This is college application time. Seniors in high schools all over the U.S. are gathering paperwork, grades, writing essays, and doing loads and loads of online research to find and/or confirm their top schools for their applications.
And you, their parents, are also getting that feeling of trepidation, wondering where your kids will be six months from now. Will they get into their school of choice? Will you be able to foot the bill and, if not, do you think they will still be able to attend that school of their choice, with financial aid, grants and scholarships?
If this is the first time going through the process, I feel you. It’s hard to keep a calm facing all of it. Here are some things you need to know.
About the FAFSA
When your teen applies to the universities of his or her choice, they will be asked to fill out a Federal Assistance for Student Aid, or FAFSA form https://fafsa.ed.gov/. It is valid for United States citizens and permanent residents.
This form is really about you, how much money you make, what you have in savings, how much you pay in taxes and well, how much you can afford to help your kid. It will also examine your savings, student-oriented savings plans that you had in place, and any trust funds in place to help your child through college.
They ask for a whole lot of information, and this information is forwarded to any school to which your child applies. This way, universities, colleges and specialized schools can see whether the student can afford their education, and if the application is approved, provide him or her with financial assistance if they qualify.
After that, you’ll be informed of what kind of aid you can expect for each college listed as one of your child’s choices.
The types of assistance available for higher education
Grants: grants are funds provided to specific students for their education and which need not be paid back. They are granted based on specific requirements which vary: some are granted for students under financial hardship, others because of specific familial situations, and some others even for intent or field of study. An example of these is the TEACH federal grant (https://studentaid.ed.gov/types/grants-scholarships/teach), given in exchange for the student engaging in a teaching position in a low-income area after graduating.
When your child’s FAFSA is processed, he or she will be qualified for a variety of federal grants, and you will be informed of that decision as soon as they have all the data required.
Loans: your child will qualify for a certain amount of student aid in the form of loans. While I am not an advocate of teens mortgaging their lives away for their education, these federal loans have the lowest available rates around and students need not start to pay them until after they have completed or stopped their studies. Plus the federal government works with them after they finish their education and start working, to determine a suitable payment amount that works for everyone.
Financial institutions, like the Credit Union, also offer student loans for U.S. citizens and residents intending to attend higher education institutions (colleges, universities and vocational schools) in the United States. The terms, fees and rates vary, and they are a last-ditch option when every other option has been discarded.
Scholarships: scholarships are also free gifts, and they are granted by many different kinds of organizations and governments. Some of them are merit-based (academic scholarships) while others are specifically targeted to help specific groups; for example, some scholarships are for seniors, or people going back to school later in life. Of course, the vast majority of scholarships are for young students.
However, scholarships are not included on the FAFSA coverage, and you must find them on your own. In the days before internet, this was both a nightmare and a blessing, because you had to either trust your child’s high school advisor to suggest appropriate scholarships to go for, or you had to go to a college library and look through a humongous book that listed all scholarships available in the United States. Of course, that meant that not so many people applied for each scholarship and they were easier to get. Nowadays the blessing is backwards: every single scholarship is available online, but that means that they are available to everyone else, too.
This means that you and your teen have to wise up and get going ASAP, as many of the application periods for scholarships started a month ago and will only last another month now.
Here are the best and most trusted sites on which to find scholarships based on a myriad of qualifying factors. Note that all of these offer complete privacy and are free to use by students:
CollegeNet: to me this is your best starting point. CollegeNet is a company that organizes online systems for education both for academia and event scheduling, and they offer access to a very intuitive scholarship engine and a student forum where students can create topics, discuss them and vote. The voting part is the reason I recommend this site above others. That open forum allows users to select the person leading the most interesting conversation every single week, and every Wednesday the student with the most votes earns a grant (of between $3,000 and $5,000) for their education. So, if your student is a good debater, there you go.
CollegeBoard: this is the site of THE College Board of the United States, not a random company. It has existed since 1900 and it has helped every student since. Their staff run checks all year round for every single grant and scholarship available in the United States, and updates the list monthly. And because this is in the institution behind the standard of education, the SATs, etcetera, you are assured to find scholarships that are well documented and from trusted sponsors.
FastWeb: it has provided actual scholarships to 50 million students in the 15 years since it started. Their system is updated daily with new scholarships, and it works on a matching system; that is, they match students to scholarships for which they would qualify. Not only that, when new scholarships are added to the system, they email every qualifying student who had previously used the system, so that they may apply.
Finally, for those reading this article from abroad and who are not United States citizens or residents, there are grant and scholarship programs for foreign students who want to come to the United States to study. Here’s a comprehensive list of the main ones.
We all want the best for our kids, so I hope that this information will be of use to you and your future college student. Best of luck to both of you!
And if you’re reading this but your children aren’t at their college years yet, you may benefit from reading about college funding ideas to get you started on a plan for when they do get there. Here’s an article that I wrote, directed to both grandparents and parents on that very subject.
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