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College TNT
Helping students and families navigate to and through college!
College TNT
Decoding College Costs and Financial Aid: Making Informed Decisions for Your Education
Unlock the secrets of navigating college costs and financial aid with our latest episode of College TNT! Host Jen Schoen promises to transform your understanding of the true cost of attending college, beyond just the sticker price. Through a thorough breakdown of the Cost of Attendance (COA), you'll gain clarity on both direct expenses like tuition and room and board, as well as those sneaky indirect costs such as textbooks and personal expenses. Discover how tools like the FAFSA and the Student Aid Index can demystify the financial aid process, bridging the gap between what your family can realistically afford and the overall expenses of a college education.
You will become more savvy about financial aid options, as Jen tackles essential questions that could impact your choice of school. From understanding how colleges meet full demonstrated need to the ins and outs of work-study programs, this episode equips you with the knowledge to make informed decisions about your college education. Learn how even the most prestigious colleges can become financially accessible, and why starting this conversation early is crucial for both students and families. Don't let financial fears dictate your educational journey; instead, gain the confidence to balance affordability with the right college choice.
For more about me - my experience and my speaking, check out the links below.
You can reach me at jen@firstgenfm.com.
https://www.linkedin.com/in/jenschoen/
https://www.firstgenfm.com/speaker-high-school-educators-students-parents
Hello and welcome back, or welcome to College TNT, a podcast and YouTube video series that is designed to get you to and through college. That's what the TNT stands for. My job, as Jennifer Schoen call me Jen is to help prepare you for college, help you navigate the college admissions process and then make a smooth transition through your first year of college. So that's what I'm here to talk about today and every day it's Jen back for more College TNT and talking about financial aid and a little bit how it works. A primer as it will on financial aid. So I talked in the last episode about the FAFSA Free Application for Federal Student Aid, as I know you know now, because you listened, what it is, what it does and what it helps the financial aid office at a college do. The other part I wanted to spend some time talking about is the cost of attendance at an institution. So this episode is all about cost of attendance. So the cost of attendance is exactly what it sounds like. It is the cost of attendance. It is the cost to attend a college or university for one full year, okay, so an academic year. This is what this college costs COA Cost of attendance. So you'll be seeing COA a lot too, but now you know what that means. It covers both the direct costs and the indirect cost. Now what does that mean? So the direct cost is basically what the university gets paid directly. So tuition, room and board, which is basically housing and meals and fees and colleges do have a lot of fees that are in there too, can be most of the times like student activities. Fees can be an athletic fee, fees that get your students some additional services that are part of that university, and fees vary at all the places that you're going to be looking at to go to college. So tuition, room and board, housing and meals fees those are the direct costs, like I said, paid directly to the college.
Speaker 1:They also factor in indirect costs in the cost of attendance because they know there are other things you're going to need to pay for to go to college. So, for example, you need books. You're going to need textbooks and supplies. There may be real, tangible textbooks. There may be online textbooks or online programs you need to get, depending on your major. There may be computer programs, all of those things. Those are books and supplies. They know you're going to have to buy them, so they consider those in cost of attendance.
Speaker 1:They also consider transportation, getting back and forth to home. Now are they going to say, well, you live really far away, so we're going to give you a lot more money? No, it's probably a general number that they have that they just plug in for that transportation number to get you back and forth to home. And then, finally, living and personal expenses.
Speaker 1:Even though everything tuition, room and board and fees are covered, they know you're going to need personal expenses for anything that's like you need, like we hope you're going to take a shower and be clean and you're going to need some clothes and maybe some new sneakers. That was always my favorite thing to get in the fall. It meant school was starting again to get new sneakers. I still love that now in the fall, but those are the things that they're going to count in there as well. And again, that's going to be a flat number. It's not going to be like, well, you need designer clothes, but you're shopping over here, so let's make a different number. Every student is going to get the same number for transportation and for personal living expenses.
