What to Know about the CSS Profile

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Meredith Clement: [00:00:00] Okay, everyone. So this is what to know about the CSS profile. MEFA's webinar.

This is just a way you can connect with MEFA. That QR code that you're seeing on the screen is a way to sign up for MEFA's emails. If you're not receiving MEFA emails, we send emails about one to every Once a week, once every two weeks with great information about college planning topics. If you have a high school senior, as I'm guessing many of you do, it's really going to give you some great information about admissions and financial aid.

So we'd invite you to sign up for those emails. If you haven't already, you can click on that QR code, or I should say, take a picture with your phone. And you can also sign up for emails on our website if you're not able to do it now. On the right hand side, you can see all our social media handles. We're all over social media.

Again, just posting relevant college planning topics for families who are looking ahead to college and career. [00:01:00] How to participate. I know many of you who have been on zoom for many years now. But for those who are somewhat new, here's your control panel with different ways that you can interact on the webinar today.

If you do have questions, go ahead and type them into the Q and a box. Julie will be answering some behind the scenes. And if there's any common questions, we might answer them at the end or if any come in at the end, feel free to type in those questions as you have them throughout the webinar. So about MEFA, many of you are probably familiar with us, but we are a state authority created by the Commonwealth in 1982.

And our sole purpose is really to help families like yours plan, save and pay for college. So we have a lot of resources to do that. And we're always happy to give guidance to families as they're. Navigating the process of planning for college. So let's jump right into the CSS profile. This is essentially a financial aid application for college and it's administered by College Board.

That's the same [00:02:00] organization that runs the SAT and the AP exams and the CSS profile or profile for short is required by about 200 colleges, universities and scholarship programs across the country. All of those colleges that use the profile also require the FAFSA. So if you see that a school requires the profile, you also have to do the FAFSA.

You're going to do the FAFSA for financial aid, And then you're going to do the profile and to send them to schools. All you do is list the schools. When you fill out the applications, you do each application one time, list the schools that you want to receive it, and then it'll be sent off. The profile is essentially used by colleges and universities to award their.

Um, so the FAFSA colleges and universities have to use to award federal financial aid and state financial aid, but if colleges as many of them do have their own financial aid [00:03:00] funds. They, some of them, 200 about, decide to use the profile to really gather information and then award their own money to students.

It does open October 1st every year, so for high school seniors right now, when October 1st hits, they can fill out the profile. I did look at it today. It does look like it might already be open for 25 26, which is what, If you're a parent or a student high school senior, you're filling out the 2526 profile because you're really thinking ahead to freshman year will be 2025 26.

I'm going to fill out the 2526 profile looks like it might already be open. So after this webinar today, this weekend, you could log on and see if you're able to actually fill out the profile. Get your login and get started. It is also an application that's available for both domestic and international students.

The FAFSA is really just for U. S. citizens, permanent residents, but a lot of schools use the profile also for their international population. [00:04:00] So it's used for both.

Institutions use the profile mainly because it's way more detailed than the FAFSA. And if you've done a FAFSA, it does go into some detail about your finances. Profile asks a lot more detailed questions about your income, about your assets, about who lives in your household. And colleges believe that getting extra information, getting a lot of this detail, helps them more equitably.

Give out distribute their own financial aid funds so they opt to use the profile, which they have to pay to use really to make sure they're getting all the information they can from families to ensure that they're giving out their financial aid fairly. So that's why schools choose to use it. And again, they use it in addition to the FAFSA.

It also allows colleges and universities to ask customized questions. So if I'm a university and I really want to know a detail about families that's not already in the listing of [00:05:00] profile questions, I can add that as a supplemental question. And you'll see that when you're filling out the profile that ABC university decided to add this question.

When you answer it, your answer is only going to go to that university. And they'll then use that information when they're assessing your eligibility for financial aid. The profile also lets families provide special circumstances. And that basically means you can write a note to the financial aid offices.

So you'll see that a little bit further on in the presentation, but you'll have the opportunity to actually type in anything you want to the financial aid offices that review your profile application. If you have a special expense that you want them to know about or special circumstance in your household, you can actually communicate that in written form.

This is where you're gonna start to fill out the profile. This is the homepage, just css profile.org is where you can go and you'll see starting on the left hand side, high school seniors, as I mentioned, are going to apply for 25, [00:06:00] 26. So that's the link that you'll click on. You can see there's a. List of participating schools.

These are the schools that use the profile schools have to opt into this list. I don't know why a college wouldn't want themselves listed, but this might not be a 100 percent accurate list of every school that uses the profile. So if you have a list of schools where your students applying and you want to know.

Which ones require the profile, which don't the best thing to actually do is to go to each college's financial aid web page and look to see what the requirements are. Most schools will be listed on this participating schools list on the profile website, but just to be sure, go to every school's financial aid page and find out their requirements if they require the profile.

