Workshop: Navigating Financial Aid

Hello everyone, welcome to workshop Wednesday.

My name is Brian Lindemann. I'm assistant vice president for admissions and financial aid at McAllister I use.

He him his pronouns, joining me behind the scenes is my colleague Adam, who's going to be answering some questions in the chat and helping with feed me some questions. At the end a couple of housekeeping things as we get started. First of all, if you are viewing this on your phone or otherwise would like to take a look at these slides.

Later, when we're all done, or when you're on a computer, will have a URL at the end where you can find a link to these slides that I'll be sharing with you today.

And this session is being recorded and will be available on our workshop Wednesday website along with all of our other previous workshops that have also been recorded. And I'll share the URL with you when we get to the end. I'll try to leave a good number of minutes at the end to field your questions. I have a lot of slides to go through, so I'll go through pretty quickly and I've but I feel confident will also have some good time at the end to answer your questions.

If you are an international student, if you're not a citizen of the United States or a permanent resident, some of the information in this presentation will be a little different for you. Some of the information in the presentation is geared specifically to US citizens and permanent residents. I'll try to point out where those differences are, and then we can try to also answer questions from international students in. At the end, all right, let's get started. Will try to.

Let's see.

These are some of the things will be covering today.

And.

Number One.

Talking about the price landscape in higher education and the concept of net price. So if you know anything about college costs, you probably know that their high and that they've been going up, and so this particular chart gives you some of those. Some of that information, the average tuition and fees, different sectors, private, nonprofit for your schools, public for years in public. Two years. This is for the 2019-2020 school year that ended last spring.

And the source of the information here is the College Board trends and pricing report, so that's what you all know already. What you might not know is that on the average, students actually pay less than half of what those published prices are, and so on. The right hand side of this slide you see, again by sector. What is the average amount that students actually pay for tuition and fees in these three sectors after grants, scholarships, and tax credits have been subtracted from their price.

And you can see in all three sectors it's less than half of what that published tuition and fees number is an in public two years. The average student actually pays negative tuition. There grants scholarships, and tax credits are more than their tuition.

So, uhm, what we want to talk about in the presentation today is how you get from the left hand side to the right hand side.

And how you can predict what your own experience will be. One of the challenges with using averages, every financial aid presentation I've ever done has lots of averages in it, and we all have a tendency to think of ourselves as average.

And while that's mathematically possible that everyone in this presentation right now is average, it seems unlikely. So I want you to be able to do is to look beyond what the averages are and try to get some information about where your own experience will look like.

This next slide is the one that I have in every presentation with way too much information on it. This is net tuition and room and board bisector overtime. The point here is that if you are a data person, go to collegeboard.org/trends and take a look at a lot of data in a lot of charts that we won't have time to go over in the presentation today.

So let's start talking about how you can use some tools to get information about your own.

Experience, what are your own experience may look like to begin that I want to talk about this concept of cost of attendance. Cost of attendance is a term that's used in financial aid world and in net price Calculator world to describe both direct and indirect costs of education. So direct costs are the things that the college sends the bill for, so it always includes tuition and fees and for students who live on campus at the school, it would include room and dining.

And then we have included in the cost of attendance umbrella in direct costs, which are perhaps less obvious things like your personal expenses to support yourself during a school year, traveling to and from campus books and supplies, and then for students who live off campus.

A significant part of that cost of attendance might be what you pay for rent or what you pay for groceries.

So all of those things roll up into this term. We call cost of attendance.

Reason I want you to know what that means is because when you go to use a net price Calculator what a net price Calculator does is it it gives you an estimate of what your cost of attendance will be after grants and scholarships are subtracted and this is a term that's in the law. Every college and University in the United States is required to have a net price Calculator on their website.

And they must use that term net price.

So the concept is that as you go from one college to the next, you can get an apples to apples to apples. Comparison of what net price might be for you at those individual colleges and universities.

Important to know that net price is not always the same as what your bill will be at the college. So for example, if you plan to live off campus and you don't need to pay the college for room and board.

The estimated price that you will need to pay to support your living expenses is still included in your net price, but you won't be sending that money to the college. You might be paying rent. You might be living with your parents. You might be an. It might include estimates for things like groceries. So just understand that net price doesn't always equate to the bill that you'll get from the college, but it is a good way to be able to compare apples to apples from one school to the next.

