Please note that this transcript was auto-generated. We apologize for any minor errors in spelling or grammar.

There we go. Okay. Well thank you everybody for bearing with me while we set this up. Uh, this is MEFA’s Financial Aid 1 0 1 presentation where we talk about financial aid and it’s primarily geared towards, uh, the families of seniors in high school. My name is Jonathan Hughes. I’m the Associate Director of College Planning and Constant Creation at MEFA.

I’ve been at MEFA for over 25 years. Oh no, Al over 20 years, almost 25 years. And my colleague, uh, is joining me, Stephanie Wells. Uh, as I mentioned earlier, she’s gonna be behind the scenes helping out with the questions. She’s been here for almost 25 years. So between us, I think you have eight months on me, Jonathan.

[00:01:00] Between us, we have almost 50 years Woo of experience. Can you imagine that? Um, I think that’s the last time I’ll say that, but, um, but so, so please feel free to ask your questions as we go throughout. We have done this presentation many times. I’ve helped thousands of families, uh, to plan, save, and, uh, afford college and attend college.

So, uh, this should take us about an hour. As I said, I sometimes struggle to get it in within an hour, so I’m glad Stephanie is here to take questions. Um, how to participate in this webinar. If you have a question, again, you can submit that through the q and a and Stephanie will answer. I’ll check in with her occasionally in case there is, uh, an overriding question, a popular question that needs to be answered to everyone.

And you can also request a live transcript. So you can get that sort of closed captioning as I go if you like to read, uh, as we move through. Um, so you will have questions throughout this presentation. And what I wanna say about MEFA is that MEFA is here [00:02:00] as a resource for you after tonight. So we are gonna go through a lot of information.

You’re not gonna retain every bit of it. You will have questions between now and the time your child or your student goes to college. That’s what you can contact Mefa for. Mefa iss, the Massachusetts Educational Financing Authority. We were created by the state legislature, Massachusetts back in 1982 and created with a public service mission to help families to play and save and pay for college and career readiness.

And we do that in a variety of ways. Um. W we offer the presentations like this for educational outreach on best practices on how to attend college and, and attain career readiness as well. Uh, we have savings programs and we have loans, but really what I want to push to you once again, is our free guidance that is available on all subjects related to, as I said, college and career readiness.

Tonight, what we’re gonna talk about. Is financial aid. So the [00:03:00] types and sources of financial aid. When we talk about financial aid, what exactly is it that we’re talking about and where does it come from? Secondly, the application process. So how do you go about getting that financial aid and what are the forms that you might need to file and what are the things they’re gonna be looking at on those forms?

How financial aid decisions are made. So once you put in all your economic information and whatnot into these financial aid forms, who’s gonna be looking at that and how do they determine, you know, how much financial aid you’re going to be eligible to receive and how much you will receive. And then finally, well not finally, but we’ll, we’ll take it a step further and talk about the options that you have for actually for paying for college.

Uh, Stephanie can probably, uh, attest to this, but I would say that the most common question I get from parents over my tenure at MEFA has been. How do people do this, right? How do people actually pay for college? People just don’t know until they get there. So we’ll talk about, uh, some ways that people used to pay for college, and then we’ll close by talking about some [00:04:00] free resources.

So, as I mentioned, you know, it’s, it’s natural to feel, uh, confused or to have questions throughout this process, but we do wanna leave you with some free resources that you can consult, uh, for assistance. Okay? Now before we actually get into the meat of the presentation, just wanna give you a, a lay of the land as far as financial aid is concerned.

So, um, some of you may be aware that last year the FAFSA was significantly changed. It was simplified and the form actually was simplified. Uh, however, the rollout of the form and the process that people needed to use to sign up and to, to complete the form and to get their financial aid had a lot of problems.

So, you may have heard of this, you may have, uh, known other families who have gone through this process or, or even heard in the news about it. Um, things ran very late last year. There were delays, there were problems with the form. Colleges had to. [00:05:00] Move back their decision deadline and their aid deadlines as well.

This year, things started a little bit later than typical once again, although, uh, I’m happy to say that it is a much, much smoother process this year. Uh, discussions about affordability are more important than ever, as the cost of college has continued to rise. A lot of people are looking at, uh, affordability in terms of what colleges they’re even going to apply to, and we’ll talk about that a little bit throughout the presentation.

We do recommend that you have a balanced college list in terms of cost. Uh, so, you know, one of the things, and we’re, we’re getting to the season where people are starting to get their financial aid offers from colleges and get their acceptances and their decisions and, you know, you just wanna make sure that you have in your letters and your offers.

Uh, possibilities. So a good range of schools and schools that you can attend if you don’t get the financial aid offer that you were hoping to, to for some of [00:06:00] your other schools. Now, a good thing that we’re gonna be talking about briefly is that the, uh, the situation for Massachusetts State Financial Aid is quite a bit better this year.

There are new programs and increased funding for Massachusetts State Financial Aid, and we’ll talk about some of those programs near the end of the presentation. And then finally, and we’re gonna talk about merit aid as well, but merit aid continues to be an important part of the financial aid offer.

This is aid, and I’ll again talk about this later on, um, that is not based on your income, but, uh, think about college scholarships for students. So, um, you know, this is an important part of the financial aid offer. You can talk to colleges, ask them if they do merit aid, and again, we’re gonna talk about that in greater detail as we go through Now.

Starting the actual present, the, the, the meat of the presentation itself, we’re gonna begin with types and sources of financial aid. And as I said, when I talk about financial aid, what exactly am I talking about? What is financial aid? [00:07:00] Well, very simply put, it is money to help students pay for college. And, and that sounds simple, but it comes in three main varieties.

The first those grants and scholarships. This is the best kind of financial aid that there is. It’s gift aid, which means it does not have to be repaid, it just comes off the bill. And so hopefully when you get your financial aid offers from your colleges, you see a lot of gift aid there. Grants and scholarships or grants or scholarships, so you don’t have to pay that back.

