FA Package: What does this mean?

Paying for College
1

<p>I'm just a junior, so I don't know enough about college admissions and such. I was looking at USNews's rankings and saw that the average financial aid package for Dartmouth was $30,019. What does this mean? Is that the total of four years or per year?</p>

<p>thanks
tux</p>

2

<p>that would be per year
A finaid package includes grants, loans and work study.</p>

3

<p>tus,</p>

<p>I would advise you to run your numbers through Dartmouth's Financial aid calculator (as it is pretty accurate).</p>

<p>I would also recommend reading Dartmouth's Student Handbook on financial aid.</p>

<p><a href="http://www.dartmouth.edu/apply/pdfs/0607_Financial_Aid_Handbook.pdf%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.dartmouth.edu/apply/pdfs/0607_Financial_Aid_Handbook.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

4

<p>Financial aid comes in 4 forms: scholarships, loans, grants and work-study, and your EFC (expected family contribution - the minimum the federal gov't determines a family will pay for college) will determine how much and of what. Dartmouth's handbook may be helpful, but it won't tell you how to increase your chances of being accepted, and it surely doesn't have any legal strategies to detail how to qualify your family for maximum financial aid. There is one book on the subject you should read though.</p>

5

<p>you also should not have to pay for financial aid advice. IMHO posters should not post just to simply hawk their product unless they are offering the services for free and then they could just be straight up in sharing their information.</p>