If you would like to get some general information about a college an what kind of net price they have for their have.

Students have had in the recent past. You can go to this website called College Navigator. It's a website that's produced by the National Center for education statistics, and it looks like it came from about 2003, but it has a lot of great information on it and every college has information on college navigator. It includes financial information. It also includes information like graduation rates, enrollment numbers, so you can get a lot of terrific information about colleges from this.

Website for our purposes today what I think is important for you to know is that you can go to college navigator and get some information about the net price paid by students at those colleges in the past. So this is a screenshot of mcalister's College Navigator net price section.

And what it shows you is what the average net price was for students in each of three academic years.

And then I think most helpfully, it breaks it down by family income. So on the left you could see a few different bands of different levels of family income, and then for students in those income bands. What was their average net price during each of these three academic years?

So what I think you can do with this is if you have some idea of what your family's net income is.

Families income is picked out that band for yourself and then go across and get an idea of what. For example, families, students from families that made between 48 and $75,000 paid at the individual school.

The still isn't a prediction of your own experience, but what you can do is if you look at three or six different colleges and again look at that same income band across all of those colleges.

Will give you some idea of how those colleges differ. So if mcallister's average net price was 17,682 for students from families with incomes between 48 and $75,000 and another college had an average net price of 5000 or 50,000, you can start to see what are the patterns at those individual schools, so that's a pre assembled set of data that you can access easily through the college Navigator website.

I'll give you two other ideas. One is called myintuition.org.

And you can see that.

URL there are about 70 colleges that use this service. It's a very simple way to calculate your estimate. Your individual net price at colleges. I took a screenshot that shows nine of the colleges that participate in this service, but there are many more and it's growing each year.

Many of them are high priced private institutions, but there are also some public institutions that use this service. The great thing about this service is that it is super easy to use. You can you have to answer six financial questions.

You don't put in any information about yourself. You don't have to have any information about your test, test scores or anything like that, and you'll get an instant estimate of what you students like you in the past have received at those institutions, so you can easily do a quick calculation at several institutions to see how this might turn out. I did a simulation for astute hypothetical student using mcalisters, my intuition tool, and at the end.

What it shows you is the best estimate of what financial aid you'd receive at the institution. It also shows you a low in a high estimate for what you'd receive it within about a 90% confidence interval.

So again, a really quick way for you to get some information without doing a lot of research about your own financials or finding your tax returns or your bank statements you can put in your information and you can even guess if you know about what your income is. Don't worry about being so too precise, just get started with my intuition tool.

Now, if you want in even more precise estimate, you can go to each individual schools. Net price Calculator. Just search for.

The name of the College in. Net price Calculator and you should be able to find it there. You might need to answer a lot more questions in order to get a net price estimate, but it will be more precise because it's the schools actual net price Calculator.

So when I go out to when I used to go out to high schools and do talks and someday I will again.

My number one piece of advice for families as they were starting to explore the concept of financial aid was to just pick a few schools and go do some net price. Calculators can be really illuminating to help you understand what your own experience might look like.

Doesn't matter if you're really interested in those schools, just pick the one down the street, pick the one your uncle went to. Do a do a calculation and it will start to help you see the shape of this process.

So.

Par three, let's talk about the types of financially that are available. The net price Calculator is not applying for financial aid and will talk about how you apply for financial aid in a little bit. But what are you applying for? So there are essentially.

Um, four different kinds of financial aid in the financial aid pie, or a package of financially that might be offered to a student.

On the left is in this particular illustration you see self help aid including loans and student employment. Those are things that students can use to help finance their education, but they're not free.

On the right hand side is gifted, and that's the best kind of financial aid. Merit scholarships on need based grants so Gift Aid is called gifted because it's this kind of financial aid that doesn't need to be earned or repaid.

So it's the best kind of financial aid.

And it essentially comes in sort of 2 flavors need based grants which are delivered to a student on the basis of their families financial situation. So the federal Pell Grant is the most ubiquitous need based grant program. It's for USC students, use citizens and permanent residents in the in the upcoming school year 2021, the maximum federal Pell Grant is $6345.

An federal Pell grants generally go to students who have family incomes in the neighborhood of $60,000 and less.

Many states, including Minnesota and a lot of other states, also have a state grant program that supplements the federal Pell Grant program in most cases to receive a state grant, you must attend an institution that's in your home state.