The first kind, the best kind. The second type of financial aid is federal work study. Now this is money set aside for a student to be able to earn by working a job on campus throughout the year. And you’ll see this in your aid offer. It will say Federal work study, and it’ll have a dollar amount next to it.

That is the amount that the student can earn throughout the year by working a work study job. Uh, so if you see that there and the student wants. Work [00:08:00] study money. They need to go and get a work study job and work the hours and they’ll get paid in a paycheck just like any other job throughout the year.

And that again, dollar limit is the amount that they can earn. Now if you have questions about work study, if you see the offer and you don’t know what your next step is, talk to the financial aid office and that won’t be the last time I say that tonight. Talking to the financial aid office is a big motif of this presentation.

Um, so colleges might do work study a little bit differently. So some financial aid offices might send a listing of all their financial aid, all their work study jobs, to all their work study students. Some may not do that, some may leave it up to the student to find that job. Um, whatever it is, if you have questions, make sure you follow up with the financial aid office.

’cause if you don’t find a job and work it and get the money, you don’t get the federal work study money. The second thing I wanna say about work study is if you don’t see a work study offer on your [00:09:00] aid offer, it doesn’t mean that you can’t get a job on campus. There are still likely jobs on campus that’s, uh, campuses that students can get that are not federal work study jobs.

So that’s a second type of financial aid. The third type of financial aid is federal student loans. And people get sort of confused about why federal student loans are considered financial aid. So I want to be clear that not every loan that you may get to pay for college is financial aid only. The Federal Direct student loan program is considered financial aid and the reason is because it has benefits associated with it, which we are going to talk about in great detail in just a minute.

But I would say that the only thing that really MEFA. Says that you should do, everyone should do is if you are going to be borrowing anything at all, you start by taking these federal student loans first because they are the only type of loans that are financial aid, um, because they’re the best [00:10:00] options for students.

So those are the three main types of financial aid, grants and scholarships, gift aid, the best kind work study, and federal student loans. Now, I said we were gonna talk about what makes federal student loans financial aid, and, and here’s where we’re gonna do that. The first thing I will say is that federal direct student loans.

Might be, you know, the only loan that you run into on which the student is the sole borrower of the loan. And I think this is something that surprises students and, and parents as well since we tend to talk about student loans. Uh, and, and you know, you see stories on the news about students leaving college with all this money in, in student loan debt.

People tend to assume that students can just borrow whatever amount they may need for college as long as they promise to pay it back afterwards. But that’s not actually true. Um, most student loans, the approval for them will be based on credit check, and students just, [00:11:00] uh, don’t have the credit or credit and income necessary to be approved without a co borrower.

So the first benefit for these federal direct student loans is there is no credit check to be approved for them, and the student is the sole borrower of the loan. So basically you need to file your fafsa, which we’ll talk about. And you’re kind of, you know, I wouldn’t say you’re guaranteed to get these loans, but the overwhelming likelihood is that you will get these loans.

Um, they come in subsidized and unsubsidized variety. So this is another benefit for these loans. So what does that mean? When you are a student and you are in college, you are not expected to be making payments on these loans while, while you’re in college. The loans are said to be in deferment, and so if you have a subsidized loan, what that means is that there is no interest that is accruing on the amount that you borrowed while the student is in college and the loan is in deferment.

If you have an [00:12:00] unsubsidized loan, there is interest accruing on that amount while you’re in college. So, um, you know, you may qualify for just an unsubsidized loan or you may qualify for a subsidized portion. An unsubsidized portion of that loan. But a subsidy that is the government paying that interest while the student is in college and the loan is in deferment, uh, is just something that is not available on most other loans.

So that is another sort of check, uh, in the, in the favor for federal direct student loans. Now, the interest rate for these loans for this up for this current year is 6.53%, and that is a fixed interest rate. So if you had a loan for this year, that’s what it would be, and that’s what it would always be. So it’s not going to change.

It’s not gonna go up or down with the market. Now, next year, if you have a different loan, that would be its own rate and that rate would be fixed. So upcoming rates for the upcoming year will be set in May. And so this is a good time to sort of look over [00:13:00] at the right side of this. Slide and see this annual loan limits graphic here.

So students are, are able to borrow this, these loans in their own name without a co borrower. There’s no credit check, but there is a limit to how much they, uh, can borrow through this program. So for freshmen, freshmen can borrow up to $5,500, sophomore, 6,500 and juniors and seniors, $7,500 each. Uh, and it’s part of the reason why we say you should start by taking these loans, if you’re going to be borrowing anything.

’cause oftentimes, you know, these are part of the financial aid offer to begin with. There may be a balance after that that you need to borrow for, that you wanna borrow for. If there isn’t fantastic. But oftentimes there is. Now if you are a student and you take every dollar that you’re eligible to receive every year, so 55, 65, 75, 75, you would leave college with about [00:14:00] $27,000.

Uh. In federal direct student loan debt in your own name. And remember, you know, there’s no payments due while the student is in college. The repayments begins six months after the student graduates or leaves the program or falls below halftime at that program. So then there’s a, once that happens, there’s a six month grace, and then the repayment begins now saying about $27,000 for a balance and let’s say about 6.53% for interest.

I would say that the monthly pay, oh, I’m sorry, the, the term that you have to repay that is 10 years. That’s the standard term. So having all that data there, I would estimate that. The monthly payment to pay those loans off within the term of 10 years is about 300 maybe to $350 a month. If that’s manageable for you, then great.

If you would like it to be lower. There’s lots of different options that you can use to get that monthly [00:15:00] payment lower. And this is, again, another benefit of these federal direct student loan programs is that they’re very flexible in how they can be repaid. So you can stretch that 10 year repayment term out to 20 years or to 25 years.

