Meredith Clement: [00:00:00] All right. Good afternoon, everyone. This is MEFA’s What to Know About the CSS Profile webinar. We’re so glad you’re here I’m sure most of you have been on many, many, many Zoom calls, but this is a just a brief overview of how to participate. Questions, go ahead and put them in the Q&A, and we’ll be happy to answer them throughout the webinar If any of you are not familiar with MEFA, we’re basically a state authority.

We were created by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts back in 1982. Our sole purpose is really to help families like you plan, save, and pay for college with a lot of different free resources for you throughout the year. So definitely reach out to us at any point if you have questions about college planning.

We’re always happy to help Our webinar today is gonna go through the very important financial aid application called the CSS Profile. And this is [00:01:00] really I would call it the, the second most important financial aid application after the FAFSA. It’s a financial aid application run by the College Board.

That’s the same organization that runs the SAT and the AP exams. It’s not required by every university, so it’s required by about 200 colleges, universities across the nation. Everybody requires the profi- or everyone requires the FAFSA, excuse me. So every college where you have a child applying requires the FAFSA for financial aid purposes.

Only about 200 require the CSS Profile. It’s really the application that colleges and universities use to award their own funds, so the funds that are coming really from their institution, those non-federal aid funds. It opens October 1st every year, which is of course tomorrow, but it does look like it’s open today.

So if you get off this webinar and you’re excited about starting a CSS Profile, I peeked at it earlier this morning, it does look like you’re able to get in there and start applying. And this is an application that’s available for both [00:02:00] domestic and international students. We got a lot of questions of, well, why do colleges use the profile if they already have the FAFSA?

Everyone’s getting FAFSA data. Why this other application? And it’s really because the CSS Profile is a lot more detailed than the FAFSA. The FAFSA gathers your tax return information, information about your assets, and how many people are at your, in your household. The CSS Profile, once you go in and complete it, you’ll see they’re very detailed.

They ask a lot more questions about your income and your assets, and they’re also able to ask customized questions. If there’s a school that has a question that they wanna ask all their applicants, they can add that into their CSS Profile. It’s, it’s really used because colleges want to be able to award their financial aid as equitably as possible.

They wanna make sure they’re giving their financial aid funds to the right students, and so they gather more information to make sure they can really determine who needs financial [00:03:00] aid to make it possible to attend, and that’s why the colleges that use the CSS Profile do that. They want that extra information to help them make their financial aid decisions.

The profile also a- allows you, the family, to type in special circumstances, which is not l- uh, available on the FAFSA. So if you have a certain financial or personal situation and you really want the financial aid offices to know, you’ll see on the profile there are sections where you can type that in, which is great.

This is the CSS Profile homepage, so you can simply go to cssprofile.org, and this is what you will see. You see at the top there’s links for more information, like many websites with a few more resources. In the middle of the screen you see it says sign in for fall 2027-2028. So that’s, that’s what you’re going to complete if you have a high school senior.

You’re really thinking about financial aid for freshman year, and if you have a high school senior, unless they’re taking a gap, [00:04:00] they’re gonna have freshman year be their tw- 2027-28 year. So you’re completing the CSS Profile for ’27-’28. You’re also doing the FAFSA for ’27-’28. You can see below that main section there are a few additional resources.

One is the list of participating schools. So you can click into there. Almost all of the colleges and universities that use the profile choose to put themselves on this list, but it is an elective list. So what we really tell families is if you’re trying to figure out if a college or university where your child is applying requires the profile, go to the financial aid page of that college or university and check for the requirements and see if the, the FAFSA will be listed, see if the profile is listed.

But this list of participating schools is pretty comprehensive, so you can check there too and see, okay, what schools that my s- child is applying to are, are listed on here, and if it’s listed on there, then you need to submit the profile to that school. [00:05:00] There’s a, a few basically profile tips on here, basically an overview where it says learn how to apply.

You can see s- as well there’s an information for parents section. That’s really helpful if you have a divorced or separated parent situation. Gives a little bit of directive on that, but we’ll talk about that as well. And then Big Future is a resource out of the College Board that has a great scholarship search.

You can see that on the screen as well. So this is the homepage. This is where you’ll start, and then you’ll click into that sign-in button at the top Here’s that participating institutions and programs list. So again, this is gonna be almost all the colleges and universities that require the CSS Profile.

