Um so uh thank you everybody. This is uh as I said this is um Donald Kerr who is the um oh god I just lost your your title there. uh director of student lending and college services and he's going to be doing a presentation um for
us on the financial aid in the FAFSA. Um so um I'll let you turn it over to you Donald and we'll go from here. >> Okay, perfect. Thank you. So tonight I'm going to kind of talk about um three easy steps to completing the FASA form.
Kind of give you a bit of a background on how to apply for financial aid. kind of what are the steps you need to follow most importantly too what are the timelines you need to pay attention to what do you need to be doing and when and then I'm going to wrap it up with
kind of some next steps what's going to happen what to expect when the financial aid process after you submit this form known as the FASA um what's going to happen kind of from from the aid perspective um as a whole right so um
you can go to the next slide All right, here we go. >> Okay, so specifically what I'm going to talk about tonight is just a little background on financial aid. I think it's kind of a good base to set and make sure everybody has an understanding of
exactly what financial aid is. Then my three easy steps are pretty simple. It's it's really about being prepared, gathering information, getting set to apply, which is creating what's known as a federal student aid
ID, kind of a fancy way to just say a username and password. Um, and then the the third final step is where do you go to apply? Um, some helpful hints and tips about actually doing the application. Um, and then some helpful
resources at the end, right? So, you're here tonight where you're getting a lot of great information, but where can you go afterwards once you're in the middle of everything? How can you get additional help? Hey, I was I'm halfway through it, but I have a question on this. So, I'll give you some good
resources and tools to use at the end as well. All right. Um, you can go straight to the next slide. That's all right. H. >> Perfect. Uh, yeah. Back up a little
more. >> Back up one more. >> I'm trying. Why won't it Let me back up. There we go. Is that it? >> No, it keeps going forward for some reason. >> Oh, >> there we go. Right there. That was it. Perfect.
>> Right there. There we go. >> All right. So, there's two types of aid. um financial aid and merit aid. So, when it comes to that, everybody, one of the myths I hear all the time from families are, oh, I'm not going to bother
applying for aid. Um, I'm not going to qualify. I'm not going to get anything. My opinion, absolutely everybody should apply for financial aid. That being said, there's some minimal eligibility around aid such as, you know, you know, being a citizen, having your high school
diploma, attending the title 4 institution, which is a very fancy way to just say a college or university that's approved to participate in the financial aid program. However, I like to spend a minute here talking about
this um because there's a very broad definition of what is a title four institution. It's not just your traditional 4-year college or university. It can include trade schools and it can even include
foreign schools. So, if you have a student wants to go to college overseas, you can use federal financial aid to cover that. trade schools and foreign schools. Not every single trade school or foreign school is approved, but you'll be surprised at how many are out
there. So, keep that in mind. It's a broad definition of of what is an eligible school. Um, but it being at least halftime, um, probably one of the trickier ones that comes up from year to year is maintaining satisfactory
academic progress. So, and this freshman year, by the time tonight is over, you'll know how to apply for a financial aid. Your students going to get awarded some. A lot of the things that they get offered in financial aid can be tied to them maintaining good grades throughout
the year. So, that's very important in subsequent years. You know, you get into that sophomore year, junior year, senior year. Having good grades is going to help you keep whatever financial aid you get. Um the the two major types of of
financial aid break down into two categories. This is what I call the first one is merit aid and that is kind of what it is. It's it's based on the students merits. So it's based on their academics, their athletics, their
demographics. basically any reason whatsoever that the student stands out on their college admissions process, the college could give you aid to help attend their college. So, not only when you're applying for colleges are you trying to make your student look
attractive to get into that college, you also can be awarded money to go to that college if your student is very attractive to them. Um, good news is you don't have to do any applications for merit aid. your admissions application
covers merit aid. And when you get that congratulations letter in the mail that says, "Hey, have you been accepted to our next class?" You will also find out if you get merit aid at that point. It'll be a congratulations letter. Hey, we're offering you the presidential
scholarship based on your academic achievements. So, that's one type of category of aid everybody gets. Financial aid is what I'm going to be the focus of my presentation tonight. And that is um what it is, what it
sounds like. It's it's aid based on your financial situation, your household financial situation. Um financial aid in this category comes from a lot of different resources. It comes from your federal government, it comes from your
state government, and most importantly, it comes from the college themselves. Um, so it's one application that's going to apply you for all those things. So, um, really that's what our our focus is here tonight. So, um, you can go to the
next slide. So to file the um your application and try to request financial aid, there are two main forms you need to file. The force the first one is called the FASA
form. Um every single college that's out there requires you to fill out the FASA form if you want any type of financial aid from them. So, good news is um it kind of serves as the gateway to
financial aid from all three resources. So, you get financial aid from the federal, the state, and the college themselves. This one form will cover all three sources for you. Um it's free to file, which is a great thing. You don't
have to pay anything. So, that's another reason why not fill it out. It doesn't cost you anything. Um, and you get to share it with up to 20 schools at a time. So, everybody needs to fill out the FASA form. That's the main one, and I'm going to spend a lot of time talking
about that tonight. The second form is called the CSS profile form. Not every college requires this form. There's only around 250, mostly private colleges that
want you to file this form. Um, good news is these types of schools tend to have more aid or a bigger financial aid budget. So, they're trying to be really fair and handing out their financial aid to their families that
