Is Financial Aid Really All That Complicated?

Colleges are a business. The financial aid office is not there to find reasons to give your student free money. They are looking for ways to honor the financial policies of their employer. That’s why the rules and regulations surrounding financial aid are over 10,000 pages long!

For most families, paying for college means relying on some form of financial aid.

A whopping 98% of families said financial aid would be necessary to pay for college and 82% said it was “extremely” or “very” necessary.  “Financial aid is more a necessity now than ever,” Robert Franek, The Princeton Review’s editor-in-chief.

Believe it or not, the biggest barrier to financial aid is the application itself. It’s too hard to understand and is not a useful college planning tool. A recent Hechinger Report news story ranked the FAFSA No. 1 among the “most complex and convoluted higher education forms.” Even though FAFSA Simplification reduced the number of questions the FAFSA asks, the new rules make it harder to qualify for aid especially those families with incomes of 80k+.

And after all that work, students still don’t receive enough information to plan and budget. The complexity of the form not only prevents families from getting the support they need — but it has also been shown to prevent students well-prepared for college from ever enrolling.

This isn’t the way it’s supposed to be. There is a better way. Financial Aid NOW™ takes the family from finding colleges that will offer their student the most lucrative award packages to properly preparing and filing the financial aid forms to negotiating the best price.

The fee to enroll in the Financial Aid NOW™ program is only $449.00.  Keep in mind that a four-year college degree at a state university starts at $120,000. More than a few private colleges are now over $360,000.