Speaker 1:So those are some ideas about what you're going to, what the cost of attendance covers when you send in your FAFSA and you get your your student aid index. That's going to give the institution a number to work on and is going to tell them if your student aid index is here and the cost of attendance is up here. So let's say your student aid index says all right, it looks like you know this family can afford to pay $5,000 towards the college education, but the cost of the institution is I'm going to use this round, round numbers $50,000. Okay, then that means for that year there's a $45,000 gap that financial aid is going to try to cover. Okay, does that make sense? So if you have a student aid index that says your family can afford $5,000, that gets subtracted from whatever the cost of attendance is. And then what's remaining is the amount that financial aid is going to try to cover through grants, which are great you don't have to pay back, through loans, which of course you do have to pay back, and work, study. Those are the three things that the financial aid office will package for you. So so that's how that works, so that the maximum amount of funding financial aid can give a student is the full cost of attendance. They can't go above that. That's like the hard line and those are federal guidelines that are out there.
Speaker 1:So, as you can tell, the cost of attendance is going to vary by institution. Each college is going to have a different cost of attendance based on its tuition fees and its room and board and the housing and meals what those costs. So when you look at applying to colleges, don't just look at the cost of attendance. Also look at the kind of financial aid they provide, because a college may look more expensive, like if you look at the sticker price and you say like oh my gosh, this college is $70,000. This one's 50,000. Like I'm going to apply to this one. Or this one's 20,000. Like I'm going to apply to this one. If you have a great school that you want to apply to that's in that seventy thousand range, apply and then see what your financial aid package looks like. Okay, don't rule it out just because of the sticker price is what I'm saying? Because colleges, they vary in the cost of attendance, that's the truth, but they also vary in how they do financial aid packaging.
Speaker 1:You will hear that some colleges cover full demonstrated need. Okay, so that's that, so that we'll go back to that. You can afford $5,000. The school cost $50,000. You have $45,000 in demonstrated need, that's what you need to go to that college. If a college says we meet full demonstrated need, they're going to cover that full $45,000. Now it doesn't mean they're going to cover it all with grants and scholarships. Hopefully you get your FAFSA in by the priority deadline and they give you a lot of grants. But you just don't know until you complete everything and send that in. So the full covering your demonstrated need is great, right, they're going to give you everything you need. It may be it'll be a combination of things of grants and loans and work study, but it's going to cover everything.
Speaker 1:Some colleges may not meet full demonstrated need, so you can pay $5,000. You have $45,000 in demonstrated need. The college may only cover $ thousand dollars of your need, so you have to come up not only with the original five thousand but with the additional five thousand to cover that gap. So when you're visiting colleges, when you're looking at them on the website, take a look and do a little research, ask the questions about do you meet full demonstrated need, and that will open up like a whole bunch of questions that you may want to follow up on and it may help you consider what colleges to go to.
Speaker 1:Other colleges kind of go another step further and I'm lucky because at Northeastern we do this is we say that if you come and we give you your financial aid package, that financial aid package will stay the same throughout your time at northeastern. So what that means is, if we're meeting that full, uh demonstrated financial need, we will continue to do that even as costs rise. If tuition goes up, if housing and meals go up, the the your, your financial aid package will stay the same and go up with that, which I think is fantastic, because then you have a plan. You know that that is going to be the same throughout your time at the institution. Some institutions may give you a lot of great money up front and then you go there, but you may see your financial aid go down in the following years because they have you on campus, see your financial aid go down in the following years because they have you on campus and it's I don't want to sound cynical, but you know they're doing that to get their enrollment goals and they want you to be there and they're going to give you a great financial aid package, but whether or not it stays the same, you may not get a guarantee like that. So that's just something else to consider. Okay, as you're looking at the colleges, do they meet demonstrated financial lead and do they make any promises or guarantees about that financial aid package continuing throughout your time at that college?
Speaker 1:Again, more questions to ask. I'm trying to give you answers, but I'm also giving you questions to ask as you go to each institution and discover what it is you're looking for at that college, because being able to afford the college is important and, of course, having that conversation with you and your students about what you can afford or what the financial aid package might look like when they want to apply, or when you want to apply to a school that is 80 000 a year. That's going to be something to consider. But, like I said, don't just look at the sticker price to decide where you's going to be something to consider. But, like I said, don't just look at the sticker price to decide where you're going to apply, because you may get a better financial aid package at a more expensive institution because they have the money to give out more financial aid. So better to apply and then get your FAFSA in. Do your CSS profile if that's required.
