Merit Scholarships: Advice from an Admissions Officer

Webinar Transcription

2024-08-08 – Merit Scholarships: Advice from an Admissions Officer

Anna: Hello, everyone. Welcome. Good evening. Good afternoon. Good morning. Whatever time it is, wherever you’re joining us from in the world, we are so happy you’re here for our webinar on, “Merit Scholarships and Advice from an Admissions Officer.” My name is Anna Vande Velde. I’ll be your moderator today. And I’m also a senior advisor here at CollegeAdvisor.

They’ve asked me to share just briefly about my background. I’ve been with the company for about three years. In addition to working with students one on one, I’m a captain on our essay review team and a member of our webinar team. I studied psychology at Carnegie Mellon, thought I was going to be a clinical psychologist, but life is full of interesting twists.

So I ended up at Harvard Law School where I graduated a couple of years back. So in addition to my work with CollegeAdvisor, I’m a nonprofit defense attorney and I live in Ottawa, Ontario. That’s more than you needed to know about me. So I’m going to move on to orient everyone with the webinar timing.

We’re going to start off with a presentation from our panelists and answer your questions in a live Q& A. You can submit your questions in the Q& A tab at any point throughout the presentation and just know we’ll get to as many as we can at the end. On the sidebar you can also download our slides under the handouts tab and like I said you can start submitting your questions.

So, without further ado, I’m going to turn it over to our panelists who were really lucky to be with us tonight. Frank to introduce himself.

Frank: Thank you Anna. Uh, my name is Frank Ranieri and I’ve been with CollegeAdvisor almost four years now, um, in the financial aid specialist role. Um, I’ve worked in higher education, uh, in some form or fashion for the last roughly 15 years.

Um, I’m from New York. I went to a small state school in New York and played basketball. And, um, you know, once my NBA dreams didn’t work out, I ended up working at a number of different schools, um, and very much enjoy helping students, families, you know, make well thought out decisions for themselves. And their future.

And I also work in youth athletics currently as well. Um, so yeah, that’s, that’s my background. Um, and I’m just going to dive in here.

Anna: Yeah. So before you do, actually, I’m just going to do a poll of the room just to see, um, what grade folks are in, which might help you get a sense of who you’re speaking with.

Um, so I’m going to launch that poll. Please let us know what grade you’re in. If you’re here as a support person. a parent, guardian, teacher, you can just select other. And while we wait for your responses, Frank, I’m actually wondering if I can put you on the spot and ask, knowing everything you know now as an expert, is there anything you would do differently if you had to redo your college admissions process?

Frank: Oh, that’s a good question. Um, the only thing I wish I would have done a little different was going to the school for more help because my mom actually lost her job going from my sophomore to junior year. And both my mom and myself didn’t really know anything. So we just tried to figure it out the best we could.

And looking back at what I know now, there would have been some sort of help, rather it was the school or professional judgment or potential state or federal grants, um, that we didn’t even think to ask for. So that’s what I would do different. But as far as the initial admissions process, like I said, I was more geared towards what school fit me both best for basketball.

I probably shouldn’t have been that worried about it looking at the long run, but you know, I don’t have any regrets there.

Anna: Yeah, no, that’s a great point for folks to know that if their financial situation changes in college, That they should go talk to someone in the, in the financial office, so great advice.

Um, just so you know, in the room we have about 40 percent 11th grade, 20 percent 10th grade, and then 40 percent other. Um, so given the topic, I’m guessing they are parents. Um, I’m going to close the poll. And then now, Frank, I’m going to hand it over to you, uh, to walk us through your material.

Frank: All right.

Awesome. And I know the bulk of this is going to be about scholarships and that’s what um, this, this webinar is for, but I like to always give a background on kind of what is financial aid? What are these terms you’re going to hear of? Um, the simply put, like the very first thing is, you know, what is the FAFSA?

The FAFSA is the free form from the federal government That school is required to be, for you to be reviewed for financial need. Now, even if you know your income is way too high where you’re not going to get any funding or you’re pretty confident you won’t, in regards to scholarships, some schools will not review you for internal scholarships without doing the FAFSA.

So at the very least, year one, I encourage all families to do the FAFSA. Um, uh, they’ve made the form a lot easier over the years. Um, and that’s kind of my role within the company is helping families. You know, what is the fastball? How do you fill it out? How do you complete it? What does it mean? Um, it’s based on financial need, meaning, um, it’s going to look at a family’s financial picture, income assets, um, things of that nature.

Um, and it’s, it’s what’s going to be used for. It says here federal loans and grants. Some schools use the FAFSA to determine their institutional funding as well. Um, the CSS profile, some schools require this. This is through the college board website. Um, if a school is asking for FAFSA and profile, the profile will be the form that’s used to determine, um, Grant money from the school.

Um, again, typically the CSS profile schools are going to be your more expensive, tend to be private, tend to be the ones that are a little tougher to get accepted to, but tend to give out a lot of grant funding.

