How to Get the CSS Profile Fee Waiver (The Ultimate Guide)

Today I will be sharing how you can literally save hundreds of dollars when submitting your financial aid applications to US Universities.

No matter whether you are a US resident or an international student, I will tell you exactly how you can request and get your financial aid application fee waived completely, allowing you to send your CSS Profile to multiple universities FREE OF CHARGE 💰.

You might be thinking that “Oh my God! but this blogpost is soo long🤯,” this is because I have literally covered almost everything about the CSS Profile Fee Waiver from scratch.

Hence, I want to assure you that if you are able to read the entire blogpost, it will save a ton of your precious time and will get to know all about the CSS Profile Fee Waiver and how to get it from the universities of your choice all in one place.

Also, If you’d like to watch me speak and explain everything to your with visual graphics, you can watch my video on the CSS Profile Fee Waiver down below 👇

If you haven’t read my last post about the Common App Fee Waiver, I highly recommend you read it because

1. It can help you save not hundreds but thousands of dollars in application fees to American universities as I share the step-by-step process of getting your application fee waived and

2. You apply to colleges before applying for financial aid (If you haven’t applied to colleges yet 😅)

So if you’re interested in learning more about the Common App Fee Waiver, its eligibility criteria, application process and more, I highly recommend you read the ‘Common App Fee Waiver’ post.

Check Here 👉 What is the Common App Fee Waiver and How to Get it in 10 Steps

With that said, let’s get started.

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CSS Profile

Now, if you haven’t started the financial aid application process for the universities on your college list, you might be wondering what is the CSS Profile?

The CSS Profile or College Scholarship Service Profile is an online application that helps colleges and universities better understand your family’s financial situation. It was developed by the College Board, an American non-profit that also organizes the SAT and AP tests. 

Through a long series of questions, the CSS Profile collects all the information about your family’s income, assets, and annual household expenses. It then sends it to universities and colleges to help them determine your family’s ability to pay for college and the amount of aid you should be given in your financial aid package.

There are approximately four universities, colleges, and scholarship programs require students to fill out the CSS Profile for their institutional scholarships and grants. It is important to remember that CSS Profile is primarily used to grant non-federal, institution-specific financial aid.

Types of Financial Aid

Ok, let me elaborate on this. There are three types of financial aid or three categories of grants in the U.S. higher education system: Federal, State, and Institutional Aid.

Federal Aid

Federal aid is U.S. governmental aid that is given to U.S. Citizens for their higher education. It can be in the form of scholarships that a student doesn’t have to pay back or in the form of loans with lower interest rates than private loans.

Federal aid is restricted to U.S. citizens only, and it is obtained by filling out another financial aid application known as FAFSA (Free Application for Federal Student Aid).

If you are an international student, you’ll never be asked to fill the FAFSA because Federal aid is not available to international students.

State Aid

Talking about State aid, each U.S. state and territory offers financial assistance to its residents in the form of one or more in-state scholarship programs to help reduce the educational expenses of the students.

For instance, Cal Grant is a California-specific financial aid for California students, while New York State Tuition Assistance Program (TAP) is specific to New York residents.

If you are a U.S. citizen, I recommend you check out the State Financial Aid Programs page by the National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators. On the webpage, you can select your state and know more about the in-state financial aid options, their requirements as well as their complete application process.

However, if you are an international student, YES, you guessed it right, State aid isn’t for you. Don’t worry; there are generous U.S. institutions to save you.

Institutional Aid

Institutional aid is non-governmental and university-specific funding, mainly granted by private universities in America, open to both U.S. citizens and international students. 

It can be in the form of merit-based, talent-based, or need-based scholarships. Actually, it includes all kinds of scholarships offered by U.S. universities and colleges.

To obtain need-based scholarships, in the majority of the cases, you’ll need to fill out the CSS Profile, but do check the specific requirements of the colleges of your choice to see if they require it.

Cost of the CSS Profile

The format and the questions present in the CSS Profile are not significantly different for US Citizens and International students, though (frankly speaking) they are not easy to answer. It takes several days, if not weeks, to complete the CSS Profile. 

Even though the CSS Profile is the same for everyone, the process of submitting it to Colleges and the amount of money you’d have to pay is quite different depending on your income and residential status. 

To understand how the submission of the CSS Profile is different for different students, we need to know what the cost of the CSS Profile is?

But before that, it is important to remember that starting the CSS Profile and filling it out doesn’t cost you anything: you just need to go to the CSS Profile Page and start your application. It is only when you finish filling it out, and you want to submit it to the universities of your choice that the payment page pops out asking you for the service charge😆.

Currently, the service charge to submit the CSS Profile to one college or university is $25. The $25 service charge is the sum of two separate fees: an application fee and a college reporting fee.

Application Fee

When you submit your CSS Profile, there is a one-time application fee, which you can also think of as a processing fee. It is $9 and it remains $9 regardless of how many colleges you apply to.