And then institutions in, especially at expensive institutions, institutions, colleges and universities are a major source of need based grants, and in fact at expensive colleges and universities. They are often the by far the largest source of grants and scholarships for students.

So it's need based grants and then we have another flavor called scholarships. Now I'm using grants to mean the kind of financially that's delivered to a student based on their family financial situation and scholarship, meaning the kind of financially that's delivered to a student based on their academic or artistic or athletic or other kinds of talents or merit.

But the terms grants and scholarships can really be used interchangeably and you'll see them used slightly differently from one institution to the next. It doesn't really matter because they do the same work, both grants and scholarships. Reduce your what you need to pay.

And don't need to be repaid or earned.

Scholarships can also come from Non College and University sources and those could be things like religious institutions, civic clubs, major companies and corporations. So there's a way to find them is to do a take a couple of approaches. One is if you can check with your local high school college counseling office. Sometimes they post these scholarship opportunities on their websites. I think that's the best place to look.

Local scholarships often have fewer applicants and therefore give you a greater chance of receiving those scholarships, so that's a good place to start.

And then if you'd like to cast a wider net, you can use college scholarship search service like a couple of named here. Fast Web.com big future from the College Board. Both have long long lists of scholarships that are available. You can also just search for scholarships for college and you'll find many many listings of databases that can help you find scholarships the way most of these services work is that a student sets up a profile.

Says something about their academic interests, what their qualifications are. Perhaps a grade point, average a test score where they hope to go to college and then these services will help the student narrow down. Good sources of scholarships for them might be specific to an academic interest might be specific to geography and can kind of help a student know what are the best places to apply.

So students can start setting that up. I would say in junior beginning of junior year is not too early to start setting these up and then you be notified as you progress through high school when scholarships become available. That might be good sources for you.

I'm going to move on to self help financial aid including student loans, student loans.

At the moment are mostly funded by the federal government. The federal direct loan is the most common student loan source.

Now the federal direct loan comes in two forms. It comes in a subsidized form in an unsubsidized form.

In this context, subsidized means that the student is not required to pay any interest, and no interest is accruing while they're in school.

So it's close to free money until the student becomes enrolled less than half time or graduates.

It's close to because there is a loan fee, which I'll tell you about in a moment. Unsubsidized direct loans mean that the interest is accruing from the moment the loan is taken out. Students are not required to make payments on the federal unsubsidized direct loan, but the interest is accruing and then is added to the principle when the student leaves college and goes into the repayment period.

I'll just give you a little bit of information about what kind of interest rates are associated with a federal direct loan, but you can always go to thisstudentaid.gov website to get Lattimore lot more details for the 2021 school year. That's about to begin. The current interest rate for a direct loans is 2.75%.

That is a fixed interest rate, so any direct loans that are borrowed for the 20 hyphen 21 school year will always be at 2.75%, but it is a fixed interest rate that only applies to 1 academic year. So for most students who participate in the federal direct loan program, if they borrow for each of their four years in college, they have four different interest rates, so the interest rate last year was a little bit higher than two .75%.

Sophomores in the upcoming school year might have alone from last year. That's a little bit higher. Interest rate alone in their sophomore year for 2.75%. Then when they leave college and go into repayment, the effective interest rate is the weighted average of all four of those interest rates.

That'll be fixed interest rate that never changes after they graduate from college from college.

There is also a loan fee. It's about 1%, so that means that for a student borrow $100 through one of these loan programs. They get about $99.00 that they can actually use to pay their tuition and other costs.

Apart from the federal direct loan program, which is probably the best and 1st loan that a student should consider, there are lots of private loans available from banks and credit unions. So if a student needs to borrow more than what's available from the federal direct loan program, they can turn to banks and credit unions to provide much more student loan availability.

There are also parent loans. I'll mention the federal direct plus loan. This is one that's through the federal government. Again, much more many more details available in studentaid.gov. This one is similar to the students federal direct loan program and that you apply through the school. The money comes from the federal government, but the interest rates are different for the plus loan in the upcoming school year, the interest rate will be fixed at 5.3% and it will have about a four and a quarter percent loan fee.

So it can be a more expensive way to borrow an for parents who have good credit and who need to borrow. Going to a bank or a credit union to borrow can sometimes be a less expensive option than the federal direct plus loan.

All of the parent loans generally allow apparent to borrow as much as the cost of attendance.

