The CSS Profile will make students eligible for institutional aid from nearly 400 colleges. (Karin Price Mueller | NJ Advance Media for NJ.com)
What is the CSS Profile?
The CSS Profile is a financial aid form created by The College Board, the same organization that administers the SAT and other tests. Close to 400 colleges use the form. “The schools that ask for both forms will typically use the FAFSA calculations in determining any federal aid they offer to a student, but use the CSS Profile information in determining their own institutional resources,” said Steven Sirot, co-founder of College Benefits Research Group (CBRG) in Roseland.
Expected Family Contribution
Colleges will use the form to determine your Expected Family Contribution (EFC).
The EFC is a measure of your family’s financial picture, and the FAFSA and the CSS Profile calculate this differently.
For the FAFSA, the federal government uses a formula called the Federal Methodology, while colleges use their own formulas, known as Institutional Methodology. Both formulas figure out your EFC by looking at your assets, income, family size and more.
But colleges, using the CSS Profile, ask for more information about you. While there is a standard CSS Profile, individual colleges can add supplemental questions about items that the particular college makes part of its formula. These supplemental questions will help the college dive deeper to consider other items, such as if the family has large medical expenses. So while the FAFSA is uniform, the CSS Profile is not, and colleges are permitted to use the information in whatever way they choose. Further confusing many families is that colleges use different proprietary algorithms to determine your EFC. And while the FAFSA will tell you your EFC, colleges that use the CSS Profile generally will not. This all means if you apply to several colleges that use the CSS Profile, each school could give you a different EFC.
While the CSS Profile may take time to complete, the aid you may receive makes it worth it. (pixabay.com)
A time investment
Because colleges consider more items than the FAFSA application, the CSS Profile will take you longer to complete.
It will ask for information the feds don’t require, such as your primary home, your retirement accounts, and non-custodial parent income. Think giving overall this additional information will make your family look wealthier, and therefore not eligible for more aid? Wrong. Colleges that require the CSS Profile are typically the schools that are more generous with aid, Sirot said.
If you have ignored certain schools because you think they’ll just be too expensive, think again. You never know what you may be offered, especially by schools with large endowment funds.
The fees