College Reporting Fee

The College Board charges a reporting fee to send your CSS profile to a specific institution or college. Unlike the Common App application fee, which is different for every college, the CSS Profile Reporting Fee is the same no matter what college you wish to send your CSS Profile to. As of now, it is $16 per college selected.

Example

Ok, let’s say you decide to submit your CSS Profile to five universities in America: Harvard, Princeton, Yale, MIT, and Amherst College.

No matter what college you add first, the moment you add the first college to your CSS Profile, the portal will start displaying a cost of $25 on the payments page. Then, with each new college you add to the list, the portal will add $16 to the total amount because it charges $16 per college.

In this case, your application fee will be $9, while your college reporting fee for five colleges will be $80 (since 16 x 5 = 80). Adding both the fees ($9 and $80), you’ll end up with a total service charge of $89 or 6,600 Indian rupees.

Therefore, no matter whether you’re a U.S. Citizen or an international student, the total amount you’ll be paying for the submission of CSS Profile will be the CSS Profile application fee of $9 plus a reporting fee of $16 for every university you choose to send your CSS Profile to.

CSS Profile Fee Waiver

If the cost of CSS profile is the same, how come the submission process became different for different students? It is due to the CSS Profile Fee Waiver.

If you don’t know, the CSS Profile Fee Waiver covers both the application fee and the reporting fee, allowing you to submit your CSS Profile for free.

Now, there are two types of CSS profile fee waivers.

✅ College Board’s Automatic CSS Profile Fee Waiver
✅ Institutional CSS Profile Fee Waiver.

Automatic CSS Profile Fee Waiver (College Board)

The first type of CSS Profile Fee Waiver is the College Board’s own fee waiver, where if you meet one of the three eligibility criteria I am about to mention, the College Board will waive the application fee and the reporting fee for all of the colleges you want to apply to.

In short, you can submit the CSS Profile for free to as many colleges as you like.

The eligibility criteria are

1. Your family’s adjusted gross income is under $100,000 👍
2. You qualified for the SAT Fee waiver 📝
3. You are an orphan or ward of the court under the age of 24 ⚖

Eligibility Criterion 1

If you meet the first eligibility criterion of ‘belonging to a family making less than $100,000 a year,’ you don’t need to apply separately for the CSS Profile Fee Waiver.

The cool thing about this fee waiver is that as you fill out your CSS Profile and answer the questions related to income and assets. Based on your responses, you’ll automatically know if you’re eligible for the fee waiver on the payments page.

You get it! That’s why it’s called the AUTOMATIC CSS Profile Fee Waiver 🤷‍♂️.

Eligibility Criterion 2

If you meet the second eligibility criterion of ‘qualifying for the SAT Fee waiver,’ you’ll be able to submit your CSS profile for free by logging in (and filling out the CSS Profile) using the same College Board account you used for registering and taking the SAT.

Eligibility Criterion 3

If you meet the third eligibility criterion of ‘being an orphan or ward of the court,’ you’ll automatically receive the fee waiver based on your responses in the CSS Profile, similar to the process in the first case.

If you’ve read and paid attention to the criteria I mentioned in my last post on the Common App Fee Waiver, you might have noticed similar here. All the three eligibility criteria I mentioned above are specific to U.S. Citizens living in the U.S. or U.S. territories.

This means that the College Board’s Automatic CSS Profile Fee Waiver is only applicable to domestic undergraduate students who are U.S. citizens living in U.S. states and territories. International students and U.S. citizens living in other countries are not eligible for the automatic CSS Profile fee waiver.

Hence, if you are a U.S. citizen living in the U.S. and you meet one of the three eligibility criteria I mentioned before, you can get the CSS Profile Fee Waiver easily and you’re basically done now.

But don’t stop reading 😅 because that’s not all. You also have the option of institutional fee waivers which are offered to almost all eligible students submitting the CSS Profile including U.S. Citizens and international students.

Institutional CSS Profile Fee Waiver (University-Specific)

Let’s talk more about these institutional or University-specific CSS Profile Fee Waivers.

An institutional CSS Profile Fee Waiver is granted by a particular university, college or program to help a student submit the CSS Profile to that specific institution or program for free.

The difference here is that the university or college bears and covers the application and reporting fees on your behalf instead of the College Board simply waiving it for you.

As I said earlier, this type of CSS Profile Fee Waiver is very specific to an institution. Hence, if a university grants you the fee waiver, it can only be used to submit the CSS Profile to that institution and not any other institution.

For example, if Yale University offers you a CSS Profile Fee Waiver, you’ll only be able to submit your CSS Profile to Yale University and not the other ones.

That’s not all. You can only use that CSS Profile Fee Waiver once, so if you intend on applying to a particular university in two different admission cycles, you can only send your CSS Profile one time because the moment you use it, you can’t use it again.

By the time the next admission cycle comes, that CSS Profile Fee Waiver would’ve already expired, and you’ll have to request a new one. But this is a rare case as only a few students apply in two different admissions cycles like I did.