And of course, all will require the FAFSA. Also on this homepage, you'll find some profile tips, information for parents. That's really for parents who have a divorce or a separation. And we'll talk more about that as far as who fills out the profile. And then at the top, you can see there's some resources in Spanish as [00:07:00] well.

Let me click through and show you this is the participating schools list. So if you click on that link on the homepage, this is the list that you'll see. This is just the very top of the A's and B's. Every school has a CSS code. Then you'll see the name of the school, the state where it's located. And then you'll see is this profile, is it used for domestic students?

Is it used for international students? So you'll be able to see that. And then you'll see is it required for non custodial Parents and we'll go into that in more detail, but some schools do require non custodial parents to do their own profile. So you'll see that list on there as well. And then some schools use a program called IDOC.

It's basically a service where you can submit your documents for schools to reviews for schools to review. We'll talk about that too, but that's the listing that shows does the school use IDOC or not. So you can check on this list. Also, toward the bottom of the homepage are some additional resources about fee waivers for international students, again about non custodial [00:08:00] parents.

So, my recommendation is when you go to the profile homepage for the first time, just look at everything on the homepage, review all the resources that are applicable to you, and then you can go ahead and start. The application.

So when you start the application process of the profile, you first need to sign in. Probably the easiest thing to do is to sign in with your student using your student's college board account, which they probably already have from doing the SAT or an AP exam. That will allow you to get right into the profile.

So log in using your son or daughter's college board account. And then you can go ahead and start the profile. If you would rather create your own login as the parent, maybe you don't want the student involved in seeing your finances or really having to log in at all. You can create your own account as the parent.

But there's not a parent account option right now. So instead what you'll do is you'll create a new [00:09:00] student account with your name. So my name's Meredith. I, if I wanted to create my own account for my daughter's profile, I would go, I'd create a new student account using my name, even though my daughter's the one going to college, I'd put my name, Meredith Clement, my email address, all my information.

It's a little confusing because it looks like I'm creating a student account, but I'm That's, it's just the only way to create a new parent account. So I'd create a student account using my information as the parent. You do need a separate college board account for every student. So if I'm a parent and I have twins and they're both applying to college to profile schools, again, probably the easiest thing is to have each of them log into their college board account to do the profile.

If I don't want them to log in and I want to log in, I'm going to have to create. Two separate college board accounts with two separate email addresses to do each profile. The profile is customized, meaning that [00:10:00] as you're answering the questions, it's going to give you questions that are relevant to you and take away questions that are not relevant to you, which is helpful.

And then once you list the colleges where the students applying, you might get some of those supplemental questions come in. There are some modern features in that you can create or I should say you can complete the profile in any order. So maybe you start with one section and then you want to jump ahead and then you want to jump back.

You can certainly do that as sections are completed, they'll be a checkmark. You can also complete it in multiple settings, so you can start it, save it, go back, which is great because you might need to, It's a great way to, um, gather some more documentation, and it is mobile friendly, so you can do it on a mobile device.

Just some general tips, and these are pretty intuitive. You're going to click save and continue when you finish each page. If you want to take a break, click save and continue and exit your browser. Use the buttons within the profile application instead of in your browser, so as you're going forward and [00:11:00] backward, use those buttons.

There's going to be hints and notes throughout, just like a lot of applications, so use those just to get some extra information if you're not sure how to answer a question. Do answer every question where you have an answer, even if it's not required. And one example of that is the social security number.

You don't have to list your student's social security number on the profile. It's not a required question, but it is very helpful for schools to then tie your profile to your student's record at that school. It's just one more way. They'll look at the name, they'll look at the address, but it just makes it easier for the college to tie your profile to the student's admissions record.

So go ahead and put that in. And then if there's a question that's not required, and you don't have an answer, it's not applicable to you, go ahead and leave it blank.

So on the profile, you're going to list parent information, and you're actually going to report all parents of the student. So that includes biological, adoptive parents, and then any [00:12:00] step parents. So there might be up to four. divorce situation, both parents are remarried, you might be listing for parents.

Even if a parent has passed away, go ahead and list that parent and you'll have the option to indicate that that parent has passed away. For every parent you're going to have to list a date of birth and an email address, so make sure you have all of that before you begin. If there's a legal guardian situation where the student has a legal guardian, the legal guardian is actually going to act as the parent and put in their information as the parent.

That is different than on the FAFSA. If I'm a student and I am in legal guardianship on the FAFSA, I actually am what's called an independent student and I don't have to list any parent information and I just list my own. On the CSS profile, I'm going to list my legal guardian as my parent. If I'm a student and my parents are divorced or separated, we need to determine as a family who's my custodial parent and who's my non custodial parent.

And just like the FAFSA, the custodial parent is going to [00:13:00] be the one who provided the most support to me as the student in the previous 12 months. So my parents are divorced. I live with both about half time, but I feel like my mom probably provides most of my financial support. She pays for most things, takes care of a lot of my expenses.

