Comparing Financial Aid Offers

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has a nifty tool for comparing school costs or financial aid offers, here. As you get acceptance and financial aid offers, enter them into the site to get apples-to-apples comparisons of what you’ll pay and what you will owe upon graduation.

Those with some time left before college can use each school’s net price calculator or College Navigator to get estimates of schools’ financial aid offers. The calculator provides estimated costs for each school, and it allows you to enter your own resources including savings and cash flow, scholarships and work study. As you enter that data, it keeps a tab of how much you have left to pay (if the resources you’ve entered don’t cover the cost of attendance). When you add loans to meet that difference, it also calculates what you’ll owe upon graduation and your monthly payment on those loans.