Timothy Peck July 15, 2024 6 Financial Aid

Every School That Requires the CSS Profile

What’s Covered:

• What Is the CSS Profile?
• How Do Schools Use the CSS Profile?
• A Complete List of Schools that Use the CSS Profile
• How to Calculate Your Odds of Acceptance

Roughly 250 schools use the College Scholarship Service (CSS) Profile to help them determine their financial aid offers to accepted students. Among these are Ivy League schools, Little Ivies, and Public Ivies, along with many other top colleges. If you plan on applying to some of the best schools in the nation, you’ll want to learn what the CSS Profile is and why schools use it.

What Is the CSS Profile?

The CSS Profile is a financial aid form administered by the College Board—the same organization that administers the SAT and AP exams—that helps schools determine your financial need and award you with a financial aid package that can make college both affordable and accessible.

The CSS Profile asks for similar information as the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA), including tax returns, W-2s, bank statements, and other income records. Like the FAFSA, it will calculate your Student Aid Index (SAI), or, more simply, how much aid you’re eligible to receive.

Unlike the FAFSA, you have to pay to send the CSS profile to schools, though you may qualify for a fee waiver* if you received one for the SAT. Otherwise, sending the CSS profile costs $25 for the first school and $16 for each additional one.

*Fee waivers are available to students from families with adjusted gross incomes of up to $100,000 and to those who are orphans or wards of the court and under the age of 24.

How Do Schools Use the CSS Profile?

Given that the CSS Profile and the FAFSA ask for a lot of the same information, and every school requires that you complete and submit the FAFSA, the CSS Profile might seem redundant. This couldn’t be further from the truth. While the FAFSA awards federal aid, the CSS Profile is used by schools to award institution-based aid.

Federal financial aid often won’t cover the cost of college alone, which is why receiving institutional aid is so important. For example, the maximum amount of a Pell Grant is $7,395 for the 2024-25 award year, but many schools have tuition that is many multiples more than that amount. Institutional aid can help you cover the difference, and lessen the financial burden for you and your family.

Compared to the FAFSA, the CSS Profile provides a more thorough picture of your household income, which allows colleges to determine which types of institutional aid they can award in addition to any federal aid you might have received. There are even a few scholarship programs that use the CSS Profile to verify your eligibility for their awards.

Colleges use both forms to create a complete picture of your financial situation and decide how best to supplement the federal aid you’re already receiving. Schools that accept the CSS Profile will award institutional need-based aid in the form of grants or scholarships. While these grants and scholarships range in value depending on the school, they all lessen your potential loan burden—and who can argue with less debt?

A Complete List of Schools that Use the CSS Profile

To get you started, here’s a list of schools that use the CSS Profile to award financial aid for only domestic applicants.

*School of Arts

**School of Nursing

Now, here are the schools that use the CSS Profile for both domestic and international applicants.

*Schools of Business, Engineering, Journalism, and General Studies

How to Calculate Your Odds of Acceptance

Nearly all the schools listed above are at least moderately selective, and many of them are among the most challenging institutions in the country to gain admission to. Before you go to the trouble of filling out the CSS Profile, it’s reasonable to want to know how your odds look.

To answer that question, check out CollegeVine’s free chancing engine. It takes into account just about every quantifiable element of your application—including grades, course rigor, SAT/ACT scores (if you have them), and extracurriculars—to give you personalized odds of acceptance at nearly 1,600 schools across the country, as well as suggestions for how to boost your chances of acceptance.