Free money for college
— and how to get it

The two big US financial-aid forms — FAFSA and CSS Profile — get confused all the time. The short answer: as an international student, you file the CSS Profile, NOT the FAFSA.

FAFSA (Free Application for Federal Student Aid) is the form the US federal government uses to allocate federal aid (Pell Grants, federal loans, federal work-study). Federal aid is only available to US citizens, permanent residents, and a handful of other specific immigration statuses. International students are NOT eligible.

CSS Profile is run by the College Board (same organisation that runs the SAT). It's used by ~250 mostly-private US universities to decide how much of THEIR OWN money — institutional grants — to offer you. International students CAN and DO file the CSS Profile, and it's how most private US schools decide your aid package.

If you only apply to public universities, you may not need either form — public US universities mostly don't offer aid to international students. If you apply to private universities (Harvard, Stanford, Yale, NYU, etc.), the CSS Profile is essential.

When you look at a US university's "cost of attendance", you're seeing the sticker price — typically $60,000–$90,000 per year for a private college. Almost no one pays this number.

The net price is what you actually pay after the school's financial aid is applied. If the sticker price is $85,000 and the school determines your family can contribute $2,000, your net price is $2,000 — the school covers the other $83,000 in grants (which you never repay).

A $40,000 school that gives you $5,000 in aid (net price $35,000) costs you MORE than a $90,000 school that meets 100% of your need (net price $2,000). Always compare net prices, not sticker prices.

Use each university's "Net Price Calculator" — required by US law to be on every school's admissions website — to estimate what YOU would pay before you apply. International applicants: the calculator results are estimates only, but they give you a useful directional sense.

When a US university says it "meets 100% of demonstrated need", it means: cost of attendance MINUS the school's estimate of what your family can pay = the amount they cover with grants.

The school estimates what your family can pay using your CSS Profile responses (income, assets, family size, dependents in college, unusual expenses). The estimate is the school's — it may or may not match what you think your family can actually afford.

For African applicants whose family income converts to a small dollar figure, demonstrated need is usually close to the full sticker price — meaning the school covers most or all of it. This is why need-blind, meets-full-need schools are such powerful pathways for African students even though their acceptance rates are very low.

If the school's estimate of what your family can pay is higher than what you actually can, you can appeal. See Philip's second video above for how.

Graduate financial aid in the US works very differently from undergrad. Most funded graduate programmes — especially PhDs — package tuition + a monthly stipend together as a single "funded offer" rather than asking you to file separate aid forms.

The three main funding mechanisms are Research Assistantships (you work on a professor's research), Teaching Assistantships (you help teach undergrad courses), and Fellowships (merit-based, no work required).

For PhDs in STEM and social sciences: assume your offer will include 5+ years of guaranteed funding (tuition + stipend) IF the programme funds its students at all. Programmes that don't fund their PhD students should generally be avoided — paying $50k+/year for a PhD almost never makes sense.

For Master's programmes: funding is much rarer. Most Master's students self-fund or take out loans (which are very hard to get as an international student). Look for Master's programmes that explicitly offer assistantships, and consider a funded PhD as an alternative if research is your goal.

In ALL cases: do NOT accept a funded offer until the funding is confirmed in writing. "We'll let you know about funding later" usually means "you won't get any."

The CSS Profile asks dozens of questions about your family's income, taxes, savings, rent, utilities, food, school fees, transportation, and more. Each is a separate field on a separate screen — but the financial-aid officers who review your file at the other end read them as ONE story.

If your parents earned 60,000 cedis last year and were taxed 18,000, the maths says they have 42,000 cedis left for the entire year. Every expense you list (rent, food, utilities, your siblings' school fees, transport, etc.) has to add up to AT MOST 42,000 + savings. If your numbers say they spent 50,000 on rent alone on a 42,000 income, the file looks made-up — and aid officers stop trusting any other figure on it.

Practical rule from Philip: do the arithmetic yourself before submitting. Add up every expense field. Subtract from (income − taxes). If the result is positive, your savings can be larger than that result (since savings accrue over years). If it's negative, something's wrong — usually you've overestimated rent, food, or your siblings' school fees.

Philip walks through a worked example in Part 2 of his video — pause it at the arithmetic section if this rule trips you up.

Don't start the CSS Profile (or ISFAA, or any other financial-aid form) until you have all four of these from at least one parent. Trying to fill them in piecemeal is how mistakes — and "numbers don't align" rejections — happen.

**1. Tax returns.** In Ghana these come from the Ghana Revenue Authority (GRA) office in your parent's region. Your parent has to request them in person; processing takes a few business days. Most schools want the previous year's; some want three years back. Both parents need their own if both work.

**2. Bank statements** — both parents, ideally for the entire previous calendar year, showing month-by-month deposits and withdrawals. Your bank can issue these on request; most can email PDFs.

**3. Pay slips** for the most recent 3 months at minimum, ideally the entire year. Your parents request these from their employer; many parents already have them emailed monthly.

**4. A currency converter** open in another tab when you fill the form. Most forms accept Ghanaian cedis (the CSS Profile lets you choose), but the ISFAA must be filled in dollars and the Certificate of Finances usually does too. Use Google's built-in converter and note the conversion date alongside each translated figure.

The CSS Profile costs $25 for the first school you submit it to and $16 for each additional. For an applicant submitting to 10 schools, that's $169 — real money for a Ghanaian student.

Two ways around this. **First: email each school directly** to ask for a CSS fee waiver. Send a short, honest email to the admissions office or the financial aid office (each school has the address on its website) explaining your financial situation. Most schools that accept the CSS Profile WILL grant a waiver if you ask early and frame it as a financial need. They'll send you a fee-waiver code that you enter at the CSS Profile checkout.

**Second: ask if the school accepts the ISFAA** (International Student Financial Aid Application) instead. The ISFAA collects roughly the same information as the CSS Profile but is free to submit (you just email it to the school). Many schools accept either. In your email asking for a waiver, mention the ISFAA as a fallback — schools often say yes to one or the other.

A few schools (Philip names Howard as an example in the video) accept neither waivers nor the ISFAA. For those, you decide: pay the fee, or skip applying to that school.