Speaker 1:Get the financial aid package in and then make a determination to say, okay, now that we have all the information on where you got accepted, on what your financial aid package looks like, now we can sit down as a family and talk about okay, what does that look like for us? What can we afford? Is there any money? Is there a gap there in the financial aid that we might have to cover? How might we cover that? If that's important and you can talk through that, okay. So finances are really important, but also going to the place that's right for you is important and it's a balance that that you as a student, that your family if you're listening as a parent, have to really determine and work through. And the earlier you start to talk about that, the better.
Speaker 1:You can Google cost of attendance at Muhlenberg College, let's say, and it will give you the cost of attendance and it will also give you what the typical financial aid is like for that particular, for your particular income. So you can see. You can go down the list and see okay, if my income is $30,000, I might get this financial aid package. If my income is $200,000, I might get this financial aid package and everything in between you can like. Like I said, a simple google search will give you that information on cost of attendance, uh, as well as what your financial aid package might look like. So that'll give you a little bit more than just the sticker price of the college, of going to that college for the year. Uh, how far your financial aid might go based on your family income. Now, again, family income is one thing, the FAFSA is something else, because it a lot more information than just your income. But it's a good starting place to go and to look for that. And colleges have to have this information on their website. So go ahead and look at all the individual colleges.
Speaker 1:When you visit the colleges, or if you can talk to an admissions person that visits your high school or there's a college fair going on in your area in your high school, ask those questions about how they do financial aid. Ask do you meet full demonstrated need? What different kinds of grants and scholarship aids do you provide? And ask about work-study. Now, work-study, most people like grants. Scholarships I get that, I know what that is. Loans, okay, I get that, I know what that is, but work-study is a little different.
Speaker 1:So work-study is where a student might get in their financial aid package $4,000 of work-study money. That does not go directly to the university. You pay anything that means a student can earn that amount and it's part of their financial aid. So they may have to cover some of their own things with that money. Some of those living expenses, personal expenses, books, supplies, transportation. You know that may come out of that money that they are earning. So they're expecting, if they put work, study money and that a student will get a job on campus and that they will work and that they will earn the money to pay for some of these things themselves. So they're including that when they do the financial aid packaging For a student. All they need to do is get a work-study position and then they get paid and the work-study position typically opens up more job opportunities on campus because more people want to hire students who have work-study than those who don't have work-study. So the benefit of work-study is that there are more options open for students who want to work on campus and sometimes even off campus, but mostly who want to work on campus.
Speaker 1:For me, if I'm an employer, if I'm hiring some students to work for me, I want to hire students who have work-study because work-study money federal work-study funds pay for half of that student's salary. So if they're making $16 an hour, my budget's paying $8 an hour and the work-study funds that they received that $4,000, is paying the other $8 an hour. So for me I can hire two people and only pay $16 an hour for those two, versus hiring one person and paying the full $16 out of my budget. So I hope that makes some sense. It may be more information than you needed about work study, but if you see that in there, it does mean that the student to access those funds, the student will have to work to get that money and then be expected to pay towards some of those expenses that are part of the indirect costs of college books, transportation, personal living expenses. So I hope that covers cost of attendance and what it means and some questions that you might want to ask about the cost of attending any particular college that you're interested in applying to. So ask those questions, reach out to those admissions folks, take a look on their website, do a quick Google of cost of attendance at X University and see what you can come up with there and you'll get some really good information as you start to gather things.
Speaker 1:If I can help. As always, you can reach out to me at jen at firstjenfmcom. You can also find me at College TNT, both on Facebook and Instagram. I am more than happy to answer your questions about this and about anything college-related and financial aid. If I don't know the answer, I know tons of experts who could really dive deep in there for some specific questions if you have them for me. So thank you so much for listening. I always appreciate talking with you and if you would be so kind as to rate and review the podcast and share it with other people so that they can find it and get some good information From me, who is now just hitting 40 years of experience in higher ed, that's a lot. It's a big number. I would be more than happy to give you other information. So thank you so much for listening and I will talk to you again next week. Bye you.