Disclosing Personal Debt on Grad Apps?

[theregalrenegade]

I'm going through an online grad application and in the financial section came across these questions:

Amount of personal debt (dollar value)

AND

Sources of Debt

I've never seen this before, and I'm unclear as to why these questions are necessary? Am I required to answer them?

If anyone has any information about this portion of the application, I'd love to hear it.

I apologize if this topic has already been discussed.

[TakeruK]

I've seen this section on a few applications last year. The section was always prefaced with "This information is for financial aid consideration only. This optional section will not be used to determine your admission."

Sometimes these instructions don't appear on the actual online form, but in an "Instructions" section somewhere in the application software or on the graduate school's FAQ page etc. I didn't answer these questions in any of my applications.

Also, a lot of online applications have an automated check when you try to submit that lets you know if you missed any required fields. So you can also try to run a completion check to see if those empty fields get flagged.

[theregalrenegade]

I've seen this section on a few applications last year. The section was always prefaced with "This information is for financial aid consideration only. This optional section will not be used to determine your admission."

Sometimes these instructions don't appear on the actual online form, but in an "Instructions" section somewhere in the application software or on the graduate school's FAQ page etc. I didn't answer these questions in any of my applications.

Also, a lot of online applications have an automated check when you try to submit that lets you know if you missed any required fields. So you can also try to run a completion check to see if those empty fields get flagged.

Thank you for the reply, T :-) I didn't answer the questions and I was able to submit the section without any indication of missed fields.