After painstakingly filling out the FAFSA for the first time (as I mentioned in this article, we had to update it later), my family and I moved on to the CSS/Financial Aid Profile on the College Board website. Both require a massive amount of information (but don’t worry, I’m sure they’ll put that DNA sample to good use).
So.. we finish the PROFILE, hit Submit, and a screen comes up telling us that we can now use this info to fill in the FAFSA. Had we known that, we could have saved several hours and a few grains of our sanity. But I suppose, as they say, you live and learn.
This is my PSA- Learn from my mistakes. If you are filling out both the CSS/Financial Aid Profile and the FAFSA, save yourself a lot of heartache and do the Profile first. Then you can use that info to prefill your FAFSA.