need it the most. Um, it's not free to file. Um, it's a very minimal fee. It's $25 per college to file. Um, if you're not sure if you need to fill out the second form or not, there's two easy ways to find out. Number one, you can
visit the colleg's website. Just simply go to their financial aid section. they will list that you need to fill out the CSS profile form or you can go directly to the College Board website and under the CSS profile section they have a
listing in alphabetical order of all the colleges that want this form filled out. So, it's really easy to scroll through really quickly and say, "Hey, these couple colleges are on there." Um, if they are on there, you absolutely want to make sure you're filling this out. um
because those schools rely on the CSS profile in addition to the FASA form. So you're doing a little double work, but it could be worth it in the end with more financial aid. Um all right, we can go to the next slide.
Okay, so who needs to fill out the FASA form? Who has to supply their financial information in there? They've this has kind of changed in the last couple of years and really what it focuses now on
is kind of the family structure or um who is supporting that student. So the student number one is absolutely always going to need to fill out their FASA form. The parent will also need to fill
out the FASA form. And they define parent now as what they call a contributor. It's a new wording and what they're referring to is who is contributing 51% or more of that
students financial support. So, it's pretty simple in a a single parent situation. Just one parent fills it out. If you have unmarried parents, but they're living together um and they're
considered their legal partner. Now, you're gonna have two parents that need to fill it out. Married or remarried. That's probably one of the most common ones where I get a lot of questions on. So, if you know you've got a student and two married parents, it's pretty easy.
Their information goes into the FASA form. But if you've got a married situation and there's been a divorce and the biological parents are now separated and one of the parents has remarried, it's
going to be the biological parent who provides 51% or more of the support and their new spouse. the o other biological parent that provides less than 51 of the support will not be in the picture. Um,
divorced or separated. So now if you just got that real clean situation, the two parents are divorced or separated. And this is defined as legally or physically divorced and separated. You don't have to have those papers signed.
Um but if you're maintaining separate households, you're considered separated. So in that case, again, they're just going to look at who is the contributor, which parent is providing 51% or more of that financial support. In that case,
only that one parents information or contributor information will go into the FASA form along with the student. Used to be based on who the student lives with. They have gone away from that. So, it's now who's providing their support.
Um, the CSS profile form, which we talked about briefly, that's a totally different um perspective. They want everybody's information in the entire family, biological parent, divorced parent, remarried parent. So, sometimes you can
end up with three contributors on the CSS profile form. So, um that's who needs to file the student. Absolutely. and their parent or parents who contribute the most um financially for them.
Okay, you can go to the next slide. All right, so the financial aid timeline, when do you need to apply for financial aid and what are the dates you need to be concerned with? So right now, if you have a senior in high school, you
should have already gone out there and started this. The October 1st was the opening date. That's when the fast form becomes available and the CSS profile form open up for the very first time and
people can start filling out the information. Now, I'm a big fan of, hey, the sooner the better, um, and being prepared and getting things done on time, but you don't have to necessarily rush out there and get it done on October 1st
because that time, that calendar date has switched. The most important date to pay attention to is your colleg's priority deadline date. So, if you have five colleges you're going to be applying to, you simply go to each
colle's website, look up what is their financial aid deadline date, and whatever the earliest date is. Absolutely. Make sure you're abiding and getting these forms done by that date. Um, never hurts to get them done sooner and get them out of the way. That way,
you know you've hit everybody's deadline dates. Um then you start getting acceptance into your colleges right from anywhere from January to March depending on what type of admissions process you're doing early action early decision
regular admission. Um then um once you get that wonderful acceptance letter kind of the next step of the process because you filled out your financial aid forms is a financial aid offer from the college themselves. The colleges are
the driver of this entire process. You may be filling out a federal financial aid form, but all that data is going to the college and they're the ones calculating everything you're going to get in that offer. So, that's a very critical time because now this is the
first time you can really start to understand, hey, the college said it cost $80,000 a year, but here's how much financial aid I'm getting. this is going to be my out of cost out of pocket expenses for this college. And then May
1st, that's your good old deadline date. Um your decision day as it's known. By May 1st, you make a deposit to the college. Again, you can do it earlier if you know where you're going. But by May 1st, they want their deposit. Then the student goes through orientation, signs
up for classes and dorms and meal plans, and then the college sends a bill out to families. June, July, and then you have to fund it or pay that bill in June to August. Um, so this is a general timeline you want
to follow. You know, if you have a senior year, you should already be well into this timeline. But if you have a junior in high school right now, you know, you're ahead of the game. You'll start coming October 1st. Um, that's when you'll start filing and filling out
these forms. Okay? So, I'm going to talk about my three easy steps. Now, the first one is all about gathering information, and a lot of things have changed recently here. Um, so I'm still going to cover them to make sure everybody's prepared because
there are some some kind of quirky exceptions that can happen with a lot of the improvements they've put out. So, um, you can go right to the next slide. Okay. So, for doing the FASA form, applying for federal financial aid,
you're going to need your prior year tax returns. So, anybody who has a senior in college right now, I mean, a senior in high school right now, they would have filled out the 2024 federal tax returns and 2024
W2 forms is what would be needed. If you have a junior in high school right now, when you go to fill this out, you're going to be using your 2025 federal tax returns and 2025 W2 forms.
