Financial Aid Deadlines

As students give a sigh of relief for each college application that is submitted, it is easy to think to yourself: "Application, Essay, Rec Letters, Transcript, Test Scores all submitted means that I am done!" And you are done with the application process.  But if you care about how you are going to pay for college then you are not done at all.

Financial Aid and the financial resources to help students pay for college is an important aspect of the college application process for students.  One of the challenges related to financial aid is that much like college admissions deadline dates, each college gets to establish the dates by which they would like to receive student's applications for financial aid (FAFSA and sometimes also CSS profile).  The priority deadline date is the day you would want to be sure they have your required forms completed by in order to put yourself in the position to get the maximum possible aid.  The colleges, as a whole, will continue to give out whatever available money they still have left over for those who submit their applications for financial aid later, but you are potentially dealing with less money being available.

So you will want to check each college's website and look at the portion of their website related to costs and aid and see what their priority deadline date is and be sure that you submit ALL of your required paperwork to them ahead of that deadline.