Seeking Financial Assistance for College? Parents, Try This 5-Step Checklist

Andrew Pentis

Updated on February 26, 2021

February 26, 2021February 26, 2021Paying for CollegeFeatured, Student Loans1336Andrew PentisAmanda GarciaSocial – Organic

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Your child will spend their senior year of high school worrying about their final grades, test scores and college options. It’ll be a whirlwind for them, but it doesn’t have to be for you.

You can get a head start on seeking financial assistance to pay for college.

Here are five actionable steps you should take once your child enters 12th grade. Feel free to print out this list and check off each step after completion to stay on track as you’re seeking financial assistance.

1. Complete the FAFSA

The first and most important step to seeking financial assistance for college is to complete the FAFSA. It’s a gateway to federal aid, such as grants and loans. It’s also a requirement for other sources of funding, such as state grants and even private scholarships. That’s because the FAFSA gives donors a sense of your family’s financial need.

In fact, the FAFSA will use your most recent tax returns and other financial information to pump out your Expected Family Contribution (EFC). Schools use this dollar figure to decide your eligibility for federal and school-based aid.

The FAFSA application opens Oct. 1 annually, and it’s wise to complete it as soon as possible. This way, your student has the best possible chance at securing limited aid, such as the Pell Grant. To complete the application, head to the Federal Student Aid website. The whole process should take under an hour.

Between three days and three weeks, you and your child should receive your Student Aid Report (SAR). The SAR summarizes your FAFSA responses and lists your EFC.

You’ll want to ensure your information is correct. You’ll be sending your FAFSA to up to 10 schools of your choice. Those schools will use this information to determine your aid allocation.

2. Guide the search for scholarships and grants

In addition to seeking financial assistance offered by the federal government and your student’s school, your family should also consider grants. Almost all states have generous grant programs.

Keep in mind that most grants are awarded based on financial need. If the results of your student’s FAFSA leaves you with a high EFC, you might want to spend more energy on scholarships that are merit-based. Your student could win scholarships for different reasons, such as for their grades, athletics or extracurricular achievements.

You can find scholarships all over the place, including:

• Your employer
• Private organizations and companies
• Scholarship search engines like Fastweb

As a parent, defer the actual grant and scholarship applications to your child. You can be more useful as a source of motivation and encouragement as your child submits their scholarship applications.

3. Estimate the cost of attendance

Before seeking financial assistance from a particular college or university, it’s important for you and your student to take some time to consider the schools you can afford.

First of all, each school’s true cost of attendance goes way beyond tuition. It will also include big-ticket items such as room and board, plus smaller expenses like books and supplies. You can compare annual school costs using the Department of Education’s College Navigator tool.

The College Navigator also reveals how much aid each school awards its students. The University of Oregon, for example, charged its in-state, on-campus students $28,764 for the 2019-2020 school year. But, on the plus side, the average student receives $9,946 in grants and scholarships.

Once you confirm the cost of your student’s top college choices, run the numbers to see if they’re affordable. For each school, take the cost of attendance and subtract the EFC listed on your SAR.

Cost of attendance – EFC = Financial need

The remainder represents your family’s financial need, which can be filled by any of the following:

• Scholarships and grants
• Additional family savings
• Federal grants
• Work-study opportunities
• Federal student loans
• Private student loans

4. Compare college award letters

While your child checks the mailbox — or these days, inbox — for college acceptance letters, you should keep an eye out for award letters. If you receive one but not the other, contact the school’s financial aid office.

The award letter reveals the financial aid package your child can receive at a school. Because many schools expect you to accept or deny this offer by May 1 of your child’s senior year, you should be on the lookout for it to arrive early in the spring.

Ideally, you and your student will have a few college award letters to compare. To ensure you’ll make accurate comparisons, don’t focus on each school’s cost of attendance. Instead, figure and consider your net costs — that is, each school’s cost of attendance minus the gift aid offered. The math looks like this:

Cost of attendance – Gift aid offered = Net cost

What’s left over will need to be covered elsewhere, either via income and savings (yours or your child’s), or by taking on debt.

If your family’s finances have changed significantly since you completed the FAFSA, you could speak with your student’s preferred school to negotiate a better aid package. But be prepared to prove why you might be seeking financial assistance a second time.

5. Consider federal and private student loans

When comparing schools, you’ll need to consider the amount of debt to take on to afford the cost of attendance.

For example, you might deprioritize a school that suggests you borrow twice as much in loans as another school. The award letters you receive might also nudge you to borrow federal direct subsidized or unsubsidized L=loans.

Once you’ve found the school that’s an academic and financial fit for your student, explain the consequences of taking out loans.

Say your son or daughter needs to borrow $5,000 in unsubsidized loans from the federal government. Explain that they’ll be repaying that amount with interest once they leave school. A federal loan of that size at the 2020-2021 interest rate of 2.75%, for example, would cost $5,725 over the standard 10-year repayment plan, according to our student loan payment calculator.

Also, take the award letter with a grain of salt when it comes to loans. What the school suggests your family borrow to afford its cost of attendance is not how much you have to borrow.

After reviewing the differences between federal and private loans, you might decide to maximize your federal loan allotments because of the greater protection offered by the Department of Education. On the other hand, you might decide that your stellar credit history could help you score a lower interest rate with top private lenders.

Whether you’re choosing between loans or looking for other aid, remember that the right choice for another family might not be the best for yours. Follow this five-step checklist to seek financial assistance and put you and your student in a position to succeed.