The Insider: College Admissions Advice from the Experts

How to Prepare for Financial Aid as a High School Freshman

During my tenure as a financial aid officer at MIT, Babson College, and other schools, I read thousands of financial aid applications and talked to hundreds of parents about how they could cover their share of the costs of their children’s educations. I learned very quickly that the earlier a family began to think about how they would pay for their children’s education, the more likely they would be able to do so without too much financial stress.

Congratulations on your college acceptances and success in receiving scholarships and need-based financial aid! If you don’t mind, I’d like to give you a little assignment.

It’s finally April, and even if spring hasn’t arrived in many parts of the country, financial aid award letters most definitely have. Many families are now wondering if what they see is what they get.

Part Two: Where the FAFSA needs Improvement

Yesterday I suggested that the FAFSA has too few questions and does not collect enough information to allow colleges to allocate federal financial aid funds to the students who most need them. Many colleges use the College Scholarship Service (CSS) Profile application to collect more information than the FAFSA collects, and these colleges took some heat recently when critics suggested this form is a barrier to access to higher education for low income students. I'd love the FAFSA to ask enough questions that schools would feel it was completely sufficient for allocation of their own funds. Let’s look at a couple of deficiencies in the FAFSA that lead colleges to use a separate application for institutional funds.

Part One: Confusing perspectives, confusing timelines

A few weeks ago, Representative Elijah E. Cummings of Maryland issued a report that called out 111 private colleges for publishing financial aid instructions that did not clearly explain that the FAFSA was the only application students needed to submit to secure federal financial aid. In our February 6^th blog post, we pointed out that Representative Cummings’s claim about these instructions, while accurate, was more likely to hurt lower income students than help them because federal funds are not the largest source of financial aid for students from low and middle income households.

The process of applying for and receiving financial aid can be challenging and confusing. Parents often ask, “what do I need to do to get the most financial aid possible?” College Coach expert Kathy Ruby is one of a handful of financial aid specialists who contributed to an important report from The Financial Times, 6 Ways to Boost Financial Aid for College. The piece is a must-read for all families currently engaged in any stage of the college admissions process. 

Lawmaker Misleads Students in Critique of College Financial Aid Practices

This week, the New York Times published a story reporting that Representative Elijah E. Cummings of Maryland has asked the Department of Education to investigate whether top colleges are misleading financial aid candidates about the requirements to apply for federal financial aid. My colleagues, (fellow admissions and college finance consultants at College Coach), and I have reviewed his concerns and while we agree that he may technically have a point, we feel he is both exaggerating the issue and not giving these colleges the credit they deserve for supporting the educations of talented financial aid eligible students.

If you are a regular reader of the College Coach blog, you know that students are not required to include information about their non-custodial parent (NCP) on the FAFSA (the Free Application for Federal Student Aid). There are institutions, however, that do collect this information. Approximately 400 colleges and universities require students to complete a second application called the College Scholarship Service (CSS) Profile, and most of these require students to have their NCP submit income and asset information as part of the student’s aid application.

It takes 4 years for a student to complete a typical undergraduate degree, right? Not necessarily. Today, students are taking longer to graduate for a variety of reasons, from a decline in personal and institutional resources to indecision about choice of major at the time of enrollment. If you're currently weighing options for a fifth year (or more) of college, we’ve provided a few things to consider as you manage your college payment plan.