As well, there are a handful of scholarship programs throughout the nation that require it as well, so they’ll be listed too. You can see each school has a CSS code. It tells where the school is located, if the profile is used for domestic and international students, and if they require a profile for non-custodial parents, and we’ll talk about that in just a bit.

There’s also a program called [00:06:00] IDOC that schools can participate in, and we’ll speak to that as well

Also on the homepage you’ll see additional resources at the bottom, information about fee waivers, international students, there’s resources in Spanish, and information about the, the noncustodial waiver request form. Again, we’ll go through all of that on the webinar today, but you’ll find all that on the homepage So for the CSS Profile application process, to begin you need to sign in.

The easiest thing to do is to sign into the profile using your student’s College Board account from their SAT or AP test. At this point, if you have a high school senior, m- probably most of your students have either taken the SAT or taken an AP test. If they have, they have a College Board account. And again, the College Board is who’s running the profile, who manages this entire application.

So easiest thing to do is get your student to log in [00:07:00] to their College Board account, and then you can create the profile under their account. If you don’t wanna log in under your student’s account, you need to create a separate account as the parent. It’s a little confusing because to create a separate account as the parent, you’re actually gonna create an additional student account but with your information as the parent.

So you’ll say, “I wanna create a new account.” You as a parent are gonna put your information in. It might ask for your high school. It might ask for your anticipated graduation date. Just put your information in as the parent. You’re creating a new College Board student account, but as the parent, and then you can log in under that new account that you created as the parent.

So that’s your other option. If you have twins, you have to log in under separate College Board accounts. So again, that’s why it’s easier just to log in under the student account ’cause then both your twins can log in, and then you can do both profiles. If you have twins, you do have to do two [00:08:00] profiles.

This is a customized application. So as I mentioned earlier, schools can add questions. So you might see additional questions that perhaps your neighbor doesn’t see because you have a child applying to certain schools. And sections might be, m- might be added. You might see them pop up as they become required based on the information that you complete as you’re providing or answering the questions throughout the application.

A new feature with the profile is that you can bookmark sections to return to them. So if you’re in a section and you’re not sure of all the answers, you can just click a bookmark tab, and it’ll bookmark it, and then you’ll find it in the side panel of all your bookmarked pages essentially, and then you can come back to it later.

You can complete the sections in any order. You can save, come back over the course of several days, and you can complete this on a mobile device Some general tips about how the CSS Profile works. Click Save and Continue. That’s pretty [00:09:00] obvious as you go through, just to click through. And then if you want to come back to the profile later, do make sure you save yourself on the page, and then you can log in later.

You’re gonna use the buttons throughout the application to navigate. There’s hints and, and tips throughout, which again, you’ll see as you go through. There’ll also be opportunities for you to expand a question that’ll provide additional information, so look for that, as a lot of people have questions as they go through the profile.

We always recommend, there are a lot of questions that are required, and then there are some that are just suggested, but it’s not actually required. If you have an answer for that question, we always recommend that you answer it. And one great example is asking for a Social Security number. It’s helpful for you to provide your student’s Social Security number on the CSS Profile because it’s just gonna help the Financial Aid Office on the back end match your profile with the FAFSA, with the admissions application.

So if you have information for an optional question, go ahead and, and put it in there. If the [00:10:00] question’s not required and you don’t have an answer for it or the answer is, is nothing or N/A or zero, you can just leave it blank So as you go through the application, uh, really the, what you’re gonna come to first is parent information, and you’ll need to list all of the parents of the child, and that’s gonna be up to four parents because if parents are separated or divorced, and especially those divorced parents, if they’re remarried, the CSS Profile wants to know that you have basically stepparents.

It wants to know all four parents. If parents have passed away, you’re gonna include those parents as well. And this will be obvious as you go through. It’s gonna ask specific questions. Are your parents married? Are they divorced? Are there stepparents? So make sure you fill in all of that information.

Adam Hartwell: Meredith?

Meredith Clement: Sure.

Adam Hartwell: We’ve had a couple of questions about this, so I thought I’d break in and ask this. Um-

Meredith Clement: Great …

Adam Hartwell: do parents need to open a separate CSS account, or do [00:11:00] they just fill in the information on the, the student’s account?

Meredith Clement: If you log in under the student’s College Board account that they have from the SAT or AP exam, then that’s all you need to create.

