Day 7 doesn’t immediately follow Day 6. If you submit your FAFSA online, it takes 3-5 days before you will receive your Student Aid Report at the email address you provided. Paper return of your Student Aid Report doesn’t happen for about 3 weeks, so email is definitely faster.

When you receive your Student Aid Report, do check on your CSS Profile as well.

In your Student Aid Report, and once your CSS Profile has processed, you will see your Expected Family Contribution (EFC) numbers by each method. Do not panic, not all schools will require you to come up with your Expected Family Contribution, depending on your individual situation including merit aid the school’s expectations of your contributions may be higher or lower.

However, this may be a good time to sit your student down, and have a discussion with them about family expectations. What do you as the parents see as the student’s role in paying for college? How much can be afforded? Every family’s decision is different, but having discussions now can alleviate unreasonable student expectations if financial aid doesn’t work out at their dream school if they’d been under the impression that “if you get in, we’ll figure it out.”

You are now officially done with your 2021 for 2022-2023 FAFSA application challenge, congratulations!

A few notes regarding timelines for the future:

By early November, your student should be completing college applications. They should create a binder (e- or physical) of all questions answered, all essays, whether for college or scholarship applications. This allows them to re-purpose essays and responses, revising and personalizing to each school as necessary, without having to create from scratch constantly. Your student should also create a tracking sheet of what the deadlines are for each college, and make sure not to miss them.

Between now and next October 1st (10/1/2022), make any money moves you plan to make, that involve taking money off the table. For example, if you plan to buy your student a car, it makes more sense to buy that car before the next FAFSA submission. Similarly, if you will be replacing your roof, get that done before your next FAFSA submission rather than right afterwards.

Otherwise, go back to enjoying having your high school senior around for another 10 months, and don’t forget to check out my other articles about college.