What to Know about the CSS Profile^™

  So this is Jameesa's what to know about the CSS profile.

I'm sure many of you are comfortable with zoom, but if you haven't been on in a while, here's some basic instructions about how to navigate. And again, any questions you have, go ahead and type them into the Q and a panel. Julie will answer them behind the scenes and then we'll go through any others at the end.

For those who aren't familiar with us, we're MIFA. We're the Massachusetts Educational Financing Authority. We're a state authority. We were created in 1982, and our sole purpose really is just to help families plan, save, and pay for college. So we do a lot of webinars like this. We have a lot of content on our website, and we're all over social media as well.

So if you're planning for college or saving for college, definitely take advantage of all of our resources. They're free of charge just to help you get through the college years.

So let's begin with the CSS profile. The CSS profile is basically a financial aid application. It's completely online and it's required by about 200 colleges and universities and a few scholarship programs throughout the country. If you need to know if a school requires the CSS profile, the best thing to do is go to that college's financial aid webpage.

There is a page on the CSS profile website that shows participating colleges and universities. Most of the schools that use the CSS profile are on that page, but it is an optional opt-in for schools to list themselves on that page. So we always tell people, if you need. If you really need to know which schools are requiring which financial aid applications, which you do, if you're requiring or you're applying for financial aid, you go to every school's financial aid web page and find out the requirements and their due dates.

Every college and university that requires the CSS profile also requires the FAFSA. So if you're doing the profile for a school, you also do have to do the FAFSA. The FAFSA is not available till December. We'll talk about that, but you will have to do the FAFSA. As well. The CSS profile, or we call it profile for short, is used to award non federal financial aid funds.

So the schools that use it usually have a significant amount of their own money, college funds, or we call them institutional funds. That they can award to families, so they use the profile to award their funds. They're basically gathering more information from families and then determining which of their funds they'd like to give to each family who's applying for financial aid.

The CSS profile opens October 1st, which is Sunday. It does actually look like it's already open. So if you're after you watch this webinar anxious to start applying and filling out that profile, you might actually be able to get on now. I was on the profile website earlier today. It looks like you're actually able to register and start the application.

It might be that they just. Opened it and you can't actually fill out the entire application yet, but you will be able to do so by Sunday, October 1st. So it does open very soon. The profile is available for both domestic and international students, whereas the fastest really for just domestic students. A lot of colleges use the profile also for their international student population.

Institutions that use the profile and require it do so for a few reasons. One is that it actually asks for more detailed information than the FAFSA. And we'll go into what the questions are on the profile and the FAFSA. But the FAFSA asks for basic income and asset information, household information.

The profile goes into more details. Then we'll go. Through what those details are and what the profile actually asks for, but institutions to use it because they get to collect more information from every family, and they believe this gives them a better idea of a family's eligibility for financial aid.

What schools want to do is really determine who needs their financial aid funds, and so they feel like the profile allows them to get them. better picture of a family's financial situation, and thereby they're able to more equitably give out their financial aid to those families. The profile also allows schools to ask customized questions.

So if I'm a college and I want to ask every family applying for financial aid a specific question that's not on the FAFSA and not on the profile, I can actually add a customized Thank you. question. So schools love that, that they can add in any question they want. And the profile also has a special circumstances section where families can type in anything they'd like.

And that message goes right to the financial aid office. So if I'm a family and I have a unique situation, maybe I have a lot of family members living with me and I'm providing their financial support and I want the financial aid office to know that I can type that into the special circumstances section and every financial aid office that receives my profile will get that message.

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Here's where you're, where you will start with the CSS profile. This is the home page. So you see, I'm going to go just around with some different points on the home page that you should make note of. You'll see that high school seniors should apply for 24 25. So if you have a high school senior and you're applying for financial aid, you're going to think about what year in school will the child be.

That we're applying for financial aid for. So if I have a high school senior, we're applying for financial aid for the 2024, 25 academic year. So that's the profile and the FAFSA that you're going to fill out that 24, 25 application. You can see on the homepage that list I referenced, which is participating schools and scholarships.

So again, this is a pretty comprehensive list. You can check there to see all of the schools that require the profile again, just to be sure. If you are have your list of where your high school seniors applying, I would go to the financial aid web page of each of those colleges, just to make sure, you know, exactly what's required, but this is a pretty comprehensive list that you can click to right from the profile homepage of the participating school.

So those schools that require this application. In the middle there, you see learn how to apply. That's just some tips about completing the profile. There's also some tips about completing the profile for the non custodial parent. We'll talk about that in more detail. There is a resource for Spanish speaking families, and then at the top there are some more links.

So this is just an overview of what you'll see when you go to that profile homepage. You can simply type in cssprofile. org into your browser and you'll get to this page. If you click on that link that says participating schools, you'll get to this page. So you can see for every school there's a CSS code.

That's basically just a code that the College Board has a Has assigned to each school. You've got the institution name, the state where it's located, and then a listing of whether the profile is required for domestic students and whether it's required for international students. Then you'll see if the profile is required for non custodial parents.

And again, we'll go into more detail about that. And then whether the profile school uses I doc, that's basically a scanning service. And we'll explain that in a bit as well, but this is just an overview of it. Just give you a good idea of what schools are using the profile and different aspects of the profile that they're using.