The entire amount they need, minus any financial aid that the student is receiving, so these loans tend to be very flexible in the amount that's available to parents.

And the last type of financial aid that I'll mention is student employment. Student employment is essentially an opportunity for a student to have a job while they're in college. It works just like a job somewhere else. They get paid based on the number of hours they work. If they show up to work, they get paid. If they don't show up to work, they don't get paid. In most cases, student employment is delivered to the student in the form of a paycheck every two weeks or every month, depending on how the college does it.

And students can sometimes use that as their money that they fund their daily expenses with, but.

It can often be used also can often be applied to the tuition bill if the college allows it. And most colleges and universities do have an option for students to do that.

OK, let's move on to part 4, which is how to apply for financial aid.

And.

You know, here's where I'm going to reiterate that the answer is, it depends. It really depends on what the college you're interested in requires, so I'll give you some general guidelines, but just know that every college and University has its own recipe, its own requirements for what you need to do to apply for financial aid. They also have their own deadlines, so ultimately you need to really check closely with the college and colleges and universities that you are interested in to know exactly how to go about applying for financial aid.

But I'll give you some general guidelines, so usually you should be applying for financial aid at the same time you're applying for admission. If you're applying early action or early decision to a college, you should be filling out your financial aid application information at the same time.

If you're playing later through their regular decision program or through the summer preceding a school year should be applying for financial aid at the same time.

There are some common ingredients to what colleges and universities require, so let's drill into those for just a few minutes.

For US citizens and permanent residents, the most common requirement is the Fasa stands for a free application for federal student aid.

The Fasa is designed to be.

An application for federal student aid. The federal Pell Grant. The federal direct loan program. It's also used by many states who have need based financial aid programs and it's used by many institutions who have need based financial aid to distribute. That's not how Congress designed it. This is a form that is designed by Congress and the Department of Education, but it's free, it's ubiquitous, and so because of that.

Reason many colleges and universities also use it as their institutional application for need based financial aid.

The faster becomes available October 1 preceding the year that you want to apply. So if you're looking at the 21 hyphen 22 school year starting October 1, 2020, the Fasa is available. Students are required to file at each year an if you if siblings are going to be in college the same year that each get to fill out their own fast, so.

So most high school students are required to provide parental information when they fill out the FAFSA. Another financial aid forms.

I won't go into that a lot today. You can find a lot more detail on the studentaid.gov website. There are exceptions.

But for the most part, high school students are going to be required to provide parental information if their biological adoptive parents are not currently married.

Then they're going to provide information on the Fasa about the parent they've lived with most in the last 12 months, and if that parent has remarried, the student also provides information about the stepparent on the Fasa, so it doesn't matter who claimed the student on their tax return. It doesn't matter what a divorce agreement says, the Fasa rule is that the student provides information about the parent they've lived with the most in the last 12 months. There are many more details available on the studentaid.gov website, and I've put the URL there. If you need to.

Drill into that a little bit more.

One more fastest light when a student fills out the FAFSA.

They have the opportunity to list up to 10 colleges and universities that they like the results to go to.

And once this facet is submitted, the faster results go out to those schools and they receive them within 72 hours. Now, if the student later decides that there's another college or University that they're interested in, they can always go back to the Fasa and add another college. If there's an open slot in that section of 10 colleges, or they can delete one of the previous colleges and add a new one, and that can be done as many times as necessary to deliver the faster results to as many colleges and universities.

As the student is interested in.

So that's the process to get. Get the fast information out to the colleges.

I want to also mention another financial aid form that's required less frequently there about 300 colleges and universities that require the CSS profile. McAllister is one of them. They tend to be higher cost to private institutions, but there are also some public institutions that require the CSS profile.

Are the reason schools require the CSS profile in addition to the Fasa? Is that and I'll speak for McAllister, we feel like it gives us a lot more information than the Fasa only. And we're trying to make the best decisions we can about who needs financial aid the most. So the CSS profile asks all the faster questions and several more. It's also the tool that we use at McAllister because we require information from both parents.

Both biological parents, regardless of whether they're currently married.

And the CSS profile allows us to collect information from both of those parents, unlike the Fasa, which only requires information from the parent with whom the student has lived the most in the last 12 months. The other thing to know about the CSS profile is that there is a fee associated with the CSS profile. It costs $25 to file the profile and send the results to the to 1 college. It costs an additional $16.00 to send it to additional colleges.