Now, what are the differences? And maybe I should have started with this slide first. But, um, what I try and explain to families is that The term financial aid is not the free money. Um, financial aid is the umbrella of everything. So rather you get a grant from a school, a scholarship, or a loan, that’s all part of financial aid.

The, um, easiest way, um, to remember it is a little bullet point in line two. Um, grants are need based, meaning it’s based on your, you and your family’s income, assets, and they will take a look sometimes at expenses, where scholarships tend to be merit based. So, um, meaning it’s based on your academic achievement, um, rather that’s grade scores, GPA, You know, they do look at some other things, which we’ll talk about later, um, but that makes up the free money.

And then there is also loans. Um, there’s the direct loans, which is going to be the federal loans in the student’s name. There’s the parent loan, which is the federal loan. in the parent’s name, still from the federal government, and then there’s private student loans where, um, the student is the borrower and a cosigner is needed and you end up borrowing from a third party.

Rather it’s a bank, a local credit union or an online student lending institution. Um, but that’s what kind of makes up. Your financial aid,

um, how can you be aware of scholarships and financial aid when creating a school list? Um, most schools have a net cost calculator or a net price calculator. Um, a lot of them will be directly on the school’s financial aid website. I know the CSS profile has a general one. or the college board website has a general one, uh, and coordinates with the CSS profile.

Um, the net price calculators are good tools, but they’re not the end all be all. Um, a lot of times they are geared towards, um, not geared towards, but the, uh, the internal calculations can be a year or even two years old from the current form. So it’s not always that accurate. And if you’re, uh, Uh, business owner, rather small or large, or have a percentage of a business, um, the net price calculators can tend to not work, um, because it’s more geared towards, okay, here’s your W 2.

Here’s your taxes. Here’s your assets. You can expect roughly this, this kind of cost. Um, full need debt free, um, are some terms that schools will have. Uh, you’ll also see the term need blind versus need aware. Um, you want to kind of be paying attention to what these schools mean. Um, so if a school advertises that they meet full need and they, and they award debt free, it doesn’t mean, um, That they’re going to give you a full aid package.

It just means they’re going to meet your financial need without a loan. Meeting your financial need is determined by the FAFSA and potentially the CSS profile. So what those forms determine your financial need as might not be the same as what you feel your financial need is. So, um, it’s just something to remember.

Um, so yeah, so essentially, um, there can still be a difference, obviously, between. what aid you’re given and what a school thinks you can cost, which, but they’re not going to automatically fill it with loan. That’s what like a debt free award letter. Um, uh, state schools in state versus out of state. A lot of times your state schools might not offer that much free money because they’re giving you a discounted cost by lowering the tuition by being an in state, um, for your private schools, um, private schools, for the most part aren’t changing their tuition if you’re in state versus out of state.

However, there are a lot of states that give additional grants to in state residents. Um, and you know, sometimes they state schools can offer more scholarships to the in state residents. But again, that’s a case by case based on the school and the state itself.

What is a merit scholarship? So getting into scholarship, a merit scholarship is free money for school. That’s typically based on something other than financial need. Um, so like I said, instantly, internally, when you apply to a school, most schools are automatically going to review you for their internal merit scholarship.

Um, like majority of the time, these are not based on financial need. However, like I said, If you don’t fill the FAFSA, admissions can put you in a different pile. So, um, when you’re applying to a school, the admissions office are usually the ones that are reviewing your scholarships as well, which is kind of a misnomer because a scholarship is financial aid, but the admissions office is the one making that determining factor.

So, you know, you apply to a school, As soon as you apply, you’ll have a, you know, a student ID and everything will be linked to that student ID, your FAFSA, your application, your demographics, your address, all of that. If you’re, uh, don’t do a FAFSA, a lot of schools will put you in a separate bucket and be like, we’ll review you for admissions, but we’re not reviewing you for a scholarship.

Most schools don’t like pronounce that, but that’s something that happens internally. So again, um, I would do the FAFSA year one, even if you’re confident that your income is too high. Um, just so you don’t take yourself out of the running for a merit scholarship.

What are the different types of merit scholarship? So I kind of touched on this before. There’s institutional versus external. And then most, like I said, are going to be need blind. So they’re not going to say, you know, let’s review the lower, the lowest income families for scholarship. It’s just going to be, did you do the FAFSA or not?

Okay, we’re reviewing you for admissions. Um, do we want to accept this person? And do we want to entice them to come here by giving them free money? Based on their, uh, again, the, the pillars of a, of a merit scholarship are going to be your GPA. Um, it’s going to be your class rank, it’s going to be standardized tests, and then it’s going to be extracurricular and or philanthropy.

Um, those are kind of the pillars, um, for scholarships. But again, Every school is different. For example, you know, some schools may look very heavily at their SATs. You know, we, um, we really care about having a high average of SATs. The students that get above X amount automatically get X amount of scholarship to go towards the school.

Some care more about class rank. Some care more about extracurricular. It really depends on the school and what they’re looking for in a student population. Um, as I said, most are need blind. Um, Um, they’re looking at your excellence, your achievements. Um, you know, what honor did you make honor society? Did, have you ever, um, you know, did you play sports and instrument?