So you can log in everything under the, basically the student’s account. It’s different than the profile, which makes things confusing. Or, sorry, it’s different than the FAFSA, which makes things confusing. FAFSA, student needs a login, parent needs a login. For CSS Profile, you can do everything under the student’s College Board account.

That’s a great question and a confusing factor in the financial aid process.

Jonathan Hughes: I, I, I wonder if you wouldn’t mind if I broke in with a question as well. Sure. I just wanna make sure I answered it correctly. Um, there was a question about grandparent 529s as well as grandparent contribution, like direct tuition payments, um, and where those should be listed on the, um, profile.

Meredith Clement: So there is a question … [00:12:00] Once you get to the asset section, there is a question, do you anticipate any financial support from anyone else? And at that point, if you have a, a grandparent who’s gonna be helping out, you can put that information right in that section of anything that you think the, the grandparent or an aunt or an uncle or anyone else, one else will contribute All right.

Yeah. And thank you, Shawn and Jonathan. Just continue to in- to interrupt as we get questions throughout. That’s great. So back to parent information. What’s a little bit also different about the CSS Profile, you’re gonna list all the parents, and legal guardians should be reported as parents. This is different from the FAFSA.

If I’m a student and I have a legal guardian, on the FAFSA I don’t list parents at all. On the CSS Profile, colleges and universities want you to list that legal guardian basically as your parent. So that’s a difference here. Everyone is going to report their information onto this CSS Profile if parents are [00:13:00] married.

So if parents are married and you have a student, then all of you are gonna put the information on that one profile. If parents are divorced, you’re going to have a custodial parent. This is similar to the FAFSA. And on the FAFSA and the profile, it’s really the custodial parent is the parent who’s provided the most financial support for the student over the previous 12 months.

So if I’m a student and my parents are divorced and my dad provides most of my financial support, he’s gonna be my parent on the FAFSA. He’s gonna be my parent on the profile. If my dad is remarried, he’s also gonna provide his information on the FAFSA and on the profile. On the profile I need to list my mom.

Let’s say my mom’s in my, in my life. My parents are divorced. I see her once in a while. I’m gonna list her name on the profile, and some schools might require her information as well, and we’ll get to that. But if my dad is my custodial parent, he and I fill out my [00:14:00] profile, and my stepmom, my dad’s current wife, also puts information on my, on my main profile.

If a school is requiring that non-custodial parent, my mom, to provide information, I’m gonna put in her email address, and she’s actually gonna get an invitation to do her own profile. So it’s a non-custodial profile essentially. So my mom would do her own. My dad, my custodial parent, and my stepmom and I are on my main CSS Profile

So a lot of the time we get a question where a s- a student is filling out a profile, and let’s use my example again. My parents are divorced. My dad provides most of my financial support and has over the past year. He and my stepmom and I are on my profile. My mom is my non-custodial parent. Maybe my mom is not available.

Maybe I haven’t seen her in 10 years. Maybe she passed away. Maybe she’s incarcerated. There will be questions on the profile to ask some basic [00:15:00] information about my non-custodial parent, and I can indicate my non-custodial parent has passed away. I, I don’t know where she is. She’s unknown. She is incarcerated, or there’s a legal order and I’m actually not allowed and she’s not permitted to be in touch with me.

There also might be a situation where maybe I have only ha- ever had one parent. Maybe my dad adopted me and there was no other parent. Maybe I was conceived by one parent. Maybe there’s no contact with the non-custodial parent. There’s a lot of situations where students don’t have a non-custodial parent that can fill out their own profile.

They can’t provide that information. And if that’s the case, students want to basically seek a waiver. They want to communicate to the schools, “I can’t get my non pe- custodial parent to provide information, and here’s why.” Check with every college and university where the student’s applying, and find out the process for this waiver request.

A lot of schools will say, “Fill out this form and explain why you can’t get your non-custodial parent [00:16:00] to provide their information.” They might want you to write a letter. They might want supporting documentation or a supporting letter from someone else that’s not in the family. You can request that they waive the requirement for your non-custodial parent to provide information, but you have to go through the steps that each college and university requires.

So just make sure you seek that out For non-custodial parents that are available and can fill out their profile, they’re gonna get an email from College Board because I, as the student, have provided the email address, and they’re gonna be told exactly what to do. They have to fill out their own profile.

They have to create their own College Board account. Again, it’s called a student account. Terribly confusing, but the s- the non-custodial parent will create their own student College Board account with their name, their email address, their mailing address, and then they will fill out a separate profile as the non-custodial parent.

