This is the time of year for parents of high school seniors to start thinking about applying for financial aid.
Many families have heard of the FAFSA, but they don’t know what it was. Families need to complete the FAFSA to be eligible for state and federal grants. You also can’t obtain a federal student loan without filling out a FAFSA.
Here are a few things you can do now to get ready for applying for financial aid:
1. Get your FAFSA PIN. A parent and the student both need a FAFSA PIN before they can complete the Free Application for Federal Student Aid.
2. Circle Jan. 1 on your calendar. That’s the first day that families can fill out the FAFSA forms for the 2010-2011 school year.
3. Print out the FAFSA worksheet. The 2011-2012 FAFSA worksheet isn’t available yet, but you can see the current one. By checking out the worksheet, you’ll know what documents you’ll need when you tackle the real FAFSA application online.
4. Register for the CSS Financial Aid PROFILE. If you are attending one of these private colleges and universities, you will have to fill out the CSS Financial Aid PROFILE. Before you can complete the form, you’ll have to register with the College Board. Some private schools require families to fill out this document if they want to be considered for institutional money.
5. Ask about deadlines. You should check with schools to determine when their financial aid deadlines are. You don’t have to wait until Jan. 1 to begin tackling the financial aid application for the PROFILE private schools. But if you start this early, you will have to estimate your 2010 income.
The very fact that the masses undergo these processes for financial aid saddens and angers me beyond words. The fact that people do not even truly understand or even think about why they are doing it is even worse. Everyone just takes as gospel the idea that they have to go to college. They follow vague yet extreme hints that with college they can get a better job and without it they will have a poor quality of life, and that they should spare no expense in pursuing this mythical “necessity”. The price of college is steep in not only money, but time and soul as well. The reward, more often than not, is debt the size of a mortgage, only without the house to show for it. Sadly, the majority of grads will admit that the knowledge they gained was virtually nil as well. The reason why college is so expensive is not supply and demand, nor intrinsic value. It is because the government interferes in the marketplace. They back student loans so that there is no risk of the colleges not getting repaid. This removes any incentive to have competitive or realistic pricing, enabling them to jack up prices to these absurd levels no student or even most parents could ever afford. No matter what happens, the colleges get paid. The students get the shaft. The fact that they are too blind to even recognize this, to even do a cost benefit analysis, is a reflection of their k-12 brain washing. I only realized these things after it was too late, after I graduated college and escaped the lying, thieving halls of academia. cut-class.org is organizing a national cut class day in protest of outrageous tuition. This is pure insanity and it needs to come to an end.
Wow this is good news… we have to admit that some parents fail to bring there children to school due to financial problems especially now that global crisis is still at high. I am sure many would consider this grant for the education of their children.
check this financial aid company out.
http://pointsandfigures.com/2010/12/10/three-24-year-olds-do-what-gao-says-is-impossible/