Did you volunteer things of that nature? And sometimes they can be demographic based, meaning as I stated before. Some schools may not give a break in tuition because you’re in state, but you might get opportunity to be reviewed for scholarships because they want to offer more to the in state population.

Or, you know, if you, if you plan on commuting, sometimes schools will give more of a scholarship to help you out. Um, to keep more room on campus, things of that nature.

Where can I find merit scholarships? Um, again, a big thing with me is always going to be reviewing a school’s website. As I stated before, um, that’s you know, one thing I didn’t do, um, when I was, when I was a student myself. So even at this time, um, you know, uh, for you juniors in high school, for example, um, the seniors in high school can’t even apply to the FAFSA until October 1st.

So, um, you juniors, you have a whole year and a couple months before you can even complete the FAFSA. But again, researching now, having an idea of where you want to go, what the cost is, what you can afford, um, what schools you’re looking for, now is the time to know what scholarships do they offer. There are some schools, for example, that give a lot of academic scholarships, um, based on your high school merit.

There are some schools, like the Ivy League, that don’t give any scholarship. Um, the Ivy League, they do give, they’re very generous with their grant funding. Um, but it is based on financial need alone. Um, the Ivy League typically has a sentiment of like, you know, getting accepted is the, is the difficult part.

And then getting grant funding can help you pay based on your financial need. Um, because everybody there is going to be a stellar, uh, academics. Um, so on financial aid websites, on the admissions office, on the applicant portal, you should be able to see these things again, most schools that do scholarships, merit institutional merit scholarships, it’s going to be an automatic review.

meaning by applying to the school, you’re automatically applying for their scholarships. There are some schools that don’t. For example, I believe Vanderbilt has a secondary application for a scholarship. I believe there are some other engineering schools that do that. Um, uh, some of your performing arts schools, um, we’ll have, um, um, some sort of, uh, Uh, rehearsal that you’d have to go through, um, to some sort of a performance to be graded by the admissions to then see if you get a scholarship.

Um, but again, majority of schools automatically reviewed. Um, and again, the admissions office are going to be typically the ones reviewing these scholarships. Um, you know, they’re, they’re awarding. the money based on whatever, whatever criteria that school is looking for. Um, now there are also external scholarships.

External scholarships are going to be third party scholarships, um, that a student has to apply for, which is still free money. Uh, but then you can essentially take it to whatever school you go to. So for example, you know, if you’re applying to, you know, Duke, Syracuse and Texas. All those, all three of them will have their own internal review for an internal scholarship.

All three are going to have the same, roughly the same application, same test scores, everything about you. One could give you a major, a large academic scholarship. One could give you a medium and one could give you none at all. Um, and you know, if, if, um, you know, Duke wants to give you a scholarship, that doesn’t mean that.

Other schools are going to give it to you. Now you can reach out to a school and say, you know, school X offered me this much money in a scholarship. Is there any way you can match? You can certainly have that discussion. Um, some schools will, some schools will not. When it comes to external scholarships, you’re applying, you’re, uh, through a third party foundation.

Rather, it’s a company. Um, you know, a non profit, um, a local church or what have you, whoever agrees to give you that money, they’re typically going to send the money directly to whatever school you tell them that you’re going to. Most outside scholarships will not send the money directly to a student. So what happens is, you know, um, you apply to say, you know, Coca Cola has a, has, um, They award a lot of students like a small amount of scholarship, but if you apply to them and they say, congratulations, you’re awarded, they’re not going to give you any money until you let them know what school you’re going to.

Um, but again, you can take that to whichever school. It’s not, you’re not bound to one school like you are with the internal. Merit scholarships. Um, the external, um, how do you find them? There’s scholarship search apps, um, going Mary, scholarly Scholarship Owl. There’s also scholarships.com. Um, there’s fastweb.com.

Um, there’s a few others, but essentially, um. The onus does fall on the student to apply for these outside scholarships. Um, so you want to basically be applying for as many as you can, um, through, you know, uh, your high school counselor should have some lists, any group program, activity leaders, uh, alumni networks.

Um, a lot of times there’ll be external resources on individual schools website. So a school will tell you, you know, go here to apply for an outside scholarship.

And that’s exactly what you want to do. You know, um, when it comes to group, whether you’re a member of a church or something like that, sometimes that can be of help. Um, and you do want to get creative with that. Um, and Um, when is a good time to think about merit scholarships? Um, I kind of stated all of this before.

Right now is a good time to be starting. So, for example, the websites I gave, those are really only going to be geared towards seniors in high school, or rather you’re a continuing student. So, maybe you’re an incoming sophomore, junior, senior. So it’s really too early for you sophomores and most juniors to even be applying for outside scholarships, but you want to be thinking about it.

You know, um, any college prep classes you have, speak to your peers, speak to your teachers about how and where to find scholarships.