It's called prior prior year income. It's the way the financial aid likes to look at it. But you're also going to get in information on things as such as your assets, any nonretirement assets and investments you have. They want to know
what your balances are as of the day you're filling out the form. Um, also you're going to need information on your checking and savings accounts. You know, what are your combined balances on your checking and savings accounts when you go to fill out the FASA form and apply
for financial aid? So, gather this information ahead of time, have it by your side. Hopefully, some of it you won't need when when I tell you about a wonderful process they've created in the last couple of years. Um, but it's great to have as backup and you absolutely
will need at least, excuse me, your information on the assets and investments and your checking and savings accounts. And important to know, you need this for both the student. If they file taxes, you need theirs and the parents as well.
So, it's not just the parents. If the students file taxes, you're going to need their information as well. Okay, next slide. All right, so assets are the big one. Every year I get the question on, all right, so I got to gather my assets. What do I count? What
do I not count? And again, this is going to be for the FASA form. The CSS profile form, everything you see on this screen, they're going to ask everything, but the FASA form does not. I like to start with the not counted things on the FASA
because there's a lot of big ones there. So, the home you live in, that's an excluded or protected asset. You do not have to worry about the equidary equity in your primary residence. um value of life insurance. If you have whole life
insurance that has a cash value, that is also protected. Um retirement plans, anything in any type of retirement account, 401ks, IRA, pensions, annuities, all protected assets, and do
not go into the FAFSA form. Um gifts from grandparents. Sometimes people will save in a grandparents name and then the grandparent would spend that money or gift it to the student in the first year. That used to be held against the
student in year two. That is no longer the case. They have gotten rid of kind of that grandparent penalty. So those are the things that do not count. What you will count are your nonretirement investments. So, you know, if you have a financial advisor and you just said,
"Hey, I want you to go out and buy me 5,000 shares of Apple stock," that's a non-retirement asset. That would you you would have to list. Um, rental properties, vacation homes, any second properties you have, you would need the
equity in there. Um, checkings and savings and trusts. um don't see these too much anymore, but universal gift to minor and universal transfer to minor accounts, um money markets, CDs, those types of things you may have
access to. Kind of a a liquid asset, so to speak. uh 529 college savings plan is probably the biggest asset you need to include on the FASA form, but it's very critical or important to note that the
529 is a parental asset. So, it's going to be listed on the parent side of the FASA form, not the student side. And why that's critical is in the formulas, they get different weights and the students assets get a heavier weight. So, if you
have a 529, you do need to list it, but make sure it's on the parent side. Okay, go to the next slide. All right, so that's the first step, gathering all that information. You now know what you need and what you're going to count and what you're not going to
count. The second step is creating what's known as a federal student aid ID. Um, it's a it's a username and password is what it is. Um you can go um to the next slide here. So this is where
you're going to go to create the username and password. Up in the top right hand corner it simply says log in and create account. Just like anything you do online today, whether it's banking, signing up for your your cell
phone plan, anything. They make you create a username and password. So it's a pretty simple process. You're going to need to do it for the student and you're going to need to do it for at least one parent or at least one contributor. But
this is a screenshot of what the site looks like. So when you go to do this, um, you will at least be familiar, know you're in the right place. Um, so everybody's going to need to go out here and create this account. It's going to pop up to this screen and
you can just simply click get started. You're going to need um basic information to fill this out. You know, name, social security number, and I think I might have this on the next screen if you want to go forward.
