CSS Profile: What You Need to Know About Filling Out the College Financial Aid Form

Applying to college is an exercise in paperwork: recommendations, essays, the application itself, and the FAFSA — the form that determines whether your student is eligible for federal financial aid.

But there’s another financial aid form you may also need to fill out: the College Scholarship Service Profile, or CSS Profile.

While anyone who wants to be eligible for federal student loans and Pell Grants has to fill out the FAFSA (officially: Free Application for Federal Student Aid), only students attending certain colleges need to worry about the CSS Profile. As such, it’s a less commonly discussed part of the college application journey.

What is the CSS Profile?

A product of the testing giant the College Board (which runs the SATs), the CSS Profile is the application required to access grants and scholarships from about 250 colleges. Each year, the profile gives access to more than $10 billion in financial aid to thousands of students, according to the College Board.

How is the CSS Profile different from the FAFSA?

The CSS Profile looks at every part of a family’s finances that the FAFSA considers: income, bank accounts (and any interest they earn) and assets.

But the CSS Profile goes much further than the FAFSA. It also considers the value of a family’s primary residence, if it owns one, retirement savings and any annuities. In addition to taking a deeper, more detailed look at your family’s finances than the FAFSA, the CSS Profile considers a greater percentage of those assets as part of what you can afford to pay for college expenses.

“The biggest difference I tell people is that it's super invasive," says Christine McMullan, a college financial aid advisor with Garretson Financial in Kenilworth, New Jersey. "They're really looking at every part of your financial picture."

The CSS Profile is also more flexible than the FAFSA. Colleges use the FAFSA in a fairly standard way. After filling out the FAFSA with information on your family income, assets and family size, you’ll get a number called your Student Aid Index, or SAI. (This is new terminology this year; it used to be called the Expected Family Contribution). Your financial need is defined as the difference between a college’s cost of attendance and your SAI.

Your financial need, in turn, determines your aid eligibility for federal grants, work-study or subsidized federal student loans. Some colleges may also use the FAFSA to award their own scholarship money, but they’re always doing so based on that same measure of financial need.

Colleges can be much more flexible in how they handle the results of the CSS Profile. One college might weigh various parts of your financial information differently than another. Individual colleges can even add their own supplemental questions to the form.

Who has to fill out the CSS Profile?

More than 200 highly selective schools use the CSS Profile, which helps determine eligibility for aid from the college’s own funds. The vast majority of profile schools are private colleges, though a few elite public schools, like the University of Michigan and University of Virginia, also require the profile.

You can see an up-to-date list of participating institutions at collegeboard.org. If your child is applying to one of those schools or is already enrolled and plans to attend next year, you should complete both the FAFSA and the CSS Profile. Some colleges only require international students to fill out this financial aid application.

Note that in a typical year, the FAFSA and the CSS Profile are released at the same time, so families typically fill out the FAFSA first and then work on the profile. But this year, the release of the FAFSA was delayed by three months to give officials more time to finalize a major overhaul of the federal financial aid form.

What information do you need to answer the form’s questions?

The CSS Profile asks for all the information the FAFSA requires and adds questions about annuities, home equity, retirement funds and sibling assets to build a full financial aid profile. Before you start the application process, gather the necessary documents. You’ll need information about your family’s finances, including:

• Federal tax returns (for the 2024-25 form, you’ll need your 2022 tax forms)
• W-2 or 1099 forms for the past two years, to show parents’ income
• Current balance amounts for savings accounts, checking accounts, stocks, bonds, trusts, and UTMA/UGMA accounts for both parents and student
• Current 529 plan values for all children in the home
• Information about your retirement accounts (whether that’s a 401(k), IRA, 403(b), pension, or some combination of those), including most recent annual contributions and account balances
• Information about your primary home and any investment or vacation properties, including how much you paid, what you owe on any mortgages, and what each property is currently worth

The CSS Profile asks a lot of questions about how much you earn and own, but it also asks for information about your major expenses. The goal is to create a full financial picture, McMullan says, so gather any documentation you have around items like medical expenses, private school tuition, mortgage payments and other debts.