You can make the monthly payment as low as 10% of your discretionary income. There’s lots of flexibility in how these plans can be paid. There’s, I think, 10 or 11 different payment plans that you can get on, and that really, again, just is not a feature of most other loans. There’s also programs like the Public service, uh, forgiveness.

Program where if you’re, um, uh, working at a, a qualified nonprofit for 10 years, you can apply to have that balance, um, forgiven at that point. If you go to graduate school, you can extend that deferment, uh, while you’re in graduate school. Again, not necessarily the case with other types of loans. And there’s also economic, affirmative, forbearance, forbearance options as well if you’re having a [00:16:00] hard time paying.

So again, uh, all reasons why MEFA recommends you take, start by taking these loans first, if you are going to be borrowing anything at all. Now as far as where financial aid comes from, there are four main sources. And, and I’ve talked already a lot about the federal government. So some examples of, uh, federal student aid are things like the Federal Direct Student Loan Program, the federal Work Study program, the Federal Pell Grant, that a grant program you may have heard of through the federal government.

And there are tax credits that you can claim by paying, uh, tuition as well. And the, the site for, um, all of those federal aid programs is student aid.gov. Uh, the state that you live in also will give out financial aid, of course for Massachusetts. Um, you may have heard of programs like the Mass Grant, the John and Abigail Adams tuition.

Uh, waiver, the Coplac [00:17:00] Scholarship and the Mass No Interest Loan. These are all examples of state financial aid from the state of Massachusetts, and the agency that oversees those programs is osfa the Office of Student Financial Assistance. And to qualify from your state, you need to file the federal form as well.

So the federal form will, uh, you know, run your eligibility for, determine your eligibility for aid from the federal and state governments. And the colleges and universities themselves give out a lot of financial aid. And so mainly in the gift rate aid realm. So grants and scholarships from colleges. Some colleges do their own loans.

I have their own loan programs. It’s not as common, but, uh, certainly a lot of grants and scholarships from colleges and universities. And then of course, there are outside scholarships as well. So, uh, for outside scholarships, we recommend looking at this, uh, on a two track. Lens. So you wanna think of local scholarships and national scholarships.

So local scholarships, you know, [00:18:00] scholarships from local businesses or organizations. Have your student talk with their high school counselor. They’re often the, um, the best resources for local scholarships and then for national scholarships. The student should use a scholarship search engine online.

Never pay to have one done. There are plenty of free, reputable, effective, uh, scholarship searches. And, uh, we link to some on MEFA.org. Here’s some listed right here, MEFA pathway.org, fastweb.com. There’s others like bold.org. In fact, Stephanie, Stephanie and I were just on a presentation that we did last week, which is recorded on MEFA.org about applying for private scholarships and some, some tips and, and tools and places to look for that as well.

Um, and then at the bottom here, I’d just like to point this out. This is the total amount of undergraduate aid received by students in the most recent year that we have [00:19:00] data for, which is $177 billion that. Figure is actually taken from a, a college board publication. They are the organization that does the SATs, um, and, and the profile, which we’ll see later on.

Uh, but they also do a lot of research and I, I just like this because, you know, it, it’s, it’s fairly well understood that college is or can be very expensive, but what isn’t as well understood is just how much financial aid gets granted every year. So, uh, $177 billion is a lot, and it, it’s not, um, a one-off that’s about where things typically are.

So, um, I just like to point that out. And the fact is, is that, you know, you see a high sticker price for a college, most people are not gonna pay that sticker price. Most families are eligible for some level of financial aid. And so. We’re gonna talk about the two ways in which financial aid is judged and awarded.[00:20:00]

The first one, which I’ve already sort of mentioned, is merit-based aid. So we’re gonna be talking a lot about income and assets and financial aid forms and all that stuff. Merit-based aid is sort of different from that. It is not awarded in terms of your financial need. It’s awarded in recognition of student achievements.

So when you hear merit-based aid, think about scholarships, think about academic scholarships or athletic scholarships. Um, money given to a student based on their achievements. Now, the thing, main, a couple of main things to realize about merit-based aid. The first is, um. This is mainly from colleges and universities.

So the federal government, for example, does not do any merit-based programs. Uh, the state of Massachusetts, the state I know about, um, most of what they do is not merit-based, but merit-based scholarships typically come either from outsource outside organizations, but from the colleges. So, um, different colleges have different [00:21:00] practices on merit-based aid.

Some give out a lot of merit-based scholarships to their students. Some don’t. Some don’t give out any. So it really depends upon, uh, the practices of the colleges. And that’s a question that you can ask a college or you can find a, you know, do you do merit-based scholarships? Uh, if they do find out if there is a separate application aside from the financial aid applications that you need to apply for a college’s merit-based scholarship program, there may be some.

Um, the other thing I would say is that. You apply for financial aid on a yearly basis, and your financial aid offer covers one year. So if you do see a scholarship, a merit based scholarship from a college, find out is the scholarship renewable from year to year? Is it the same amount every year? If it is, and then if you can renew this scholarship from year to year, what are the requirements that the student has to meet in order to do that?

Um, you know, maybe [00:22:00] a GPA that they have to maintain. If it’s an athletic scholarship, maybe there’s another component to it. Um, it, it, it really, you know, it, it depends. You wanna make sure that you know that. So that you can continue to qualify for that scholarship. I will say that the very few times I’ve spoken with parents and they have lost a lot of financial aid from one year to the next, it typically doesn’t happen.

Um, but the very few times that it has, it has been because the student missed out on qualifying, uh, to renew their scholar scholarship. So you don’t want that to happen. But generally speaking, most financial aid that is granted in a year is not merit-based. It’s need-based financial aid. So that means that it’s based on the family’s financial eligibility or their financial need.

Oh, hang on a second. My computer appears to be dying and I don’t know why.

