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An interesting article in my home town paper offers sage advice on how to get the best financial aid offer. It closes with advice I've been preaching consistently, and will trumpet once again.
Submit the FAFSA and financial aid applications before the schools deadline. The federal deadline of June 30th is often too late to be considered for financial aid because by that time all the money a college had budgeted for aid has already been committed to other students. So if you are applying to college for next fall and have not yet submitted your financial aid form, you better make that an urgent priority. Don't turn on any March Madness games until that form is done and sent off to all the colleges where you've applied and not yet been denied admission. For the non-procrastinators among us the first nine suggestions will be more useful, and they can be organized around two simple themes. The first theme is that in never hurts to ask. If your higher choice college is giving you a less attractive package than your second or third choice, let them know and ask if they can make if more financially feasible for you to follow your heart. If you are still searching for dollars, ask the colleges you are considering if they have any additional scholarships for which you might qualify. Ask how you might hook up with on campus employment even if you don't have a work-study award. If you ask politely, the worst that will happen is that you will be told no politely, and the best that will happen is that you will find more funds that will help you afford to graduate from a great college. The second theme is one worth bearing in mind while you are asking for more help. Financial aid budgets are designed to help make college possible, and even though colleges can and do use merit grants to attract students, adjustments to financial aid packages are almost always made based on reconsidering need. So ask politely, and be ready to explain and document why you and your family will have trouble making college work without additional aid. If you can show that your family has unusual expenses, such as a major medical bill for a family member or providing support for an aging parent, a professional judgment review by a financial aid officer could result in a recalculation of financial need which could lead to more aid being offered. Similarly, if a parent has suffered a loss of income this year, it won't show up on last year's tax return, and therefore won't be reflected in the FAFSA student aid report. A college financial aid officer could adjust an aid package to reflect this change in circumstance. To help the financial aid office find a way to help you, don't approach them with demands or threats. Frankly, it's in the interest of the financial aid office staff not to attract the children of hard-to-deal-with parents, and a financial aid officer may not go out of his or her way to creatively repackage aid when an angry parent is throwing a fit or making unreasonable demands. Financial aid officers are in the business of helping students find a way to pay for college, and they will be most receptive to an honest approach that communicates a desire to attend their college, but an unwillingness to do so by borrowing more than $20,000 per year to get it done. Instead of seeing college financial aid officers as adversaries, treat them as allies. Ask them for advice on what additional resources might be available to make it possible for you or your child to accept the offer of admission. They can't pull money out of thin air, so in the end you may still find that another college represents a better value. Still, if there is any way to get things to work, they will know about those options. So treat them as partners in trying to solve your college funding problem. Whatever the result, be sure to say thank you for their efforts. They were almost certainly doing their best to meet your needs. |
