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Watch The Recording!
Thanks for registering and attending Sunday night's session.
Hopefully you found it informative and useful.
Here are some discussion points that stood out to me: - Use college net price calculators to get an estimate of what a school will cost you.
- In addition, estimate your EFC. (Here's a link to a spreadsheet we feel does a very good job of estimating EFC and allows you to fool around with the inputs - https://bit.ly/FAFSAspreadsheet)
- You can determine if you have financial need by subtracting your EFC from the school's COA: Financial Need = COA - EFC
- Understanding a school's financial aid policies is critical in determining whether a school can be a financial fit for your family.
- Does a college offer needs based aid? If so, what percent of financial need will they meet?
- Does a college offer merit aid? If so, what are the criteria needed to be awarded merit aid?
- Where does a school sit on the spectrum of Jeff's Buyers and Sellers rubric? How much of a college's institutional aid is devoted towards meeting financial need vs offering merit aid?
- Unless a school states they are "need blind" (which only a handful are), you should assume they are "need aware" and your family's financial situation may be considered in the admissions process.
- Many families already know their financial situations are significantly different as compared to their 2019 taxes. Gather your documents to be ready to file aid appeals when your student's offers come in.
Click below to watch the session in its entirety... |
| | | | College Insights: Help To Find Merit Scholarships |
| | We have good news - our popular College Data Spreadsheet has been converted to College Insights, an online search site with more data and easier to use functionality.
College Insights can quickly help you determine a college's financial aid policy and whether or not you'll receive needs based or merit scholarships.
Enter your student's stats and preferences for major(s), location(s), and school size. Decide to search schools based on matching to their average stats or the top 25th percentile.
You'll receive a list of colleges with pre-filters based on which offer merit scholarships, needs based aid, early decision or early action deadlines.
You can sort the results based on any of the columns. - To find colleges in your results that will be more generous for merit scholarships, sort the list by "% of students without financial need who receive merit aid" and review the size of the average merit award.
- To find colleges that meet more of a family's financial need, sort the list by "% need met" and review the size of the average needs based aid.
We also have crowdsourced college offers from families over the past two admissions cycles. Review these offers to see how they compare to the college data in the table for a particular school.
By comparing your student's offer to other students' offers, you’ll get a better sense of whether you can ask for more aid.
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| | Other data you can sort and compare against include:- Four-year graduation rates
- Early Decision/Early Action rates and the % of class accepted Early Admissions
- Regular Decision rates
- Average net price and sticker price of a school
- And a variety of criteria that matters most to you and your student, such as: location, test requirements, school size, majors offered, GPA, financial aid forms required, retention rates, endowment per student, and average loan balances
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| | | | | It's Been A Busy Fall...
Here's a list of other webinars we held on topics that might be of interest to you: |
| | My goal is to provide affordable services, insightful information and access to actionable data so your family can make more informed decisions about college.
Feel free to respond to this email with any questions you have. |
| | Debbie Schwartz Founder, Road2College I'm a parent, like many of you, navigating college admissions and paying for college. With an expertise in personal finance, analysis, and marketing, I'm working to give families the information and tools to make smarter financial college decisions. |
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