So, here are some additional resources on the homepage. So, below that 1st screenshot that I just showed, this is what you'll see. So, there's just some more resources information about fee waivers, international students, divorced and separated parents. All of this will go over today in the webinar. But as you're navigating through the application, if you have some questions or you're not sure about one of these categories, you can click and get more information at the bottom of the homepage.

Is that video? You'll see this is a quick, I believe it's a 3 minute video. Just a nice overview of the application. You can watch before you start just gives you again another overview about what you'll see.

Okay. So let's talk about the application process to begin the CSS profile. You'll need to sign in. There's a few ways to do that. If your child. Did the AP test, your child likely already has a College Board account and a College Board login. If you choose, you can sit down with your child, have your child login using his or her College Board ID, College Board username, password, and then you can get in and complete the profile under your child's College Board account.

That's definitely an option. If you want, you can create your own College Board login and complete the profile. Complete the profile that way. Some families choose to do this because they don't want their student to see all of the information they inputted into the profile. Some don't mind, but if you would like to create your own login to do the profile, you can do that.

Slightly confusing because you as the parent are going to create a new student account using your information. And that's simply because there's not a parent login. There's not a parent account. All the accounts on the College Board website are labeled student account. But if I'm a parent, my name's Meredith, I'm going to go in and I'm going to click, I need to set up a new student account.

I'm going to put in my information, my name, Meredith, my information, my address, my email address, not my child, my information. So, just keep that in mind, if you're creating a new account and you're the parent, you're going into the section where it says create a new student account, but just put in your information, your name, your email address, et cetera.

The CSS profile is a customized application, meaning that it, the questions that you received are based on the student and the colleges where they're applying. So there is smart logic throughout. As you're answering questions, the profile is determining what additional questions they need to ask and what questions they don't need to ask you because they don't apply to your situation.

As I mentioned to colleges can add in questions. So, as you list colleges where you're going to send your profile information, you might see additional questions pop up. That those colleges have required the people applying to that college to answer as sections are required. They are added. So, if you list in a certain college, and they've added a question at a section, they'll pop up on your profile.

There are some modern features to the application. You can complete the profile actually in any order. The FAFSA, for those who've done that in the past, you have to go through each section in order. The profile, you can jump around if you'd like. You can also complete it in multiple sittings, so you can start, save it, and then go back later.

And it's also mobile friendly if you'd like to do it on a phone or tablet. Some general tips, and some of these are pretty intuitive, you're going to click save and continue to go to the next section, or if you want to stop completing the profile for a bit and return to it later on or the next day. As you're navigating through, when you're hitting the arrows to go from section to section, go ahead and use the arrows that are in the actual application, not in your browser.

That's going to make it easier for you to navigate through the application. There's going to be hints and notes throughout that can help you answer the questions. Some are expandable, and again, you'll be able to see that so that you can read more information about every question if you need to. Do answer every question that you have answers for.

There are some questions that are not required, but if you have the answer, go ahead and put it in. One of those examples is the social security number of the student. This is not required, but it is helpful because then the financial aid office can Basically tie the CSS profile to the student's admissions application to the student's FAFSA.

So if you see a optional question, but you do have an answer for it, go ahead and fill that in. And if a question is not required and you don't have an answer for it or it doesn't apply to you, you can go ahead and leave a blank.

So for the parent information, and this is a little bit different for from the FAFSA, if for those of you have ever filled out a FAFSA, you are going to report information for all of the parents of the student. So, if we have a student, and student was with mom and dad, you're going to report the mom and the dad on the profile.

If a student has a mom and a dad, and those parents are divorced, and they're both remarried, you are going to list all four parents on the profile. So, all the parents, and then all the step parents. If a parent has passed away, you're still going to list that parent on the profile. So list all the parents of the student.

Legal guardians should be reported as parents. And this is different than the FAFSA. If you're a student who has a legal guardian on the FAFSA, you actually, oops, sorry about that. If you're a student that has a legal guardian on the FAFSA, you only report student information. On the profile, the legal guardian acts as the parent.

So, that legal guardian fills out the parent information in situations of divorce or separation. You have to select a, what's called a custodial parent on the profile. That's the language they use and that would be the parent who has provided more financial support to the student in the previous twelve months.

This is new and it's the same definition. on the FAFSA. So, if you're someone who's filled out financial aid applications before, this is new. If you haven't, this is the directive you're going with. So, if I'm a student, my parents are divorced, I live with my mom, I live with my dad, it doesn't really matter.

I'm going to ask myself, who provided more of my financial support in the previous 12 months? Let's say my dad did. And in the cases of child support, you're gonna Assume the child support is financial support coming from that parent. So even if I live with my mom, let's say my dad pays and that child support paired with other financial support he has given me really to me means in the past 12 months, my dad has provided me more financial support.

Doesn't matter that I live with my mom, doesn't matter who I live with. My dad, in this situation, is going to be the custodial parent. He and I are going to fill out the CSS profile. We're going to list my mom. We're going to call her the non custodial parent. We're going to list her on the profile, but she's not going to fill out this main profile application.

It's going to be me and my dad. If my dad is remarried, let's say I have a stepparent, let's say it's a stepmother, my dad and my stepmother are going to fill in their information on the profile. Now, in my example, my mom is my non custodial parent. Some schools do require her to fill out a separate profile.