Unlike College Board’s CSS Profile Fee Waivers, which are offered to all eligible domestic students, institutional CSS Profile fee waivers are not as widely offered to international students.

Some universities are pretty generous in providing them to international applicants, but most of them, including some top American universities, do not provide these fee waivers to international students.

CSS Profile Fee Waiver Requirements and Process

But how do you know whether or not the universities of your choice offer CSS Profile Fee Waivers?

And if they do offer CSS Profile Fee Waivers, how do you request one?

These two questions have a one-word answer which is Research.

When I was applying to U.S. universities last year, I assumed that since I am applying for need-based financial aid, my CSS Profile would be sent to colleges without any cost, for free.

However, when I researched, I was wrong and was shocked that College Board charges $9 of the application fee and $16 for every university I submit my CSS Profile to.

Since I knew about the Common App Fee Waiver, I wondered whether there was a similar fee waiver for CSS Profile, and this time, I was right. Yes, there was College Board CSS Profile Fee Waiver, but it was not for international students.

I continued my research and didn’t stop until I found out about institutional CSS Profile Fee Waivers and used them to save me a huge sum of money 💸. 

The process of requesting the CSS Profile Fee Waivers wasn’t as straightforward and smooth compared to the process of requesting the Common App Fee Waiver because I spent hours and hours understanding the CSS Profile Fee Waiver requirements and sending tens of emails to request Fee Waivers from universities on my college list.

But don’t worry 😉, you won’t have to do that as I will be sharing everything I did and the exact steps you need to take to save your time and request institutional CSS Profile Fee Waivers successfully. If you follow the steps carefully, you’re gonna get fee waivers as well.

I will go over the CSS Profile Fee Waiver Requirements and Process for each of the 12 U.S. universities I applied to for the fall of 2021.

Then I will share how you can use the same approach to request the CSS Profile Fee Waiver from any university of your choice out of the 400 universities/ colleges/ programs that accept the CSS Profile.

Yale University

Again, I want to remind you that since the CSS Profile Fee Waiver policies and requirements are very specific to the institution and differ from university to university, I’ll be covering every university I applied to one by one.

Alright, let’s start with the first one, an ivy league school, Yale University.

Yale University is one of the five U.S. universities that offer need-blind admission and full financial aid to both domestic and international students.

Yale has one of the most generous financial aid programs in the world that not only helps admitted students attend Yale but also helps prospective students apply at Yale. They do this by offering tons of Fee Waivers to all students, including international students.

Even though the College Board has its automatic CSS profile fee waiver for U.S. citizens and permanent residents, Yale offers its own institutional fee waiver.

Suppose you are a U.S. citizen or permanent resident and you meet one of the three eligibility criteria for the College Board’s CSS Profile Fee Waiver. In that case, you won’t need Yale’s institutional fee waiver because your total cost would already get waived by the College Board.

This might make you wonder, what is the use of Yale’s institutional fee waiver when College Board is already offering its fee waiver to domestic students? Isn’t that unnecessary?

No, it isn’t. 🙅‍♂️ I’ll tell you how.

Let’s say you are a U.S. citizen or permanent resident, and based on the information you added on your CSS Profile, you don’t qualify for College Board’s CSS Profile Fee Waiver. Still, you know paying that CSS Profile fee will be a financial burden for your family. In this case, you can go ahead and request Yale’s institutional fee waiver.

Remember I told you that the College Board’s Automatic CSS Profile Fee Waiver is only for U.S. citizens and residents living in the U.S. states or territories.

So if you’re a U.S. citizen residing outside the U.S., you won’t be eligible for the automatic fee waiver. In this case as well, Yale’s institutional fee waiver will be a savior for you, and you can go ahead in requesting it.

Similarly, suppose you are an international student, and you feel that paying the CSS profile fee will be a financial burden for your family. In that case, you too can request the Yale institutional CSS Profile fee waiver.

Now, the big question is, how do you request Yale’s institutional CSS Profile Fee Waiver?

It’s quite simple and is pretty much the same for both U.S. citizens and international students. You need to fill out the CSS Profile Fee Waiver Request form on Yale University’s website.

Once you open the form, it will look something like this 👇

The first step is to let Yale know, whether you are a U.S. resident or an international student.

Based on your response, different questions will be displayed. Let’s first look at the questions you’ll see, if you’re a U.S. citizen or permanent resident.

U.S. Citizen or Permanent Resident

If you are a U.S. Citizen or permanent resident, you can check the “Yes” option. This will display a the following question 👇

Did you qualify for an automatic CSS Profile fee waiver from College Board? *

🔴 I don’t know. I have not tried to submit the CSS Profile yet.
🔵 No. I was asked for credit card information before I could submit my CSS Profile.

This question asks you whether or not you qualified for the College Board’s Automatic CSS Profile Fee Waiver. You have a “No” option and an “I don’t know” but not a “Yes” option because if you did qualify for the automatic CSS Profile fee waiver, you wouldn’t be filling out this form as you wouldn’t need it.