Hopefully that’s better. Um, so how do they determine your financial need?[00:23:00]

All right, just checking on that. Um, they determine your financial need or your financial eligibility, eligibility by the information that you put on the financial aid forms. And so it’s important to understand that when you’re filing the fafsa, which is the free application for federal student aid, which will go to every college at you’re applying to, uh, that is a standardized formula.

Every family’s information is going to be treated the same. They’re all going through the same formula. If you’re applying for an additional scholar, uh, I’m sorry, um, if you’re filing an additional financial aid form based on the college, ’cause some colleges will want an additional one. Uh, that will also be the same formula for all of their families as well.

So examples of need-based aid include things like grants, loans and work study. So those federal programs, for example, all based upon need. And even though most financial aid is need-based, the student [00:24:00] must be making satisfactory academic progress. So they have to be moving through their course of study, uh, in a satisfactory way.

And that is determined, you know, the college has to certify that this is happening and they need to be meeting that progress in order to continue to qualify for, uh, need-based financial aid. I’m gonna stop here and ask Stephanie if there are any questions that should be answered. No questions, but feel free to type those in the q and a folks and I will answer them.

Okay. Thank you. Um, okay, so that is. Sort of the, the essentials of what financial aid is, where it comes from and how it is awarded. Now, it comes to the part where we talk about what you need to do to get that financial aid, the financial aid applications that you need to file, just to give you an overview on the timeline.

And we’re, we’re kind of at the, the later point of the timeline now. Um, but you should all, [00:25:00] you know, one of the most important things that you need to do in this process is to not miss deadlines, be aware of deadlines and not, you know, miss them. Even if you have to send something in that you’re not sure about, you can always follow up with the college later.

Um, it’s one of these times where a deadline is a hard deadline and if you miss a college financial aid deadline, you should not expect to get financial aid from that college. So, um, your financial aid application and your admissions applications should be. Done around the same time. So you don’t wanna make that mistake that some families make, which is you apply for admissions, wait to get your admissions decision, and then apply for financial aid because colleges have their financial aid deadlines and if you’ve done that, it’s a good chance that you’ve missed their college, uh, financial aid deadline.

So there are a couple of different ways that you can apply. You can apply regular decision or early action or early decision. Early action and early decision deadlines are probably passed by [00:26:00] now, but just to tell you what they are, early action is I. You’re applying for admission early and you want to know early whether or not you’ve been admitted.

And that’s essentially it. Early decision is what they call a binding decision. So you’re applying early, you wanna know early, but more than that, you’re telling the college that if they do admit you, you are committed to coming to that college. So, as we always say, choose very carefully about whether to apply early decision anywhere.

And then also you should only be applying early decision to one college ’cause it’s really a commitment that you can only make to one college. Um,

yeah. And so also if you’re applying regular decision, the regular decision deadlines. It depends on the college. I mean, sometimes they, they may have passed by now. There may be some that you still have time to file your financial aid forms and be approved for, um, aid from the college. [00:27:00] So standard deadlines are typically in February or March.

Uh, we do have a tool to meet application deadlines and you can click on this and, and go to our college application manager and it will say, you know, uh, what’s the admissions deadline? What’s the FAFSA deadline? ’cause each college will have their FAFSA deadline. Then colleges may want an additional form called the CSS profile.

Uh, if it’s a CSS profile school, find out. And then what’s their deadline for the CSS profile as well. So, as I said, I know we’re sort of later in the process and people are sort of getting their admissions decisions perhaps, and their financial aid offers. You should receive those about the same time the decision and the aid offer.

Um, so some of you might be seeing those soon, but just that is the general overview of the timeline. You’re gonna be applying for admission and for financial aid at the, around the same time, early action, early decision deadlines, [00:28:00] October or November. Standard deadlines for regular decision February or March.

And you should start to hear, um, your admissions decisions and get your financial aid offers shortly. Uh, some of you probably have them now.

Now, here’s where we get to the fafsa. Something that I’ve mentioned many times already. The FAFSA is the free application for federal student aid. It is a free application. It is required by all colleges. If you want aid from the federal government, from the state government, and from the colleges, you need to file a FAFSA and send it to every college that you are applying to.

This is something that you need to complete every year if you want aid every year. Uh, this year it was available on fafsa.gov on December 1st, actually a few days before December 1st, as I mentioned, it had, it was significantly delayed last year, slightly delayed this year. Usually it’s available October 1st.

So if we have the families of juniors. On the call, on the, on the [00:29:00] webinar tonight, you, you may be, uh, eligible to file this next for, for your children or your students beginning October 1st. So 2025 high school grads will do the 20 25, 20 26 fafsa. This is something that is still open though for students, so you can do this now.

Uh, and this concerns contributors. So a contributor to a FAFSA is the person who needs to file a FAFSA and put their information down. So FAFSA typically have more than one contributor. So a student is always a contributor to a fafsa, so they need to put their information in. Uh, and then if a student is including parent information, which is a lot of un sort of traditional, it’s called undergraduate, students will need to do, they can invite.

That person or those people to, to complete their FAFSA and, and fill in their section of the FAFSA as well. And then the last person to fill in their section of the fafsa, uh, submits the fafsa. Incomplete FAFSA [00:30:00] are deleted after 45 days of no activity. So you don’t have to start and, and complete a FAFSA all in one sitting.

You can start and, you know, get information, send it to a parent or what have you, and they can go in later. But after 45 days of no activity, it is deleted and you have to start over. Uh, we have a lot of information on completing the FAFSA on MEFA.org. A lot of old, uh, webinars, recorded webinars, um, including the understanding the FAFSA webinar.

So the most important part of the first part, and probably the, the, the trickiest part since the form has been so simplified, uh, is to get your FSA id. And this is a username and password that you need to log in and submit your FAFSA and every contributor needs to have, well, this is where it gets tricky.