So you're going to check on the school's financial aid page to find out what they require. They're going to say, we need that non custodial parent profile. My mom will actually do a separate profile of my non custodial parent. So her name is going to be listed on mine, but not her financial information.

She's going to fill out a separate profile. In my situation, I'm going to be going through my CSS profile, and it's going to ask about my non custodial parent, and it's going to ask me to provide her email address. So I'll type that in, and the profile will then send my mom an email and say, you are Meredith's non custodial parent.

We need you to fill out your own CSS profile, and she can log on and do that. It is my responsibility to follow up with my mom and make sure she got that email and make sure she fills out that noncustodial profile if it's required again. You saw on the homepage. There is a section for divorced or separated families provides a little bit more information.

So you can click there to get some tips.

Sometimes there's a situation where there's a non custodial parent, their information is required by a college, but the student isn't able to get in touch with that non custodial parent. If I'm a student and I'm in that situation, I am going to receive some follow up questions. So I'm going to notate on the profile that I don't have non custodial parent information.

I'm then going to be asked some questions. Is that parent deceased, unknown, incarcerated, or involved with a legal or documented abuse? Or it might be that I'm a student who has a single adoptive parent. I have only, only had one parent my entire life, so there's no other parent. Or I was conceived by a single parent.

Again, no other parent. Or I'm just not in touch with a non custodial parent. Haven't talked to that parent in years, not even sure where that parent lives. I'm going to answer these questions that the profile provides for me. And based on my answers, the requirement for me to provide non custodial parent information might be removed.

And I might be. Good just to provide the information for the parent, my custodial parent. If my non custodial parent information is still required. And for whatever reason, I can't provide it. I'm going to submit a waiver to the colleges, but basically a waiver request. And there's a form. I have the URL on the page here.

You can go onto the, you, the CSS profile website and fill out this waiver request. And it's basically the student explaining why he or she can't get non custodial parent information. You'll send that off to all the schools. That are requiring noncustodial parent information and then really as a student and as a family, you should follow up with each school to make sure they've received that waiver request and what they've done with it.

They might say, okay. Yep. We're not going to require noncustodial parent information. They might actually come back and say, no, we think we still need it. So make sure that you follow up with every school because you want to make sure that you've completed all application requirements.

As the noncustodial parent, so in my example, that was my mom, that parent is going to receive that email request from the profile. So if I'm a noncustodial parent, I've got that request. Your child needs you to fill out a profile. I'm going to go to that same website. Cssprofile. org. I do need to create my own college board account.

So as a parent, I'm going to do what I, that process I explained earlier. I'm going to create a student account using my information. I need a new college board account. Cssprofile. org On my profile, it's a noncustodial parent. I don't have to supply student financial information because that's already been supplied on the main profile.

I'm just going to provide my own financial information and some demographic information about the student. I don't have to list the colleges where the profile is going. The students already done that and I can't submit the application until the student is actually selected a college, but usually that's already been done.

There is a fee to submit the profile and there are payment codes available. So those do apply to the non custodial parent and I'll talk about those in just a minute. If I am completing two CSS profiles as the non custodial parent, I will need two College Board accounts using two different email addresses.

So that's a little bit confusing, but if I'm a non custodial parent, I have twins applying to college. They're both applying to colleges that require a CSS profile and a non custodial CSS profile. I've got to use two different email addresses, create two College Board accounts to create two different profiles.

And just as a reassurance, the custodial and the non custodial parents don't see each other's information. So you're a family, you're completing the profile. Here's the general information that you're going to supply. The colleges where the student is applying. You're only going to write down the colleges that require the profile.

So for those that don't require the profile, you don't need to list those, but any colleges that require the profile and parent and student 2022 income information similar to the FAFSA, the profile goes back two years. So we're filling out the 2425 profile. Going to ask for 2022. Thank you. Income information.

It is going to refer to your tax return. Any of you who filled out the, the FAFSA know that there's a process where the FAFSA actually pulls your tax return information automatically from the IRS. It's a great feature. The CSS profile does not have that. So the CSS profile is going to ask for your income information is going to refer to your tax return.

So you need to have that in front of you. So before you even start the profile, get your tax return, all your schedules, get your W 2s, because questions are going to refer to certain line items on your taxes, and then you'll be able to easily grab that information. There's going to be asset questions. So savings accounts, checking accounts, investments.

So make sure you have your current statements. It's going to ask for current information for your assets. Income information is from 2022. Asset information is current. What do you have in the bank? What do you have in your investments right now? The profile is going to ask for household number information, who lives at home, and the number of children who are going to college.

As mentioned, the profile does ask for more information than the FAFSA. So, the FAFSA is going to ask for your general income asset information, who's in your household. The profile digs a little bit deeper. So, in addition to all the questions asked on the FAFSA, the profile is going to ask for some additional...

Income data. Some of that is listed on your screen. Any untaxed social security benefits. If you had a foreign income exclusion, alimony, household allowances, workers compensation, disability benefits. It's going to ask about a lot of income information. Your assets. It's going to ask for the value and debt of your primary home, where you live.

On the FAFSA, you don't list your primary home. You do list other real estate, but not your primary home. The profile asks for all your real estate, your primary home and any other real estate you own. I'm going to ask about any assets held in the names of other children. This is a little bit of an unusual question.

It doesn't apply to most people, but if you have placed parent assets in the name of, let's say, a sibling of the student, you'll need to report those assets. You don't have to report the assets of siblings of the student only if you've put your own assets, the parent assets, into the names of any of your children.