But the CSS profile also has built-in fee waivers so that lower income students can file the profile without paying a fee, and that fee waiver is determined based on your answers that you put in on the CSS profile. It's essentially designed so that students who qualify for free or reduced lunch do not have to pay the fee to file the CSS profile.

There are a few other things that might be asked in the application process.

For the 2122 school year, that 2019 is the most relevant tax year, and so some colleges may require students to supply parent and student tax returns. If there are tax returns for the 2019 calendar year.

There's also verification worksheet, which is essentially tell us who's in your family and where they're going to college if that's applicable. That's required, sometimes in. Occasionally, colleges may ask other questions, so I think if you.

I would take away from this is just that you need to pay attention to the specific requirements from the colleges and universities that you are thinking about and if you receive a request from a college that's asking for something different that you didn't know about, it's because they're trying to resolve a question so it's important to respond to those questions in order so that you can receive a financial aid result.

All right, so we're almost to the end here of my presentation that we can go to questions. Here's a QR code if you want to scan that. That will send you to the slide deck that we just looked at. There's a URL there as well.

You can find the recording of this workshop on our Workshop Wednesdays, and then I also wanted to point out that there are a lot of other resources available, in particular from Khan Academy, short course of information about paying for college that might be useful.

I recently viewed it. Anet pointed out to me that there are lots of opinions that differ from my own when it comes to giving advice about paying for college, and so it may be helpful too.

Information gathering process to check out a few of these different resources so that you can understand the landscape in the best way possible.

So I think I'll stop talking and then I'll turn to questions an Adam's going to help me try to.

Categorize those an answer questions in the best way possible. So first one that he's directing me to address is the question of financial aid for international students.

So I'll try to summarize this. So first rule is it depends on the college, so there's a wide variety of approaches to international student financial aid among among colleges and universities. So the best source of information for an individual international student is to look at the college website or ask them questions about how they provide financial aid to international students.

I can talk about McAllister in general at McAllister. We provide financial aid to our international students almost exactly the same way that we provide the financial aid to US students.

The big difference is that all of the financial aid for our international students comes from McAllister. Our international students generally can't use federal Pell grants, can't use government financial aid, so it's up to the institution and sometimes some outside partners who provide international financial aid. But it mostly comes from the institution.

The other resource that international students can use if they are interested in finding out what institutions do for their international students or have done for them in the past.

Is go to the Google machine and search for common data. Set common data set for and then the name of the college they're interested in.

Common data set is a giant pile of information that most colleges publish.

And buried in there somewhere in section H.

Which is the financial aid section are a few questions about the international student financial aid profile. It it says how many international students do you have at your institution? How many of them received financial aid?

And what is the average amount of financially that those international students received? So that's one way to get some general landscape. Unfortunately, the common data set uses the phrase nonresident alien.

When they refer to international students, so that's that's the phrase You have to look for.

Ultimately.

International students need to check with the individual colleges and universities to find out both whether they offer financial aid to international students is it need based financial aid or is it merit based financial aid.

And then how do I go about applying for that?

Many colleges and universities use the CSS profile as an application for international students, but not all, so you really need to drill down into that individual college and University instruction.

So hopefully that gives you a place to start.

OK, and then some questions about student employment which is also called work study. So if you hear the phrase work study.

That's the same as student employment. I like to call it student employment because sometimes when you say work study, you get the idea that you're going to be studying while you're at your job, and that's not always true. I really think you should imagine student employment as a job just like any other job you'll show up. You'll have work to do. You'll get paid on how much work you do at our institution, and most institutions, I think those jobs vary quite a bit. The big four employers at McAllister.

Our our facilities office, so that means mowing the lawn and shoveling snow. Serving food in the cafeteria. Shelving books in the library and then working in our athletic facilities to monitor the weight room or check IDs when students are entering the facilities. But it also includes jobs like being a resident assistant in the halls being a preceptor in a class, so students tend to have many more choices about what they can do for student employment.

As they progressed towards graduation as you obtain some skills as a professor gets to know you, you may you may have more opportunities than you have when you're a first year student.

They can. Students can sometimes also use earn their student employment financial aid by working off campus in a non profit organization. So some of our students are two during elementary students and doing that to earn the part of their financial aid award that's based on student employment.