Students need an FS a ID and at least one parent if parent information is being included. Included needs an FS a I, and we’ll talk about that in a second. [00:31:00] So, uh, you can go to student aid.gov/fsa. Id. To create, you know, and click on create an account. It should only take a few minutes. You put in your information.

Your FSA ID is going to be tied to your, um, yourself, your social security number, your date of birth, although you don’t actually need a Social security number to get one. Um, it will be yours for the rest of your life. So, you know, it’s gonna be your F-S-A-I-D next year as well. When you’re filing next year’s fafsa, when you’re looking at your student loans from the federal government, if you have them after the fact, you’re gonna log in using your F-S-A-I-D.

So. You know, you set up a username and password, make sure you, you, you write it down and you, you have it. Uh, you can get another one if you lose it, but it’s just a, a sort of a pain. So you don’t wanna have to do that. Um, you have to have an email address, right? So again, who needs an F-S-A-I-D The student always needs an F-S-A-I-D.

And this would be the first thing really, that you do if you haven’t filed a fast yet to start getting your F-S-A-I-D. [00:32:00] So the student needs to go on and get their F-S-A-I-D, um, they can complete their side of the process in about five minutes. It may take about two to four days for things to be finalized because the information that you put in needs to be checked with the Social Security Administration.

And once that’s done, you’ll get an email saying that, uh, your FSA ID is all set to use. Now, oftentimes students need to put parents on the fafsa and it depends. On the circumstances of who filed taxes, if each parent needs an F-S-A-I-D, uh, or if only one parent needs an F-S-A-I-D, although first I should say if the student is married, uh, the student’s spouse needs to get an F-S-A-I-D if they filed taxes separately from the student or didn’t file.

Same thing for the parents. If the parents file taxes jointly, then only one parent needs an F-S-A-I-D. If, uh, the parents did not file jointly [00:33:00] or did not file at all, then both parents need their own F-S-A-I-D. Honestly, I think this is probably the most confusing thing in the entire FAFSA process. So once you get past this, it should be pretty easy.

But, um, student needs an F-S-A-I-D if parents are married and filed jointly, only one parent needs one. I. Parents, uh, didn’t file or file separately. Each parent needs an F-S-A-I-D and as I said, you don’t need a social security number to get an F-S-A-I-D that’s new from this year. That used to be something that you needed.

Um, but you can set one up without an and answer knowledge base questions pulled from your credit history. So once you get that and you’re ready to file your fafsa, what goes on the fafsa? So, general information, student citizen citizenship status. So all students who are eligible to get federal aid need to be either US citizens, permanent residents, or eligible non-citizens.

[00:34:00] Um, so that is the case federally. In terms of state financial aid, the policies as to who is eligible for what programs for state financial aid really depends from state to state, uh, in Massachusetts. There are programs for, um, people without social security numbers to, to get some Massachusetts state aid and be eligible for in-state tuition.

Uh, so if you’re in Massachusetts, that may be a possibility depending on your status. And, uh, other states you, you’d have to consult with your agencies there. Um, you need to put all the colleges at which the student is applying. There’s space for 20 colleges, so again, FAFSA’s going to each college you’re applying to.

Parents need to be listed on the FAFSA for most students and which parents need to go on the fafsa. All married parents, including parents, both of their information needs to go on the fafsa. All parents who live together, married or not, [00:35:00] both of their information needs to go on the fafsa. In the cases of divorced or separated parents.

The FAFSA is looking for information from the parent who provided more financial support for the student in the last 12 months, and then if that parent has remarried the current spouse’s information as well because they’re looking at the household. So, uh, I know this always drives a lot of questions because oftentimes divorced or separated parents try really hard to split everything.

50 50. Um, this is something that they really want you to figure out as a family. Um, the guideline is that if the parents provided equal support, use the parents with the greater income and assets. So we wanna be able to figure this out without having to do that. The guidelines, the guidelines that we received, um, from the federal government when they set this up was it could be something as small and sort of vague as I bought another.

An extra cup of coffee over the past 12 months for that student. [00:36:00] It could be a dollar more that you calculated that you’re giving to the student. Um, it that’s, they want you to figure this out. They’re not going to be policing it. They want you, the, the family to, to tell them who the, uh, the parent to file the FAFSA would be.

Also, you wanna put the number of people in the household, uh, that will pull from the IRS, but if that’s not correct, you can update that information as fam, um, as a family and the number of children that will be in college for the relevant year, although that will not be used in the calculation. So I keep talking about information, whose information needs to go on, but what information needs to go on.

Basically we’re looking at financial information aside from the demographics, financial information from both the parent and the student. And they’re both in two main categories, income and assets. So, um, a big part of the reason that the FAFSA is easy to do now is because. Most families won’t have to grab their tax forms [00:37:00] and find the correct line and put it into the fafsa.

Most families will be able to use, uh, the data exchange from the IRS. So what they’re looking for in terms of income is what they call the prior prior years. So you’re gonna be doing this fafsa. Let’s say that you have a student that’s going to college in the fall. They’re gonna be filing a 25, 26 fafsa.

They’re going to be looking at income and asking you from, for income from the year 2023. And the reason is because most people have already filed their 2023 income taxes yet. And so you need to sort of give consent at the very beginning of filing the fafsa. You, you know, give consent for the student, for the FAFSA to go into the IRS and and import this information and put it directly into the fafsa.

If you don’t consent to that, you’re not gonna get financial aid. So you wanna do that. Um, and so that most people will not have to answer income [00:38:00] questions because of that. So they’re gonna be looking at your adjusted gross income and untaxed income that appears on your tax return, and they’re gonna be looking at that from both the student and the parent.

The other thing they’re gonna be looking at is assets. So assets of the student and asset of the parents. I think it probably makes sense to talk about what is not considered an asset first. So things that are not considered an asset for the federal calculations are things like the value of your primary home.

