Your parents owe more on their house than it is worth and their stock portfolios just took a hit. But, they are professionals and make a healthy salary. They tell you that they’re not going to be able to pay for much of your college expenses. You wonder, who qualifies for financial aid?

The truth is that more people qualify for financial aid than take advantage of the opportunity. Financial aid can be broken down into three categories.

The first category is based entirely on financial need as determined by the Free Application For Student Aid (FAFSA). You fill out this form with the information about your parents and your own income and assets. These numbers are fed into a computer program and an expected family contribution is produced.

This means that wherever you go to college, your family should pay that amount. If your expected family contribution is $15,000 and the total cost of attending the local state college is $14,000, you probably won’t get any financial aid unless you have some special skills or talents.

If you go to a school which charges $25,000, you should get $10,000 in financial aid in the form of scholarships, grants, work study, and loans. But, here’s the clincher. If you go to a school where the cost of attendance is $40,000, you shouldn’t have to pay any more than you would have at the $25,000 school. That is because your estimated family contribution is the same. So, the $40,000 school should come up with $25,000 in aid for you.

Therefore, it is important to not limit your choice of schools based on price.

Many colleges guarantee that they will meet the full need of all admitted students. Most are able to meet it for a good many of their students. If the school is not able to meet it through grants, loans, work study, and federally backed student loans, you have the option of taking out private loans to cover the difference.

The second category of scholarships comes in the form of merit aid. Who qualifies for financial aid grants? Well, when the college wants to attract a specific type of student, they will offer extra non-need based aid.

For instance, colleges often offer full athletic scholarships for people who play on their sports teams. This is particularly true for Division I football and men’s basketball teams.

In order to attract the best and the brightest, some colleges offer honors scholarships for students with high grades and test scores regardless of financial need. Scholarships are also frequently offered to students with specific artistic talents.

In order to provide a broad demographic diversity and to make up for past injustices, most schools offer some level of scholarship support to racial minorities.

Though women make up the majority of students on most campuses these days, there are still scholarships that are targeted at them, left over from the days when they were underrepresented.

But the real answer to the question “Who qualifies for financial aid” comes down to this: the people who qualify are the people who apply. Many people who consider themselves comfortably upper middle class are surprised at the amount of financial aid they qualify for.

Filed under: Scholarships For College

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