So there is a wide variety and it varies by institution what the last thing I'll say about student employment at this point is that if you can do it, please seriously consider it because there are non monetary benefits to doing student employment. You can gain some job skills, you can get experience working in an office. You can also sometimes in, especially if you're away from home for college, your supervisor for your student employment job can be.

An important resource that person is often an adult who isn't giving you a grade and who can help you plug into campus resources, learn the lay of the land as you arrive as a new college student in a place you've never been. That supervisor that you see 2 three times a week for your job is a person in adult who can answer questions for you. So there are some non monetary benefits to being.

Involved in the student employment program as well.

Some questions about how COVID-19 affects financial aid and scholarships.

And Uhm.

I'm going to guess at the nature of that question that there may be some concern that colleges in universities or other sources of financial aid are becoming scarce in an environment where COVID-19 has caused some budget problems.

And.

I don't know enough about the the wide landscape of higher education to comment broadly at McAllister. The way we're dealing with the pandemic is basically knowing that families are affected. We have families who've become unemployed who've experienced medical challenges. We have students who have lossed employment opportunities over the summer because of a pandemic, and so we really augmented.

Our financial aid program. In order to try to meet some of those needs. Now that's not an infinite well, so I don't know that we've made it easy for families who are in those situations, but our approach has been to know that we're going to need to invest more in our financial aid program to help students and families weather this storm.

There could be other institutions where that's not the case, so I don't want to suggest that that's what you'll experience with every institution.

But I don't think there's a reason to be pessimistic that financial aid will be less available in a post pandemic world. In many cases. I think you'll find that institutions are realizing that they're going to be even more generous with the way that they distribute financial aid in this new environment.

Yeah, so here's a question about why this one specific to McAllister and about our merit scholarship program. So I'll describe a little detail about our merit scholarship program. Just as an example of how one institution does it, I don't think that were terribly unusual, but we're not. It won't be universal, that's for sure at McAllister. About half of our students.

Receive a merit based scholarship and many of those students. Most of those students also receive need based financial aid in addition to their Merit Scholarship.

But it's about half of our students. The distribution of those scholarships is based on the criteria that are admission committee reviews, so.

The strength of your curriculum, how you did in your classes. In high school, the breath of your curriculum are you well prepared to do college work as well as anything else that comes in in that college application? What are your extracurricular activities? What? What is your general strength as an applicant to the college? We don't require students to do anything extra.

There is no extra essay there. You don't have to visit campus, you don't have to do an audition. Some colleges you will have to do something extra to apply for merit scholarships. So that's maybe a little bit unusual at McAllister.

The amount of our merit scholarships varies quite a bit in the current school year. They very all the way from $6000 per year up to $22,000 per year.

So there's quite a variety and that again is based on the strength of the students admission application.

One thing that I always suggest students investigate as they are thinking about merit scholarships is what are the renewal criteria?

So it's not unusual for a college to award of Merit scholarship to a student, but then require that student to maintain a certain grade point average in order to retain that scholarship throughout their four years at the college. And those grade point average requirements might vary quite a bit at McAllister. We don't have any grade point average requirements because we do not want our students to choose their classes or avoid classes because they're afraid.

They might not do well and that they would put their merit scholarship at risk. We want students to stretch themselves and explore an take organic chemistry or language course or or advance course, even if it's not something they feel that they're going to be as confident with they want. We want them to do that without worrying about their merit scholarship, but it will vary from one school to the next in something that it's a good idea to understand.

I've got some questions about CSS profile in fast. What's the difference? So let me just reiterate one of one of the things that's come up the Fasa.

The free application for federal student aid has no fee.

That's what the first F stands for free. So you should know that you should also be careful because there are.

A lot of services that will be happy to charge you to help you file your FAFSA.

But those are not the official government FAFSA websites, so Fasa dot dot giovi is the official Fasa website. There's no fee for Fasa.

The CSS profile does have a fee $25 to file for the first school, $16.00 for each additional school fee waivers available. Based on a student's financial situation. So there is a difference in. Again, the Fasa is required by almost every college and University in the United States. The CSS profile is required by only about 300 out of.

More than 3000 institutions, so I'll use the state of Minnesota as an example. There are three colleges in Minnesota that require the CSS profile, McAllister and two others, so it's very uncommon within the state of Minnesota for the CSS profile to be required. That's not true in every state, it's more common in some states than others.