So I'm going to decide my mom is my custodial parent. And so as that my mom, and if she's remarried, let's say she's remarried to my stepdad, my mom, my stepdad, and I are going to fill out my profile. We're still going to list my dad and my stepmom. Let's say my dad's remarried. We're still going to list their names.

But really, my custodial parent, my mom, her current spouse, my stepdad, and I are going to fill out the profile. Some schools, not all, but some schools that require the profile also require a non custodial profile to be filled out. So in my case, that would be my dad. My dad might have to fill out his own profile.

Profile and we'll talk about that in a little bit, but that's going to be a [00:14:00] requirement. You can check the school's financial aid web page to find if that is really required, but that's something to note. And if I'm a student who, again, has this divorce or separated parent situation, I'm going to list my non custodial parent's email address and Profile is going to send an invitation to that parent to ask him or her to fill out the profile.

So in my example, I'm going to put my dad's email address, Profile is going to email him and say, your daughter is filling out a profile, and you need to fill out a separate profile. And on the right hand side here, you can just see a listing of how the profile actually indicates, so it'll list all the parents that you've put on the application, and then it'll say which ones are going to fill out this profile.

Really, who did you decide is the custodial parent, is their current spouse, and you'll check those people off. Sometimes non custodial parent information is not available. So maybe I'm in a situation where I have a non custodial parent. I, I [00:15:00] know he's alive or she's alive, but for some reason that person cannot fill out the profile.

There's going to be some questions that I can answer as the student and that's going to be is the Noncustodial parent deceased. Maybe that parent has passed away unknown. I'm not sure who it is incarcerated. There's a legal order against this person, or it could also be that I don't really have a noncustodial parent.

Maybe I was adopted by a single parent or conceived by a single parent, or I'm just really not in touch with that custodial parent that he might exist. I don't, I don't know. I'm not even sure where he or she is. So when that, if that's the case, I'm going to answer these questions to let the profile know that.

I really can't provide noncustodial information based on the answers I provide, that requirement might be removed. But if it's still required, if the profile and my colleges are still saying, no, we really need noncustodial parent information. There's a chance for me to go on and send a waiver request.

And there's a profile page where you can actually fill out a [00:16:00] form. It's also good to communicate with the college. If they're saying we need your Profile from your non custodial parent, and I can't provide that for whatever reason. I need to communicate that to the school and find out what the school needs.

Do they want you to fill out a waiver request form? Did they just want a letter or an email? Explain your situation and then they'll make a decision whether they can waive that requirement. So as the non custodial parent, Let's say in my example that I gave, that was my dad, I'm going to give his email address.

He's going to get an email saying, go ahead and submit a profile. It's going to be separate from the one that my mom and I fill out. So he has his own profile. He's going to go to the same website. He's going to create his own account. So he needs to create a student account under his name, kind of go through that confusing process.

I'm going to have assigned to me what's called a CB FinAid ID. This is just my ID number that was assigned to me when I started my profile as a student. That'll be in the email that is sent to my dad. So he'll take that [00:17:00] ID number, he'll fill it in, and that's what's going to tie his profile to mine behind the scenes.

When he fills out my noncustodial dad, when he fills out his profile, he doesn't have to repeat my information, my income, and my assets as a student. He's just providing his information. He doesn't have to list the colleges where I'm applying. I already put that on my profile. He's just going to submit his profile with his own financial information.

And he can't really fill that out until I've started my process. So if you're a non custodial parent on the webinar right now, and you're thinking, I want to get a jump on this, your student really has to start the process, invite you, and then you can do your profile. And again, if I'm, if I'm a parent who's doing I'm going to need two separate profiles for two different students.

I'm going to need two separate accounts and just to note that custodial parents and the student that profile and the non custodial parent. They can't see each other's information. So there's there's no way the non custodial parent will see the custodial parent information or [00:18:00] vice versa. So let's talk about general information that everyone's going to submit on the profile.

For the student filling out the profile with the custodial parent and that parent's current spouse, you're going to list the colleges where the student's applying, and you're just going to list the ones that require the CSS profile. So you're going to select those, and then parents and students are both going to report their 2023 income.

This is just like the FAFSA, so the 2526 FAFSA and the 2526 CSS. So if you go to the next slide, you'll see that in this profile, which is for students who are in college 2026, they're going to submit 2023 income. So it almost looks back two years. The profile also asks you to project your 2024 income. So it'll say based on how you're earning income this year in 2024, what are your earnings looking like for this year?

So it'll ask for that as well. It's going to ask for your current assets. So as of today, what are your assets? What's in your bank account? What do you have in stocks? What do you have in investments? [00:19:00] And that includes any businesses, your business value. You're going to have to list your household numbers, who lives in your household, and then the number of children you have going to college.