They’ll just put in their information. [00:17:00] They, they put in basic information about the student, but they don’t have to repeat again the student income and the student assets. They’re really just reporting their own information. The two sets of parents won’t see each other’s information, so you don’t have to worry about that if you’re a parent and a non-custodial parent.

But they both have to fill out a profile. If a non-custodial parent has to fill out two CSS Profiles, let’s say the non-custodial parent has twins, they have to create two College Board accounts because remember, every student needs its own College Board account to fill out the profile

Let’s talk about the information that’s requested on the profile. A lot of it is what’s requested on the FAFSA. The colleges where the student’s applying, parent income, parent assets, anything that related to the number of people in the household and the number of children going to college. So that’s a lot of the same that’s reported on the FAFSA.

It’s [00:18:00] helpful to have on hand when you fill out the profile your tax return. If you have a high school senior applying to college for the ’27, ’28 year, you’re gonna need your 2025 federal tax return. You’ll need it and the student will need it, W-2s and any untaxed income that you earned in 2025. You’re also gonna be asked about your current assets, so 2025 income, but current value of assets Now remember, the profile’s gonna ask more detailed questions than the FAFSA.

So this is some of what they’re gonna ask about. With parent income, really the FAFSA’s just pulling tax information. The CSS Profile wants to know every bit of income that your family earns, so any untaxed Social Security benefits, if you had a foreign income exclusion, basically you worked abroad and earned income in a foreign country, if you’re receiving alimony, a housing allowance, workers’ compensation.

Any money coming into your household [00:19:00] CSS Profile wants to know about. Then let’s talk about the assets. On the FAFSA you’re asked about basically savings account, checking account, investments, not your primary home, but if you own other real estate, a vacation home or a rental. The profile wants to know about your primary home.

They wanna know your net value and your debt. Estimate your net value and then you can put in your, your, your debt. Or I should say estimate your, your total value and then put in your debt, so you’re reporting your net value of your home. So the home that you live in, if you own it, you’ve gotta report that on the profile.

You’ve gotta report the value of all your businesses and farms, any parent assets held in the names of other children. This is a, a one that doesn’t apply to most people, but if, if you have the parent … If you have some funds and you’ve put it into one of your children’s names, you do have to report that on the profile.

And the value of your retirement. So this is different than the FAFSA. FAFSA doesn’t know what, want to know what’s in your retirement account, what’s sitting there, the value of it. [00:20:00] Profile wants to know. A lot of schools don’t use this information, so they don’t want you to use your retirement account to pay for college, but they just wanna have an idea.

Is this a family that’s put away a great, great, great amount for retirement or is this a, a family that like the rest of us has saved what they can and, and has that money sitting in a retirement account? Other questions that the profile’s gonna ask are about your expenses, and this is a benefit to you.

They want to know what money is earmarked for really other costs you have in your life, medical and dental. Do you have kids that go to private school, and that includes elementary school, secondary school? Are you paying back loans for yourself or for older children? So make sure you report that ’cause the schools wanna know, okay, they have all these other costs that’s, that basically requires their finances, and so that’s gonna help you as they figure out what you’re eligible to receive

The CSS Profile is also gonna ask more detailed [00:21:00] questions about your family. They wanna know all the other dependents, basically all the other children in your household, how old they are, are they going to school, what are their expenses for school. For students, they’re gonna wanna know if you, your student has already earned any private scholarships.

That’s money that they’ve already earned. You know that they’ve won that scholarship, and that’s money coming in. And if basically your family has any tuition benefits, usually from a parent employer. And then there’s this special circumstances section, and we have a screenshot on the right. This is where you as a family can write in anything that you want the financial aid office to know, and they really do read every note.

So if you have a special financial obligation that you really feel like isn’t reflected on the profile, but you want the, you want the financial aid office to know. You send money abroad to family every month, or you have a really high medical expense that wasn’t covered by insurance, or you just had to get your roof redone because of a natural disaster.

Put all of that information in the special circumstances section so the financial aid office [00:22:00] knows that when they’re calculating your eligibility for financial aid. And as mentioned earlier, you might find some supplemental questions added by certain schools. So Boston University, Boston College, they might have a question that they want everyone to answer, and it’s not a question that’s already asked on the profile, so they’ve added it in.

