<p>So I have 4 financial aid/award letters and I have no idea how to compare them.</p>
<p>Any help would be appreciated.</p>
<p>My end goal in comparing these packages is to see how much I/my parents will have to pay each year.</p>
<p>Take the tuition, room & board and fees and subtract any grants, subtract any scholarships. The resulting number will be your subtotal and will reflect the total costs after what the ccollege is awarding eg free money. Then subtract Stafford loans and Perkins loans. These are loans that will be in YOUR name (the student) and will need to be paid back. The balance is what the family needs to pay. To that number you should add books and spending money and then transportation. Work/Study that is awarded can be used for spending money possibly some transportation but work/study is paid to the student and typically the student doesn’t get the check until a couple weeks after the job starts. Hope that helps.</p>
<p>I take a slightly different approach. Comparing FA packages and determining how much you have to pay are two different tasks, although they are related. Assuming books, laundry, and pizza cost the same at all 4 schools there’s no need to clutter the comparison with these costs. That leaves the following costs: tuition/fees, room, board and estimated travel (your estimates, not those provided by the schools). Now subtract the free money (grants & scholarships). Do this for all 4 schools and compare. This should tell you where the schools stand relative to each other and by how much. Don’t forget that college is for 4 years, so a $1500 difference becomes $6000 in the long run.</p>
<p>Once you have the comparison numbers, add the other costs that were initially left out to determine the total to be paid. IMO, loans are a payment plan, not financial aid, even though they are included in the fin aid packages, but keep in mind that amount of loans included in your FA package generally go up in subsequent years.</p>