Well, what are the requirements? How do you qualify for an external scholarship? It’s based on the awarding foundation slash company. It can be need blind or need aware. Um, and it can be specifics, you know, your race, your gender, your religion. Um, you know, uh, um, so what I mean by it can be need aware, it’s all dependent upon the third party company.

Right. So it could say, you know, you have to have a GPA of 3.8. You have to have an SAT score of 1400 and you have to, in your family’s income, has to be low, be below 100k. So in those cases, that would be considered a need aware scholarship. Again, most scholarships are not going to be need aware. It’s more about completing what they ask for.

Um, And, and you do want to get specific, you know, like, um, um, based on where you’re at in the country, you know, um, if you’re, um, you know, looking based on something specific about use, you might really want to think about, like, what makes you, you, and then find scholarships where. Um, like I said, there are major companies that offer scholarships, your Coca-Cola, your Apple, your Google scholarships, and they do award a lot of students a small amount.

Um, so I do, I don’t encourage you to stay away from them. I do encourage you to apply for those, but you also want to apply to scholarships where maybe you’re only competing against 5 or 10 other people instead of 500. Um, and so that’s where you want to get really granular with. How you apply,

um, how can you access if you’re eligible for marriage scholarships? You do have the ability to follow up with these applications. You want to keep track of the external scholarships you’ve applied for. I know a few of the scholarship websites like scholarships. com and Going Married, they will actually keep track of the ones you’ve applied for when you applied.

A lot of them even tell you how long the application will take. which are all very nice features. Um, you know, uh, you can also have like a Google sheet or an Excel doc and just kind of keep track of when you applied, what you applied for. Um, but again, uh, most of the scholarship websites have that functionality, so you don’t have to do that, which is, which is really nice.

Um, and any, any advice is just, I would, Apply for as many as you can and make it a part time job. Um, when it comes to, when it comes to, um, scholarships, you want to apply for as many as you can. And when I say make it a part time job, uh, this is what I tell families that I meet with. So for example, um, the FAFSA is typically available October 1st, and the CSS profile is available, um, November 1st.

If you’re doing early decision, you’ll have to get these documents in. typically right by November, the second week in November. And a lot of times these schools are going to give you acceptance notices by December, January. If that’s the case, you may know where you’re going as early as, as like mid December.

Once that happens, once you know where you’re going, you have an idea of what the cost is, then, you know, you don’t really need to worry about anything besides scholarships because the first bill isn’t due. typically until the following July or August. Um, so, um, the reason I say make it a part time job is, you know, uh, I’m going to do scholarships for five hours a week, or I’m going to apply to seven scholarships a week, um, or try to apply for 30 scholarships a month, right?

Make it a game if you can and apply for as many, many as, as you can. Um, how do we help? How does CollegeAdvisor help? So, um, number one is giving you the websites and the tools, uh, to kind of search for them. Now we, we have, we have, um, an ongoing scholarship list, um, that we, that we, uh, build to give to our families, but really the, the scholarship websites are going to be the best thing for you because they’re always updating and their algorithms are really good where you make a profile on a lot of these sites.

name, demographics, you know, religion, race, whatever, anything. Again, you’re, you’re putting in all the information you’re putting in. If you’re staying in state for school, you’re putting in some of your extracurricular, you’re putting in what internships you want, and then it’s going to create an algorithm and basically give you hundreds of scholarships based on your profile.

You can then go through those. and basically save them for later, apply for them on the spot. You can exit them for like, you know what, this one’s not me whatsoever. Um, and kind of go from there. What we can also help with is like if you have a question on a specific scholarship, Hey, I found this one. How do I apply for it?

Um, we can help rather it’s writing an essay. That wouldn’t really be my area of expertise. Again, I know it’s confusing. Scholarships is financial aid. but how you apply for them can be different. Um, what also happens on these, um, there’s a lot of different ways of applying for scholarships. Like when I was applying to school, everything was write an essay, write an essay, keep it under 250 words, keep it under 500 words.

about a time you did X or why you would be a good fit here or how you would handle this. Now, um, in like the technology age, there’s all different sorts of ways. Like a lot of them are asking for, give us a 45 second video of when you helped someone. Um, you know, and again, you do that and you upload it and boom, that’s all they want to see.

Um, you know, so I would obviously pay attention to the directions where if, uh, if a school is asking you about, um, your volunteer work, you know, you don’t want to talk about your, um, you know, hitting the big shot in the big game, or if it’s, um, you know, uh, you want to answer the specific questions, um, you know, sometimes it’s bullet points, sometimes it’s a short presentation.

Um, sometimes it’s like, It can be social media related. Um, so there’s all different types of ways to apply for these third party scholarships and they’re always changing. Um, so that’s why I kind of advise our families to do is here’s where you can look for them. If you have any issues, then come back and then we can kind of go through them.

And again, we do provide, um, scholarship websites. We provide actual links for scholarships, um, things of that nature. Like once you were to meet with me or one of my colleagues, Um, who’s on the financial aid side and, and we want to assist you in getting, um, that free money from a third party foundation.

