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Posts tagged Financial Aid
As families explore highly selective colleges where total costs often exceed $80,000 a year, financial aid packages determine whether such prestigious degrees become accessible or remain pipe dreams. Unlike public universities offering substantial merit scholarships, elite private colleges provide almost exclusively need-based aid. However, with few exceptions, these schools promise to meet 100% of demonstrated financial need. Here’s what families should understand.
With the recent celebration of college decision day, now is the perfect time for parents to plan their withdrawals from 529 college-savings plans. These tax-advantaged accounts have become increasingly popular as a way to save for education expenses, and it's crucial to understand how they work to maximize their benefits.
There are a number of important strategic considerations to make when thinking about applying Early Decision (ED) or Restricted Early Action (REA) to highly selective colleges. When students ask us whether or not they should apply ED to a college, our answer is always, "it depends."
Getting acceptance letters from colleges is a thrilling time, but maybe more important are the financial aid offers that come around the same time. We sat down with financial aid expert Jeff Levy , who talked about how financial aid offers should be read, common misconceptions about financial aid, and strategies for negotiating aid offers.
There's no way around it: college is expensive. But there are things you and your student can do to prepare for that expense and temper it to a point that feels more comfortable for your family. Consumer Reports suggests " Having the College Money Ta lk " with your high schooler, and here, we'll reiterate the three tips we found most useful:
The 2020-2021 school year was unlike any other in so many ways… students learning remotely, then in masks… teachers finding creative ways to engage classes across a screen while families found creative ways to celebrate their students’ milestones… There was little in the world of education that wasn’t upended last year and that was true even for something like standardized testing that might once have been thought of as inevitable and unchanging. In the last admissions cycle, colleges and universities had to learn how to recruit students who couldn’t visit their campuses, and to review applications without some of the previously required metrics.
Heading off to college is exciting (maybe a little more for the student than the parents). On the other hand, wondering how you’re going to pay for the next four or so years of your life can be pretty daunting. Here are 10 terms that can help parents navigate the confusion of financial aid:
One of the most frustrating problems for high school parents during the college planning process is the lack of quality data surrounding admissions. Some parents spend hours—or even days—assembling statistics from college websites and guidebooks. To give you easier access to quality data, our colleagues Jennie Kent and Jeff Levy have released their 2021 analysis of Domestic Undergraduate Need-Based and Merit Aid As parents evaluate affordability, they often consider the average need met and merit aid data provided by colleges and universities on their student's list. Analyzing this data early can prevent roadblocks down the road. On the whole, data analyzed from these 600 colleges shows a decrease in the percentage of non-need undergraduates receiving aid and, in particular, merit aid in 2018. The dollar amount of the average merit aid award has also dropped. Having said that, there are a number of schools that offer merit aid awards that are significantly higher than the average:
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