So as you're filling out the profile, what's helpful to have on hand is your 2023 federal tax return, because that's where you're going to get most of your income information. It will refer to the line items, which is really helpful. So it might ask for something, then it'll say, go ahead and go to line 15, grab that number and put it in this field.

Grab your W 2s from 2023. Any in taxed income, untaxed income, once in a while appears on your tax return. There's a couple lines that have some untaxed income, but any other income you got that was not taxed, have some documentation on hand of that, and then records of your current assets. In most cases, you're not going to have to submit asset information as in bank statements or investment statements.

You might, but you probably won't. They're just asking for an estimate. You know, what do you have right now in your bank account, in your investments? You'll have to report that.[00:20:00]

As I mentioned, the profile is going to go into a bit more detail than the FAFSA, so it's going to basically ask all the same FAFSA questions about your income and your assets, those ones I just summarized, but there's going to be more detail. So in the parent income section, you're going to have to add, you're going to have to report tax, social security benefits, you've got a foreign income exclusion, alimony, house allowance, workers comp, disability, basically any money that you took in in 2023, you're going to have to report.

In the asset section, you're going to have to report your primary home. If you see on the right hand side, this image, it's going to ask your home purchase year, the price, the market value, what you owe on it. Do the best you can in estimating this information. In most cases, the college is not going to ask for documentation.

So when asked about home value, just think, If I was asked to sell my home today, what do I think I could get in this market, in my neighborhood, and then your debt? What do you owe currently on the home? What, what will you not receive when you sell your home? Because you owe, [00:21:00] you owe a mortgage, you owe debt.

You'll also be asked to report any assets held in the names of your children. That basically means if you have some money, but you've put it under one of your children's names, but it's really your, your asset, You'll ask to report that and then your retirement value. What do you have sitting in your retirement account?

Not what you put in there in 2023, but what's actually in your retirement. Now, a lot of schools don't use this. They don't assume you want to Spend your retirement to pay for college. They just spot check it to see what do they have in there and a lot of colleges also just skip this question. So just go ahead and put an estimate of your retirement value.

But again, most colleges aren't assuming that you can use your retirement to pay any of the college expenses. And then finally, the profile is going to ask about parent expenses, and this is a question that's very helpful to you because it provides a benefit to you and that they want to know of your assets of your income.

What's going to other expenses? Do you have medical and dental expenses that you need to continually pay? Are [00:22:00] you paying private school tuition either for elementary school or secondary school Your student or any other siblings of the student. And do you have education loan payments of your own or for older children?

They want to help you out and know, okay, well, they have this income and assets, but they also have other, these other expenses. And so that's going to help you out to answer those questions and provide that information.

For family data, like the FAFSA, you're going to have to list basically your family size, but they're also going to ask for the name of everyone, the date of birth, the relationship of the student, if they're in college, what year they're in, and how much their college costs. If you have maybe have two older children who are already in college, you'll need to report that.

For students, if your student has already won any private scholarships, a lot of students haven't. So that answer might be zero, but let's say you have a high school senior who's already won a scholarship. Profile will ask about that. And then if you have any employee tuition and benefits that are going to help you pay for college.

As I mentioned, there's going to be this special circumstances section. And it's, it appears a [00:23:00] few times throughout the application. And it allows you to kind of pick a category. If you look on the right hand side of your screen, you'll see that your special circumstances, maybe it's falls into one of these categories.

Maybe you had a change in employment recently. So your 2023 income looked great. But you've had change in employment and it's much less now, and you want to explain that. Maybe you have elder care expenses or medical expenses. You can click any of these boxes or you can just click other, and then you will be able to type in your message to the financial aid offices.

For supplemental questions, again, those are ones that the College or the University has come up with. You'll see those, they'll be added by the College or University, and it'll be noted. X, Y, Z university is asking this question. Sometimes they're not required, but it is. It is recommended that you answer them throughout the application.

So once you fill out your profile, so you submit all this information, there is a cost to basically submit it to schools. Now, the [00:24:00] FAFSA is always free. That's always going to be free for you. The profile does have a cost for a lot of students. It's 25 to fill out the application and to send it to one school, and then it's 16 for each additional school to receive it.

You can pay by credit card or debit card. If you're the non custodial parent, you're just going to pay 25 one time, and that's all you're going to have to pay. And there is a, there are fee waivers. So some students do receive fee waivers, fee waivers are automatically granted to students if they meet certain criteria, and that's if your household income is a hundred thousand dollars or less, so household income falls under that a hundred thousand dollar mark, that it's basically your AGI number, that's the case.

You're automatically going to be given a fee waiver. You won't have to pay to submit the profile. If the student's an orphan or a ward of the court and under 24, Student won't have to pay to submit the profile. If the student received an SAT fee waiver, and you filled out the profile using the student's College Board account, the student will [00:25:00] automatically get a fee waiver.

