When your expected family contribution is too high to be affordable for your family, you have several options. I want to address this both for high school Seniors with actual award letters in hand and also for younger students where Net Price Calculators are indicating an expected family contribution amount Read more…
Will we qualify for need-based financial aid for college? – A question on the minds of most parents with college-bound high school students. The answer is going to depend on many things, with the biggest being parental income and number of kids in college at the same time. Let’s go Read more…
Before we go on with the Upside Down College Search process, let’s talk about Expected Family Contribution. Last week, I said that this week’s topic would be “What Deals Can You Get?” As I started writing that, I found the need to explain a lot of background information related to Read more…
Ideally, preparation for the college search process will start years beforehand. There are several things you can do as a parent to be in a better position for helping your child determine what his or her college choice should be. I learned some of these the hard way so I 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…
This is the time of year when parents need to think about filing the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA). But how do you know if it is worth your time and energy to file? Many people have the impression that if they make over “X” amount per year, Read more…
When you are looking at private colleges, there are two types of financial assistance that may be offered – merit aid and need-based aid. The beauty of merit aid is that it has nothing to do with how much a college thinks you can afford or your actual ability to Read more…