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The new Simplified FAFSA is here! Here’s a quick video with some tips that will help you get through it with a minimum of chaos and maximum of financial aid. 🔗
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Work study falls under the self-help column of financial aid. If your aid award includes work-study, you should understand what it is.
About 3/4 of families who appeal their financial aid award receive additional aid. Yet less than half appeal. Here’s how to get more money from the colleges you’re considering.
Highlights
We’re almost there: acceptance letters are arriving and the May 1 decision day is right around the corner. For most families, how much schools cost is part of the decision making process.
Happy 2023! Last year I made a New Year’s Resolution and kept it. That makes me a self-appointed expert on New Year’s resolutions. Here are some resolutions for parents planning for college— and my expert advice on how to keep your resolutions.
Parent assets seem to be the area that most families and planners focus on, despite the fact that they typically have the smallest impact on the formula of each of the components. Strategies and tactics to minimize parent assets abound, but for most families these result more in nibbling around the edges than actually making a significant dent in SAI.
The College Board’s annual Trends in College Pricing and Student Aid report was released recently. Among the headline findings: college tuition prices increased at extremely low rates for the second year in a row, reflecting both a combination of continued impacts of the pandemic and enrollment pressures from demographic trends.
Filing the FAFSA raises tons of questions for divorced parents. Here are some answers.
Happy FAFSA Day! Are you completing the FAFSA for the first time this year? While you’re waiting for the site to load, here are some resources that will help you get through it with a minimum of chaos and maximum of financial aid.
I think Oregon is one of the last places in the US that starts school after Labor Day so my apologies if you’re no longer in back-to-school mode. Here are some resolutions your family might make for the coming school year. And, here’s hoping they don’t get broken as quickly as the typical New Year’s diet-and-exercise resolutions!
The FAFSA becomes available onOctober 1, but you can download the EFC Formula Guide to see how the sausage gets made in advance. Here are some suggestions for how to use this data.
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Saving for College
Student Loans
Application Process
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Budgeting for College Applications
It is both a blessing and a curse that the Common App makes it easy to apply to many colleges. One of the curses is that applications cost money. Enough that you should budget for them. The good news is that having a money budget for applications will automatically create a “time budget” since it might reduce the number of applications you file.
To Defer or not to Defer
Many students are considering deferring enrollment for the fall; surveys show that perhaps as many as 15% of college-bound students in the high school class of 2020 are likely to defer.
Thinking it’s worth taking out student loans to go to your first choice college instead of your second choice? Here’s what older Millennials have to say about their student loans.