While the CSS Profile typically takes families longer to complete than the FAFSA, the level of detail the form requires can be to your benefit, since it gives you a chance to explain your financial situation, she says. (After gathering your documents, McMullan recommends setting aside a couple hours to fill it out.)

How much does the CSS Profile cost?

It costs $25 to submit the CSS Profile to one college. Submitting the profile to additional schools costs $16 each. Families with adjusted gross incomes of $100,000 or less can fill out the form for free, as can students who qualified for a fee waiver on the SAT. You’ll be notified if you qualify for a fee waiver when you fill out the form.

When is the CSS Profile due?

You can begin filling out the CSS Profile each year on Oct. 1 for the following academic year. Schools set their own, individual CSS Profile deadlines, so check with the colleges where you’re applying to find out when you’ll need to have it done. Most schools’ deadlines are between Jan. 1 and March 31, or during the first quarter of 2024 for students planning to attend college in the fall of 2024.

Plan to complete the submission by two weeks before the deadline. “You might as well be in the early part of the line for money,” says Jim Shagawat, a financial advisor in Paramus, NJ.

Tips for filling out the CSS Profile Application

The FAFSA gets a bad rap for being complicated, but the CSS Profile is even longer and more complex. Start by logging into your College Board account that you used to sign up for the SATs, or create a new account if you don’t have one. Then gather your bank statements, W-2 forms and other paperwork outlined above.

To make it easier on yourself, read the directions, fill out the whole profile, and upload all the supporting documents, says Jason Anderson, a Kansas-based college and student loan planner previously told Money. Give yourself plenty of time to assemble everything you’ll need.

“This isn’t exactly like the FAFSA, which runs on the honor system, plus retrieving information from the IRS,” Anderson says. “The CSS wants the documents.”

Here are some additional tips for filling out the form:

Be smart about where you store money

To the best of your ability, shift money into parental assets and away from student assets, especially if you have time to plan. A 529 plan, for this reason, is better than an UTMA or UGMA, because parents or grandparents own a 529 and the student owns an UTMA or UGMA.

Spend down money in any student-owned accounts at least two years before you’ll be applying for aid. A car, orthodontic braces, lessons, educational travel or a musical instrument can all contribute to a child’s education while also making her more eligible for college financial aid.

Finally, don’t report cash value in a life insurance policy on the CSS form. The CSS Profile doesn’t consider this as an asset.

Pay attention to the wording of the questions

Answer the specific questions the CSS Profile asks. If the form asks how much you contributed to your 401(k) last year, give that number — not the total amount in that account, says Jenna Shulman, an educational consultant in Florham Park, NJ. Answering the question with the total amount, rather than the current year’s contribution, can make your family look much less eligible for aid than it actually is.

If you own a business, start the application process early

You can get property values from a site like Zillow or pull them from your property tax assessment. But if you own a business, it may be worth hiring a qualified CPA to value it. Start the process well before the deadline, to give this person enough time to work.

Look into a college’s rules around non-custodial parents

If the student’s parents are divorced or separated, find out whether the college to which you’re submitting the profile wants financial information from both parents or from just the parent with primary custody, says Eric Endlich, a college consultant in Boston, MA. “This can make a big difference in situations where the non-custodial parent is a high earner,” he adds.

Don’t be shy about special circumstances

Tell colleges about extenuating financial circumstances. “Some people don’t realize that there’s a place to explain extenuating circumstances on the CSS,” Shagawat says. “Tell them about medical bills, one-time income sources, income losses, or anything else about your financial situation that they haven’t asked about, but you think is germane.”

How to get help filling out the CSS profile

Stumped? Call the College Board’s hotline with questions. The CSS has people who can help at 844-202-0524. Your college’s financial aid office can also help you figure out how to properly answer a confusing question.

Finally, if you’re just starting the college application process, don’t be put off by the rack rate at private colleges, and don’t avoid applying for financial aid because of the paperwork or because you think you won’t qualify for aid, Anderson says. “Filling out the CSS may get you a significant break.”

Note: This story was originally reported and published in October 2021. It has since been updated with new information and additional reporting.

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