Does your guidance counselor have time to
walk you through every step of the college planning process from
career exploration to test preparation to college selection and financial
aid?
According to a recent cover story in the January
l6 New York Times EducationLife issue, public high school guidance
counselors are responsible for an average of 311 students each. Not
surprisingly, they reported spending only 23% of their time on college-related
counseling and within that small slice, only 27% on helping students
with financial aid and scholarships.
Clearly, guidance counselors need to optimize
their precious time with students by offering their insights on how
to identify and get accepted at good-fit colleges.
Where does that leave students and their parents
when it comes to knowing how and when to apply for financial aid,
seek scholarships, find low-cost college loans, or compare the financial
aid offers they actually get from the colleges that admit them?
It mostly leaves them anxious, confused and
highly stressed! Decisions about where to apply and where to accept
admission very often turn on the question of money but, until recently,
practical assistance for parents or students has been scarce.
To meet the need, new resources and services
have in recent years been introduced. In 2002, the National Institute
of Certified Financial Consultants was created to provide a professional
development and regulatory program for financial planners and accountants
who wished to specialize in helping families plan college funding
for their children. They help families understand from years ahead
of time how to manage the family’s financial situation so that
college funding is more readily available when it is needed. For
more information, go to www.niccp.com.
While hiring a certified college planner is
surely helpful, there is much about financial aid these counselors
are not prepared to address, for example:
When should
families begin to try to project the amount of aid they will receive
for each child?
Where and
when should they research non-government aid like merit, special
needs and affinity scholarships?
How do
parents protect themselves and their students from going deeply
into debt for decades after college graduation?
What is
the role of preferred lenders in the financial aid system and how
should a prudent loan search be conducted?
Simply Student Aid, LLC last year introduced
its Simply College™ program, a workbook and webcast workshop called Financial
Aid Simplified. These two tools not only tell parents and students what they
must do to qualify and apply for financial aid, they tell them precisely
how and when to do it — and all in plain English. Conveniently,
the step-by-step workbook timed from January of junior year through
senior year in high school, also serves as a research recording device
and document organizer so that every piece of important information
is captured in the right place and ready at the right time for each
required aid application task. For more information and a free 10-segment
workshop on Tips for Breezing Through the Financial Aid Process,
go to www.simply-college.com.
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