Now that it’s April, your child will be receiving all
of your college decisions and financial aid award
letters. Now it is time to make some important choices.
Here is a checklist of three things that all seniors
should be doing this month.
1) Compare Financial Aid Award Letters.
Your child should have several financial aid award
letters from the different colleges and universities
that have accepted them. These letters are notoriously
difficult to decipher. But it is crucial that you understand
exactly what the financial aid offer is. Here is a worksheet to help you figure it out.
Many schools make it impossible to determine if the
financial aid offer is a grant/scholarship (which doesn’t
have to be paid back) or a loan (which does need to be
paid back). Moreover, there is no standard format for
financial aid award letters. This makes it tremendously
confusing.
So what should you do? Basically, you need to determine exactly what types of financial aid each school is offering your child. This will allow you to compare apples to apples in terms of financial aid offers.
Before your child makes a big decision about which college to attend, it’s imperative that everyone understand the financial implications of their choice.
2) Appeal for More Financial Aid if Necessary.
So what do you do if the financial aid package is just not enough?
There are ways that you can appeal for more financial aid, but only if you have special circumstances that affect your family’s ability to pay.
There are many different types of situations that can
impact the amount of money that your family is able
to contribute to your child’s college education. The
important thing is that you must be able to document
them. If a parent has recently lost a job or experienced
a drop in family income (perhaps due to COVID), this is a legitimate situation for seeking an appeal. Make sure that you can quantify how much money your family has lost as a result.
3) Sign the Intent to Register and Mail Deposit.
Once your child has made the final decision about which college they will attend, they need to sign the intent to register, accept the financial aid offer, and mail in your deposit check to hold the spot. The deadline for this is May 1 for most schools. If possible, try to visit the campus in person before you make your ultimate decision. It is always a bad idea to commit to a college sight unseen.
Once your child has mailed in the intent to register, make sure that they notify the other colleges that accepted them. They need to tell those schools that they will not be attending. This allows those colleges
to move down their waitlists and possibly accept other students who do want to attend.