So the home that you live in. If you own that, you’re not going to be asked to list that as an asset. The value of your retirement accounts that is not asked to be listed as an asset and the value of life insurance, either what is considered an asset child support received, any education savings account that you may have for your child or your children, uh, sorry for your child that you’re filing the FAFSA for Now, that’s gonna be looked at as a parent asset.

And then, you know, other assets that you may have. If you have second [00:39:00] property, they’re gonna look at that. Uh, any investments that you might have. The value of a a small business and what’s in your checking and savings account. The day you file the fafsa, they’re gonna look at all those things and that is what your.

Sort of available assets will be looked at. It’s important to say that debt is not looked at on the FAFSA except as reported on assets. And what I mean by that is if you have second property, for example, that you are listing and the value of that property is listed at $500,000, but you owe $400,000 on it, then the value of that property for the form is a hundred thousand dollars.

So you’re subtracting that debt from the value, and that’s really the only place that debt is, uh, looked at or is accounted for at all on the fafsa. Although I must say too, within this calculation, income and assets. Income is weighted much more heavily than assets. And I say this because I know that people [00:40:00] get sort of nervous about having assets and they wanna move things around so that they won’t be included.

Um, assets are taken anywhere from three to 5.6% of the total assets will go towards what you can afford to pay for college as far as the calculation is concerned. Whereas income, it’s anywhere from zero to 47% of your adjusted gross income. It really depends on, on your income level. So just to tell you that the, the income is weighted much, much more heavily than assets in the equation.

That’s the fafsa. There is, as I mentioned before, um, so every college is gonna get a fafsa. Some colleges want an additional form to be filed to qualify for their own institutional aid, and these are, you know, colleges who give out a lot of their own money and they want more information than what the FAFSA can give them so that they, you know, can feel that they are making a good decision about who, who’s getting their rate.

And so. The most common of these applications is called the CSS [00:41:00] profile. Uh, this is for use by a few hundred colleges throughout the country. I tend to think mostly private schools use it, although there are, I think, are some public schools that do, and certainly not every private school. Um, but in order to check on whether or not your colleges requiring a profile, you can go to their financial aid website and see what their deadlines are for FAFSA and for profile.

Or you can go to the college board site and see if they’re there. Uh, the biggest difference between the FAFSA and the profile right off the bat is the, the profile is not a free application, so it cost $25 to file your profile, so the first school that you’re sending it to, and then $16 for each additional college.

Though there are fee waivers available for families who make less than a hundred thousand dollars or meet other criteria, and the, the form will calculate whether or not you’re eligible for that as you’re moving through it. Uh, this form as well becomes available on October 1st. Um, and. Another, a couple of other big differences between the profile and the faf and the FAFSA [00:42:00] is, um, you know, the, the profile will ask more questions.

So they’ll look at where the FAFSA looks at your prior, prior year for income. The CSS profile will ask for that prior, prior year. They’ll ask what you earn this year and what you plan, you know, what, what it looks like you’ll earn next year. They’ll probably ask you to list things like the value of your primary home.

They’ll probably ask you to list the, the value of your retirement. They won’t necessarily take retirement into account though, um, but, uh, they’ll ask you to, to list it. This doesn’t mean that you’re going to get less money, uh, from a CSS profile school. Uh, it, it really does not. I mean, the people have looked at the data and it, it does not mean that, uh, they just want more information again, so that they can more wisely allocate their money.

The other big difference between the FAFSA and the profile is in the case of divorced or separated parents, they probably will want. Sep, uh, noncustodial parents to also file a profile. So, you know, you would start your [00:43:00] profile if your parents are divorced or separated, and you, they’ll ask you to list the, the contact information or the email address of the noncustodial parents, and they will reach out to that person and ask that person to file a profile.

If it’s a situation where there’s no contact or, you know, the, the, this is not possible. There are waivers there, there’s a waiver process, and that’s gonna be different at every school, whether or not they’ll grant that waiver. But there is a, a waiver, um, a, a non-custodial waiver form that you can file and, and go through that process.

Okay. So after you apply, after you do your FAFSA and your profile, if you need to do one, uh, the colleges and the state receive that data electronically. The student will receive a FAFSA submission summary by email that will let them know that they’ve done everything they need to do, uh, and that the colleges have received their FAFSA data.

Colleges may request additional documentation. We’ll talk about that in just a second. But generally speaking, [00:44:00] colleges are gonna review those applications and determine the financial aid offer. And as we mentioned, you know, some of you may have received those already. Uh, financial aid may be sent with the admissions decision or slightly afterwards as well.

So, I wanna say just a, a quick word about verification. That is, uh, when, uh, a college has your financial aid information, you’ve submitted it, and they reach out to you to verify some of the information on that. It sounds scary. It doesn’t mean that you’ve done anything wrong. Certain colleges. Um, just request certain items for verification randomly for their admitted students.

Uh, although it may be that they have a question based on something that’s on your FAFSA or something that’s on your profile or both of the two of those things, the only thing I can really say about it is they will be very explicit as to what it is that they’re looking for you to get to them and to.

Keep in contact with them and, and get them what they’re looking for. ’cause they won’t be able to finalize your financial aid offer until they get that resolved. [00:45:00] So, you know, uh, as a colleague of ours would say, open all the things. So if you’re getting email, um, read your email. If you’re getting mail, read your mail.

If there’s a portal that you need to be in contact with the college, make sure you’re on top of those communications because, uh, as I said, you know it, it’s not gonna go away. You need to address and, and get them whatever it is they’re looking for, um, for them to finalize your rate offer. And they could be things like a tax return transcript or verification worksheet could be an issue with the Social Security Administration.

You may need to go and, and verify a name if it shows up differently in one place. Um, so whatever it is, just make sure you, you get that to the college. I’ll say a, a word too about the financial aid office. I think there’s two main points of this presentation that I want you to remember. The first one is deadlines are really important and not to miss any deadlines.