You’ll see that on there, and you’ll actually see the college that required it. Boston University is asking an additional question of you. So you’ll be able to answer those as well. Some of those aren’t required, but it’s usually helpful if you can go ahead and give them that information

So let’s talk about fees on the CSS Profile. The FAFSA is completely fle- free to submit. It should always be free. If you’re ever doing the FAFSA and you find out there’s a charge, you’re probably on the wrong website. FAFSA’s always free. The CSS Profile does have a fee. So it’s $25 to submit the profile and send it to one school.

It’s $16 for each additional [00:23:00] school. So if you have to send the profile to five schools because your child is applying to five schools that require the profile, you’re gonna pay $25 for that first school and then $16 for the next four schools. So $16, $16, $16, $16. You can pay with credit or debit card.

If you’re the non-custodial parent and you’re doing your own profile, you just pay a one-time fee of $25. Doesn’t matter how many schools are requiring your information. You’re just paying $25 one time. Now, there are fee waivers for the CSS Profile, and they’re automatically granted to families who meet certain requirements.

If your household income is $100,000 or less, you’ve got a student who’s an orphan or a ward of the court and are under 24 years of age. If your student already received an SAT fee waiver, as long as you log in under your student’s College Board account to do the profile, then you’re gonna get that fee waiver again, so you won’t have to pay to submit the profile.

And this is available to most students, freshman, [00:24:00] transfer, returning, inder- independent, and undergraduate. The fee waivers are only available to students whose parents live in the US, so that’s likely most of you. But if parents live abroad, they, they cannot receive that fee waiver, and it’s not available for the international students, only students in the US.

The fee waiver can be used for any number of schools. So if you’re a student, you receive a fee waiver because you meet one of these requirements, you’re applying to 25 schools that require the profile, you’re gonna get a fee waiver for every one. And for non-custodial parents, if you meet that income standard, so if you have household income less than $100,000, you’re also gonna get a fee waiver, so you won’t have to pay that $25 fee There are something called fee payment codes, and these are usually purchased by college access organizations, sometimes colleges and universities.

They’re basically codes that students can use that allow them to submit the profile to one school for free. So maybe you have a student who works with a college access [00:25:00] organization. They’re applying to two profile schools, and they really can’t afford that fee. The college access organization might say, “Oh, we’ve purchased some fee payment codes,” ’cause they do have to be purchased.

And they might give the student that code, and then the student can then submit that profile for free. It’s one code for every school. But students can use as many codes as they want if they’re able to gather some from organizations and colleges and universities. So that’s an option as well

So submitting the profile. You’re gonna go through your questions one by one. If you have questions throughout, again, you can bookmark them and come back to them later. We’ll talk about the resources that MEFA offers, but you can always call us if you get stuck as you’re going through the profile and you have questions about your income, your assets, or what a question means or what to include.

But once you go through the entire profile, you’ve answered all your questions, you feel good about it, you’re gonna come to the end, and the profile will actually give you prompts if they think you answered a question incorrectly. So maybe you reported student [00:26:00] income of $150,000. The profile’s gonna basically give you a prompt and say, “Is this correct?

This looks like maybe that was parent income.” Or if you answered another question where it just doesn’t seem consistent with the re- rest of your information, you might get a prompt. So review those prompts. Make sure you answered all the questions correctly. You will have a, a chance to review all your answers, and you can actually print your answers if you want as well.

You’ll need to just- Meridith? Oh yeah, go ahead.

Jonathan Hughes: Sorry. Uh, um, I had a couple questions about whether or not you should list siblings’ assets, um, on a CSS Profile for, you know, another sibling, whether that be a 529 or a CD.

Meredith Clement: Right. Only if it’s specifically asked about on the CSS Profile. So schools might ask about it, but anything in the sibling name, only report it if it’s really that belonging to the parents.

Thank

Adam Hartwell: you.

Meredith Clement: Yeah. All right, so [00:27:00] again, at the end, you’re gonna check the box that everything you’ve submitted is accurate. You’ll be asked to pay your fee at that point, and if you’ve gotten a fee waiver, your fee waiver will be shown there The profile has a dashboard, and you’ll notice that as you’re going through the application.

You can access it any time. It’s in the top right. And this is really your landing zone. It has a lot of information on here, including your application status. So if you’ve submitted your profile and then you wanna make sure that you actually sent it to the, to the, to the right schools, you can log back in and go back to your, your dashboard.

