Required Documents – School and Student Services by Community Brands

Understandably, many families have questions on how to best submit the documentation that many schools require as part of the financial aid process. Our goal is to make the process of submitting documents as easy as possible so weve put together some tips to help you in the process.

As a first step, we suggest you view the documents required by the schools you are applying to. They can be found in the Family Portal, under the My Documents tab. Please keep the following in mind as you go through the process:

If you know the school(s) you are applying to requires documents but they are not listed on the My Documents page, please contact us at sss@communitybrands.com. This indicates SSS needs to alert the school(s) where youre applying so they can enter their document requirements into the system.

Your documents will be marked as received much quicker if you upload them through the Family Portal.

If you upload documents online, they will be available on the My Documents page within 5 minutes of your upload. You may need to refresh the My Documents page or log back into the application in order to see the upload. Its important to note, however, a distinction between uploading your documents and fulfilling your requirements. SSS is required to review the docs, verify their authenticity, and label them for our use. This process typically takes up to 3 business days.

Please be careful not to upload your documents more than once. Good news! If you are submitting a 1040 bundle (like Turbo Tax and other tax preparation services provide) and it includes images of your W-2(s) along with your supporting tax schedules, you do not have to upload your W-2 document(s) separately. Our system will find the W-2s with all your other tax documents and process them accordingly. If you are concerned that your upload was not successful, refresh the My Documents page or log back into the application to verify whether or not your document label appears in the correct Required Documents section.

While there is a time lag between when you upload your documents and when the system recognizes them as received, the good news is that will not adversely affect your applications timeliness. All documents will be stamped with the date they were received for processing whether mailed or uploaded. As an example if you upload your documents the day before your application deadline, they will be time stamped on that day. The system will not show them as received for up to another 72 hours, but that does not mean that they will be considered late. Its the date you upload them, not the date the system recognizes them, that will determine if your application was completed on time.

Our document upload wizard uses pop-up functionality. Families should always turn their Pop-Up Blocker off when working in our system.

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Required Documents - School and Student Services by Community Brands