Financial Aid Letter Decoder

<p>Time for this link to be re-posted: Financial</a> Aid Letter</p>

<p>Follow the links to sample letters, and then click on the decoding button to read the authors' comments on each package.</p>

<p>There also is a nice glossary of financial aid jargon.</p>

<p>Thanks for the link.</p>

<p>A lot of that is so true. Students don’t really read the FA letters like they should. They look at the bottom line; COA is 40000 and the school gave me 37000, yeah!</p>

<p>What they fail to realize is that about half of the “award” is debt that must be repaid. I have heard so many classmates brag that they got a “free ride” somewhere only to find out that they got maximum Stafford loans and a PLUS loan. The letter sure looked like everything was covered.</p>

<p>I think its expecting too much to think that 17 and 18 year olds can figure this out. Most adults couldn’t!</p>

<p>Great link.</p>

<p>Wish they would add in something about these so called “student loan caps” that so many colleges are now touting. Sure they cap what a student can borrow, but they leave huge gaps for the parents to borrow using unsubsidized loans at higher interest rates.</p>