And then the profile will ask for the value of your retirement, what's sitting in your retirement account. A lot of people panic at this, they don't want schools to assume they can use their retirement value, and what's sitting in their retirement accounts to pay for colleges. And most colleges don't use this information.

They might eyeball it, they might look at it, just as a point of reference, but a lot of them don't use it in any type of calculation. So be assured if you saved a lot for retirement, Kudos to you. It probably won't be used at all in the financial aid process. And then the profile does ask about any expenses you have.

And this is a benefit to you as a family. They want to know, do you have high medical or dental expenses? Are you paying private school tuition or are you paying off education loans of your own, or maybe, uh, an older student in your family? Definitely list all that. Cause that's going to help you out as colleges are going to take that into consideration, knowing that you have these extra expenses as you go to pay for college for the student applicant.

The profile is going to ask about your family situation. So, who's in your household, as I mentioned, the ages of children and family, and the colleges that they're attending. It's going to ask for some data of the student, any private scholarships that they've won. If there's any employee tuition benefits, that's usually.

Benefits that you're getting as the parent that will be applied to the student. And then there's going to be as I mentioned this explanation of special circumstances. So you'll have an opportunity a few times throughout the application to just type in. This is basically a note to the financial aid offices, letting them know anything special about your situation with your finances with your household.

If you're not sure whether to include it, go ahead and include it. And every financial aid officer is going to read that note. So they will receive the information and they'll take it into consideration when determining your financial aid package. There are also, as I mentioned, supplemental questions asked by colleges and universities.

So they might have decided to add in an additional question. Sometimes these aren't required, but go ahead and answer them if you do have the answers. And you'll see which college actually asks each question. So you can see who's requiring which additional information from you. There is a fee associated with the CSS profile, whereas the FAFSA is always, always, always completely free to submit.

There is a fee with the profile. It's 25 to fill out the application and submit it to one school and then 16 to submit it to every additional school. You can play with credit or debit card. For that non custodial parents, they only have to pay twenty five dollars one time, no matter how many schools are getting their information and there is a fee waiver policy that will go through on the next slide.

It is good to know. Forty percent of applicants and over eighty percent of first generation applicants do get a fee waiver. So there are a lot of students that do get a fee waiver. Fee waivers are given to students who meet one of the following criteria. Their AGI is 100, 000 or less, and that's household AGI, so basically parent AGI.

Any student who's an orphan, a ward of the court, and under 24 years old, and then anyone who already received an SAT fee waiver. These students will be told you're given a fee waiver. You don't have to pay anything to submit the CSS profile. And there's no limit. You can submit the profile to as many schools as you'd like.

The fee waivers are only given to freshmen. Transfer returning independent undergraduate students so that some schools use the profile for graduate students only undergraduate and it's only available to students who have parents living in the U. S. not available to international students, non custodial parents.

If your household income is under a hundred thousand dollars, you will get that.

There's also something called fee payment codes, and these are purchased either by colleges and universities, sometimes college access organizations, and they're given to students. There's you can use 1 code to submit the profile to 1 school and you can use as many codes as. Like, you just have to use one code for every school.

So sometimes students are working with a college access organization, or they're working with a specific college or university, they're not able to pay the fee in the college or university will say, here's the fee payment code, type this in, and then you won't have to pay anything to submit the application.

So, once you go through all of the questions on the CSS profile, you'll be given a chance to review your entire application. There's going to be some prompts if there are inconsistencies. So if you put in, for example, an extraordinarily high student AGI, student income, the profile is probably going to notate that and think this might be parent income.

The family might have put. Parent income into student income line by accident. So they'll, a prompt will come up and they'll just, the profile will ask for you to review the information and to verify that it is correct. If there's an error, that's where you'll be able to correct it before you submit. You are able to print your answers if desired.

So here's where you'll be able to print everything that you entered into the profile. If you'd like to do that, you'll have to check a box to verify everything is accurate. So once you review your answers, you'll say, yep, everything's complete. And this is where you'll be asked to pay. And this is where you'll also be shown if you've gotten a fee waiver.

There is a dashboard on the CSS profile. You can access this anytime and this is really your, your landing page. This is where a lot of your information is. So, if you log into the profile, you can go to your dashboard. That's where the application status is going to be for every school, whether you submitted the application, whether it's been received every college that you've listed on your profile, it's going to be the submission date.

So, when you sent. the profile to that school, the deadline for the school, any additional requirements. So maybe that school is requiring a non custodial profile or additional documentation. That'll be on your dashboard. Any next steps, your payment receipt, this is where you can go ahead and print the application.

So if you do the profile, you submit it, and then you think, Oh, I want to print my answers. Go back into the profile, go to your dashboard, and you can go ahead and print your answers at that point. This is also where you can add a college. So this is a question we get a lot. What if you send your profile to three schools, you're finished with it, and then your child decides, I want to apply to one more school, and it requires the profile.

Log back in, go to your dashboard. You can add the school right on your dashboard, and this is where you'll just have to pay that 16 again. There will also be a link to IDOC. We'll talk about that. That's on your dashboard. This is also where you can add your non custodial parents email address. So if you haven't done that already, and you've noticed that as a student, you have a non custodial parent that needs to fill out a profile.