And fee waivers are available to freshman transfer returning independent undergraduate students. So some colleges use the, Profile for graduate. They can't get a fee waiver, but undergraduate can. The fee waivers are only available for students whose parents live in the US. So it's not available for international students and it can be used for any number of schools.

So if I get a fee waiver and I'm applying to 16 schools that require the profile. It's free to send them to all of those, uh, non custodial parents can also get a fee waiver if they meet the, basically that household income standard under a hundred thousand. There are also something called fee payment codes.

And these are codes that nonprofit organizations, college access organizations, high schools, colleges can purchase and basically give to a student. So if, if I'm a student and I'm working with a college access organization, I can't afford to submit my profile and maybe I don't qualify for a fee waiver.

But I'm this organization has bought some fee payment codes, they can give [00:26:00] me one I can enter it in and that will essentially pay for me to submit the profile. It's one code to submit to one school. So one for one. And there's no limit on how many students can use. So when submitting the profile. Once you fill out all of your questions, your income, your assets, your household information, you are going to be given a chance to review the entire application.

So go ahead and do that. Make sure you gave the right answers. You didn't mix up parent and student data as you were answering the questions. There will be some prompts if there are some inconsistencies that the, the profile while reviewing your application behind the scenes thinks like this number doesn't seem right.

You might be given some prompts to, to double check a number. And you will be able to to print your answers to if you'd rather review that way. So you'll be able to review all your answers. You're going to check a box to say, Yep, I'm going to certify this is accurate. And at that point, you'll be asked to pay and you can see on the right side of your screen.

That application fee will be listed, the colleges, the total charge, and then if you have many schools, you'll have [00:27:00] all of those schools listed.

There is a dashboard on your CSS profile. You can access this anytime. You'll see on the top right of the application, you can click right into your dashboard. And this is going to include a lot of information about your profile. So, the application status, whether you've submitted it or it's in progress.

Each college where you've submitted the profile, the deadline, the day you actually submitted it, and any additional documents that are required. So if they're requiring maybe IDOC that we'll talk about, that'll be listed there. Next steps as well. And then your receipt showing that you did pay. This is also where you can easily print or save the application to your desktop.

And this is also where you can add a college. So you can see on the right hand side of your screen, that blue button, add a college or program. So let's say you do the profile, you submit it, maybe you're got five schools on there, and then two weeks later your child comes to you and says, I wanna apply to one more school that requires the profile.

You're gonna log back [00:28:00] in, go to your dashboard, click on add college, put in that college, and then submit. And at that point, you'll pay again for that extra submission. This is where there'll also be a link to IDOC that. That service where you can basically enter in all the documents required by colleges and the dashboard is also where you could enter in the non custodial parents email address.

So if I'm the student filling out the profile, there'll be a couple opportunities for me to list my non custodial parents email address. But on that dashboard is another one. So I can put in my example, my dad's address. click in and he'll be sent an invitation to do his profile. That's also where that, that ID number I mentioned, the CB FinAid ID, that's also listed on the dashboard.

Now this is new in the last few years. Now families can do one correction to the profile. So let's say you fill out your profile, you submit it, and then you realize You made a big error. You put the wrong amount of assets or you messed up something with the income. [00:29:00] You can submit your correction one time for application.

You're going to log back in into that dashboard and you'll indicate that you want to do a correction. And there's a couple, basically, options where you can say, I messed up, I indicated I was an independent student and I'm dependent, or I indicated I didn't have a business and I do, but there's really a Catch all box that I imagine most people use where you can just select.

I made a mistake. I forgot to list something. Basically, I made an error. And at that point, you would put in a written explanation of the number that's wrong or the field you forgot to fill in and what should be corrected. You can do corrections about a day after you've submitted your profile. You can only do them once, and you can't submit a correction and then add a college at the same time.

So probably what you want to do is, is add a college and then do a correction that will go to all the schools. And there is no charge to submit a correction, there's no extra fee. So IDUC, I've [00:30:00] mentioned a few times, it's essentially a scanning service. And this is what colleges and universities, not all, but some of them use if they want to collect extra documentation from you in their financial aid analysis.

So what a college, what a lot of colleges might collect is your tax return. Maybe they don't have your FAFSA yet and they want to examine your tax return. To assess your financial aid eligibility. Or maybe they want a statement of your assets or something having to do with your primary home. They would enlist IDOC.

And IDOC allows you to log into IDOC, this separate website, and upload any documentation that's required, whether it's your tax return or an asset statement. Not every profile school uses it, but a lot do. So you can check with the college, but you can also check your, your profile dashboard to see what's required.

The, uh, IDOC website actually has a separate student dashboard, so you can go over to the IDOC site, and again, you'll link over from your profile [00:31:00] dashboard, and in there, it will tell up the required documents, so it might say, please upload your 2023 tax return. The documents have to be in, in certain form, they can be JPEG, they can be TIFF, or they can be PDF, and probably most of your documents are on, are in that format already.

