for financial aid first year or not at all. Bryn Mawr was like this. I know financial aid calculations are changing regarding multiple kids in college but at least under current calculations when I ran NPC there was a chance we would qualify for some aid once we had two in college.

4. If there is some kind of state aid that you would qualify for that requires FAFSA - I think folks mentioned DCTag.