The FAFSA Ignores Your House. The CSS Profile Asks About It. Check Each School Before You Pay $16 to Send It.

If you own your home and your kid is applying to private colleges, the form that sets your grant money isn’t just the FAFSA. It’s the CSS Profile, and the 2027-28 version opened October 1.

The FAFSA doesn’t care what your house is worth. The CSS Profile asks.

Here’s the split. The Education Department’s 2027-28 aid formula counts real estate as an asset but excludes your primary residence. That’s federal aid: Pell Grants and federal loans.

The CSS Profile is the College Board’s form for the other pile, the colleges’ own grant money. The College Board says it unlocks more than $14 billion in nonfederal aid a year. Its formula, the Institutional Methodology, doesn’t skip the house. In the College Board’s words, “a homeowner is in a stronger financial position than is a renter” and “may be able to tap into the equity in the home” to pay for college.

That formula asks families to contribute “between 3 and 5%” of their net worth, after allowances, every year.

Run it on $250,000 of home equity. If a school counts all of it, that’s roughly $7,500 to $12,500 a year added to what it expects you to pay. Over four years, up to $50,000.

Now here’s what they don’t tell you on the form. The school decides.

Stanford says it considers savings, investments and real estate, “but not home equity or retirement accounts.” Harvard says home equity and retirement assets “typically” aren’t considered. Princeton doesn’t use the CSS Profile at all; it has its own application. Same house, three different answers.

The same goes for divorce. The College Board says some colleges want a Profile from the noncustodial parent too. Stanford computes separate contributions for each parent. If your ex’s income was never part of the plan, find out now, not in April.

Our verdict: the form is fine. Sending it blind to every school on the list is questionable.

Here’s the move this month.

Open each school’s financial aid page and search for “home equity” and “noncustodial.” Write down what each one says. A school that counts your house in full can cost you more than a school with a higher sticker price that ignores it. Run each school’s net price calculator with your real numbers.

Check the fee. The Profile costs $25 for the first school and $16 for each one after that. It’s free if your family’s adjusted gross income is up to $100,000, if your student got an SAT fee waiver, or if your student is an orphan or ward of the court under 24.

Then mark the earliest deadline. The College Board says to submit by midnight Eastern on your earliest priority date. For Harvard’s Restrictive Early Action applicants, the CSS Profile is due November 1. Other schools set their own dates, so check each one now.

Don’t shave the home value to game it. Schools can ask for tax returns and other documents through the College Board’s IDOC service, and Harvard notes you can’t get into IDOC until your Profile is complete.

For the rest of the college money picture, start at our education hub and compare options on our best picks for education.

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