You don’t have to major in math to know that college costs add up quickly. College tuition alone can cost tens of thousands of dollars or more, and you also have to take into account living expenses such as your dorm, apartment and daily needs. And to make matters even more difficult, most students have no time for a full-time job. Even if you have tried saving money for college for several years, the rising costs of college tuition probably overwhelm your savings.
Despite high college costs, however, federal programs and other programs have tried to give everyone a chance to attend college, financial backgrounds notwithstanding. If you have worked hard to get into a college, and spent the time researching and applying for schools, you should not worry that lack of money will prevent you from going to school. Although applying for federal financial aid requires some paperwork, the funding you could receive for your education will more than cover the extra time you put into putting together your application.
The first step to determining what kind of federal financial aid you can receive involves filling out a FAFSA, or Free Application for Federal Student Aid. By filling out this form, you will know where you stand compared with other students needing federal financial aid. You can receive federal financial aid directly from the government, and you may also get financial aid from your own school’s programs. Filling out a FAFSA can qualify you to receive many different grants and loans including Pell Grants for undergraduates, Federal Perkins Loans given by individual campuses, and Federal Work-Studies, or part-time jobs that help students pay for college in addition to giving them work experience in their area of study.
Although you can fill out a FAFSA online or in paper form, filling it out online will probably save you time. Be prepared to answer a lot of questions about your tax returns, bank statements, investment records, parents’ financial status, and a lot of other information. You can find a sample application with many of the questions asked on the FAFSA. Reading this sample form will allow you to gather all the information you will need for completing the real form so you can fill it out more efficiently. If you have all the required information on hand, it will probably take no longer than an hour to fill out the form. If you don’t have all the information at first, you can fill out part of the form and save it, and then come back to it later. You have up to 45 days before FAFSA automatically deletes your form.
You should also make sure you fill out the FAFSA on time, and the sooner the better. For the forthcoming academic year, you can fill out a form starting January 1 st, with a June 30 th deadline. However, you should try to apply as soon as possible because some schools actually have earlier deadlines than the federal deadline. Even though you can only fill out one application, you can still edit your application after you have submitted it by looking at it online. To review and edit your FAFSA, you will need a PIN (also required for signing your FAFSA online), and you can apply for a PIN online. Also, keep in mind that if you give false information on your FAFSA, you can be heavily fined and jailed.
By Lisa Zyga