The second one is reach out to the financial aid office with any questions. So reach out to them if you, um. Have circumstances [00:46:00] that are gonna negatively impact your ability to pay that are not asked about on your financial aid forms. So remember, there’s no talk of debt. So if, especially if there’s something like medical debt or if you’re helping to care for a relative or something that they’re not asking about, that you can reach out to the college and let them know if there’s a job loss, if there’s a change that happens, that’s gonna, again, impact your ability to pay, let them know.

Colleges can, uh, use what they call professional judgment and make changes to the formula based on your circumstances and what you tell them. So, uh, reach out to them. The more they know the, the, the better they can help and be ready to document. ’cause they need documentation. If they’re gonna change, uh, financial aid formulas and they need to know, show why they, uh, have done that.

Um. You can appeal your financial aid offer as well. So if you get your financial aid offer from May, say it’s your top choice school and, and you want to see if you can get more, you can do that, uh, you can reach out to the financial aid office. We also [00:47:00] have a webinar on financial aid appeals that we do with, um, directors of financial aid from various colleges.

So you can call, you can email, you can stop in the office, you can chat whatever ways is convenient. Okay. Now I’m gonna stop again and ask Stephanie if there’s, uh, any burning questions. Yeah, I, I actually have a couple that mm-hmm. Are really good. Um, but I might wanna wait on one of them. Okay. Next section.

So I’m gonna wait on that one. Um, okay. It’s, you know, if your financial situation changes, you can talk about that as we go. Mm-hmm. Um, but then I do have another one. That’s a good one. Um, and you’re gonna cover verification, so we’ll talk about that. Um, but just, you know, if a, if a family’s financial situation changes, you don’t have to answer it right this second, but mm-hmm.

You know, how does that. How do they handle that? So they filled out the FAFSA in October and now they have a job loss. I know you have a slide on it, so Yeah, no, no, we did actually, we just did the verification slide. But I, I would say, um, and verification, the [00:48:00] verification when Jonathan was really more, you know, what kind of documents do the colleges ask for.

Oh, okay. Okay. Yeah. So for, for verification, um, it really depends. So it could be something, as I said, from the Social Security Administration, if there’s a discrepancy in how a name shows up. Um, it could be if you did not file taxes, they might need a tax transcript from you. So, so that may be, it could, they may have a worksheet that you need to complete a verification worksheet.

It could be information on assets. So they’ll, as I said, they’ll be explicit in what they need you to get them. And then in terms of, and, and feel free to add anything, Stephanie as well. Um, and then in terms of. Changing circumstances, always reach out to the financial aid office. So, uh, and be prepared to document.

So if there is a job loss, if there’s a divorce, if there’s a death in the family, if something has happened that is gonna make it tougher for you to pay, [00:49:00] uh, reach out to them, let them know, and they’ll probably ask for information. But colleges do professional judgment every year, um, and certain things will probably weigh heavier than than others, um, as to whether or not they’re going to, uh, use that and, and make a, make a change to the financial aid formula because of that.

But, um, I, I would say always reach out and explain the circumstances to them. That’s great. Anything? Okay, great. Thanks. Thank you. Okay, so how financial aid decisions are made. So at this point in the process, we’ve done our financial aid paperwork, it’s into the, the federal government, the state government, the colleges, et cetera.

How do they determine how much aid you’re eligible for and how much you may receive? Right. So to do this, we have to talk about two separate metrics. The first one being cost of attendance. And cost of attendance is what it’s going to cost for you to go to a particular college for a year. And so every college is gonna have a different cost of attendance.

Every college will [00:50:00] have their cost of attendance on their website, uh, and different students at different colleges, I’m sorry, different students. Different students at the same college might have different costs of attendance, right? ’cause there’s different types of students. There’s commuter students, there’s students who live on campus, et cetera.

But these are the elements that go into the cost of attendance. So tuition and fees. Food and housing. These are things called build or direct expenses. Because they show up on a bill, we, they have a definite cost. We know what they’re going to cost. The other things are indirect or non-bill expenses. So books and supplies, transportation, personal expenses.

They can’t really show up on a bill. Uh, but they are going to be part of paying for college for a year. All of these taken together are the cost of attendance, and as I said, every college is going to have their own different cost of attendance. But bear that in mind. So this is before aid. This is just cost.

On the other side, we have, the other metric that we have to keep in mind is the student aid index. So all that information that you put into the fafsa, the [00:51:00] income, the assets, the number of people in the family, et cetera, that goes through a formula and at the end of the formula comes this number, the student aid index.

This is the amount that the formula is calculated that you as a family should be able to. Afford shoulder absorb for a year in college, not that they think you can write a check for it. And so it’s the same federal formula used for every family. As I mentioned before, income weighs much more heavily than assets.

And you can use a student aid index calculator on mefa.org. We have a really good one, I’ll say that. Um, and it should take about five minutes. You go in, put in your information, it’ll put, pull it through that exact federal formula. And for colleges that use the CSS profile, they use what’s called the institutional formula.

And so you can use that as well. You can do for both federal and institutional formula. And it will give you this number, the Student aid index. So the student aid index might calculate that you as a family can afford to pay [00:52:00] $10,000 a year for college. So that doesn’t mean necessarily that that’s the amount of money that you will pay for college.

And we’ll talk about that, uh, because this is basically the financial aid formula, the cost of attendance. Minus your student aid index is your financial aid eligibility. So what does this mean? Let’s say you’re going to a college that costs $45,000 and your student aid index. After putting in your income and your assets through the FAFSA and all that, they calculate that you can afford as a family to pay $5,000.

That means, again, cost of attendance, 45,000 minus Student Aid Index 5,000 equals $40,000 of financial aid eligibility. So you’re eligible to receive $40,000, but it doesn’t mean that you’ll get all the money that you’re eligible to receive. So let’s see, $45,000. The first thing that we’re putting in is the Family Student aid index of $5,000.