The question is reminding the student to only fill this firm if you know you didn’t qualify for the automatic CSS Profile Fee Waiver. If you’ve already qualified for the fee waiver, there is not need of filling this. So, choose “No” to continue.

Once you choose the “No” option, the form asks you for the following personal details:

1. First Name
2. Last Name
3. Date of Birth
4. Email Address

Moreover, it asks for a short explanation on why the CSS Profile fee would be financially burdensome for your family.

Once you’ve filled your responses, complete the Captcha and Submit the form.

In a few days, you will receive an email with a Yale-specific fee waiver code that you can use on the payment page to submit the CSS Profile to Yale University without paying a cent.

As this is Yale’s institutional fee waiver, you will get a Yale-specific fee waiver code that you cannot use for other universities and that you cannot even use twice. So be careful in using it.

International Students

If you are an international student, you need to check “no” in the first question. Doing this will open some different questions for you.

First, fill in your first name, last name, date of birth, email address, and country of residence.

After that, you are asked two very, very important questions as they primarily determine whether you’re eligible to receive a fee waiver or not. They are as follows:

🔷 What is your family’s annual income in U.S. dollars? *
🔷 How many people live in your household (including you and your parents)? *

Make sure to honestly answer these questions and accurately convert your family’s annual income from your country’s currency to U.S. dollars.

Next, complete the Captcha and hit the “Submit” button.

Based on the information you provide, one of the two things will be sent to you at your email address. You will either get a Yale-specific fee waiver code like all eligible U.S. residents do or you will get the International Student Financial Aid Application (ISFAA) which is basically the paper version of CSS Profile but with fewer details.

Even though ISFAA asks comparatively lesser details than the CSS Profile, it is considered equivalent to the CSS Profile, so don’t think it will affect your eligibility for financial aid or the amount of aid you’ll receive.

Once you complete the IFSAA, you can submit it by faxing the form to Yale or uploading it on Yale’s Document Upload tool.

In my case, I added $3836 as my family’s annual income and the household members as five.

A few weeks later, I received the following email from Yale’s Financial Aid Office asking me to fill the IFSAA and submit the form via fax or the Document upload tool.

Dear Zohair,
We have received your request for a CSS Profile Fee Waiver Code. Based on the information you submitted, the financial aid committee has approved the submission of the International Student Financial Aid Application instead of a CSS Profile. Please follow this link, https://finaid.yale.edu/sites/default/files/files/2122IntlFinAidApp.pdf . You can fax the form to 203-436-9768 or you can upload the form at https://finaid.yale.edu/document-upload

Yale’s Financial Aid Office.

Amherst College

Amherst College is also one of the five U.S. institutions that offer need-blind admissions and full financial aid to all students.

Like Yale University, Amherst College also offers the CSS Profile Fee Waiver, but unlike Yale University, it doesn’t provide fee waivers to U.S. Citizens and permanent residents.

Hence, if you’re a domestic student, you only have the option of using the College Board’s automatic CSS Profile Fee Waiver when submitting your CSS Profile to Amherst College, but if you’re an international student, Amherst College offers the CSS Profile Fee Waiver by accepting ISFAA instead of the CSS Profile.

Previously, Amherst College gave out Amherst-specific CSS Profile Fee Waiver codes to international students by asking them to fill out a Fee Waiver Request form (on their website) that had very similar questions to the Yale’s Fee Waiver Request form.

Last year, I submitted my CSS Profile to Amherst College through their fee waiver code, but this year Amherst has stopped giving out fee waiver codes and instead asked international students, who feel that CSS Profile Fee will present a serious financial hardship, to fill out the ISFAA.

Even though the ISFAA form is available on the Amherst’s Website, you can’t just download it, fill it out and send it to Amherst. Instead, you are first required to request Amherst College to complete the ISFAA so they can confirm your eligibility and send you the form. If you don’t a request, they won’t accept your ISFAA.

You can make a request through the Amherst Applicant Portal or by sending an email to their financial aid office.

If you have submitted your application and you have the login credentials for your Amherst account, you can request the ISFAA through the Amherst applicant portal. But if you haven’t yet applied to Amherst, send them an email and ask them to fill the ISFAA.

Once you’ve completely filled the ISFAA, you are required to upload it on Amherst’s Financial Aid Portal, which you can only access through the login credentials that you get after submitting your Common App to Amherst.

Please do not email your ISFAA to Amherst unless they ask you to do it.

New York University Abu Dhabi (NYUAD)

If you don’t know, NYU Abu Dhabi is one of the few universities outside the U.S. that is need-blind and meet 100% of the demonstrated need for international students.

By the way, if you’d like to know one hundred and twelve 100% Scholarships for International undergraduate students around the world, I highly recommend you check out my two really informative posts to save a ton of time in research and make yourself aware of all the scholarship opportunities available to you.

