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Looking for how-to-pay-for-college book recommendation


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The only book that I have found at all helpful in understanding financial aid and merit aid and college costs in general is "The College Solution: A Guide for Everyone Looking for the Right School at the Right Price" by Lynn O'Shaughnessy.

 

In addition to having several sections on how to find the right college, the book provides a lot of information about both college costs and college admissions. The following sections deal specifically with the financial side --

 

Part I: Capturing financial aid

Part II: Capturing tuition discounts

Part VIII: Economizing for college

Part IX: Navigating the student loan maze

Part X: Maximizing college accounts

 

I strongly recommend the book. The only negative I can say about the book is that it was printed in 2008, too late to have helped me navigate the maze with my older two!

 

I own several other books that deal with college finances, and none are remotely as good as this one.

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Gwen, that book sounds interesting. Another one that's often recommended (& the one I learned from) is:

Paying for College Without Going Broke, published by Princeton Review, updated annually. It covers long-term strategies for paying for college, short-term strategies for receiving more financial aid, how to choose colleges, the FAFSA and Profile forms, understanding financial aid offers, bargaining, payment options, managing debt, and special circumstances. Nothing specific about college scholarship research, though.

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Another one that's often recommended (& the one I learned from) is:

Paying for College Without Going Broke, published by Princeton Review, updated annually.

 

Thanks, Kathy! (Hi! :001_smile:) This is funny -- so I looked up the book you recommended on our library's online catalog, and they had a photo of the cover, and I realized that my husband had gotten that exact book from the library a week or so ago, but it's been sitting -- unopened -- in our front entryway ever since :lol:. I think we're afraid to really get started, even though our heads are swirling with low-level panic, anecdotal horror stories, possibly counterproductive schemes like spending some of our savings on that new fence we've been needing for years, etc. ... I guess we should open the cover and start reading, haha!

 

~Laura

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or a book on scholarship research. . .

Whenever scholarships are mentioned, I like to chime in on something that we did not understand when ds worked hard to get scholarships, even joining the Army, and our costs ended up being more rather than less.

 

*If* you qualify for "need-based" grants on the FAFSA, and your school offers you those grants and some types of "school scholarship" that are based on merit but may be partly based on the FAFSA, then this would apply to you.

 

Every penny of the scholarship will go towards reducing the grant and the need-based scholarship, not to reducing the rest of your tuition, until you get enough scholarships to go over-and-above those types of grants. And for us, my son's Army and other scholarships caused us to end up "owing" more money to the school rather than less, because we were put in a different bracket or something.

 

So that's just to say that scholarships don't always help unless they really are huge or unless your family income is high enough to not qualify for any reductions. So you might not want to put a lot of effort into scholarships in some cases.

 

HTH,

Julie

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Julie - good point!

 

But again, this depends on the college, so please check the policies at the schools your child is interested in.

 

My kids' schools both allow outside merit scholarships to replace any student loans and/or work study in their financial aid packages. In other words, they could earn up to about 5000/year in outside merit awards and essentially keep the money. After that, any additional outside award money just replaces college need-based grants dollar-for-dollar.

Edited by Kathy in Richmond
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Every penny of the scholarship will go towards reducing the grant and the need-based scholarship, not to reducing the rest of your tuition, until you get enough scholarships to go over-and-above those types of grants.

 

HTH,

Julie

 

This was not true for my oldest. His major outside scholarship replaced one loan, but no grants. It reduced what we had to pay.

 

What happens in general is that a college can only offer federal aid that fills in the gap beyond the EFC as determined via the Fafsa (they can not lower the EFC without extenuating circumstances with federal aid - there are specific cases where they can - documented medical needs, etc).

 

For instance, if an EFC says the parents and student can pay $15000, then the college can only offer federal aid for the difference between the total college costs (not just tuition, but everything) and $15000 (called "need"). If they meet "full need" and an outside scholarship comes in, then yes, they have to cut federal aid first. Many colleges will cut loans. That's a good thing!

 

If the college did not meet full need, then the outside scholarship can be applied to the bill. It still doesn't replace the "need" amount.

 

If the college gave "COLLEGE AID" (not federal), they can meet as much as they want and outside scholarships can be extra. This is what happens when people get full rides (full merit scholarships). Those don't matter at all with FAFSA. Federal aid was never involved.

 

Overall, aside from offering federal aid that reduces the EFC, a college can do whatever they want.

 

My oldest's outside scholarship has been a huge blessing and reduced what we needed to pay. At a different school it could have been different.

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