Financial Aid
If your parents are divorced, you may have difficulty filling out the FAFSA. It's important to take the time to talk to both parents to figure out how to answer some of the questions the form asks.
While having a driver’s license will make filing the FAFSA easier, other forms of identification are acceptable. If you don’t have a license, a state-issued ID, which is easy to obtain, will work.
Financial aid doesn’t just appear out of thin air. The federal government and other organizations create regulations and budgets that allow them to dole it out through appropriate channels. There are a wide variety of programs at the federal, state, and private levels to help students pay for their higher education. Financial aid mainly includes […]
Filling out the Free Application for Federal Student Aid, or FAFSA, can be confusing, especially when it comes to questions about whether you’re a dependent or independent student. If you’re under the age of 24, the federal government assumes you’re a dependent student for the purposes of financial aid—and you can’t simply choose to file as […]
If your parents will not or cannot help you pay for college, you still have options to cover the costs. First, fill out the FAFSA. Next, look for scholarships, places to work while in school, and private student loans.
The FAFSA takes around 1 hour to complete if you do it online or 3 hours if you do it by paper. It takes around 3 to 5 days to receive the results if you include an email or 7 to 10 days if you only included a physical address.
An ombudsman is someone appointed within the government or a private organization to investigate complaints against poor administration of programs. If you are having trouble with your student loans, there are two student loan ombudsman groups that you should know about: the Federal Student Aid Ombudsman Group and the CFPB Student Loan Ombudsman Group. Both exist
If you drop out of college before your school's deadline for dropping courses, you likely won't be refunded already-paid tuition. Furthermore, if you drop out after 120 days of federal student loans being disbursed, you will owe at least part of the loan back.
If you want to send your FAFSA information to more than 10 schools, you will need to wait until you receive your Student Aid Report and then have it sent to them by going online, calling, or sending paper mail to the Federal Student Aid Program.
Like it or not, your parents’ financial situation affects your ability to get financial aid for school. The federal government takes the position that if you want a college education, you and your parents (or other family members) should take the lion’s share of paying for it unless there is a compelling reason why you […]