If you are required to submit your tax return, make sure you submit both of those two main pages, but also any schedules, any extra pages so that everything is submitted to the college, just so there's not any delay and they don't have to come back to you and ask for the rest of it. You are also going to have to sign documents.

So if you submitted your taxes electronically, you might have to print out that signature page, sign it, upload it again, and then submit it to IDOC. There is a separate Customer service line for IDOC. That's on the IDOC website, but we've included it here as well, and that IDOC website is idoc.

collegeboard. com. Again, you should be able to link to it from your profile dashboard, but if you want to go right there, that's how you'll find it. There [00:32:00] is an IDOC overview. This is right on the College Board site. This is just an An overview of IDOC, if you really want to dig deep and know exactly how it works and exactly how the processes of uploading your documents, you can go through basically this, this short presentation, short webinar that explains the intricacies of IDOC.

And this is going to be your profile customer support center. So this is where, if you click on contact us anywhere in the profile application, this is the page you'll get. So you see that there are the hours listed, the phone number. You'll see all the way on the bottom right hand side, if chat is available, that blue live chat box will pop up.

You can click in there and chat with a customer service representative. There's also an email address that we added to the screen. So some years it seems that the profile includes this email address on their customer support page. Some years they don't, so we went ahead and just added it on here. So that's the email address for profile.

Because they don't list it, it's [00:33:00] probably best to call or to chat, but this is an email address that you can use. Both students can use it, parents can use it, and colleges and universities. So that'll reach that profile support center.

So different things that you can do now as you prepare for the financial aid process. Research your deadlines and required applications. So get the student's college list, put everything down, and start making a note of when the CSS profile is due. When the FAFSA is due, if the profile, I should say first is required.

And then when it's due, when the FAFSA is due and start completing your applications. Profile again, opens on Tuesday, October 1st might already be open. So you can go ahead and check after this webinar, see if you can create a login and start the application. And the FAFSA this year, normally it opens October 1st last year.

It didn't open till. December 31st. This year for you, parents of high school seniors, the FAFSA is going to open December 1st, so you can [00:34:00] have in your mind that the FAFSA O's open December 1st. One thing, side note, you can do for the FAFSA now is get your FSA ID. That's basically your user name. And your login.

So if you're getting your items together and you're going through your checklist of what to do, start filling out the profile, get your FSA ID for the fafsa, and then, and come December 1st, you'll fill out your fafsa. We have two resources here for you. The first is timeline for college admissions and financial aid.

This is a great resource for parents of high school seniors QR code. You can also just find it on our website by going into the search box. This is. Basically your to do list by season, so definitely recommend this timeline. And then we'll also have other webinars. We actually have a FAFSA webinar coming up closer to December 1st.

We have FSA ID workshops if you need some help creating that FSA ID, which is your FAFSA username and password. And then we'll have other workshops, other webinars throughout the year just to help you through this planning process for [00:35:00] college and then the payment process as you get closer. Again, I'm going to put this slide up, which is how to connect with us MEFA.

So this is the QR code for our email signup, but again, you can find that right on our homepage. And then on the right hand side are all our social media handles. So Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, now X, LinkedIn, we have a ton of videos on YouTube and we're constantly adding new ones, and then we have a podcast.

So definitely recommend if you're a podcast listener to look through the topics there, because we have a lot of topics there that are helpful for families. Okay, so that's our slide presentation for today. We are going to open it up for questions. I'm sure some of you have been typing questions in for Julie.

I'm sure she's furiously been answering them. But Julie, if there's any questions you want to go through right now, I'm going to bring our question bar over here. Anything that you think we should ask publicly or that would be helpful for anyone to hear [00:36:00] throughout at the end of this presentation here.

Julie Shields-Rutyna: No, that's great. And I have been answering. I'm trying to think of the themes that I've that I've had, or I have some that I haven't answered yet. So first I'll, I'll ask a couple of these that I haven't had a chance. Um, and then I will, um, actually here are a couple that are, um, a little bit of a theme. So I'll ask the first one first.

Uh, my son received social security benefits because his father is deceased. Do I report that on parent income?

Meredith Clement: So normally and let me think for because it's different with the profile and the FAFSA normally that is reported for the student because it's received its students or security benefits that are received.

But you know what? Let me let me double check on that. What I, what I normally do, um, when I, I, my background and Julie's background is both [00:37:00] in financial aid, what we normally collected was we did ask for social security benefits, and then put a note, told families, put a note in the special circumstances that they would be Um, so that's probably the best guidance that the profile will ask the profile pretty much asks for any type of income that you're receiving, but anything that is going to be ending like those benefits, I would put a note right in that special circumstances, um, section because I believe that's what we always would ask families to do just so then the office knows when they're evaluating your eligibility that that will be ending soon.