Check Here 👉 100% Scholarships for International Students in Singapore, Japan, China, South Korea and more 😲

Check Here 👉 50+ Fully Funded Scholarships to Study Abroad for Free (USA, UK, Europe, Australia and New Zealand) 🤯

Luckily, NYUAD also offers the CSS Profile Fee waiver to all eligible applicants.

If you are a U.S. citizen or international student and it would be a financial hardship for you to pay the CSS Profile fee to NYUAD, you can fill out NYUAD’s CSS Profile Fee Waiver Request Form on their website.

Once you open the form, it will look something like this 👇

Fill in your First Name, Last Name, Date of Birth, and Common App ID.

If you don’t know your Common App ID, you can find it in the top right corner of your Common App Dashboard. It is also called CAID.

Once you fill your personal details, the next question is straightforward and asks you whether you have submitted your Common App. If you’ve submitted, check “yes,” if not, check “no.”

I understand that this form is specifically for applicants to NYU in Abu Dhabi and confirm that I am applying to that campus:*
🔵 Yes
🔴 No

The next question (quoted above) tells you that this fee waiver is only for NYU Abu Dhabi students and asks whether you’ll be applying to this specific campus.

Having this option checked “Yes” is a must because why would you request NYUAD’s CSS Profile Fee Waiver when you aren’t applying there 😅

I am seeking a fee waiver for:*
🔵 CSS Profile(s) for myself and/or custodial parent(s) or guardian(s)
🔵 CSS Profile for a non-custodial parent or guardian
🔴 Common Application

After checking “Yes,” the last question 👆 asks whether you’re requesting the fee waiver for your custodial parent(s) or non-custodial parent.

Personally, I checked the first one as I lived with both of my parents, but if you are requesting the CSS Profile Fee Waiver for a custodial and a non-custodial parent, check both boxes.

The last element here is the Comment Section. You are not required to write something here or explain yourself. But if you have special circumstances or other information that you’d like NYUAD to know while considering your fee waiver request, you can use the Comment section to explain yourself. Otherwise, please leave it blank.

Lastly, click on the “Submit” button, and that’s it. You’re done.

Once you’ve submitted the form, in under a week, you will receive an email from NYUAD giving an update on your CSS Profile Fee Waiver request.

Don’t worry about receiving the fee waiver because, as far as I know, your fee waiver request will get approved if your family is earning less than $65000 a year and you are a student in need..

From my experience, I found that NYUAD has one of the easiest and smoothest processes to request the CSS Profile Fee Waiver.

Last year, it took me anywhere from one week to four weeks to successfully request the CSS Profile Fee Waiver from other American Universities; however, in the case of NYUAD, I just filled the CSS Profile Fee Waiver Request Form, and in a few days, my fee waiver request was approved.

NYUAD then sent me the NYUAD-specific fee waiver code, and I didn’t have to wait for weeks to receive it.

Cornell University

All right, moving onto another ivy league which grants CSS Profile Fee Waivers to international students even after being need-aware to them. Can you guess it? It is Cornell University.

As far as I know, Cornell University doesn’t offer Cornell-specific CSS Profile Fee Waivers to U.S. students and permanent residents. However, they became a bit generous to international students by providing them CSS Profile Fee Waivers.

Like NYUAD, Cornell University also gives out CSS Profile Fee Waiver codes to international students, but unlike NYUAD, Cornell doesn’t have a Fee Waiver request form on its website.

Instead, you have to send your fee waiver request via email to Cornell’s Financial Aid Office, and if they approve your request, they will reply with a Cornell-specific fee waiver code.

When you request the CSS Profile fee waiver, depending on your financial circumstances, Cornell University may directly send you the fee waiver code or ask you to fill out the IFSAA.

Last year, when I sent the fee waiver request to Cornell’s financial aid office, they took two days and replied with a Cornell-specific fee waiver code that I could use for submitting my CSS Profile to Cornell.

If you want a CSS profile fee waiver from Cornell, you need to do the same: write an email to the financial aid office requesting the fee waiver.

The email address of Cornell’s financial aid office is intl-finaid@cornell.edu.

Remember to include the following five details in your email when you send a CSS Profile fee waiver request to Cornell or any other institution.

☑ Let them know your residential status. If you are an international student, mention it. If you are a U.S. resident, mention it.

☑ Tell them that you’d like to request a fee waiver as the CSS Profile fee will be a financial hardship for you.

☑ Write the number of members in your household, including you.

☑ Write your family’s household income for the last year. If you are applying in 2022, mention your family’s income in 2021. Do mention the income in your home currency and in U.S. dollars.

⭐ If you can include proof of income, it would be great, but even if you don’t, that’s okay too.

☑ Mention the exchange rate of your home currency against the U.S. dollar. This is optional, but it provides more information to the financial aid team.

These are the 🖐 things you need to mention in your email.

Down below 👇, I’ve shared the email I wrote to Cornell’s financial aid office to help you get a better understanding on writing the CSS Profile Fee Waiver request email.

