College Strategies

Lesson 6: Spending, Saving & Financial Aid

Get an A in Financial Aid

All colleges offer some sort of financial aid for students, whether that is in the form of grants, loans, bursaries or scholarships. If you are interested in getting to these funds you have to thoroughly inform yourself. Do research on each possibility and under which circumstances you could be considered. Some scholarships are given to students who excel in a particular course or program of study. If you work at it you can be one of those students.

Grants are usually given to people in financial need who have exhausted all other possibilities. When applying for a grant you have to give a statement of your total expenses and total income. As income loans and gifts are considered as well, so basically you have to report any money that is or will be going into your account. When it comes to grants colleges are more willing to help with smaller values than bigger ones! So don’t exaggerate on purpose to make them feel sorry for you and give you something. They will think “if he can’t even make it with the 1000 we are going to give him, then there is no point in giving it”. A college will figure you should then either drop out or work for a year to raise the funds. They do not want to be overly creative in how much they will give you, they rather just blindly fill a gap, as long as that gap is not too large. It will be much easier to receive $1000 from your college that $10,000 towards your education.

It can also be helpful to still have an outstanding balance in your student account, so that when they deposit the money it goes towards that balance. For the college it might feel like they are just giving you a discount, but for you it means you have more money in the bank. Just because you do not receive a physical check, do realize there is no difference in the end if you pay of your complete tuition and then get a check, or if you pay your tuition minus a bit and get the rest “waived”.

Do a search on the internet for scholarships. Go to websites such as: www.scholarships.com and www.financialaid.com . Also doing a normal web search can bring you some other good results.

If you can get a loan where you just start paying interest after graduation; go for it! Especially if you will qualify for more than you need, put the extra in a good savings account and make some money with the interest payments. Either leave it in a fixed deposit (then you cannot touch it!) or put it away in savings, but do something with it. The interest you make on the money is pure profit because you do not need to pay it back once your payments kick in!

Whatever you do, if you need financial help go and speak to the appropriate consultant at your college. Be friendly, be polite, and build a bond. There are very few cases in college, and in the real world, when you do not need to use politics to get yourself somewhere. Don’t be rude and keep your temper; if you were the financial aid officer you would not want to give any money to a cranky demanding person either. It is your privilege, but in most cases not your right! So do built a relationship, be nice and above all show you are doing all you can to get your funds together. If you really get the right message across and show you are by no means lazy and do work hard for your money, they will be more likely to give you more!

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