If you haven't notated the email address of that non custodial parent, you could do so in your dashboard, and you can send that request to fill out that profile. Also, on that page is that student C. B. I. D. so every student has a basically college for financial aid. I. D. you can find that right on the dashboard.

There is a. New features was new last year on the CSS profile. You can submit corrections one time per application and there's a few examples of or situations when you can submit a correction if you complete the application as an independent student, but you're actually dependent. So you answered a question wrong.

Maybe you said you're an orphan and you're not. You said you were married. You're not. You can correct that and then complete the application as a dependent. If you forgot to include business or farm information, or if you basically just made a mistake, if you put in a wrong number, you answered a question incorrectly, there's a drop down box where you can just say you made a mistake and then you have an opportunity to write in an explanation.

So you can say, oh, I answered this question wrong. I reported the wrong amount of assets or income, and then you can type that in and submit that correction. Corrections are usually permitted once you've submitted the application and about 24 hours has, has, has gone through and then you can go in and make that correction.

You can't complete a correction and then also add additional colleges within the same city. So go ahead and add your additional colleges and then you can make your correction or or vice versa, but you can't do them all at once. And there's no charge to submit any correction, you'll just go ahead and submit it and and then your colleges will receive that information.

So IDOC, I've mentioned a few times, this is a scanning service offered by the college board and it basically allows colleges and universities to request documentation from families that they will use within their financial aid evaluation process. And the college board provides this service. It allows.

Colleges and universities to request tax returns or specific forms that they want families to submit and rather than colleges asking families to fill out this information or collect this information and mail it directly to the college instead families submitted to the scanning service. I doc takes all this information and sends it electronically to the school.

So it just makes the school's job easier as they're collecting documentation in the financial aid process. There is a, I doc dashboard. So it's, this is a separate dashboard from the profile dashboard. And this is going to tell students that they're required documents. Not every college uses IDOC. So some colleges.

So they can send that back to make sure they actually are completing what they secure. So they can send it back in asking leave before they have Ukraine ăn. I good. Okay, In case you like it, It's very soon. It'll be fresh on YouTube. Again. If you enjoyed it and you want to watch more, check out more of our great content.

Don't forget to subscribe to the school's Instagram page. You'll find more on I'd like website colleges and universities will let you know if they're using and if they're requiring information. So 1 thing you can do is once you've done your profile, you can go to your profile dashboard and look at each of those schools and it will list.

Yep. We're using and we need you to submit certain documentation. And then you can click over to the IDOC website, which is on your screen, idoc. collegeboard. com. And you can then submit your documentation. So let's say you're on your profile dashboard and you see, oh, these three schools are asking for my text return.

They want to verify the information that I submitted. They want to see my text return. You'll go over to IDOC, you'll log in and you'll be able to upload your text return. It has to be in that JPEG, TIFF, or a PDF format. A lot of us have that already. So you do have to. You'll just have to upload it that way.

In most cases, you do have to sign the document, so you might have to print out your signature page, sign it, and then upload it so that the college knows that this has been verified, this has been signed. If you have any trouble with IDOC, there is a customer service line, so you can go ahead and call them with any technical questions.

But this is usually a pretty seamless, seamless service, and it just allows you to submit all the documentation that the school is requesting.

If you'd like an IDOC overview, they do provide one. This is just a quick little overview of how IDOC works and how you use the service. So if you're required to use it, you want to have an overview before you actually upload everything. You can watch this, these slides and that's the URL on your screen.

As you go through the CSS profile, you can, of course, reach out to me if you have any questions at all, and we're happy to talk to you through the process or answer any of your questions. Sometimes, if it's something specific to your CSS profile, maybe you submitted it and the profile dashboard is showing that you haven't submitted it yet.

If it's something technical like that, it's really best to reach out to Profile Customer Service. If you contact, if you click on that contact us link on the top navigation bar, anytime throughout the profile application, you'll get to this page. So there's a phone number for students. There's a phone number for counselors and financial aid administrators and there's also chat.

So, if chat is available, there's someone on the other end of chat, you'll see live chat in the bottom right hand corner of your screen and you can click on that. There is an email address, finaidsservicesatcollegeboard. org. Some years the profile puts this on their webpage, some years they don't. It's always been the same email address, so we went ahead and added it.

So if you'd rather email the CSS profile with any questions, use that email address, finaidsservicesatcollegeboard. org. And then someone will go back to you answer your question.

So things you can do. Now, as a family, we have a timeline for college admissions and financial aid right on me for dot org. Go ahead and reference that to go through this entire year. It's breaks up the year by season. So you won't miss anything as your son or daughter's applying for financial aid and applying for admission to colleges go on every college universities website and find out the deadlines and the required applications for financially the, the facts of this year.

Doesn't open till December. So some colleges are requiring additional forms or information. So this year, especially, but we tell people to do this every year, go to the financial aid page of every school on your child list and find out every application that's required and all the deadlines. We have some other great webinars this year scheduled.

If you go to our events page, MESA. org events, you'll find those. And you can go ahead and start completing those applications. CSS profile opens October 1st and the FAFSA will open in December. We don't have a date for the FAFSA yet. The Department of Education has not provided one. By New Year's Eve, they're supposed to have that FAFSA open.

