Ask Me Questions

Financial Aid/Scholarships

Now, I suppose I'm a good one to ask about financial aid and scholarships. I do have a full ride to college including my tuition, room & board, textbooks, miscellaneous fees, etc. It covers pretty much everything. The only thing I had to pay for was my computer and my actual supplies like notebooks and pens. But, it's a good thing I'm paying for my own laptop because I used my own credit card (that I got for this purpose) to help build credit for myself since I'm not taking out any student loans to help build credit. But enough about that. You didn't come here to listen to me ramble on about useless shit. You're here for information on financial aid and scholarships. However, this information is only relevant to the U.S. Sorry, but I'm from the U.S. and haven't spent time researching other countries financial aid information.

Also, I'm going to tell about my financial aid and how I got certain amounts.

FAFSA

To begin, financial aid is important to file for. It now opens in October when it used to open in January. It's best to fill it out as soon as you can because it's kind of a first come first serve basis, meaning the earlier you apply the more you're likely to get in aid. Now, I forgot an important detail. You apply for financial aid by filling out FAFSA (Free Application for Federal Student Aid). Some people don't want to apply for FAFSA because they feel like they won't get anything because their parents make too much. But a lot of schools in the U.S. will make you fill out FAFSA to get any merit scholarships you earned. In my opinion, though, it's always good to fill out FAFSA just in case they do offer you something. That being said, FAFSA offers various types of awards/aid. I got the full amount they'll give for each award/aid, and I'm going to use the abbreviations they do (but I'll put what the stand for). A lot of it is based on your parents' tax information. You can now upload the tax info directly from the IRS website. I can't tell you really how because my mom filled out most of my FAFSA because it dealt with info your parents should know.

They consider your EFC (Expected Family Contribution), which is the amount they expect your family to contribute to your education (again this based on your parents tax info along with how much they make). EFC is broken into 2 parts. Parent Contribution and Student Contribution. Parent Contribution is exactly like it sounds. It's what your parents are expected to contribute. They consider both parents' (unless you only live with one of them like I do, then they only take the one you live with) income and assets. Assets include cash, savings, checkings, money market accounts, investments and real estate holdings, and business equity (if they own their own business). They also consider the size of your family. So if you have a family like mine. Since technically my step-dad isn't my step-dad because my mom isn't married to him. Also, he doesn't technically live with us because his address on all his bills goes to his mom's house (it's actually his house because it went to him when his dad passed) and nothing for my mom's house is in his name. So on my FAFSA it has my mom as a single parent with 5 kids. My family is also on aid from Job & Family Services so that was taken into account too. So my Parent Contribution is $0. But if you have a family with both parents and only one sibling your parents are going to more likely to be expected to contribute. Now for Student Contribution is what you may be expected to contribute. It's based on your income and a part of your savings. So if your parents set up a saving account in your name they're going to take it into consideration. But if you're like me and don't have a job (I didn't when I filled out FAFSA and I don't know. I only had one for the summer, and I stopped working there at the beginning of the month.) or a savings account with more than $200 then they won't expect you to contribute anything.

The second part they consider is Need. If you have low EFC most universities will take your need into consideration and help bridge the gap between the cost to go there and your EFC (or lack thereof).

Now, I'll go into the different awards/aids they offer. Most of these are grants. Grants you don't have to pay back. They come from the federal government, state, or university. They offer a few different grants.