Dear Financial Aid Team,
Hope this email finds you well,

I am Zohair Ansari, an IB DP Graduate, currently residing in India. I would like to apply for the CSS Profile Fee Waiver because the CSS Profile fee of 25 USD or 1,840 INR would constitute a significant financial burden for my family.

The following numbers are indicative of my family’s financial difficulty in bearing the cost of CSS Profile:

The number of family members who live in my parents’ household: 5 (me, my parents and 2 siblings).

My family’s total 2019 income: 3836.94 USD or 2,82,425.83 INR

Exchange rate used to convert INR to USD: 1 USD = 73.61 INR

Thank You for your help and support

Best Regards,
Zohair

You can use this my email’s format, but make sure you change the numbers and personalize it to your context.

On Cornell University’s website, you will not find details about CSS Profile Fee Waiver and its requirements. It just says that:

CSS Profile fee waiver requests must be sent to intl-finaid@cornell.edu by the stated application deadlines.

Cornell University’s Financial Aid Team

Cornell University recommends that students send fee waiver requests well before the financial aid application deadlines.

I am assuming they are saying this because they might not have the resources to offer an unlimited number of CSS Profile Fee Waivers to international students since they are a need-aware school for international students.

To be on the safer side, I recommend you reach out to Cornell’s financial aid office for the CSS Profile fee waiver well in advance, so you are among the first pool of students to request and get the fee waiver.

Columbia University

Columbia University is another Ivy League school that despite being need-aware for international students offer them CSS Profile fee waiver.

Like Cornell University, Columbia University also points to the College Board’s automatic CSS Profile fee waiver for domestic students and does not offer their school-specific fee waivers to them.

However, in the case of international students, Columbia does mention that low-income international students can email the financial aid office to request a CSS Profile fee waiver.

Hence, if you are an international student and want a CSS Profile fee waiver for Columbia, email their financial aid office using the same email format I mentioned above.

The process of requesting the CSS Profile fee waiver from Columbia University is pretty much the same as that of Cornell University, but there are some more details that Columbia University specifically asks for when giving you the CSS Profile fee waiver code or allowing you to submit the ISFAA.

I learned about these details from my email to Columbia’s financial aid office last year. Don’t forget to include all of the following details when requesting a CSS Profile fee waiver from Columbia.

1. Columbia ID

Last year, when I sent an email to Columbia’s financial aid office requesting a CSS Profile fee waiver, they asked me to share my Columbia ID, which the university only emails after you submit the Common App.

Therefore, make sure you request the CSS Profile fee waiver after submitting your Common App to Columbia University, and don’t forget to include your Columbia ID in the email.

Additionally, I’d suggest you to provide your Common App ID for their reference.

2. Country of Residence

You need to provide your country of residence. Tell them which country do you currently reside in? 🌎

3. Number of Family Members

Mention the number of family members who live in your parents’ household 👨‍👩‍👧‍👦.

4. Family’s Total Annual Income

Write down your family’s total annual income from all sources in U.S. dollars. As I said earlier, you need to mention your family’s income from the previous year. 💳

If you’re applying in the 2021-22 admission cycle, write your family’s income for the year 2020.

If you’re applying in the 2022-23 cycle, mention your family’s income for the year 2021.

5. Equity of Family’s Assets

Provide the Equity (value minus debt) of your family’s assets in U.S. dollars.

What is Equity, and how do you calculate it? Equity is the value of assets you own after any liabilities or debts associated with the assets are cleared. You can calculate it by subtracting the liabilities and debts from the total value of the assets. 🏢

For example, your family owns a house worth $1,000,000, but you owe $400,000 on that house. What will be the Equity? $1,000,000 subtracted by $400,000 will give us an Equity of $600,000.

Similarly, figure out the Equity for all your family’s assets, sum them up, and write the figure in your email.

6. Exchange Rate

Lastly, provide the exchange rate that you use to convert your home currency to U.S. dollars 💲.

My Fee Waiver Request Email

For your reference, I have shared the email I sent to Columbia University providing them with all the requested details (down below 👇). Feel free to copy it but do personalize it to your context.

Dear Financial Aid Team,
Hope this email finds you well,

First of all, Thank You for your response.

Here is all the information you require:

1) Full Name: Zohair Ansari
Columbia ID: C000000001

2) Country of Residency: India

3) The number of family members who live in my parents’ household: 5 (me, my parents and two siblings).

4) My family’s total 2019 income from all sources in US dollars: 3836.94 USD or 2,82,425.83 INR

5) The equity (value minus debt) of my family’s assets in US dollars: 8005.39 USD

6) The exchange rate that I used to convert Indian Rupee to US dollars: 1 USD = 73.61 INR

Looking forward to hearing from you.

Thank You for your help and support

Best Regards,
Zohair

Once you provide all these details and send the email to Columbia’s financial aid office, you’re done. If you are eligible, they will definitely reply to you with the Columbia-specific CSS Profile fee waiver code or will at least ask you to complete the ISFAA.