Um yeah, you're going to need um name, social security number, date of birth, email addresses, that type of basic demographic information. Um, critical. Never use the students high school email
address if they have one they're using. Make sure it's a personal email address that a student's using when they create their account. Once they leave high school, if they may not have access to that email address anymore and that can
really put a monkey wrench in the entire financial aid process. So, >> they definitely know Norton do not have access once they graduate. So that usually gets shut down about a week after, if not sooner. >> Good. Good. Yeah. So, absolutely make sure you don't use that because then
you'll be in that that limbo situation until you can get everything resolved, which usually is going to require a phone call to the Department of Education, which is never a fun thing. Um, so usually only one parent contributor
needs to get a username and password. So the student absolutely does, but the parent does as well. So if the parents are married and filing jointly, only one parent needs to get a username and password. But if the parents are married
and they're filing separately, then both parents are going to need to create a username and password. or if they're in another situation, you know, where they're, you know, um, kind of the legal partners, but they're not doing their taxes together, they're each going to
need that separate username and password, and you absolutely have to have it. Um, and it does help you do a lot of things down the road as well. So, it's it's very important you get this set up before you go out to uh to fill in the
FASA form. Okay. Uh, next screen. So, here's the information that you're going to need. The date of birth, social security number, email. Again, that very basic stuff. The number one thing I will always say when you're setting up your
username and password is double check your information. Triple check your information, especially social security number, the way you're spelling everything on the student's name. Reason being is this is a federal ID and what
they do when you create this username is they check you and they do background checks on you to make sure you are who you say you are. They run a check against the Social Security Administration and if something doesn't match, you
don't get verified and you do not get allowed to fill out the FASA form. you will get blocked until you resolve the discrepancy. You know, you could be off on the date of birth just by a digit. You you hit it by accident. So, if you
double and triple check things up front, this process will go a lot smoother. Um, so the third step is getting ready to apply. So, now we're going to go out and fill out the application now that you've
got your usernames and passwords and you're ready. So, um, you can go right to the next slide. Here's where you're going to go. Studentaid.gov. This is the website where you're going to go to fill it out. Um, when you log
in, uh, you will see up on that top left hand corner. There's multiple ways to navigate to the fast form, but you're simply going to click on start a new form. So again, this is just designed to give you the look and feel so you know
when you go to this site, you're you're in the the right the right site in the right place. Um you can go to the next slide. Okay. So you get your IDs first. The fast form itself when you go to this
site and you start applying it's broken down into two sections. So the student needs to log in and do their section and the parent separately needs to log in and do their section. So over the past couple years they've kind of changed
this process a little. I will tell you the absolute best flow and the best way to do it is log in as the parent first and then log out and log in and do the student second. Reason being is when you
log in as the parent, you have to put in some student information. You have to answer questions about the student. When you go to do the student section next, all that is going to prepopulate. Almost 75% of the student portion will prefill
for you. It's also a student-based form. So, if you hit submit on the student section, you're going to get your results instantly. But if the parent hits submit, they don't get any results. Parents never see the results
of the fast form. Only the student does. So, do the parent first. The flow works a lot easier. And when you finish with the student, you'll both get to see the results of the form right away. Um there is a simple consent and approval release
process which is going to um help do a lot of the work for you. Try to do this in one session with both the parent and the student together in the same place. It really works ideally that way. But because they are separate
forms, if you can't pull that off, you can absolutely do it. You both don't have to be together. I had a family I just helped. Um, mom was here in Massachusetts and the kid had just left to go to school overseas. So, we filled out mom's section and the student could
log in from overseas and finish his section. So, they absolutely can be done separately. Um, but if you can do them together, it it's a lot smoother. Okay, you can go to the next slide. Um, so this is just again a sample of
the login screen. Um, you can go right to the next slide. We kind of already covered this. So, this here is the big thing they introduced the last couple of years. Consent and approval form. So, this is going to be a big long page. After
you're into the FASA form and you filled out your first page on some of your information, the next thing you see is this where you have to grant permission to the IRS. give them consent to share your tax data directly with the schools.
