It’s common for colleges to send informative and important emails about your student’s financial aid progress. But many aren’t exactly what they seem. Some are blanket emails that go out to every applicant regardless of whether they apply or not.
Just when parents think they finally can take a breather from the frenzy of their student’s college applications, email follow-ups and reminders for this and that arrive almost constantly.
Blanket emails reminding your student to file the FAFSA and maybe the CSS Profile can make parents nuts. Even parents with excellent organization skills, who keep records of everything that was done and then begin to doubt themselves.
For the most part, these emails go out to everyone who applied for admission regardless of whether the college has their financial aid forms or not.
Occasionally, a college’s financial aid office will contact you saying that your student’s aid form wasn’t received. This is different from reminding you in case you didn’t file your forms. If the college tells you they never received the FAFSA and or the CSS Profile, you need to address this.
If you know you filed, then the college does have the forms– they just don’t know it yet. 99 times out of 100, all that has happened is your student didn’t put their correct social security number on their admission application (or even listed an incorrect birthdate!). Call the college and ask them if they have the correct information. If not, they will change it to the correct info.