Families getting started on the college search process are well-served by keeping a list of schools that the student is interested in. (This should be the student’s job, by the way.) But what does that list look like? What goes in it? Here’s my suggestion: Create a spreadsheet in Google Sheets (or your preferred online platform). The left-hand column will…
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Financial Aid
Families who will file the FAFSA this fall should know what dates matter for which data inputs. Income is prior-prior year (meaning most recently filed tax return), assets are “day of” and then there’s the matter of education tax credits such as the American Opportunity Tax Credit. This chart shows what data is used each year: The 2020 tax year,…
Cozy Wittman of College Inside Track and I played Mythbusters about merit aid. Listen to my latest podcast episode to get the full scoop on who gets merit awards, where and why. Families just starting the college search process won’t want to miss Cozy’s detailed and engaging explanation of how merit works and how you can work the system to…
Many states offer free community college to some or all residents. But there’s some fine print that makes timely action necessary. Most states require students to apply for free community college during their senior year of high school. By now, most college-bound seniors have a pretty good sense of what their plans are, and those plans might not include community…
About 170 pages of 2020’s year-end omnibus federal spending bill were devoted to FAFSA Simplification. Sounds almost ironic, doesn’t it? The changes aren’t all that simple, but here’s a summary. Most important, the changes come into effect for the FAFSA that will be available in the fall of 2022, for the 2023-2024 school year. That means that students who are…