Uh, obviously the better your admissions application is the better chance you have of getting those automatic review for your merit scholarships. And that will be done with your academic advisor, right? They will be the ones who are helping you make your application, your essay, making sure you’re putting your best foot forward when it comes to the, um, admission side of it.

And then, you know, the secondary part, which is the obviously doing the financial aid forms, but then applying for outside scholarships.

which is pretty much okay. There we are. Um, so yes, a lot of very wordy conversation, very wordy on my part, but, um, try to get you some good information there.

Anna: Thank you, Frank. I don’t think it’s possible to talk about financial aid without using a lot of words because it’s complicated. So thank you so much, uh, for sharing all of that.

That is the end of the presentation. Part of our webinar. We hope you found all that information helpful. And remember, you can download Frank’s slides from the link in the handouts tab. Now we’re going to move on to the live Q and A. I’ve been reading through the questions you submitted both when you registered for the webinar and as you’ve been listening.

As we get to each one, I’ll paste it into the public chat so you can see them and then read it out loud before Frank gives you his answer. As a heads up, if your Q and A tab isn’t letting you submit questions, Just make sure that you join the webinar through the custom link in your email and not from the webinar landing page.

So you might need to close out real quick, check your email, click that link, and then it should work for you. All right. So, Frank, we had a question about how the EFC, that expected family contribution, is calculated. I know you mentioned. It might, it might differ from what families think they can contribute.

Um, so how, can you speak a bit to like what goes into that number and how it’s calculated?

Frank: Yes, absolutely. And like I said, I kind of zoomed through that first part, um, because I wanted to concentrate on the scholarships, but so, you know, when the FAFSA is completed, essentially that’s what it’s calculating.

It’s the expected family contribution or the EFC. How that is calculated is it’s based on the, the, the basics are going to be your income and assets, but they’re also looking at household size and they’re looking at. Um, you know, let’s see the FAFSA doesn’t really look at the, it does, it does take into account like your zip code and like where you live and the cost of living briefly.

Um, but the FAFSA creates an EFC. And then also if you’re a profile school and you do a CSS profile that calculates an EFC and sometimes those EFCs can be different. So, um, if, if you’re applying to a federal only school, also the only form that’s required is the FAFSA. Um, schools are going to use that EFC with determining, um, any federal aid, which the school really has no, nothing to do with the federal, that’s your federal loans, your federal Pell Grant.

Um, and it’s typically used for any state aid you might be eligible for, and it’s going to be used to determine how much grant funding they can get. Now, if your family contribution is, let’s say it calculates to you, you having to owe 10, 000. If a school says they meet your full financial need, that means they’re going to give you money to cover up to that 10, 000.

Now, if a school says they’re going to meet most of need or try to meet need, there can be a big gap there. Um, the other time there can be a gap is if a school says, you know, your FAFSA says you can afford 50, 000 a year and you’re like, I can’t, I can’t afford half of that. And that’s when you’d have to have a conversation with the school to be, to find out what they were looking at, how they’re calculating it.

Did you add an extra zero? Um, that ladder doesn’t happen too much anymore because everything’s linked to your taxes. But you know, if you added, you know, if you have a hundred thousand in savings versus 10, 000 in savings, that can be a big difference.

Anna: Thank you for expanding on that. Are folks able to. Negotiate their financial aid offers with colleges.

Frank: Uh, I would stay away from the term negotiate. So, by all means, yes, have a conversation with the school. Um, typically in my past in financial aid offices, Um, the word negotiate would kind of like, uh, turn advisors off because basically When an award letter is given a school Is really trying to give as much aid as they can based on your numbers, right?

so you know what can happen is especially with You know, the the financial aid forms that you fill out are almost two years old based on two years old information. So um, you know, like if you’re applying You For fall 25, it’ll be based on your parents’ 2023 income. So the conversation can be, you know, Hey, I know you use my parents’ 23 income, but they lost a job in 24 and in 25, they haven’t gotten a new job yet.

What else can we. what documentation can I provide to show you the change in income? Um, or my financial circumstance have changed and here’s what happened in most cases. You, if you can provide documentation that the finances have changed, schools will definitely give you more money. Now, if, if, if your finances haven’t changed, it may be a conversation about your expenses because again, the FAFSA doesn’t look too far into expenses.

Um, where, you know, I had high medical bills. I had to send money back home to a relative in another country. Um, we had to, we had to deplete our savings to put a new roof on the house because of a natural disaster. Um, you know, my income was inflated last year because I took money out of my 401k to pay for my child’s braces.

Like all these things don’t always show up in the FAFSA so you can have those kinds of conversations. Additionally, you can ask for comparisons to other schools. And I would do that too. Like I had mentioned, you know, if school X. And school why a relatively similar price and one of them gave you way more in scholarship.

You can ask that question, you know, Hey, this school gave me this much. Is there anything you can do to help? Um, and, and, and have that conversation. Um, most schools have like an appeal letter and appeal process on their website. But typically when it comes to an appeal, You have to provide documentation of something drastic that changed.