Dartmouth College

Like Columbia and Cornell University, there is yet another need-aware institution that only offers CSS Profile fee waivers to international students. It is Dartmouth College. 

Dartmouth College does offer CSS Profile Fee Waiver to international students in need, but it is not in the form of a CSS Profile fee waiver code. Rather, Dartmouth asks you to fill out its paper-based alternative, ISFAA, much like Yale University.

The process for requesting Dartmouth’s CSS Profile Fee Waiver is similar to that of Cornell and Columbia, in which you need to send an email to their financial aid office requesting the fee waiver. Hence, you need to send an email to Dartmouth’s Financial Aid Office at the following email address: financial.aid@dartmouth.edu.

You can give them with all the information I showed in my Cornell’s email, but, specifically speaking, Dartmouth requires you to provide them with the following information in your email:

1. Your country of residence 🌍.
2. Your family’s total annual income from all sources in your country’s currency 💶.
3. The name of your home currency (Kenyan shilling, Mexican pesos, etc.) 💱.

Last year, I sent the same email, I shared with you above 👆, to Dartmouth’s financial aid office. They reviewed my information and asked me to fill the ISFAA and submit it via email, fax, or postal mail.

Moreover, they asked me to write my name on each page of the ISFAA and send the scanned PDF version of the ISFAA and other financial documents. I did exactly as I was told and was able to send my financial aid application to Dartmouth for absolutely free.

This is what you have to do. Just send them an email with all the information they need, and (if you’re eligible) you’re good to go.

Princeton University

Princeton University is also one of the five need-blind U.S. universities for international students.

Princeton University is one of those cases where if you don’t do your research, you can get in a lot of trouble because Princeton University requires the CSS Profile from neither U.S. residents nor international students. 

Instead, Princeton has its own financial aid application on its Financial Aid System. It is called the Princeton Financial Aid Application (PFAA), and you can only start filling it once you’ve applied to Princeton University through the Common App. 

Once you submit your Common App to Princeton, it will send you login credentials to set up your account on Princeton Applicant Portal. Only through these details can you access the Princeton Financial Aid System and apply for financial aid.

Don’t think that, “Oh my God !! now I need to fill another financial aid application.” 😭

The good news is that if you have already filled your CSS Profile, you can import your data into PFAA because it has very similar questions to the CSS Profile and the Princeton financial aid portal gives you the option to do that. 😉

Personally, I won’t recommend you to import your CSS Profile data into PFAA because then the Princeton Financial Aid office will get to know that you’ve applied to other universities that require the CSS Profile 😲

Anyways, getting back to the point, what’s fantastic about Princeton’s Financial Aid Application is that you don’t need to request the fee waiver as it is completely FREE for both U.S. and international students.

Harvard University

Harvard University is unequivocally one of the best universities in the world. It too offers the CSS Profile fee waiver to international students. However, in my opinion, Harvard made it a little complicated to receive the CSS Profile fee waiver compared to other top universities.

Harvard University does not give out CSS Profile fee waivers to domestic students. Instead, it asks them to see if they are eligible for the College Board’s automatic CSS Profile fee waiver.

But they do have an alternative financial aid application for international students, not ISFAA but rather a Harvard-specific financial aid application form called the Financial Statement for Students from Foreign Countries. 

If you look at Harvard’s financial statement, it is almost the same as ISFAA, except for the font, phrasing, and format of the questions, which are different 😅

Anyways, I like the fact that they made an effort to help international students submit the financial aid application without the burden of CSS Profile fee.

You can download the Financial Statement from Harvard’s website and once fill it completely, you need to submit it through Harvard’s Uploader Tool, along with other supporting documents that Harvard require like income tax documents, business documents, etc. 

When I was applying for financial aid last year, I wanted to use the Financial Statement and submit my financial aid application to Harvard for free, but I did not have sufficient time as the financial aid deadlines were pretty close, so I decided to submit my CSS Profile to Harvard by paying for it.

Stanford University

Stanford University, informally known as ‘Harvard of the West,’ is among the top universities in the world.

Stanford is need-aware for international students, and getting straight to the point, it doesn’t offer any fee waiver to domestic or international students. It doesn’t provide a school-specific Common App fee waiver or school-specific CSS Profile fee waiver.

On its FAQ page, Stanford says:

The Financial Aid Office does not issue fee payment codes for the CSS Profile for freshman or transfer applicants. However, your fee may be waived by the College Scholarship Service (CSS) if you meet their criteria. If you have any questions about your eligibility, please contact CSS.

That’s it, nothing else, not even a mention of international students.

Hence no matter who you are, if you are applying to Stanford and want financial aid, there is no other option but to pay the CSS Profile fee when submitting your CSS Profile to Stanford.

Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)

Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is one of the top names for need-blind admissions and meeting 100% of the demonstrated need of admitted students. However, you’d be surprised and disappointed to know something.

MIT doesn’t offer a school-specific CSS Profile fee waiver to U.S. citizens and points to the College Board’s automatic fee waiver for getting the fee waived.