So just have it on your list. Be contacting families once the FAFSA is open. So if you sign up for our emails, which you can do right on our homepage, MIFA. org, we'll let you know as soon as the FAFSA is available. I want to point out we're all over social media. We're posting daily with great tips about financial aid and admissions, information about saving for college, all kinds of things.

So find us Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, YouTube. And we also have a podcast for those who are podcast listeners. Great information about college planning.

Okay, and that concludes the presentation. I know Julie's been incredibly busy behind the scenes answering questions. So. Here she is popping on. We'll go ahead and answer any questions. If you have to jump off, or if we don't get to your question, our 800 number is on the screen there and also our email address.

So reach out to us. Anytime and we'll also send out this recording if you want to watch it again, but we are available throughout the season. So definitely reach out to us with any additional questions as you go through this process.

Oh, and Julie, I think you're muted. Thank you. Um, so one question we have a number of people ask this and I forget the answer. Um, if the non custodial parent wants to start the profile, can they do that? Or do they need to wait for the student to start and send the email? Right, so I believe the student has to start and the student has to select a college where the noncustodial profile is required.

And then once that happens, then the noncustodial parent will get that email with the student's College Board FinAid ID, and then they can start. So, even if the student is, says I'm applying to BU and I know they require the noncustodial profile, the student, I believe, has to actually start that profile and list BU, and then the noncustodial parent will be able to start.

His or her own application. That's great. So here's a question. You know, you know, we know that different colleges can ask their own specific questions. And so when a family answers those questions, do all the colleges see those questions or just just the college that that wanted that the answer to that specific question?

See that? Oh, that's a good question. I am pretty sure only the college requesting that, um, asking that question. Um, gets that information, and I believe it's because they might have to, they might have to pay a fee to ask additional questions. Um, but it's also, it's basically private to that school. So that school might want asking you about something and all the other schools really shouldn't get that information because it's not asked on the actual, the main profile application.

So I believe only that answer will go to those, the schools that requested it. That's great. Um, you know, I'll have you answer this outright just because a lot of people asked it. Um, can you just talk about how to value their house, their home that they live in on the form. Oh yeah, we get that question a lot.

So it's on your primary home or any other real estate. We both, we basically say, just put your best guess sometimes there's a home that is similar to your home in the neighborhood that recently sold. You can base your home value on that. You can simply go on Zillow or one of those other websites that gives an estimate of your home value, whatever you believe your home is worth, you can put it unless it's way off from what a Zillow or a site like that reports, the financial aid office is just going to trust you with your value and the debt that you're reporting.

So just give your best guess of what you think your home is worth and any other real estate that you have and go ahead and put that on the form. That's great. And then we got a question. If divorcing in 2023, but filed joint return in 2022, how is the information from 2022 broken down or used? Okay, so if you have a joint tax return and you're only pulling information for one parent because there's a situation of divorce or separation, you basically need to do the best that you can to only pull your information.

So, if I'm a parent who's divorcing and I have a joint return, I'm going to look at my tax return and every line where I have to pull information and put it into the profile, I'm just going to pull my information. So, for my wages, I'm, I'm going to. Disregard the wages of my to be ex spouse and I'm just going to pull my wages.

Some of the lines, maybe taxes paid and other just split in half. I mean, do the best you can to just pull out your information. The, the financial aid office, in some cases might ask you then later to submit your tax return. And again, break up the information between you and your soon to be expelled. But when you're filling out the file, just do the best you can to just pull in your information.

Disregard the other persons and put that on the application. That's great. And I'm going to ask you a question that sort of incorporates a lot. So someone asked, why is the FAFSA not available till December? And then the other questions that surround that are, so what about early action, early decision?

You know, all of all of that, what am I going to do submitting my profile? So maybe you can just sort of give an overarching answer to a lot of these questions. Yeah, so great question. So the FAFSA, for those who haven't heard, is getting a significant overall overhaul, and the goal is to make it simpler.

We're calling it FAFSA simplification, and as a result, it's taking a long time for the Department of Education to make all those changes, especially on the back end. So the goal, of course, was To have the FAFSA ready October 1st as it is every year, and that's just not going to happen. So, the Department of Education has said to implement all of these changes that came through on this.

It was basically the FAFSA Simplification Act that was, that mandated these changes. We won't have it ready till December. So, if you're a student who's applying early action or early decision, simply go to the financial aid webpage, which I know I've said a few times. Go to the financial aid web page of every school and see what's required.

So there are schools this year that haven't used the profile in the past, and they're actually using the profile this year. Because the FAFSA won't be ready, and they want to start giving people a financial aid offer. So it might be that you have to do the profile for a school. A school might have their own financial aid application.

We've heard of at least one school, and there probably will be others who don't use the profile. Usually just use the FAFSA, but they want some information before December from the family. So they're going to have their own financial aid application that you're going to download off the college's website.

So you might have to do that. So just go to the web page, find out the requirements. You will still have to submit the FAFSA, even if you're applying early decision or early action, you're going to have to do the FAFSA when it does open in December or January, but In the meantime, colleges will have a plan in place.

They might not have it on their website yet, so they might still be scrambling or figuring out what to do, um, certainly by the deadline of the admissions application law, something listed. So keep checking those websites just to see what they're going to do with their financial aid process. It's going to differ, um, school to school.

That's great. And then a number of people ask this question to, uh, or questions related to this. People are wondering, what if I don't have a college board ID because my child took the ACT, for example, um, how do I do that? Where do I find that? Yep, so just either the student or the parent needs to set up a college board account.