It is absolutely fabulous because now I know I told you to get your um prior year tax returns and W2 statements. You will no longer need them. All of that data is automatically going to be imported and shared and it's guaranteed
accurate and correct. So, when you hit this at at the very bottom, there's a button that says, you know, grant your consent or approval. It's then going to go out to the IRS and see if it can gather your tax data. It will then come
back within a few seconds and you're going to get a green message that says, "Hey, congratulations. We've successfully as accessed your tax data." You get that green light, so to speak. You are good to go. all of your financial information is being imported
and and you're all set. If unfortunately you don't get that green message now you're going to have to go pull up your tax returns that you have handy and you're going to have to manually enter some of that data. Not as bad as it used to be. And they give you line by line
instructions. The questions on the FASO will simply say, "Please list line 11 on your tax return." and you just have to transcribe the number. So even in that worst case scenario, it's not bad. They'll give you stepbystep instructions on how to do it. U but this is one of
the biggest improvements that have really cut down a lot of your time and effort in your manual data entry on the FASO form. So everybody has to grant it, but it's a a great tool. All right. Um next slide. Um, so even though you're
going to get this and you're going to get all of your tax data imported and shared directly from the IRS, your checking and savings account and any nonretirement assets, you're going to have to enter that manually. So, you
have it prepared, you have it ready, and you'll be good to go when you get to that section of the FASA form. Okay, you can go to the next page. All right. So, some helpful hints when you're filling out the FAS form. Uh, you
can enter up to 20 schools at a time to receive the financial aid form. It doesn't cost you anything. So, I always say even if there's a college you're thinking of applying to later, but you're just not sure, add them when you're doing the FASA form. It doesn't
hurt anything. If they get your FASA data, they're just going to hold on to it and they're going to say, "Hey, maybe that student's going to transfer to us for the second semester. You never end up going there." They don't do anything with your data and they purge it out of
the system after a while. You can go back and add a school if you want to as well. So, even though you said, "Hey, these are my top 10 schools." you filled out the FASA form and then all a sudden your student comes to you at the last minute and says, "Hey, I want to add
this school because their best friend's going to that school and you've already submitted the FASA." You just simply go out, log in, and they have a section where you can edit and add a school. You don't have to do it all over again. Um, but also the other great thing is
because you created a username and password earlier, a lot of that information is going to prefill into the fast form for you. So again, saving you time typing. Um, a lot of the fields when they come to
things like your checking or savings accounts or your assets, type in a zero. Don't leave them blank. Um, if you leave it blank and you hit continue, they're going to give you a message and they're going to, you know, the screen's going to pop up and say this has been left
blank. So, if it doesn't apply, just add a zero and you won't have that. The form has autosave features. A lot of people panic when they're filling out financial aid forms. Maybe it's a 10-page form, you're on page seven, and your battery
on your laptop dies. Well, it's autosaved. So if you're on page seven, the first six pages already saved. The only data you lose is the current page you were working on. And that's not a lot of of data in any particular case.
So um there is a process when you're filling out the FASA form as either the student or the parent. If you were not together and you can't both do it at the same time or you're just in different parts of the country, you can
send an email invitation to the other party and they just simply have to open up their email and there'll be a link right into the fast form for all the information that they um they need to complete. Um so that's a very helpful
tool if you're in that situation. If you have multiple students, you have two kids going to college at the same time like I do, you do have to do this form twice for each student. And yes, that means you as the parent have to log
in twice and do your section twice and then you have to log in as each individual student and finish their form. Um, there have been some promises of a tool like we had in the past where the parents data would simply import
into the the second students form for you. Um, that unfortunately went away when they rolled out some of the more helpful tools. Um, so be aware. Um, you'll have to do it, but that's okay. You'll you'll be a pro u by the time you get through the first one. You'll you'll
you'll breeze through the second one. And I'll be honest, with with these new changes, it's cut the time of filing the FASA form in half. I work with families and help them fill it fill it out all the time. My average used to be about one
hour to fill out the FASA form. It is now 30 minutes to 20 minutes is my average for filling out the fast form with a family. So, it's gotten a lot easier. Even if you have two students, you can get through it in under an hour.
Um, all right. Uh, we can go to the next slide. Okay. So, you filled out the fast form and you've gotten the results. The results of the fast form is this really wonderful complicated formula the
federal government comes up with where they're looking at your wages, uh the age of the older parent, your zip code, poverty level for your zip codes, lots of very complicated stuff, but basically it all goes into a formula and
it calculates what's called your student aid index number. used to be called your EFC, expected family contribution, but this is the most critical result of filling out the FASA form. Why? Because
it helps determine what is your specific financial need at that school. And it's used with a pretty simple formula. It's the cost of the school. So that big scary number, right? If the school says
it's $80,000 a year, you know, including tuition, room and board fees, transportation costs, miscellaneous expenses, all of that minus your student aid index, which is the result of your FASA
form. That difference is your financial need. So, three examples that are up here that are really realistic examples of three different schools. One school was an outofstate school. So, it's, you
know, um, if you're in Massachusetts, let's just say University of New Hampshire. School A was around $54,000 a year. School B, you're Massachusetts resident, and let's just say that is a state school in Massachusetts, UMass,
that's about 30 a year. It's up a little more now, but um and school C, that's a private school. It's 80,000 a year. It's the most expensive one. So, your student aid index from your FASA form is the same regardless. It doesn't change
whatever school you're going to. So, in this example, you can see at school A, your financial need is about $37,000. School B, your financial need is a lot lower. It's $12,000.