This is where your status is gonna be. So it’s gonna show every profile that you submitted, the schools where they were submitted, the deadline you submitted it. It’s also gonna list any next steps by each school. Anything else that’s required. It’s gonna show your receipt. You’re gonna have the option to go back in and print if you wanna print your answers ’cause you wanna go through them again.

And the dashboard is also where you can add another school. So maybe you do your profile, you send it off, you put three [00:28:00] schools, and then your child comes to you and says, “Ah, I wanna actually apply to one more school,” and then it, it does require the profile. You can go back into your dashboard at that point, add that additional school, pay that additional fee if it’s required, and then submit it again.

You’ll also link here to IDOC. We’ll talk about IDOC in just a moment. And the dashboard is also where you can list that non-custodial parent email address if you haven’t already and request that non-custodial parent to do that separate profile

Corrections. Now this is something that relatively new that the CSS Profile offers. After you submit your application, you can actually go in one time and submit a correction. So let’s say you submit your profile, you’re looking at it a few days later and you realize you reported something that’s incredibly incorrect.

You can go in and make that correction. Uh, it, it might be that you listed a student as independent when they’re dependent, you forgot some business information, but it might just be you made a mistake somewhere in your [00:29:00] assets or your income. There will be a drop-down box where you can select the type of error you made, and then you’ll provide a written explanation, uh, of basically the correction.

So you’ll type it in and that’ll go off to the financial aid office. At the time that you’re making the correction you can’t add additional colleges, so add the additional college first and then go ahead and submit your correction. And there are no charges for, for those corrections Okay, so let’s talk about IDOC.

IDOC is essentially a service that allows colleges and universities to collect documents from students electronically, and it basically allows a family to upload documents into their IDOC system, and then IDOC will distribute them to the colleges and the universities. Mostly colleges and universities use IDOC to collect tax returns.

So remember when you’re doing the FAFSA, the FAFSA actually has the ability to go [00:30:00] to the IRS and pull in your tax returns, your actual tax returns. With the profile, you’re not doing that. So with the profile, you’re actually having to reference your tax return and type in your answers. So schools a lot of the time want to see your tax return, or I should say some of the time they want to actually see your tax return, or they might be requiring another document from you, either one they’ve created or one created by the college board.

If that’s the case, the college or university might use IDOC. So some colleges use it, some don’t. You will get a basically a request from the college or the university to go ahead and use IDOC. You’re gonna log into IDOC, and you’ll have information. You’ll receive information on how to do that, and you’ll receive instructions on what you need to upload.

Maybe they’re requesting your tax returns, maybe some asset statements. So you’ll log in again, and you’ll get a request from the school, and you’ll get in- information on how to actually log in, but you’re gonna go to the IDOC website. You’re gonna log in, and you’re gonna submit the documents that are required.

They have to be in a certain format, and you’ll get [00:31:00] instructions on that. If you’re requested to turn in your tax return, do make sure you send in all your schedules because they’ll… If you don’t, they’re gonna come back to you and say, “Ah, we only got the first two pages. We really need all your schedules as well because we’re gonna examine everything.”

You’re also probably gonna be requested to sign your documents, so a lot of us do our taxes online. We don’t wet sign them. You might be requested to actually print your signature page of your tax return, sign it, and submit it. Again, if schools are using IDOC, so they’re requiring you to upload your documents through this service, you’ll get a request from the school to do this, and the system is, is pretty easy to navigate.

But if you have questions, there’s an 800 number for or an 866, but basically a toll-free number for IDOC. But you can also come to MEFA too if you have questions about what’s required or how to submit your documents. Profile customer support. Again, you can talk to MEFA, but once in a while you might have a question about your profile, and [00:32:00] really it’s about what was submitted or what’s required, or you’re getting an error message from profile.

So sometimes you really do have to go right to College Board, right to CSS Profile customer service and chat with them. If you click on Contact Us on any page on the top navigation bar as you’re going through the CSS Profile, you’re gonna get this screen here. You can see that phone number, which is all the way on the left.

There is also an email address for the CSS Profile. Some years that email address seems to be listed on the profile, some years it’s not. But it’s the email address that you see on your screen, the [email protected]. So that’s an email address you can use as well. Phone number, you can definitely use that.

They have pretty good hours of when they’re open. Call them with any specific questions about really your personal CSS Profile

And what you can do now for a- as you really navigate the financial aid process, go to all of your colleges and universities, go to each [00:33:00] financial aid webpage, figure out the deadlines and the required applications. A lot of people make a spreadsheet. Some people write it down, put it in their computer.

