Students whose parents are divorced have some planning opportunities if the exes are willing to cooperate. The first step is of course to understand the planning areas. And the first step of that first step is to understand a key definition: “custodial parent.” Custodial parent is used in two primary places for college purposes, and in ways that are completely…
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The FAFSA won’t be available until Oct. 1 but in the meantime you can download the EFC Formula Guide for the current year and calculate your Expected Family Contribution. This year’s FAFSA EFC formula includes nominal inflation-related adjustments to the Income Protection Allowance, Adjusted Net Worth of a Business or Farm, and Assessment Rates and, for the first time in…
I write a lot about the FAFSA, but there’s a second financial aid form that’s also important: the CSS Profile. While all schools use the FAFSA to allocate federal funds such as Direct Student Loans, a subset of schools– primarily private schools– use the CSS Profile in their financial aid calculations. There are a few key differences between the two…
Want to know if your school is at risk financially? The Hechinger Report offers a college Financial Fitness Tracker, a searchable database of colleges showing their overall financial health based on a series of metrics. Their analysis shows that even before the pandemic hit, hundreds of colleges were experiencing financial distress. They cited several factors behind this: A smaller population…
If you’re the parent of a student athlete, you’ll want to watch this interview with Kathy Connor of Connor College Consulting. A former D1 student-athlete, Kathy is also mom to two college athletes (D1 and D3) and a college admissions consultant specializing in student athletes, so she has seen college athletics from every angle. A few key takeaways: Athletic scholarships…