And on that last one, school C, your financial need is really high. It's almost $63,000 a year. So why does that matter? So the schools are going to look at the strength of your financial need when
they determine how much aid they're offering you. So we talked earlier about in that process, you're going to get a financial aid offer from that school. the stronger your financial need is, the better your chances of getting a good financial aid package from that
particular school. Um, some schools will even tell you on their website, hey, we meet 50% of our family's demonstrated financial need. Other schools may say 75% of our demon family's demonstrated
financial need will be met as our financial aid process. So, there's a wide variety of what schools are going to offer you, but they are all using this formula as their as their point in determining how much they're going to
offer you. Um, so this is again, this is just another picture of of the the formula how it's used pretty simply. cost of attendance minus your ESC or student aid index
determines your financial need. So, um we can go right forward to the next slide. Okay. So, after you file that fast form, right, and you've submitted, student gets the confirmation email. And I like to spend a minute here talking about
this. This was a shocker for me when my kids went off to college for the first time. colleges are treating your student as adults, which means that comes with the full protection of all privacy laws that
um are in place in this in this United States. So that means the colleges will communicate directly with the student about everything and they will not communicate with you as a parent. There is a form you can fill out to give the
college permission to talk to you, but all of their communications on whatever financial aid, signing up for orientation, it all goes to the student. So, the student gets an email about the results of the FASA form. Um, data goes
to all the different colleges you listed there and they run it through those formulas to prepare these award letters which come out in the spring. The very first place you're more than likely to see this financial aid offer is on the
students portal at that individual college. Every student can create a um a portal where they have access to all the information they need, admissions, financial aid when they come times for orientation,
uh the bill when it comes out. So have the student create a portal. they can go there and see that financial aid offer first. It's going to come in the mail too to your home, but you want to see this right away the sooner you can because every college will give you a
vastly different financial aid offer. Um, a couple things before we go to the next slide based um on your financial aid offer that not a lot of families are aware of they can do. You can appeal
your financial aid offer from a school. So, we talked about earlier you're using tax returns from your prior prior year return. That's two years ago. Well, maybe something unfortunate has happened. You know, maybe a parent has
lost their job and income has gone down. Uh maybe somebody's gotten sick in the family and you have a ton of additional medical expenses. Um, whatever the situation could be, if there's a reason your financial situation is worse off
currently than what it was two years ago, you can appeal it. You can talk to directly to the financial aid office at the school and say, "Hey, my financial situation has changed. Here's what's changed." And they can absolutely make
adjustments and offer you more financial aid. It's completely up to them. They they have what they call professional judgment. They can absolutely say, "Sorry, I'm not giving you another dime." But they also can end up giving you a lot of money. Um, you can also
sometimes just plain out negotiate. Um, you know, doesn't really seem like it you, hey, I got a financial aid offer based on all my financial aid information. Nothing's changed. But you can absolutely in certain cases go to
certain schools and ask them for more money. So um if you have competing schools that are roughly the same type of school and one school's offered you a really aggressive and really good
financial aid offer, but you want to go to the other school and they're not offering you a lot. You can absolutely go to that financial aid office and say, "Hey, we really want to come here, but it's going to be a struggle financially. We have a better offer from another
school. Is there more you can do before we have to make up our mind where we're going to help us afford it financially?" Sometimes schools absolutely will turn around and give you more money just based on that. Other times, schools will
um not give you the time of day. They'll say, "Sorry, that's our best offer. We don't negotiate. Take it or leave it." They're not going to take anything away. I have never seen that in 20 years where they don't take away what they've already offered you. So, as long as you're asking in the right way, never
hurts to ask. You just have to be realistic, right? you know, you're not going to get an Ivy League school to compete on a financial aid offer, you know, against a very small regional school that has less than a thousand students. But, you know, if you've got a
couple Ivy League schools out there, maybe they compete amongst each other. If you've got a couple small regional schools with under a thousand students in their classes, yeah, they may compete against each other and offer you more financial aid to get you to go there.
