Filling out the CSS/Profile: Your Guide
Maximize financial aid and scholarships for private universities
The College Board offers the College Scholarship Service (CSS)/Profile to help colleges allocate financial aid. The College Board also administers the SAT and AP Exams. Colleges use the CSS/Profile, like the Free Application for Financial Student Aid (FAFSA), to determine how much money they will offer a student in financial aid and scholarships.
The main differences between the CSS/Profile and the FAFSA are:
Unlike the FAFSA, the CSS/Profile isn't free to fill out and send. It costs $25 to send to the first college and $16 for additional colleges. If you qualify for a fee waiver for the SAT, you'll also receive one for the CSS/Profile.
Colleges use the CSS/Profile to determine eligibility for aid from their endowments ("institutional aid"), i.e., money not awarded by the federal or state governments.
Most public (state or federal government-owned) universities do not use the CSS/Profile to award aid to domestic students. However, some require it for international students, and a few public universities require it for merit aid.
About 400 universities require the CSS/Profile for some students. To find out whether your colleges require it, click this link.
Colleges use a different methodology from the one used by the FAFSA for financial aid determinations from the CSS/Profile. This "Institutional Methodology" considers many other types of income and assets when determining your aid.
This piece focuses on what you need to know about filling out the CSS/Profile. The FAFSA for this year will be available on December 1. For information on filling out the FAFSA, please read the companion piece. I will update that blog post soon with details for the new FAFSA for 2024-25.
The 2024 CSS/Profile for students attending college in the 2025-26 academic year became available on October 1. The College Board publishes a step-by-step guide to filling it out.
LifeLaunchr Webinar On Maximizing Financial Aid: Filling out the CSS/Profile
LifeLaunchr's webinar on maximizing your financial aid is an excellent resource before you fill out the CSS/Profile. It will explain how you can maximize your aid legally by filling out the form correctly. Sign up to watch it at this link.
Here's what you need to know to fill out the CSS/Profile
You Need a College Board Account
If you took the SAT, you should already have a College Board account. If not, you (the student) will have to create one. Each student must have only one account, so check before creating a new one. To create an account, visit this link. Please use a student account to start your CSS/Profile, not a parent account.
Some students whose parents are divorced or separated will also need to have their non-custodial parents create an account and provide information separately. The non-custodial parent is the parent who provides less than 50% of the student's financial support. The College Board can tell you at this link whether the colleges you've applied to require the non-custodial CSS.
The non-custodial parent should read these instructions to create an account and file their information.
If you can't connect with the non-custodial parent, or they won't file it, you can request a waiver by filling out this form. You must send this form to each college that requires the non-custodial parent's information, accompanied by the relevant supporting documents.
Financial Information You'll Need to Fill Out the CSS/Profile
You need the same type of information to fill out the CSS/Profile. However, the CSS/Profile considers many more types of assets and income, making it harder to shelter assets. Specifically, the CSS/Profile, unlike the FAFSA, considers:
For children of divorced or separated parents, the non-custodial parent's assets and income
The equity parents have in their primary home
The value of retirement accounts
Assets within a parent-owned small business and the value of the parent's equity in the business
Assets owned by siblings under 19 who aren't in college yet
All 529 plans that list the student as the beneficiary
Like the FAFSA, the CSS/Profile uses the "prior-prior" year's income, which means that for the 2024-25 school year, you need your 2022 tax return. As with the FAFSA, you'll need information on untaxed income and exclusions.
The CSS/Profile takes longer to complete because it involves more questions and can produce different answers, as it also uses a different methodology.
Fill It Out Early
Colleges use the CSS/Profile and FAFSA to allocate governmental and institutional aid (aid from colleges). They often give out this aid from a fixed pool of money each year. So, submitting the form early helps.
This post is a companion piece to our article on filling out the FAFSA at this link.