FINANCIAL AID TIPS

FINANCIAL AID WIZARD

When it comes to planning your college education, the cost of attending college should not be your main concern. While a college education can be costly, it is a lifelong investment in yourself. Even though cost is important to consider in making your decision, we encourage to not let cost be the only reason for choosing one institution over another.

Unlike other costly purchases, you can and likely will get help paying for college. This help is typically made up of grants, scholarships and loans. There is a lot of financial aid available — tens of billions of dollars go out every year — and some of that could be yours.

The U.S. Department of Education's feature Student Aid on the Web provides an online tool to help you learn about and consider the financial aspects of attending college. The Financial Aid Wizard allows you to plan out, in 7 easy steps, your entire financial aid packages online! Notice we said "packages" — our wizard will help you find and calculate virtually everything you need for any and all schools you're interested in. It will show you the deadlines for filing financial aid applications for the colleges you select, walk you through scholarship searches, help you estimate your expected family contribution and federal aid, and provide you a tool to interpret and analyze your financial aid award letters.

In order to use the wizard to your maximum benefit, we recommend you go through the steps in order, starting with Step 1, Estimate Costs.

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