So, um, keep that in mind once you get your financial aid offer. Um, it's your first snapshot, but there can sometimes be more you can do. And I just wanted to say this um kind of goes into the discussions that we've had in some of our other uh presentations, especially
around when you're you're looking at schools and you're starting to do some of that research and we talk about make sure you're your students get out there, they go and visit, they do all of those things because um if you show a real interest and they think that they have a real shot at getting you, they're much
more um likely to respond. Right? Right. So, if you've been out to visits and you've done your students done student acceptance day and they've gone and done interviews and they're on their social media and they're doing all the things. Uh I that has been our experience. I've
actually experienced that personally um when my son um had a choice between two schools. He had kind of narrowed it down. The school he really wanted to go to um had offered a little bit less. He went back in. he had done all the things and they I
think really recognized that his his admissions counselor kind of guided him through the process you know she wanted him to to go. So I think you know it all ties together right especially now as you were saying Donald some of the colleges need you as much as you need
them um as it as enrollment drops. So, um, you know, again, it's it's not I, hey, I've never been on campus, but I want I want more money. That's not going to work. But if you've been on campus and you've done the things and and been a part of that process, then I think you have a much better chance.
>> Yeah. Well, great advice. One one of the things they they track a lot when they look at that is your visitations to their website. They know who's visiting their website. So if you simply do that, that goes a long way for their formula to say, "Hey, this student is
interested. This student could actually come here if we give them a little more money." They they are definitely um very likely to go there. So visiting their website and just navigating around is going to help the >> We've been told that some of them some
of them even monitor how long you've been on. >> Yeah. So, we've advised kids, hey, even if you're looking at your TikTok on your phone, flip around those pages a little every once in a while, and they'll track how many times and how long you've been on. So, yeah, this it's part of the
game, unfortunately. >> It is. It is. Um, all right. Um, so college is expensive, so I only have a couple minutes left here. Real quickly, there are some ways you can sometimes cut the costs. Um, so you know, if you
stay in state, um, sometimes you can save a ton of money. You can look at, um, regional discounts. Um, one of my favorite ones is, um, the New England Board of Higher Education has this
discount that if you live in Massachusetts and you want to study a major at UMass and UMass does not offer that particular major, but it is offered by one of our surrounding state
colleges. Um, perfect example of this is mechanical engineering technology major. So, UMass offers a ton of mechanical engineering degrees, but they do not have a mechanical engineering technology
degree. University of Maine happens to be one of the few schools that offers that specific degree. So your student from Massachusetts can go to UMain and attend at a discounted tuition rate. So you're not going to pay full out ofstate
tuition. On average, families save maybe around 7,500 per year through this type of program. So if you're looking at state colleges or in a or very unique um major, visit here, research it on New
England Board of Higher Education. It's going to tell you what majors are eligible and what schools offer those majors so you can you can try to plan a little bit better. Um, of course, if you can test out with any advanced um placement and taking those exams and
trying to get college credits now and getting them out of way so they're less credits you have to pay for later on when your students in school. That's another way to help save a little bit. Um, room and board options. Um, this was it's almost proven in every time I've
seen it, but if your student goes from living on campus to off-campus, those costs get cut dramatically. Um, almost in half in some cases, I've seen. Um, so consider living off campus. Um,
commuting. Um, if you have the ability to commute back and forth to school, right? Maybe live on campus for uh a year the first year. make some friends, make some connections, and then in the rest of the years, commute. You can save a ton of money. Um, RA, become a
resident assistance. Uh, great schools have a lot of programs for this. Some will cover the tuition if your student becomes a resident assistant. Um, some will do even more. They'll do tuition and cover half of the
room and board. There's all different ways schools work their um RA programs, but you can save a ton of money if your student can apply for and become a resident assistant. It's also a great way to help make friends, right? They're going to interact with all the students
and and help them through their college career. Um cheaper meal plans. Definitely don't go starving your student. But if your kid is not going to wake up till noon every day and doesn't have his first class, doesn't start until two, well, there's no need paying
for three meals a day and paying for breakfast that he's never going to use. Um, books and supplies. You can rent books. You can share textbooks. You know, when you sign up for dorms, sometimes you end up in the same type of dorm. Maybe you're going to be a teacher
and you're in the dorm with a lot of other teachers. Well, maybe you can share a book with your roommate. Um, so you both don't have to go out and spend the full amount on that. You're going to get tax breaks as well. So, I'm not a
tax expert, but research publication 970 and you'll be up to date on all the different tax breaks you can get to help you offset all these costs. or, you know, if you have an accountant who does your taxes for you, just let them know, I have a kid going to college and they'll know exactly everything they can
help you qualify for. Um, scholarships. Look for scholarships now and until the the day the student graduates. These are things you have to do on your own outside of the financial aid process we covered tonight, but there are a lot of
