All right. It's time now to stretch your dollar
. This is where we give you tangible tips to
help you make the most of your money. And
today we're talking about something that's caused headaches for tens
of millions of people and that's paying for college and
also getting financial aid. Now earlier we sat down
with will see the co-founder and CEO of Summer that
for some advice on making those big decisions. So
will, let's talk us through how parents and students
should approach financial aid packages. What do they need
to know? Yeah, it's a great question,
I think right now is an exciting time. Thousands
and thousands of students and families are finding out about
that. They're getting into college. It's an exciting
time. But we all know that getting into college
also comes with quite a high expense for most Americans
. It's the most expensive cost they will experience second
to me home ownership. So it's important to know
exactly what to do when you get to this process
. Can you break down some of the different types
of aid? Like you have scholarships, you have
grants, you have loans, you have work study
, you have offers. What's the difference? Yeah
, there are four main components that every award letter
may include some of or all four. So it
includes scholarships, grants, work, study and loans
. The most important thing for folks to is what
is actually going to be taken off the total price
of the school and the cost of attendance versus what
actually needs to get paid back. So the biggest
mistake that I see folks make is that they look
at the loans included in an offer packet and they
assume that it's actually taking off the price of the
school. But the thing is loans do need to
be repaid most scholarships and grants, however, do
not. And so what we really advise families is
to make sure that you're talking to the school,
you're asking the right questions. If something is confusing
, sometimes schools can play tricks and make it seem
that a loan is actually written in a certain way
that might not look like a loan, you always
want to ask questions and be sure. So scholarships
tend to be merit based aid, meaning it's based
on your performance, how you know the quality of
what you were able to achieve in the classroom and
then grants tend to be more need based based on
your ability to pay for the tuition. And so
those are two different things that you definitely want to
maximize. But loans you always want to be careful
that you are not assuming that it's just taking off
the cost for what we call the net price,
which is the total cost minus everything after grants and
scholarships, the component that does not need to be
repaid. Now you gave so many great tips.
Do you have any other tips when you're reviewing all
these documents that you get, that might be helpful
when you're thinking about what to accept? Yeah.
Another tip that I think we find very helpful for
families that are navigating this that we always recommend is
make sure you get all the costs factored in.
A lot of schools don't like to include all the
costs on the award letter and that may include things
like transportation, room and board, the cost of
textbooks, anything that you may be, you know
, any clothes or food, anything that could be
in addition to the tuition itself, you want to
be able to factor that in and not just for
the year you're there, but over the years that
you'll be in school, 1st, 2nd, 3rd
and in some cases, 4th, 3rd and 4th
years for folks going to four year programs. Now
, when you're considering things like textbooks and maybe things
that might not consider tuition are those usually covered by
scholarships and a lot of these loans, not always
. And so that's a great question. You definitely
want to check and it's always good to ask when
in doubt. I think a lot of families we
find get nervous, they, you know, they
just got accepted, they've been tip toeing trying to
get that offer, getting the, getting the acceptance
and then when you get the award letter, it's
tempting to just sort of say, ok, great
and accept the reality is that a lot of these
award letters are not Apples to Apples. You may
be applying to multiple schools comparing different award letters from
different programs. You really want to recognize that different
schools do not standardize them. And so unlike the
common app, which for a lot of schools has
a similar application across award letters are different. So
always ask questions with the financial aid office. Ask
what does this mean? What does this entail?
Does it include the textbooks? Does it include any
other expense that you may be debating? And then
in turn, get that information and it's always possible
to appeal. Folks don't realize, but you can
appeal if you have a better package from one school
than the other, you can certainly take that to
the school. That might be the less good package
and say this is something we're seeing from another school
. Can you meet it? And that is a
way to try to get more from maybe your dream
school if they're not offering you what you want?