So, really, your family can decide what to do if you're, if your child hasn't taken the doesn't plan to doesn't plan to take an exam. You could set up the college board ID. And again, you're gonna. You're gonna click on, set up a student account and put in parent information, or you can just have your, your child set up a college board account.

Maybe your child will be taking exams. They're gonna have to have one anyway. So, just have someone in the family, either the student or the parent just register for a college board account. Pretty simple process. Typical questions, as in registering on most websites, and then you'll get your, and then you can start the profile and you'll get your, your college boards and eight ID.

And can I add a little caveat there? What if it's a legal guardian? Can the legal guardian set up the college board account for the student? That's a good question. I would assume so because we are requiring the legal guardian to act as the parent. So, yep, if it's the legal guardian, go ahead and set up, you can go ahead and set up that college board account.

Great. And now I'm going to ask you just three kind of smaller questions, um, but we'll just make sure we cover all this. Is the retirement value a required field? Oh, that's a good question. I am actually not sure. I think it might be optional. And do you know, Julie? I think so, too, but I wasn't sure. So we can get that answer to folks.

Yeah, we'll get that answer. And we'll put that what we'll what we'll likely do with this webinar is grab some great questions that you're all asking and put it into a blog post. So if there's anything we can't answer here, we'll, we'll put out a blog post probably in the next week and you can reference that.

But I do think that that retirement question is optional. And so you can put in the answer if you'd like to provide it. But we'll find we'll find out and we'll put we'll make we'll make sure we have that answer in that blog post. That's great. And we have a, you know, a few questions left like that that I think will will be good for that.

I'll ask one other question because this is something larger you can talk about. Are the custodial and non custodial parents financial profiles weighted equally. And what if the non custodial parent has more assets but doesn't support the student as much as the custodial parent, all kinds of issues, you know, we know that's a good question.

Thank you. Yeah, so in most cases, what profile schools can do is they can actually decide how they weight all of the information that they're getting in the profile. Most of them are going to wait it equally. So they'll just combine parent information, custodial and non custodial parent information. put it together and then they'll determine the financial aid eligibility for those institutional funds.

But again, they're going to take special circumstances into consideration. So if there is something specific with the custodial or the non custodial financial information or something a little bit different or a little bit unique, go ahead and report that because colleges really will. They are individually looking every.

Student and making sure that they as fairly as possible. Determine your financial aid eligibility, but in most cases, they will look at the parents together and just combine their income information as if the parents were. We're married, but again, some schools might do that completely differently. So different school to school.

That's great. And let's see if there's anything else we should address here. If a small business income changes drastically year to year, will the schools consider this or just, or should I mention it in special circumstances? Yeah, so any income fluctuations, mention it in special circumstances, especially some people who own a business, maybe 2022 with a Banner year, you made a lot of income, but you can show the college that, Oh, and the 10 years prior.

And even in 2023, as it's looking right now, the income is much smaller. And that could be too. If your income was inflated because of an inheritance or a one time bonus, colleges will take that into consideration. So put it in a special circumstances. And you could also get a jump on it and actually send documentation to the college to just show.

Thank you. Here's my income previous to 2022. Here's my estimated income for 2023. Here's why 2022 is so big, and they can definitely take that into consideration. What they might do is take the average. They will take it into consideration because what they want to do is give you financial aid that's fair for really the broad picture of your finances and try to repeat that every year, if it makes sense, while you're the students in college.

And then here's here's when we get this question once in a while, this family owns a two family. So how do they list the value of the unit they live in versus the other part? Oh, yeah. Okay. So if this is a true duplex where it. It's the, the unit you live in and the unit that you might be renting out are pretty even they're evenly sized.

They're about the same. You can take the value of the entire property and just split it in half. And for your primary home, you're gonna. Actually report that amount that that half you live in. And then for the other real estate, you're going to have to report that the, the unit that you don't live in. So, even if it's not equal, try to just again, you're just going to estimate as best you can, the value of the property that you live in, or the, the.

Section of the home that you live in, and then the value that you don't live in. And as a note on the FAFSA, you don't report your primary home information, but you do report other real estate. So, if I live in a duplex, and I live on on 1 side with my family, and then the other side, we own, but we rent out to another family in the neighborhood, we're going to have to report that other side of the duplex as a real estate on the FAFSA as an investment.

We won't report. The side we live in. But that other side is going to be other real estate. So again, do the best you can with with estimating real estate property, your primary home and any other property. And you're going to list the value. You're going to list the debt too. So the school's really only going to take into consideration your net value of every property you own.

And so I just a couple more. I think we'll well, we still have a few minutes. Can you talk through the process if a non custodial parent is really out of the picture and absent and how a family would would work with the school on that? Sure. So if you go through the profile and you answer all the questions, and it still looks like a college is requesting a non custodial profile, there is and you'll see on the slides, which again will send out there's a URL.

There's a. Basically on the parent page of the CSS profile, you could find it too. There's a waiver request and what we usually tell the families is go ahead and fill that out. So non custodial parent information is required. You can't get it for whatever reason. There's this request form. You can fill it out and Basically allows you to explain your situation.

