Because you have not registered yet, you don’t have the cost of attending on your Ohio State portal. However just put the term “cost of attending” on the search engine spot at www.osu.edu and it should get you to the page of cost of attending that usually is in the financial aid section of the Ohio State website.
Cost of Insurance is included in California residents for the UC’s for their financial aid package. I just saw that for my student’s awards this week.
OP-Don’t forget to register for orientation and try to get an early spot so that your COA is included in your portal early.
Be sure to check with financial aid about whether your merit award will increase if tuition increases. I can’t remember if it did for my son.
@itsv I plan to pay my enrollment deposit/fee once I put my check in the bank tomorrow. I’m assuming I need to do that before I can register for orientation, but I’ll make sure to do it ASAP! Also I’ll be sure to check with financial aid about the merit award. Thanks for your help.
Should I only take out the $2497 in subsidized loans? Will I be able to get by without the $2606 in unsubsidized loans? I’m looking to minimize my debt load after college as much as possible. I have friends talking about taking out huge private loans or parent plus loans, which I personally find terrifying.
Absolutely don’t take the unsubbed loans until you need them. You may find you need them in October, so go in then and get them. You may find you don’t need them at all. It’s very easy to get the money when you need it.
@twoinanddone oh, that’s good to know. Thanks. I was under the impression that I needed to take them out before school began in order to have them. The unsubsidized loans are the ones where interest starting adding up immediately, right? So if I take them out, should I pay the interest while in college? I’m not sure how much that would be a month, but if it’s not too high I think I could pay for it or perhaps even my mom or dad, although neither of them are able to fund my education. But they might be able to pay a small interest payment each month.
The interest would be 4.29% on about $1500 (you only get 1/2 per semester). You can pay the accrued interest every quarter, or every time it gets to $100, whatever is easiest for you. It is not that much.
When your actual billing goes up on your portal, accept enough financial aid to cover the billed amount. The rest you can just wait on to see if you need it. You’ll have some money in your pocket from this summer to pay for books, dorm expenses, travel if you need it. Hopefully your parents can afford some of that or load you up on toothpaste and sheets from home. Maybe you’ll get a gift card or two for graduation. You don’t need much. My daughter took about 6 huge duffelbags to school filled with all kinds of clothes and blankets and coats. One suitcase of just shoes. Year 2? Two bags, not full. Many schools have a rummage sale the first week of school and you can get a fridge or coffee maker for a few dollars, but you don’t even need that.
You sound thrifty. It’s really good you are taking control of this from the beginning.
@kingx16 Go and talk to Financial Aid, but I am pretty sure you don’t have to take the unsubsidized loan now, you can just leave it available on the financial aid section of your portal. Just don’t hit the “decline” button (if it is still set up the same way as it was for my son). Have financial aid walk you through the steps you have to do for each item in your financial aid. I remember at orientation there was a great financial aid presentation so be sure to attend that workshop. You don’t have to take out all the loans now. My son never took his loans, but they were always available for him in his financial aid file.
One other money saving thing you should definitely do is sign up to be an O.W.L. (Ohio State Welcome Leader). OWLS are freshman who help other freshman move into their dorms. When you are an OWL you get to move into your dorm on early (like Thursday) when most freshman move in on Saturday. There are special fun events for OWLs and you get to get settled into your dorm and meet fellow OWL freshman before the large group of freshmen move into the dorms. Dorm move-in is much calmer during the OWL period. The best thing of all is that being an OWL is free and you don’t have to pay extra for moving into the dorm early. My son did it and the friends he met while an OWL are still his best friends today. He said it allowed him to get settled before the masses arrived so he started freshmen year off on the right foot. Plus the then President of Ohio State rode the elevator with him for 20 minutes getting to know him since my son’s OWL job was to control the elevator in Taylor Tower during freshman move-in. Here is the link to sign up for it. https://housing.osu.edu/jobs/ohio-state-welcome-leader-owl/
Another thing you want to save up for is football tickets. Those usually go one sale in May or June and cost around $180 for the season. As you know Ohio State is big on football and a lot of freshmen go to the games especially this year when Michigan comes. You can’t get tickets any other way so be on the lookout for sign ups for those tickets.
Also if you have passed any AP exams, be sure to have your scores sent to Ohio State since you can earn college credit for them. My son was able to get 40 units of credit to save money. Another final cost savings tip is to save up those Bed, Bath and Beyond coupons even the expired ones. There is a BBB on Lane Avenue near campus and we saved a lot of money using those coupons. I don’t know how far you live away from Columbus, but you can purchase things at your local BBB or Container Store and they will send them to Columbus for free for you which further saves money.
I forgot one more thing, my son said to tell you to wait to buy your books. Some professors don’t use the book or you can get a pdf of the book that will save you some money. Also when you get your Ohio State email you should then sign up for the free Amazon Prime membership students can get for either 6 months or 1 year (I don’t remember the exact term). My son said that sometimes your text books are cheaper on Amazon and with prime they can usually send them to you on two-day mail for free.
If you look at my post #3 I looked up the 2026-17 costs for tuition, fees, room and board which is about $21,700
Your aid is showing the following: $10,010 tuition scholarship
$3365 Federal Pell Grant
$4500 in School Grants
$3000 in work study
$2606 in Federal Unsubsized loans
$2497 in Federal Subsidized loans
Work study is not money you will have available at beginning of semester since you will earn that from a paycheck once you get a work study job. You might not need unsubsidized loan, subsidized is better so let’s look at how much just the grants and scholarship cover.
It’s $17,875
So direct billed costs minus scholarship and grants = $3,825
This is approximately what you have to come up with per year, half for fall and half for spring.
So if you need the subsidized loan and can pay the rest out of pocket from savings and summer work earnings, you can do that. Or you might not need any loan.
I was selected for FAFSA verification so I have gone in and updated my taxes info using the IRS Data Retrieval. We were unable to do it for my mother’s because she filed her taxes right before Easter (!!!), but she called them and said it was okay and that her tax info would just remain pending. I think she’s either sending in or uploading copies of her 2015 tax return.
I’m worried about how much my aid will vary once they receive my Dependent Student and Verification Forms. After updating the FAFSA, my EFC went from $2,497 to $2,585, making my estimated Pell Grant drop from $3365 to $3225. I’m assuming it will drop more once my Mother’s tax info comes in. She made approximately $8,000 more than last year (we had used last year’s tax info to estimate it).
@kingx16, if your mom filed last week, you can keep trying to see if IRS retrieval tool becomes available. If she is getting a refund it might only take a few days.
Yes, your EFC will likely go up, hopefully not too much.
@kingx16, My son filed his taxes the week before Easter. He was able to use the Data Retrieval tool today. He checked for it every day until it came up. It didn’t take long.
The good thing is that any increase in EFC by the higher parent income will be less so because you have a sibling in college. So if parent EFC would increase by $3,000 your and your sister’s EFC would each increase by $1,500 because there are two in college.
@mommdc I believe my dad claimed the education credit on his tax return. I think they did this because my dad would give whatever the return is back to my sister to use for educational costs, while my mom wouldn’t have. I’m sorry, I’m not sure if they were incorrect to do that. I don’t understand much about the education tax credit/or taxes in general, really.