The College Solutions Blog

March 21, 2010

Student aid letters are hitting mailboxes across the country this month. My son has been getting these financial aid letters and so have millions of other families. All this mail inevitably leads to a question that’s on many parents’ minds: If you are distressed with the dollar amount in a student aid letter, is it possible to negotiate for more...

March 18, 2010

Congress is on the verge of enacting the biggest federal student loan reform in a generation. I’ve been following the high-stakes fight on Capitol Hill between the student lending giants and the Obama administration for some time, but I didn’t feel compelled to share the news until the legislation looked like a sure thing. The Democrats have tucked the federal...

March 17, 2010

Can you get a better financial aid award if you are laid off from your job? That’s the question that many parents, including my sister Julie and brother-in-law Mike are grappling with right now. Last night, I got a call from Mike, who recently received a financial aid award letter from Rockhurst University in Kansas City, where my niece Molly...

March 15, 2010

Ever hear about college taxes? No this isn’t a joke. If you aren’t careful you could owe college taxes on your 529 plan. Nobody tells you that you could ultimately owe taxes on a 529 college plan, but plenty of people discover this nightmare during tax season. Before I get to the bad news, let me review why parents gravitate...

March 12, 2010

The University of California and the Cal State universities are in serious financial trouble. This reality is finally resonating with teenagers, which is why more of them have applied outside the state instead of assuming that their Cal State or UC admission applications will be successful. With the UC And Cal State schools experiencing their biggest financial crisis ever, the...

March 11, 2010

In my last post on deciphering financial aid letters, I focused on college grants. Grants are the best kind of aid that you can snag in a financial aid letter because these awards don’t have to be repaid. College Grants: Decoding a Financial Aid Letter Part II My son has been receiving financial aid awards from colleges during the last...

March 9, 2010

This is my second post on deciphering college financial aid packages. Yesterday, I explained what sort of federal financial aid assistance you might find in your financial aid award. How To Decode a Financial Aid Letter Today, I’m going to cover the types of college grants that parents typically find in a financial aid letter. College Grants Many families believe...

March 8, 2010

It’s the college financial aid season. Some parents are still struggling to complete their financial aid application, while others are just beginning to receive their financial aid packages in the mail. Once you receive a financial aid award, the challenge is to decipher it. I’m going to help you master these financial aid letters by looking at the scholarships, grants...

March 3, 2010

Will your family qualify for college financial aid? I bet you that most parents think they won’t qualify for financial aid although most will. Here’s a shocker: even families that make $150,000 or even $200,000 may qualify for close to $25,000 in financial aid at very expensive schools. In the college admission process, financial aid misconceptions can easily punish families....

February 26, 2010

It is hard to qualify as an independent college student when seeking federal financial aid. I wrote about this big hurdle recently in this post: Getting Financial Aid as an Independent Student Yesterday about four dozen students posted passionate comments on my blog after Chegg, the giant online source for textbook rentals, carried a post that I wrote earlier this...