Why can't you as a student get your non custodial parents information? Send, fill out that form. If you have any supporting documentation, whatever makes sense with your specific situation, attach that. You're going to send it to every school that's requiring that non custodial profile. And then maybe give it a couple of weeks, follow up with each school to make sure that they got your waiver request and that they've either Waive the requirement for you to submit noncustodial profile information, or maybe they've requested some additional information from you.

But as the student, as the family, it's your job to follow up. If a noncustodial parent profile is requested for your financial aid process, and you don't submit it, you are incomplete. You are not going to receive any financial aid except your federal and state aid. So the school won't. Provide you anything because your application is incomplete.

So it's really important that you follow up with every school where you've submitted this waiver request. A lot of schools are very reasonable. If you're not in touch with the next studio parent, there's a safety issue. There's a reason you can't get in touch with that parent. They're going to waive that requirement, but you need to make sure the schools have done that.

Crossed all the t's, dotted all the i's, and completed every requirement in the process. All right, I'm going to save this one for last because actually there are many many questions about this. We're circling back to parents creating their own account or using their student's account. And so there were a lot of questions about if a parent Sets up their own account.

How does that? How does that information link? And then there were a lot of questions from parents about well, if I have two Children to setting up my own account, make it easier because then I link, you know, to those two. And I've been typing into the answers here about how each student needs their own account.

But maybe you could just talk through that process one last time before we close. Yeah, so it is. It's confusing and every year we hope that it'll change, but, um, the easiest thing to do is probably do the CSS profile under the student's college board account if they have one or have the student create a college board account, just because it's easier to create an account because it's the student and that's the language that's used.

But if you're a non custodial parent or you're a parent who just doesn't want your student to see your information, you as the parent are going to set up a student account. So you're going to go in and you're going to, it's going to feel funny. It's going to look funny. You're going to click on. I want to set up a new student account, but again, my name is Meredith.

I'm the parent where it says student's name. As I'm registering for account, I'm going to put Meredith. I have a daughter named Sawyer. I'm not going to put her name. I'm going to put my name, Meredith. I'm going to put my address, Meredith. Address my email address. I'm coming at me for dot org. I'm going to put my information and then I'm going to be able to fill out the profile for my child under my account.

Um, I'm not sure if I'm going to link to, I guess, putting in my child's identifying information will then just link my child and let the schools know that this is, this is my child. CSS profile, but it's going to look funny. It's going to feel funny, but you're setting up a student account with your information as a parent and in that example, I gave if you're a parent and you have twins and you don't want to use their college board account, you need to set up.

Two different accounts with two different email addresses. So every CSS profile needs its own college board account and every college board account has its own email address. So if I have twins, I don't want to use their college board account for whatever reason. I need to set up one college board account using maybe my personal, maybe my Gmail address, and then I'm going to set up another college board account, maybe using my work address, my MIFA address.

That's such a pain, and we know it's such a pain, but that's how just the College Board operates. And that's how the CFS profile operates. So, some families find that it's easy. We're just going to use the student's College Board account. A lot of the time, the student never looks at it. You're answering all the questions.

They never log into the College Board account again, but that's just a work around. If you don't want to use their account, you're going to set up your own College Board account and we'll on that blog post. We'll add some more information about this, just so we have it written out for you to. Thank you.

All right, well, some we didn't get to but we know we will and people can always call us I'm going to end on one because it's a good answer on our part. Someone is asking how our grandparent 529 plans. counted. So maybe you can just give that good news. Yeah. So if you have a grandparent who's open to 529, um, I'll talk about the FAFSA and the profile on the FAFSA.

You don't report it anywhere. So if you're a family grandparent at the 529, you don't report them out anywhere. Process that when the grandparent withdrew that money and used it to pay for college, the student had to report that as their own income, which could be hefty if the parent or. Grandparent was withdrawing a lot of money.

That has changed for the FAFSA. So, on the FAFSA, Grandparent 529s are never listed. Ever, ever, ever. You don't list them as an asset. You don't list them when they're used. On the CFS profile, there is a question. Does the student have a relative, like a grandparent or family friend, anyone in their lives, who's going to be helping them with college costs?

So, as a family, you could mention, yep, we have a grandparent with a 529. This is a question a lot of colleges might ignore it, a lot of colleges might eyeball it. Um, it, it might raise a red flag if you are a family that has no resources, and then you say, yep, we have 100, 000 coming in from a grandparent 529.

That's rarely the case. In most cases, students who report this, colleges will just basically ignore it. They might see, okay, grandparents are helping to pay for college. That's fine. A lot of colleges won't take it into consideration, or they might think about it when they're awarding financial aid, but again, there's just one question on the profile that asks about it.

And then this general question, you'll see it. I think it's toward the end. Are there any other resources that the student has coming from any other relatives? And it's just a. Kind of a general kind of a vague question and colleges just want to know, is there some outside resources coming in? That's the only place you're going to list it.

So you're not going to answer when you're answering those investment questions, student investments, parent investments. If you've got grandparent money, grandparent 529, you don't put that anywhere except that that 1 question at the end. All right, I think in time, um, and because we won't be able to get to all of these, I think we can, we can stop there.

Great. So as Julie mentioned, call us or email us with any additional questions. We're going to go through all the questions asked today and we'll compile them. We'll put them in a post. So check our blog in the next couple of weeks and we'll have more information, but just reach out anytime. We're happy to answer any questions for you.

Great. All right. Well, thanks everyone for joining today. Have a great day.