But one more thing, sorry, Anna, um, the calling a school and asking how they came up with the numbers or the why behind it, I would absolutely advise that, um, you know, it’s, it’s because again, schools are typically going to come back with, Hey, you know, we offered as much as we can based on either federal rules or institutional rules.

And, and again, you know, the, the rules and like the, um, The calculations typically set by the profile by the FAFSA. But then the standards are set typically by like your board of directors, which is going to be like, you know, people way above even the financial aid admissions enrollment management office.

They’re way above that making those decisions on like how to imply the rules. Basically.

Anna: Thank you. That is such a helpful perspective. I think for students, like you have the inside scoop to really appreciate that.

Frank: And we help with that too. So like I, I do discuss with families all the time, like, Hey, we got an award letter because I’ll, I’ll go through this appeal process when I help families fill out the forms and then, you know, I’ll get emails of.

Hey, we’re ready to appeal. Can you help us before we submit? Um, and again, I can’t do anything as far as like assisting at getting approved, but I can say, you know, Hey, they’re probably going to say no to this, but this is what you want to concentrate on. And can you provide more documentation with this?

And I think that would help because that’s, what’s going to happen. The schools are going to say. This is an appealable situation. We need more documents or sorry. This is not an appealable.

Anna: Yeah, Frank’s team is really helpful. I always encourage my students, um, every single one of my students to meet with them at least once just to sort of get the lay of the land because there is a lot that we need to know.

Um, we’ve talked about the FAFSA a lot tonight. Folks have heard of the delays and the issues with FAFSA this past year. Do you know, has that been resolved? Should folks be prepared for more delays this year?

Frank: Very good question. I really hope it’s been resolved. Um, the, as far as I know, it’s supposed to be ready to go October 1 this year, which will stop a lot of the issues where it wasn’t even available.

until a few months after. Um, I know schools are still having issues with like pulling the information from the FAFSA to their school to review. Um, you know, so for your high school seniors out there, like I said, even if everything was perfect timing wise, you wouldn’t be able to apply till October one anyways.

Um, so fingers crossed, it’s good to go. Um, but I’m not exactly sure what it’s going to look like for the, um, that’ll be the 25, 26 academic year. Yeah. So, um, what basically what schools have done is they gave estimated awards. You know, most schools can pull on the fast was now. But what a lot of schools did was either gave estimated awards.

Um, rather families had to fill out some sort of like. Uh, internal application or get the taxes or if you’re a CSS profile school, the profile had nothing to do with the FASFA. So the profile is more manual where you have to take your taxes and you know, line six a type in line and then you actually have to upload your taxes.

So for the profile schools, they could kind of manipulate what the FASFA would say because the profile uses that information to determine grants. So they’re not using the FAFSA for their own money anyways. So the profile schools weren’t affected that much besides, you know, Pell grants and federal loans and such weren’t technically official until the FAFSA says so, so it’s, it’s a, it’s a wait and see, but you know, schools have workarounds and if the forms Are late.

It’s not going to, it’s not, you’re not going to be penalized because of it. I can, I can confidently.

Anna: Thank you. So just important to keep an eye out and see when the application does go live. Frank, I’m going to give you a break for a minute here so I can talk for a bit about CollegeAdvisors. So for those in the room who are not already working with us, we know how overwhelming the whole admissions process can be.

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We’re going to use the rest of our time to go back to your questions, but please know that that QR code is going to stay on the screen. And also note that it is in the slides you are able to download in the handouts tab, so you can always scan it afterwards. So, Craig, I thought we should get to some questions about scholarships since that’s what, um, what we’re here to talk about.

Can you speak to how external scholarships impact a student’s financial aid package, if at all? Yes,

Frank: make sure I unmuted myself. Um, yes, um, great question. So any outside scholarship a student gets is going to go directly to the bill. So a school cannot by law reduce any outside scholarship same way they can’t reduce any federal grants that you are awarded.

Typically, the way external scholarships work is they’re geared to cover your, um, non billable costs. Um, so what that means is without getting too into the weeds here, your college cost is made up of billable and non billable costs. Your billable costs are going to be room, board, tuition fees. Um, some of your non billable costs that schools work into your budget, which the budget is how they determine, you know, it’s, it’s the overall cost minus what you can What you can afford and then the difference is your grant your aid package.

Um, But there’s additional costs that are non billable things like supplies travel books personal expenses things of that nature so typically Any outside scholarship is going to cover those things first What that means is it’s very rare that a school would reduce any of your grant funding based on an outside scholarship.

What can happen sometimes is your part of your federal loan package, the subsidized loan, is technically a need based loan. Loan or need-based award. So sometimes it’s either, uh, a school can reduce your grant or they can change your, your loan from like subsidized to an unsubsidized. Um, typically schools will do that, um, which they would let you know first.

In some cases, if you get a very large amount of outside scholarships, your grant money can be reduced. But in those cases, that’s typically like your, your bill has been paid anyways, if the grant’s going to be reduced. Um, but you’re technically your outside scholarship does have to fit under the overall umbrella of the cost of attendance.