Here's a question about whether we consider us families, wealth and assets in the financial aid application process. So let me let me spend a moment talking about how eligibility for need based financial aid is determined.

Need based financial aid is determined based on an individual student's family income and wealth situation. So when a student fills out the fast so there are lots of questions or the CSS profile, there are lots of questions about what was your income in 2019. What is the value of your savings account? What's the value of your investments? If you have any and so all of those inputs go into a formula.

The fastest formula is publicly available. It's part of the law, so if you want to go out and search for the FAFSA formula, you can easily find it. But all of those things combine to go through a formula. There are other questions like how big is your family, how many of the children in your family are going to be attending college next year, and all of those things going to the formula to calculate something called the expected family contribution.

Or just FC?

That expected family contribution is what this formula says. You and your family should be able to pay for one year of college.

Now there is. It is not uncommon for someone to tell us that that calculation of expected family contribution is quite aggressive or non realistic. So it's a formula. It is not something that's designed to try to understand your families actual cash flow. There are no questions about what you pay for your car loan for example.

Or what your expenses are to support people who live outside of your family.

So it's really a very.

I would call it a simple formula. Most people tell me that that is not the right word to use when we describe the FAFSA, but it is not a long list of questions to understand the family's financial situation in. The faster really is designed to determine who is eligible for a federal Pell Grant, so it rides. It tries to balance simplicity.

With.

Getting some insight as to who needs financial aid the most.

So if you let me use that as a springboard to talk about a question that comes up sometimes.

You know what? If the faster it doesn't reflect what's actually happening? In my family's financial situation? What if there's something going on that the Fasa didn't ask me any questions about? So what if I, for example, if a parent has lost a job since 2019, there's no place on the Fasa to tell anyone that if a family is has significant medical expenses, there is no question on the faster that asks about that.

So that's the bad news. There's no place for those special circumstances to be expressed in the standard FAFSA process.

But there is a way for an individual college or University to take an individual students special circumstances into account.

They can gather information from a student and then based on their own policies and procedures, decide whether or not to take that families special circumstances into account. So that's the good news. Schools can take special circumstances into account. The tough part is that if you are thinking about a few different colleges, you need to tell each one of those colleges in universities about those special circumstances.

And.

I can guarantee that if you, for example, express your special circumstances to six different colleges that you may receive six different responses from those colleges. Each college and University has to make their own judgment about how to treat those special circumstances, and they will vary.

If you feel like that's your situation, there's something going on that you think the colleges need to know.

Here is my recommendation and I will say this is another reason that colleges sometimes use the CSS profile. The CSS profile has a place for you to explain those circumstances, but even if the colleges doesn't use the CSS profile, you can put your summary of your special circumstances in writing.

Try to do it in a relatively succinct way.

And then give that summary to the College in writing as you are applying for financial aid and you could send that as an email. It could be a letter, could be a fax if you still have a fax machine by whatever means you choose, deliver that information to the college as you are applying for financial aid.

That's step one.

The other important step that I think you need to keep in mind is that if you receive a financial aid result from a college and it seems to you like you're special circumstances may not have been taken into account.

It's important for you to follow up with those colleges and say, you know, did you receive my description?

But of my special circumstances, did it affect my financial aid result? And if not, is there more information I can give you that might help you take it into account? Because I think the reality is that colleges and universities, financial aid offices are processing financial aid applications very, very quickly. It's often impossible for them to always take those special circumstances into account when they first process and eight application.

That subsequent conversation that follow up dialogue is.

Sometimes difficult to do.

Most people don't enjoy talking to a stranger about their financial difficulties.

But it's important an I can guarantee you.

That, well, I'll tell you it's very likely that if you grit your teeth and have that conversation with the financial aid officer, you're probably not the first person who's been in that situation and the financial aid officer is ready to hear that has heard it before and can give you advice on whether that special circumstance might have an effect and how to bring those special circumstances forward.

Any other questions out there, Adam?

Whatever there must be, what have we missed?

The question about how I'd be considered for a federal Pell Grant. The answer is fill out the FAFSA. The FAFSA is the application for a federal Pell Grant. The actual calculation and determination of whether you're eligible for a federal Pell Grant will come from the individual, college and University.

But the Fasa is the way to apply for it.

