Figuring Out Financial Aid

A couple of weeks ago, I was idly speaking to my Mom over the phone while I was sitting in my dorm room trying to decide between slingbacks and stilettos for the nights upcoming debauchery. Though only half listening, something very quickly caught my ear. "Financial Aid."

"What?"

She repeated to me that between me going into my senior year at a private college, my sister starting her freshman year at a private college, and my father being halfway through another Master's degree meant over $100,000 of school fees being in the works. Could I apply for financial aid?

Sure, I told her, no problem at all. A few pleasantries later I hung up the phone and had a teethgritting moment of uh oh. I'd never applied for financial aid before. Who did I ask for it? How much did I need? What was the first step?

FAFSA was the first thing that came to mind. I had recently finished up a fellowship in the Bronx where time in the college placement office meant a lot of exposure to this useful little form. I spent a hot second to revel in the irony that I'd helped so many people fill out their forms but had never bothered to look at one for myself. The form was at fafsa.ed.gov and I very quickly realized that I would need my parents' tax information to fill it out.

Fast forward to a few days later. I'm on Skype with both parents screaming over each other from one window on the monitor and I've got a FAFSA opened on another. Frankly, the process isn't very difficult if you keep your wits about you, it's just time consuming and frustrating because you'll probably need to do it with at least one parent. In any case, at the end you'll get an EFC, or expected family contribution. This is how much they think you can pay. Along the way you'll also have to make note of your pin (write it down!!) and be sure to include which school you're attending or plan to attend so that they can report your information. Otherwise filling out the form would be pretty pointless.

he next step for me was contacting my college and quickly finding out that they had an entire Office of Student Financial Services. The Office was complete with a physical office at the college as well as a website from which you could download all kinds of forms for financial aid and scholarships. That was the next thing I did, in hopes that maybe my school could help me out even a little bit more than the federal government (which is where the FAFSA money comes from). The forms are presumably similar but different for every school, but will probably ask you things like how much you have in savings, what your parents do, how many cars you own, what your grades have been, etc.

This is as far as I got in terms of financial aid stuff because this it was at this point that I felt pretty good about what I was eligible for. I know that there are loads of other federal level monetary grants, loans, etc. to which students have access, as well as loads of scholarships from religious assemblies to political organizations to corporations to ethnic groups. The point is, take a look around, there's bound to be someone willing to help you out.