So if, uh, you know, if a school costs for, for easy, if a school costs, 80,000 and you got 70,000 in free money from the school and your outside scholarships was 12,000. You would lose 2,000 from the school, but your bill, everything would be completely paid. Now, there are some ways schools can kind of Again, these are large outside scholarship.

Um, uh, and then there’s also like the work study component that can be taken away. But again, work study is just an allotment of potential earnings. It’s not like free money that goes to your bill. So unless your scholarship is over 10,000, it’s not going to change anything. The school gives. Now, if you get over 10 K, that can be a discussion with the school because again, sometimes they can manipulate the budgets for at least year one.

Um, I also advise, you know, if you’re getting any type of need based aid, not like any, again, any type of aid, even if it’s a small grant. If you’re offered an outside scholarship and they give you the option of like, you know, 20,000 year one or break it up into 5,000 over the four years, I would advise breaking it up.

So you don’t run into losing aid from the school. Now, if you don’t have any free money or your parents make too much, or you know, you’re not going to get any free money, Using the scholarship all at once or broken up is not going to really change anything over the overall cost for the four years. It’s just kind of becomes a family decision and how you, how you want to handle that.

Um, but yeah, again, it’s case by case. And again, it really depends on if you’re going to a school that meets your full need, then yeah, sometimes aid needs to be adjusted. If a school is not meeting your full need. So again, my example earlier, where. You can afford 10K, but a school’s making your bill 15K.

You have 5,000 to just get more free money. That won’t affect anything.

Anna: Thank you. That’s helpful. And Frank, I think you answered one of the other questions we got in that answer, which was, can merit scholarships be applied to things like cost of living textbooks, and it sounds like the answer to that is yes,

Frank: absolutely. Absolutely. Just the thing to remember is that the bill needs to be paid first. And. Now, again, there are scholarships out there will that will, you know, you, you’ve got a 2,000 scholarship and you’re going to get it every year. Some scholarships will send it directly like to the student, like you can get a check in the mail, most are going to send it to the school and typically a school’s process is going to be all money goes towards the bill.

Once the bill is paid. If there’s anything left over, then you get, you know, what’s called a refund check or, or what have you. So, um, yes, it can be geared towards that, but it doesn’t mean you’re going to get a check to go buy your books.

Anna: That makes sense. Can a merit scholarship require a student to maintain a certain grade?

And if it does, what happens if they don’t maintain that grade?

Frank: Great question. And honestly, that should have been the slide. Um, most institutional merit scholarships, all of them are going to require, um, a certain GPA. Now, again, when I say institutional, that means one that’s directly from the school, the ones that you can’t transfer from school to school.

Most of them in the award letter will, will say, or online research. Keep a 2 7, 5, keep a three. Oh. Um, if you, if you DD dip below, um, that’s a question for the individual school. Some will have an appeal process. Some will say it is what it is. Um, you know, if, if something happened where. You got really sick after the drop deadline and you had a really horrible semester.

I’m sure there’s ways to work with you, but that is a case by case school by school basis. Um, when it comes to outside scholarships, there are not typically any type of GPA requirements as long as you’re in good standing with the school. Like you get the money. And again, summer is going to be freshman year only.

Like we’re going to give you a 5k for your freshman and that’s it. You know, some will give it year over year, but most are not going to ask for like a grade update. It’s just a matter of if you’re still in good standing with the school.

Anna: As long as you’re like

Frank: meeting the requirements, the school is, then you’re, you’re good to go with outside scholarships typically.

Anna: Yeah, that makes sense. Cause outside scholarships don’t have the insider view that the college does.

Frank: Exactly.

Anna: Uh, you mentioned work study programs. Yeah. Can you elaborate a bit on how those work?

Frank: Yeah. So that’s part of the financial aid umbrella as well. Um, so the federal government. The FAFSA is what’s going to determine your, your federal loans, any federal grants, and your work study.

Now, if mom and dad income is too high, or you don’t get any free money, or um, or you do get some free money, but you don’t have a work study on your award letter, it doesn’t mean you can’t work on campus. What the work study does is, It allows you more opportunities to work because you can apply for jobs on campus that can’t afford to pay you without the work study.

So rather you don’t get, uh, have a work study award or you don’t even want to work your freshman year. It’s not going to affect you negatively. It’s not, it’s not going to be like you owe more money to the school. It would just kind of hurt your pocket because again, it’s kind of like the non billable costs where if you work on campus, When it comes time to buy that train or plane to get home, you know, maybe you can pay for out of pocket instead of asking mom, mom, or dad.

Um, and so what happens is like, let’s say you get a work study allotment of 3, 000. Um, you know, you work at the library, the library doesn’t have a budget for employees, but they can hire you and pay you through your work study. So when you get your paycheck, it really won’t look any different than if you’re working at like a low grocery store or restaurant.

It’s just going to have your name, small amount of taxes taken out, and then you do with the check as you please. Um, it’s just the government’s basically funding that paycheck, not the school, not the library. So by having a work study, it allows you more opportunities to apply for jobs on campus. Most sites, most college, uh, job sites, you’ll go to it and it will literally say work study or non work study jobs.

