Fafsa opens today

[Anonymous]

probably a dumb question. I have twins applying to college. Do we need to do 2 FAFSA or can they use the same one?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:probably a dumb question. I have twins applying to college. Do we need to do 2 FAFSA or can they use the same one?

Each student makes their own account. Parents can get a key from their student (or fill out the initial form as the student and make up the key code they want to use). Once you submit the first form, on the confirmation page there is supposedly a way to share that information for use with another child, so that you don't have to fill it all in again. (Sorry I don't have more details--just finishing up for my first kid!)

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:probably a dumb question. I have twins applying to college. Do we need to do 2 FAFSA or can they use the same one?

Each student makes their own account. Parents can get a key from their student (or fill out the initial form as the student and make up the key code they want to use). Once you submit the first form, on the confirmation page there is supposedly a way to share that information for use with another child, so that you don't have to fill it all in again. (Sorry I don't have more details--just finishing up for my first kid!)

Supposedly is the word of note here, I could not find it last year, even with lots of googling. Things clearly change frequently and helpful info goes out of date quickly. That was our only year with overlap, oh well.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Is there a way not to let kids see all our financial info?

Who do people care?

Why not, live frugally and save most of what we earn. We don’t want them to know since the moderate amount of assets could seems a lot to a 17 year old.

[Anonymous]

Anyone else have trouble getting on the site this afternoon?

[Anonymous]

Ugh. I don't want my kid seeing our full financial picture. Especially since last year I got a large, once in a career bonus.

It's going to make it look like we can pay $80k for college, when in reality, we have 5 kids, spread in age, and have big expenses for the next 15-20 years. So, we are really hoping for good merit aid.
I don't want to limit our merit by not filling out the FAFSA.

Plus, my kid has ADHD and is kinda immature, and may potentially share our financial info with friends.

[Anonymous]

Dumb question. I assume this is a two-step process?
1) FAFSA and
2) financial application to colleges?

The reason I ask is that if you don't think you'll qualify for aid and/or want to be sure to qualify for merit, you might fill out FAFSA, but you might want to tell need-aware schools that you're not applying for aid...

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Ugh. I don't want my kid seeing our full financial picture. Especially since last year I got a large, once in a career bonus.

It's going to make it look like we can pay $80k for college, when in reality, we have 5 kids, spread in age, and have big expenses for the next 15-20 years. So, we are really hoping for good merit aid.
I don't want to limit our merit by not filling out the FAFSA.

Plus, my kid has ADHD and is kinda immature, and may potentially share our financial info with friends.

Am I misunderstanding the process? Isn't it possible to open the kid's account and choose a password and do everything on their behalf? At what point would the kid actually need to log in to do anything?