Julie Shields-Rutyna: Thank you. All right. I'm going to ask. There are a couple I'll ask more general and I'll try to answer some of these behind the scenes at the same time. What if you have a major life event change weeks after you submit the financial aid forms?

Meredith Clement: That's a great question. Always what is important to do is communicate with the financial aid office.

So, and this happens a lot with families where they submit the financial aid [00:38:00] applications and then someone gets laid off the main breadwinner or something happens where that's really a huge medical expense or there's a huge household expense. A tree falls on your roof and you've got a 20, 000 now charge on your family.

Definitely communicate that to the financial aid office. So you can simply submit an email or you can submit a letter. I think most what most families are doing now is submitting an email. Send it to every financial aid office, include any details that you can, including any documentation. So if there is something where there was a layoff, include your layoff notice and with an estimate of now, this is what I think our family income it's going to be.

If there was a huge expense. Show that bill of what you just had to pay for a household repair or a medical expense. Submit everything to the financial aid office. The key is submitting documentation, because then that shows that, yep, we had this expense. This is what we, what we did pay. Make sure you have the student's full name.

Student, if there's, usually students have a, uh, Basically a school I. D. Once they've started the admissions process include the student's I. D. And [00:39:00] then you can also follow up with the financial aid office after the fact to make sure they did get your letter. But send that information because then they can take that into consideration when evaluating your eligibility for financial aid

Julie Shields-Rutyna: and could you talk a little bit about verification and what what what colleges might follow up and ask about?

Meredith Clement: Yeah. So verification. First, there's a federal process called verification that Basically a set number of students every year selected for verification, which means they might have to verify the information that was on their FAFSA. And then in addition to that, some schools who use the profile or even some who use the FAFSA do their own process where they're also verifying certain information.

So it might be something on your tax return. Now on the FAFSA, a lot of the, a lot of families, what they'll be able to do is pull in their taxes from the IRS. Um, you and automatically and by doing that schools basically have that information and they know it's [00:40:00] verified. But a school that hasn't gotten your FAFSA yet and is trying to evaluate your eligibility for financial aid and only has your profile might ask you to send in basically your tax return or your tax return script transcript.

To verify the information. Some schools want verification that you have other Children enrolled in college and then others might want verification of your of your assets they might see on your. Tax return. For example, maybe you had really high interest and dividend income in 2023, for example, but your assets aren't very high and a college might think, well, how did this family earned all this interesting come all earn all this dividend income, but they don't have very high assets.

So they might ask you to submit your asset statements with an explanation. And maybe you just bought a new home last year. And so A lot of the assets that you had went to that new home or went to medical expenses or went to some other expense for your family. So, so those are some of the things that colleges are verifying once they're going through your application.

Julie Shields-Rutyna: Uh, so Meredith, um, can you talk a little bit [00:41:00] about early action, early decision, how, when, and how they should start? submit, um, these things for that.

Meredith Clement: Yeah. So if you're applying early action or early decision through admissions, and probably most of you are aware, but a lot of schools have a process where instead of applying through kind of the regular timeline for the admissions application, you might submit early.

That might be as early as October or November. So you're submitting your admissions application early. And in a lot of instances, there might be an earlier financial aid deadline. So a school might say, we want your. admissions application by October 15th, and we also want your CSS profile by October 15th, or maybe it's November 1st.

So you'll need to make sure if you're going through early admissions, whether it's early action or early decision that you're submitting your financial aid applications by that deadline by the early action or early decision deadline. So make sure you know those early deadlines. And. A lot of cases, the college can then [00:42:00] come back and give you an estimated financial aid offer.

Now, the FAFSA, as we said, isn't open until December 1st. So they might come back and say, we've admitted you early action. Here's an estimate of what we think we could provide in financial aid, but we really need to get your FAFSA to really finalize this financial aid offer. But they might be able to give you an estimate based on your profile, which maybe you sent to them October 8th or 9th.

So that's how the process is going to work. Everything won't be final until you've got your FAFSA off to all those schools and they can, they can basically verify your FAFSA information, reconcile everything. Uh, but that's how the process you could get a financial aid offer that's a little earlier, which is great.

Julie Shields-Rutyna: All right. And here's a question. Um, when they ask for other dependent, other dependents, college expenses, what do you put if you have twins both entering college and you don't know what the other child's college expenses will be?

Meredith Clement: Oh, that's a great question. So you could [00:43:00] estimate, um, and it's, this is really a tricky question because sometimes you, you have no idea.

So you could put, um, Roughly an estimate of what the school costs or some families have done. Maybe an, an, an SAI calculator, a student aid index calculator, just to get an estimate of what their eligibility might be for financial aid. And you could assume, well, I think I'm going to get all this financial aid.

