Financial Aid Forms
Weve given you lots of options about how to get financial aid for international students, but all you care about is how to get money from the U.S. government since theyre making you pay taxes, its the least they can do, right?
Theres good news and bad news. Heres the bad news: the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) is used by U.S. citizens and permanent residents to apply for financial aid from federal and state governments. With a few exceptions, however, international students are not eligible for U.S. government aid programs.
But the good news is that even though there is no official FAFSA for international students, there are still opportunities out there for foreign students in the USA to get financial aid! The form asks for personal and financial information about both you and your parents, and in the case of divorced parents some schools may request separate forms for each.
The application opens October 1 for the year before you need financial aid; for the 2019-2020 school year, for example, the application opened on October 1, 2018. The deadline varies, however, so make sure to stay on top of it.
To submit the CSS Profile for one school, youll have to pay $25, and its an additional $16 per school after that. And much like when you submitted your applications to schools and needed a credential evaluation, if youre from a country that speaks a language other than English your financial documents will most likely need to be translated. Yes, this will probably add to your timeline and subtract from your bank account, but the amount of money potentially awarded to you will more than make up for it.