Like other need-blind universities, it was expected of MIT not to provide a CSS Profile fee waiver to domestic students because College Board already waives the fee for eligible U.S. students.

However, what I didn’t expect and was quite shocking to me was the fact that MIT does not give CSS Profile fee waivers to international students 😲.

No fee waiver code.

No ISFAA.

No alternative financial aid application, Nothing.

Maybe they are working on it and may introduce it in the future, but for now, international students do not have an option of getting their CSS Profile fee waived if they are sending it to MIT.

University of Pennsylvania (UPenn)

University of Pennsylvania (UPenn) is another Ivy League school on this list and is also need-aware for international students.

For international students, UPenn requires the CSS Profile and a UPenn-specific financial aid application called Penn Financial Aid Supplement (PFAS). Upenn developed the PFAS, and there is no fee associated with its submission.

However, in the case of CSS Profile submission, UPenn has given no information (on their website) whatsoever about waiving it or offering CSS Profile fee waivers for it.

Therefore, if you are submitting CSS Profile to UPenn, you can email their financial aid office and request a fee waiver, but as far as I know, they don’t offer CSS Profile fee waivers to any student.

Brown University

Brown University is the last and final university for today. It is another need-aware school for international students.

Like Stanford, Upenn and MIT, Brown does not provide CSS Profile fee waivers to domestic students and points at the automatic CSS Profile fee waiver offered by the College Board to get the fee waived. 

For international students, Brown offers no fee waivers whatsoever.

For international students, the policy is not different. Brown offers no fee waivers whatsoever. They have clearly stated on their undergraduate financial aid page that:

Brown does not provide fee waivers for the CSS Profile application. Instead, we rely on the College Board to determine who automatically qualifies for a waiver during the electronic application submission process. When completing the payment process for the CSS Profile, students may find that fees are automatically waived.

Brown’s Financial Aid Office

Therefore, if you are an international student and you are submitting the CSS Profile to Brown, you have to bear the cost yourself.

It is quite surprising that Brown’s financial aid team has mentioned ‘relying on the automatic CSS Profile fee waivers’ on the International Undergraduate financial aid page even after knowing that College Board’s automatic CSS Profile fee waiver is only applicable to U.S. residents, not international students.

Probably, they made a mistake, or maybe they don’t know about it 🤔

Summary

In a nutshell, I got the CSS Profile fee waiver codes from four universities (Amherst, NYUAD, Cornell, and Columbia), filled the International Student Financial Aid Application or ISFAA for two universities (Yale and Dartmouth), applied to one university on its financial aid portal for free (Princeton) and paid the CSS Profile service charges for five universities (Harvard, UPenn, Brown, Stanford, and MIT).

Here is a Visual Breakdown of CSS Profile fee waiver offering Institutions for International Students:

✅ Amherst College
✅ New York University Abu Dhabi (NYUAD)
✅ Cornell University
✅ Columbia University
✅ Yale University
✅ Dartmouth College
✅ Princeton University
✅ Harvard University
❌ Stanford University
❌ Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)
❌ University of Pennsylvania
❌ Brown University

Overall, I saved $105 through the CSS Profile fee waiver in one form or another. If I had used Harvard’s alternative financial aid application instead of submitting my CSS profile, I could’ve saved $121 or 9000 Indian Rupees 😁.

Now, what if you want to learn about the CSS Profile fee waiver availability, criteria, and eligibility for the universities of your choice. Simply, go to Google, type the university name, and add “CSS Profile Fee waiver.” Ex – If you’re applying to Duke University, type “Duke University CSS Profile fee waiver.”

Usually, the top-ranking links will be good indicators as to whether the university or college offers the school-specific CSS Profile Fee Waiver or not.

In most cases, you will find that universities do not offer them, but the ones that do, have either a form on their website or ask students to contact them over email.

If your universities require the CSS Profile and have mentioned nothing about the CSS Profile fee waiver, reach out to their financial aid office by writing an email using the email format I shared before. And ask them whether they can offer a CSS Profile fee waiver to you.

Common Question

Lastly, I would like to answer one more question, which is How to know whether you will receive the CSS Profile fee waiver or not?

Receiving or not receiving the CSS Profile fee waiver depends on your unique financial situation. Every university has its family income threshold above which they do not grant fee waivers. 

Generally, if your gross family income is less than $65,000 a year, you have a very high chance of getting a CSS Profile fee waiver. 

However, even if you fall above the income threshold, the university can grant you a fee waiver if you can explain your family’s financial situation and justify your need for the fee waiver.

I hope you got an in-depth understanding of the CSS Profile Fee Waiver and how you can request it from top U.S. Universities and other universities of your choice.

If you did, don’t forget to share this blog post with your friends and relatives, so they get a better understanding of CSS profile and how they can save a lot of money by requesting a fee waiver.

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Thank you so much for sticking around till the end.

See you in the next time.

Good Bye, and Take Care.