CSS Profile

More on that in a minute.

Fifth, if your student is applying to private colleges, check whether any of them require the CSS Profile.

The CSS Profile is a separate aid form run by the College Board used by a few hundred colleges, and it opened October first.

It asks more questions than the FAFSA, including home equity at many schools.

Put it on the same week's calendar.

Mistake seven: filling the FAFSA and stopping there.

The FAFSA is one step.

Your student might also need the CSS Profile, a state application, or a college's own scholarship form.

And so the purpose of the FAFSA is to set that baseline, um, is to figure out, um, provide some gauge as to what you can afford to pay.

The same would be true, uh, for people who fill out the CSS Profile, which another couple hundred schools require a- along with FAFSA.

And talk about merit aid then.

That's, like, something you kinda carved that out already in this conversation.

That's okay.

Starting with the FAFSA and then using the CSS Profile for a broader view of multiple year income as well as assets, and we explain to families why that is the most equitable way to award aid.

Then there is a number determined by that formula.

And so meeting 100% of demonstrated need, coming all the way to that determination, whether that is zero, in some cases now maybe even negative, or whether that's 12,000 a year, 36 a year, you know, depending on the family and their resources.

A fee waiver is when there is a required fee for, in general, for applicants, but your family's financial circumstances mean that you could get that waived.

So application fee waivers for the common application or, or other applications.

Um, I love that the CSS Profile builds in, um, fee waivers just based on the answers that you're giving.

Um, could be fee waivers for AP registrations, um, sending test scores.

Starting with the 2026-27 FAFSA, family businesses with 100 or fewer full-time employees, farmers where the family lives, and commercial fishing businesses are excluded as well.

Colleges that require the CSS profile collect asset details for their own institutional aid, regardless of what the FAFSA skipped.

That difference explains why two schools can show different numbers on a financial aid award letter.

Weird.

Got it.

And we're gonna talk a little bit about the CSS Profile in our next segment, and, and how schools use that to also understand, um, the aid eligibility for a family when accounting for other factors.

Um, now, um, I'm hearing some of the downsides here that are, like, downstream effects.

Um, if a family decides that they, they don't wanna file the FAFSA initially, like they're not scrambling to get this started here on October 1st, or even if it's something that they don't do when the student applies to, say, an early action school, can they go back and refile the FAFSA later on, and, uh, or have they lost their opportunity?

... appreciate you.

All right, folks, when we come back, we are gonna talk about one more aid form.

I think it's a little bit more complicated than the FAFSA, the CSS Profile.

So if you're applying to any schools that are requiring that profile, let's talk through what to expect.

I don't know if the big number should be one billion, the biggest gift ever in public school history, which is kinda what I came on here to do, September 23rd.

But how about his total of 2.2 billion over- [laughs] since 2007? How about that? All right, friends, so, so what is my tip? You know, my tip is this: FAFSA and CSS Profile are about to open up, right? They both open up on May 1st, and, uh...

Sorry, on...

I keep calling May October.

I don't know why I'm doing that.

They open up October 1st.

And do you know how common it is for students to make a mistake on the FAFSA or the CSS Profile? It happens all the time.

You know, different reports you read, I've read anywhere from one in six people have to come back and make a change because of a mistake on their FAFSA, to most people estimate that more than 35% actually do make a mistake on FAFSA.

While these guarantees are meant to sound simple, families aiming to benefit from them have some paperwork to do.

In most cases, money is awarded only after a family completes both the Free Application for Federal Student Aid, known as the FAFSA, and the College Scholarship Service Profile, or CSS Profile.

The universities are funding their largesse through their endowments and specific donor gifts.

Big endowments are key to generous grant-based institutional aid.

Um, and also thank you to Gabby Tobias and Gerardo Ochoa for joining me today.

Also, join us next week on October 1st when host Ian Fisher will be hosting a show about all things finance from the FAFSA, or Free Application Fed, uh, Free Application for Federal Student Aid, to the CSS Profile to National Merit.

And finally, I wanna remind you that you don't have to listen to our shows live.

Every show is accessible 24/7 on the Voice America website.