And you click and then, and you know, if you have work study, You have more jobs to apply for. Um, and if you apply for a job with a work study, they eventually will find out that you don’t have work study. So just

Anna: don’t do that.

Frank: It’s all internal. So,

Anna: um, we have a couple of questions about federal loans. Can you give, I know it might vary, but can you give folks a sense of what, what interest rates they can expect on federal student loans?

Frank: Yeah, so the, um, the interest rates are set every year as of the new a, uh, academic year. Um, typically for the student loans, there are somewhere in the three range, 3. 5, 3. 6. They have not changed much over time. Um, the, and then the parent federal loan is typically between six and 7%. If a parent wants to take out a loan.

Um, and the, uh, the federal loans for students. So if you’re an incoming freshman, you’re, you’re, No matter if you’re low income or if your parents won the lottery, the maximum loan you can get as a freshman from the federal government is 5, 500. Um, 3, 500 of which can be subsidized, meaning no interest until after graduation.

Where 2000 is just going to be 2000 of that 5, 500 is just going to be your standard loan. That’s gaining interest even while you’re in school. Um, again, by no means do you have to take out any loans when you go to school, but it is an opportunity to, to, to assist. Um, so, you know, sometimes it is a necessary evil.

And then if you need more loans, like more than the 5, 500, that’s when you would look into either a parent loan or the outside private

Anna: Are there limits on the parent? loans?

Frank: Uh, it’s up to the So, um, you can only do o

So rather you’re doing a private loan or a parent loan, you can only go up to that cost of attendance that is set by the school, which again, billable and non-billable cost.

Anna: Can you speak to how the federal loan forgiveness program that folks have heard about how. That works. And is that something you think students should be considering now, as they’re thinking about applying to colleges?

Frank: Yeah. So, um, student, uh, aid. gov, which is where you find the FAFSA form, um, has information on that.

Um, it, I mean, it really depends on, on what your program of study is. Um, you know, typically it’s in the, if you’re in the teacher or the public, uh, sector. Um, or the nonprofit sector, typically what you have to do is repay your loans for 10 years and then, um, the rest can be forgiven. Um, there are also income based repayment plans where, uh, like what you pay is, um, or excuse me, there’s an income base and then there’s like an.

And then there’s an increased one too, but, uh, the income based is every year you file your taxes, then the, your lender sets what you pay based on what your income is. Um, and then again, sometimes that can be, that can be, um, forgiven as well. The, the forgiven loans are typically set by what your, um, what your actual job is.

It’s typically, like I said, the public, government, nonprofit, teachers, things like that. Um, And then some, and then there are some other ways to get out of the loans. If you’re paying X amount for X amount of years, eventually some can be forgiven or, or, um, you know, just done off with, but yeah, I mean, it’s, it’s, it’s tough to say because, you know, as a, I mean, if you know what you want to, like what you plan to do now, then yeah, you may want to look into what schools are best, obviously for that program of study.

But a lot of times. Some of the jobs that you end up with weren’t planned or you didn’t, you don’t realize that they can be forgiven. So, you know, if, again, it’s typically going to be your teacher, your nonprofit, your public sector jobs for, for forgiveness.

Anna: Yes. And take it from me. You never know where you’re going to end up, even if you have a really clear plan when you go into your undergrad.

Frank: StudentAid. gov is a really good spot for that. Um, and, and that’s another thing we can go into in more detail in a one on one conversation.

Anna: Yeah. Thanks. Frank, any last advice you want to leave our families with?

Frank: No, uh, just, like I said, Review the websites, you know, especially your top five, seven schools, get to know the websites, all the information is going to be there.

Um, you can call these schools at any time, you know, even before you apply, even before you’re like a number in the system, once you do officially apply, you have a college ID number. They can look up your account. Um, you know, um, once, like if you were to meet with me as your, as a financial specialist, you’ll have my contact info going forward.

So what happens a lot of times is I’ll meet with a family once, and then maybe they’ll want to meet again or they’ll shoot me an email. Hey, can you explain this? So, you know, we can, you know, we, we, we want you to on the financial aid side too. It’s more about just, um, trying to be transparent and helping you guys out as, as best we can, um, just to navigate because there are so many crazy terms.

Um, which again, we, we can’t always help getting you more money, but we can make sure you’re filling out the forms, correct. And make sure that everything is, you know, you’re getting the most that you can.

Anna: Yeah. And, and that makes a difference because there are a lot of forms and terms and they are confusing at times.

Thank you so much, Frank, for your time, for your wisdom. We really appreciate it. That is the end of our webinar. But before you go, check this out. We do webinars like this pretty regularly. So you can see we have some upcoming about building your college list, making your essay shine, deciding if you should apply early decision, early action.

And so many more upcoming. So keep checking our website for more webinars. And please don’t forget to scan that QR code and sign up for a free strategy session with a specialist on our team. Thank you, everyone. We hope you have a great night and take good care.