When you apply it for when you fill out a FAFSA, you get a result from the Department of Education from the faster processor, but it doesn't tell you a lot. It tells you a couple of things. It will have a sentence that says something like.

It looks like you might be eligible for a federal Pell Grant.

It probably won't tell you the amount. It looks like it will tell you if you've been selected for verification.

How to come back to that in a moment?

But the The real result of your financial aid application is going to come from the individual colleges and universities. Those colleges in universities will take your facet information.

And it will. They will calculate whether you're eligible for a federal Pell Grant. Whether you're eligible for federal state grant. Whether you're eligible for institutional financial aid and then they will provide an eligibility notification to you, which is sometimes called an award letter.

And that eligibility notification will give you a list of every kind of financially that you're eligible for, including the federal Pell Grant the state grant if that's applicable. An financial aid from the institution.

So the institution, the college or University is the place that will tell you exactly what you're eligible for. The faster processor the federal government will not tell you exactly what you're eligible for.

OK, and some other questions about asset asset consideration. Students are wondering what contributes to family assets and investments. OK, so let me drill into that a little bit more on the FAFSA. These are the kinds of assets that are asked.

Cash savings and checking.

For both parents and student.

Investments.

That are not retirement assets. So if a parent holds assets in an IR a or a 401K, an account that is specifically for retirement, it should not be reported on the Fasa.

But if a parent or student has an investment like.

Rental property or gold bullion or stocks or some kind of investment that's not specifically in a retirement account that needs to be reported on the FAFSA as an asset.

The home that the family lives in is not reported as an asset on the Fasa.

OK, if it's your primary residence, the place where you live.

The value of that asset. That home should not be reported on the FAFSA, but if the family owns another property, either a rental property or a vacation home, the value of that second property is an investment and must be reported on the FAFSA.

The other kind of asset that's a little more complicated than I won't spend a lot of time on here is if the family has a business or a farm.

It might need to be reported, but most family businesses are small. Businesses are excluded from the Fasa. There are exceptions. If the business has more than 100 employees or if the family owns less than 50% of that business, then it must be reported. But in most cases the value of a business or a farm is excluded from the Fasa. Now I'm saying specifically that those things are excluded from the fast so.

Because if you if you require are required by one of your colleges or universities to fill out the CSS profile, the CSS profile is going to ask about all those things your home, your business, your retirement account. So that's another difference between the CSS profile in the Fasa. The Fasa does not ask about many kinds of assets. The CSS profile does.

The other kind of asset that's kind of confusing.

Is a 529 college savings plan.

So in most cases of 529, college savings plan is a way that a parent has or someone else has saved money specifically for college expenses, and so if that's the case.

That 529 college savings plan has an owner, usually the parent, and it also has a beneficiary.

When you fill out the FAFSA, the person who reports the value of that 529 college savings plan on the Fasa is the person who owns it. So almost always the parent and it does not matter who the beneficiary is. So if the parent has three children.

And their account statement says that some of their 529 college savings plan is for child, one child, two child 3 the parent is the owner of all of those assets and reports that on the faster, regardless of who the beneficiary is.

Now, if it's a grandparent who owns the 529 college savings plan, then no one reports it on the FAFSA because the grandparents assets are not a question on the fast.

So we're going to take one more question and sounds like Adam reports that there have been some questions about. You know what does it take to get a full ride to a college?

And I don't have an answer for that. It depends on the college. So I think what full ride means is either a scholarship that covers full tuition or depending on who's using the phrase full right, it might mean a scholarship that also covers room and board, maybe other expenses.

I would say to you that generally that full ride is a.

An elusive an unusual animal.

But if that is what you're seeking, I think you really need to check with institutions you're thinking about to find out if that's a possibility. There are institutions that do that, and at McAllister we have some of those. Not very many.

Some of some financial aid programs are extremely robust and especially at wealthy institutions, so they do exist, but they are not terribly ubiquitous. If you are a student in the United States, you could use a net price Calculator to find out whether that will be your experience at an individual institution. If you're an international student, the net price Calculator is probably not going to work for you.

And so there you would be needing to ask individual questions by sending an email to the admissions office at the institutions that you're thinking about.

So I think we'll end it there. Thank you again for being here. Please go ahead and check out workshop Wednesdays on our website for even more recorded workshops and workshops coming up in the future.

And I hope this has been of some help to you. Thank you and best wishes.