FAFSA changes were announced this week that will impact students applying for aid for 2017-2018, including this year’s high school juniors applying for college admission for Fall of 2017. As most of you know, FAFSA is the Free Application for Federal Student Aid that is used to determine how much financial Read more…
How do you know if you are too wealthy for financial aid? The answer is, there’s no easy answer! Generally speaking, most schools will not give need-based financial aid to families making $150,000 or more per year, but there are exceptions. Princeton University, for example, is known to be the Read more…
Last week, I talked about non-need based scholarships your student may be eligible for. This week, I want to cover the other major type of college money: need-based financial aid. Who May Be Eligible for Need-Based Financial Aid? There are many myths floating around about who is and who isn’t Read more…
If your child will soon be making the final college choice, it’s time to prepare to compare financial offers. That is, of course, unless you don’t need to worry about the price difference between schools. As you review acceptances, scholarship offers, and financial aid offers, here are some tips: Make Read more…
For three mornings this week, I spoke to groups of parents and students at the local high school about the college search process. When I spoke to high school juniors and their parents, I stressed that there are several ways to find great deals on colleges. Junior year is the Read more…
My daughter, a high school senior, came home recently and said she had a friend who not only hadn’t selected a college yet, but hadn’t even applied. She assumed that his only option left would be to attend a local community college. Not necessarily so. May 1 was National Decision Read more…
Can you negotiate college cost? Yes, and you should. Most schools have some wiggle room with their merit and need-based offers. While the college choice process isn’t really like buying a car, there are some similarities. You can start the process once the school sends you a summary of your Read more…
Updated 2-4-17 – Updates in red In part 1, I talked about what you can do to minimize your upcoming out-of-pocket college costs when you have a senior in high school who is in the process of getting down to the final college choice. Today, I want to talk about Read more…
I recently filed the CSS Profile for a couple of highly competitive top-dollar universities on my daughter’s college application list. According to the Net Price Calculators at these schools, we would probably qualify for some institutional grant aid, even though we didn’t qualify for federal financial aid. The CSS Profile Read more…
Before you can determine this, you need to know when the financial aid deadlines are for the schools to which you are sending a Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA). You need to go with the earliest financial aid deadline because the FAFSA is distributed at the same time to Read more…