So I might have these expenses. The other thing, if I, if it were me and I had twins, I would probably put a note in the special circumstances saying. I don't know. I, you know, I made an estimate of what our college expenses will be, but we really have no idea what our other child will get in financial aid.

So we're assuming this amount. I would definitely low ball it. Um, but really I would, I would put a note in that financial, that special circumstances, um, right on the application just to say, you know, I have twins, they're the same age and we won't really know what our expenses will be until we get those bills in the summer.

Julie Shields-Rutyna: That's great. Um, [00:44:00] someone is just asking, what if your income slightly exceeds 100, 000? Does that mean you will have to pay?

Meredith Clement: Yeah, I mean, what the, what the profile has said, it's really based on your AGI. So, but your AGI is on your taxes. So, it's, it's an automatic process too. So, there's not really any wiggle room.

There's no one evaluating it. So, if your AGI is a bit over, you likely will have to, you will have to pay and you won't qualify for one of those fee waivers.

Julie Shields-Rutyna: That's great. I'm thinking, Meredith, maybe we can, uh, talk about the plan for the rest of these questions. It's, uh, they're coming in faster than I can answer them at this point.

Um, here's a good one, though. Uh, do I need to submit the CSS profile if I'm only applying for merit aid?

Meredith Clement: Oh, that's a good question. So, A few colleges, and there's not many, sometimes require the financial aid applications, even if you're applying for merit aid. This is not a [00:45:00] common scenario, but I will say I worked at a college and we required the FAFSA and the profile for everyone.

And we did that because we had a merit that we gave to students who just missed qualifying for financial aid. So they had some income, they had some assets, so they didn't qualify for need based financial aid. They were, it looked like they were able to, they had some resources to pay the bill, but we knew writing a check for the college cost was going to be a lot.

So the college had a merit scholarship. It was given to students who had very strong grades, very strong standardized test scores. And they just misqualified for financial aid. So once in a while, there's a college or university that says, if you want to be considered for certain merit scholarships, we need your financial aid applications.

The college will communicate that in most cases, if you're a family who thinks I'm not qualifying for financial aid, I don't want to go through the process of filling out the profile, but I want to [00:46:00] be considered for merit. Just look on the college's website to make sure that there's no requirement that you submit anything.

We always do say at least submit the FAFSA just to get an idea of what your eligibility is for financial aid. And as well, everyone who fills out the FAFSA is qualified to receive an unsubsidized federal direct student loan. So this is a loan in the student's name. It's only 5, 500 for freshman year. But if you're a family who thinks we're not qualifying for financial aid, but I want my student to take a small loan just to take on some responsibility, build up a credit history that you can receive by filling out the FAFSA.

So. Usually fill out the FAFSA, but really the smart thing to do is look at that financial aid page for every college and just see what's required. And if for the merit money, if there's any financial aid requirements, make sure you complete them. And then, yeah, Julie, what I'll say about the next question or the remaining questions is maybe what we'll do, unless there's one or two more that you think is good for everyone is we'll go ahead and go through.

We'll end the webinar. We'll go ahead and answer the rest of the questions [00:47:00] and we'll send out the answers to all of you that are on the webinar. So you'll have them in written form. So if you have a question and you might have answered or sorry, you might have asked a question. That's a little bit more detailed that we want to write a better explanation.

Just just so we make sure we have all the details in there. We'll go ahead and send that out to you. To everyone. So let's do that with most of these remaining questions. So we'll have that to you by end of day tomorrow. So we'll get all these questions answered by end of day tomorrow to all of you will email them out to you.

And we'll also send out this recording and then the slide. So everyone will get everything.

Julie Shields-Rutyna: I like that. That seems fair and also so that I, you know, I can be more thorough too, because I've been quickly trying to answer as many as possible. That's great.

Meredith Clement: That's great. Okay. Awesome. So, um, any other questions anyone has quickly write them into the Q and A.

And again, this is our toll free number and also our email address for MEFA. So if you have questions that you didn't get to today, or you think [00:48:00] of after the webinars over and you wish you had asked it, please call us or we have a customer service team, very small customer service team that is very knowledgeable in everything related to financial aid.

So call us, you'll get one of our, you know, Basically eight or nine great representatives and you can also email us. So we go through we get every email answer every email so you can email us also on our homepage. If you have really specific situation, maybe a lot of special circumstances. Basically, you have a lot of questions.

We have an opportunity where you can basically set up an appointment one on one with one of our customer service or college planning team members. So that's available on our homepage as well. You see there's a Basically a link for a one on one appointment. You can fill that in, indicate what you want to talk about, and then one of our team members will contact you and then we can set up a Zoom call with you just to answer any specific questions you have.

If you want to screen share or show something to us, we can answer questions at that point as well.[00:49:00]

Okay, great. Well, thanks for joining today. Again, we'll send out information by end of day tomorrow with this recording and answers to these questions. So we appreciate you taking part and we'll talk to everybody soon.