great resources out there for scholarships. uh your high school guidance counselor in their office will provide information on scholarships you can be eligible for. The colleges themselves will list scholarships that
apply to their individual college and then you can go do your own research searching for private scholarships as well. Um there's time and effort put into them, but it's time and effort that is well spent. And it's one of those things, right? It it it can kind of be
like that lottery ticket. If you don't buy it, you've got zero chance of winning, but if you buy the lottery ticket, you've got a chance. So, um absolutely do scholarship searching. So, just uh on Norton specific, um we do
keep a there's a kind of in the Naviance program, there's a running list of scholarships, both mostly national um that that um is up in that platform. And then we get a lot of local um folks that reach out to us or different things that
come across our desks. And what we do is each of our um classes has their own guidance Google Classroom. Kids are very used to Google Classroom. They they we get them signed up in uh on that uh their freshman year and we'll use it for
deadlines and and other kinds of information uh college related in business. Some kids, you know, military is coming uh all kinds of different things. Um, but one of the things we also do is put uh scholarships that come across. So, if we have a local bank who doesn't really want to be part of our
bigger scholarship uh process, which I'll talk about in a few minutes, but they want to get that information out or um you know, the the Italian local Italian uh group that that wants to offer something, the VA sometimes like those kinds of scholarships, we'll get
those up as well. And then uh for our junior parents that are coming up next February, uh all of the local scholarships that um that are offered to our students either through uh community memberships or um you know local uh
folks that want to offer Norton specific scholarships. Um we have one Google form that the students will fill out in February. We do a big um assembly where we go through the process. It literally takes maybe an hour, an hour and a half.
There's usually somewhere between 70 and 80 scholarships that are available. Some of them very specific criteria. So, it doesn't have to be for every um you know, it's not it's not for the top 20 so so to speak. There are criteria that
can be met um that just about anybody uh in the senior class can take. And then um there's one specific scholarship. Basically, if you fill out the um if you fill out the form, you're going to get something u some level of money. Not a ton, but something. So, that's something
that's really important. It amazes me every year how many kids don't fill out the form despite our numerous uh reminders and so forth. So, that's something to be aware of. And then the last thing is we still um even though MCCAST is no longer a graduation requirement, it is still something that
is required by the state and actually you have to sit for it as part of our local requirement. And um there's the Adams and the Copic uh scholarship and I have a feeling that a lot of kids aren't going to take it as serious now that it's not a a requirement for graduation
per se to get a certain score. However, those scholarships that are offered to the state schools like the Adams scholarship, if you finish in the top 25% or something to that, don't hold me to that, but I think it's the top 25% in our in your individual uh school, then
you are uh you have a chance to to get the scholarship for the Adam scholarship. So, making sure that your student still takes the time and puts in the effort to the to the MCCAST because I think it it could lead to a potential scholarship either through Adams or Copick. So just a few things there.
>> All right. So um where you can go for help um financial aid office at the college or university. Also the department of education you can go directly to them as a resource if you get stuck. They do have live chat email and a phone number you can call in. And
they also do have a lot of helpful tools and resources on their website studentaid.gov. So, if you've forgotten something or you don't remember all the things I told you to gather, they have a lot of the same resources that you can access to prepare and get ready to fill out the financial
aid form. And then my contact information, my phone number is listed here. Um, you can always reach out at any point in time. I'm happy to answer questions for anybody who needs that additional help or just has something a question on something we didn't cover or
wants to expand upon something you saw tonight um you just want to try to get a little more information on. So, so I think that's the last slide. Um oh, college funding options. You know, how do you pay for college? Um you know,
savings first. Go with that. Use your past income. any of your savings 529 savings plans, tuition payment plans. One thing people don't really realize they can use is you don't have to go the route of using a student loan. You can
just pay the college directly and spread it out over the year that your student's attending. So, if you owe them $5,000, you can sign up for a payment plan with no interest and just pay them $500 a month for the next 10 months. Um, and
then of course there are loans out there you can use. Always use the federal financial aid loans first. My day they were the Stafford loans. Now they're just called the subsidized and unsubsidized loans, but they're the same loan programs.
Always use those first. And then you can look at other loans like the plus loan for parents, private education loans, home equity loans, all the different types of options you may be considering out there. are ways that can help you uh pay the tuition bill when it when it
does come. >> I think that was the last >> that I think is it. Yep. Yep. Thank you, Donald. Um for our folks that are here live, um if you have any questions, I'm just going to stop sharing.
Um if you have any questions, you want to put them into the chat. Um that'd be great. All right. Well, I'm not seeing any. So, with that, I'm going to uh thank you, Donald, for again uh coming out and uh
taking part in this and giving us this good information. And for the folks that joined us live, thank you so much. And um this will be recorded, has been recorded, and will be up on the website usually in a day or so.