Just make sure you know what’s required of every school. And today you can start filling out those applications. So every college needs the FAFSA, and then about 200 colleges across the nation require the profile. So if a college requires the profile, you gotta send in the FAFSA. You’re gonna do both. We have a timeline that we send out to everyone about the college admissions and financial aid process.

If you get our emails, you’ve probably seen it before, but if not, we have the QR code on the screen. You can scan that. That’s a really helpful basically a to-do list for you of different things that you need to do as you go through this college admissions and financial aid process, and it’s segmented by season.

And then finally, this is our main CSS Profile webinar. We have other webinars coming up. We have one where we’re gonna bring in a financial aid expert from a college to [00:34:00] answer your CSS Profile questions. So now you can start the application. If you find that you have a lot of questions, of course you can call, email us, set up a one-on-one appointment, but we’re also gonna have this great webinar available with an expert from a financial aid office.

And we have other webinars coming up as well. So scan that QR code, and you can basically register for all of the rest of the webinars for the academic year We encourage you to connect with us. Many of you probably already receive our emails. If you don’t already, you can scan this QR code, sign up. We try to only send emails every one or two weeks, but it’s gonna be a lot of great information, especially as you go through senior year.

Just making sure you don’t miss anything, deadlines, all about our webinars, our tips, and scholarships as well. We, we post a lot of scholarships from different organizations, so we’ll share those in our emails, uh, uh, as well. Social media, we’re all over the place. FAFSA… Um, or sorry, Facebook, Instagram, we’re on X, and we also are on [00:35:00] LinkedIn and YouTube, and we have this wonderful podcast.

So definitely invite you to follow us, subscribe, and connect with us in that way

All right. And I’ll open it up. Uh, I will say again, if you have to jump, definitely call us with questions. That’s our number, that 800-449-MEFA. We have an email address, [email protected]. We answer emails every day. And also we have one-on-one appointments, so if you go to our Contact Us page, you can also request a one-on-one appointment with a MEFA team member.

If you really have personal questions and want to sit down with someone, it’s, it’s all virtual, um, but you can share your screen, you can talk to someone one-on-one, so those are available as well. So I see there’s still some questions coming in, so I know Shawn and Jonathan behind the scenes are answering those, but anything else, Shawn or Jonathan, that you want to ask right now or even explain yourselves to anyone?

Jonathan Hughes: There, there’s some questions that I have that I think, uh, would be good to, to ask you. Um, [00:36:00] so the first one, um Would be, so someone wants to know, and I’ve, I’ve seen this come through a couple of times, and I mean, I know Shaun answered the first one, so but, um, when asking about medical and dental expenses, are they asking about the current year or what you expect to pay starting in 2027?

Meredith Clement: Usually that what they’re asking is what have you already paid that wasn’t covered by your insurance? So what are expenses that you paid? And a lot of the time if schools are gonna consider it, they, they will request some documentation. Show us that you paid this large bill that wasn’t covered by your insurance.

And a lot of schools will then consider that, and they will take that out of your income, or they’ll take that out of your resources because you did have this medical expense that was paid. So most of the time it is expenses that you already incurred and paid for.

Jonathan Hughes: And, and is it in the… You know, for example, if you’re doing it this year, right, they’re asking for 2025 income, would it be in [00:37:00] the year 2025 or this current year?

Meredith Clement: Gotcha. A lot of the time it does depend on the school. When I was in the financial aid office, we considered both. Mm. So even though we were looking at 2025 income, we did consider if you had a large medical expense in, or if you have a large medical expense in 2026, we wanted to know that too, because you did pay it, and that was an expense you incurred.

I don’t know if you wanna add, Shaun. We all worked at different schools, so schools do handle things differently. But at the school I worked at, we wanted to know anything in the past, whether it was two years ago or last year or just a few months prior.

Adam Hartwell: I agree with that, Meredith, that you can use both years’, um, medical expenses.

Meredith Clement: Okay. That’s great

All right. Any other questions? And again, if you, if you had to, you have to jump or we, we didn’t get to your question today, we definitely encourage you just to call or email us, and we can [00:38:00] certainly talk to you one-on-one and go through your personal situation and provide any additional guidance that we have

All right. So I’ll go ahead and stop our recording