The FAFSA itself won’t be available until Oct. 1, but in the meantime you can download the EFC Formula Guide to see how the sausage gets made. If you are a parent of a high school senior who will be completing the FAFSA this fall for whom the cost of college is important, here is a suggestion for how to…
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…
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,…
Clearly, test-optional admissions are here to stay, with more than 1,600 four-year colleges offering test-optional admissions for the fall. More than 80 others are test-blind for the 2021 admissions cycle, according to FairTest’s online database of testing policies. So students not wanting to submit test scores will have plenty of schools to choose from. But pulling back the curtain shows…
I’m changing topic today because my friend Jon said something on Sunday that I can’t get out of my head and I think all parents of teens and young adults need to hear: “We want our kids to be happy. We want our kids to be successful. But most of all we want them to be here.” We spent Sunday…