So now we have $40,000 [00:53:00] of eligibility that we can get from the college. College gives us about 27,500. And grants at scholarships are pretty good there. Our federal direct student loan, freshman year loan limit of $5,500. Okay? Our federal work study offer of about $2,000. So we’re at 35,000. We didn’t get everything right.

So we have $5,000 of unmet need. So what we’re responsible for is our student aid index of $5,000 and then the $5,000 that we did not get from our eligibility. And so I know, you know, people don’t like the term gap, but it’s a gap. And, um, you know, unfortunately it’s probably more common that you won’t get your full need met than it is that you will, uh, it doesn’t mean that you won’t, it’s just more common to have some, uh.

Gap there in your need. So that is why it’s good to have a low SAI means you’re eligible for more aid, but that’s not necessarily the, the [00:54:00] amount that you’re going to be paying, although sometimes it is, right? Some, some colleges do meet full need as a matter of course, even if they don’t, you may qualify for full need.

Even, even if you don’t, you still make it a lot of aid. Um, so is there a way to figure out what you might get at a particular college based on your financial information? There is. It’s called a net price calculator. Every college is required to have a net price calculator on their website. And so, um, each one is a little bit different.

So some colleges put a lot of work into their net price calculators. Some, it’s a little more uniform, but basically it should work in a similar way to the student aid index, which is, you know, you take a few minutes, you put in some information, income assets, family size, et cetera, all that stuff. Um, if it’s a college that does merit aid and they have a good s uh, net price calculator, they may ask you to put in some GPA or SAT information to, to verify what the student may be eligible for merit scholarships.

Um, but generally what it’s supposed to do is give you a sample financial [00:55:00] aid offer based on what you put in and a resulting balance. So, um. These have been around, oh God, I wanna say about 15 years now. Um, and you know, it’s not set in stone. It’s all an estimate and it’s all only as accurate as the information that you put into it anyways.

But I think in general, you know, I was sort of bracing for a lot of net price calculator, horror stories of, of, you know, things being way off. And I, I didn’t really ever hear them. And I can say from personal experience, I used one myself when my wife went back to college and it ended up being pretty accurate as to what we were gonna end up paying.

So again, not set in stone, but I think a good tool to use to get a, a feel for what a particular college or particular types of college. May cost you based on your, uh, information. Okay? Now, once you get your financial aid offers from colleges, uh, I wanna make two points here. Even though you may have the same eligibility at different colleges, you probably won’t get the same financial aid offer from each college.

So we have here the same cost of [00:56:00] attendance, the same SAI, the same eligibility for these three hypothetical colleges. And you can see here, college A, uh, they’ve, they’ve granted you everything that you’re eligible for. So you have no unmet need. College B, you get $7,000 less and a grant or scholarship.

And, and that’s where that difference shows up. So your $7,000 under your, um, cap and then college C your $15,000 under your, um. Your limit. So the totals will vary. And then also, and this is again, if you’re seeing financial aid offers from colleges, you may be seeing this, the types of aid listed will vary.

And you know, these are part of the reason that we have this paying the college bill presentation that we do, which is a, a campaign that we’re starting now. Uh, is it looking at financial aid offices is confusing. Looking at one can be confusing. So looking at three or four or 10 can be really confusing.

And so they would call maybe the [00:57:00] same types of aid by different names. Some might put loans on there, some might not. So from this example, if you look at what’s you’re eligible for, it’s the same as the last slide. And you just scroll down to the unmet need at the bottom. It looks like you’ve got the same award, right?

$5,000 of unmet need at each school. But if you look at the top here, you see College A, we’ve got 27,500 in grants and scholarships from college A. We’ve got $10,000 less from that from college B and nothing at all from college C. So where’s that difference made up here? It’s made up in the parent loan section.

And so some colleges list a parent loan on their financial aid offers. Typically it’s a loan called the Federal Plus stands for Parent Loan for undergraduate student. And you know, I wanna be clear that there’s nothing wrong with a plus loan. It’s fine loan to have, but it is not financial aid. Uh, it’s not, uh, it doesn’t have any of those benefits associated with the federal direct student loans.

And then also. It’s something that you have to be credit approved for as a parent, so you weren’t [00:58:00] even really granted it. It’s this sort of, you know, you could apply for a plus loan to fill in this gap. So it’s important to look at each line item and understand really what that is, to see how much you are really getting in financial aid from a college, which brings us to paying for college.

Once you do get this financial aid offer and you have a balance due, how do families pay? So you can apply for a loan for the entire balance due from any number of private loan lenders or from the federal government through the plus loan program. Uh, but we like to encourage people to be wise borrowers, and the big part of that is only borrowing what you need to borrow.

So it’s worth it to pay what you can out of pocket, even if it’s not the entire amount due. In this example, we have a $20,000 balance. If you borrowed that full amount, you’re looking at a 200, maybe $250 loan payment, um, a month. For, for a private loan, borrowing this. [00:59:00] Um, whereas using past income, present income, you can try to get that down.

So once you’re, and I say this because you know, once you get your financial aid, there’s only really three ways to pay past income, present income, and future income. So, uh, let’s see how we can chip into this. So student savings in this example, a thousand dollars maybe that’s from a summer job parent saving $4,000.

So we’ve knocked our balance due down to $15,000. That’s your past income. Present income. I’m talking about a payment plan. So most colleges offer, uh, interest-free monthly payment plan through an outside provider. And not every parent knows about these, so we like to talk about them. Um, the way these work is for a small fee to start off, uh, and they, and you can sign up for these plans usually over the summer, um, but you sign up for a small fee and then calculate what you can afford to pay out of your own pocket every month.

In this example, let’s say it’s $500 a month that parents can pay, and let’s say over [01:00:00] 10 months. If you’re on a 10 month plan, that’s gonna be $5,000. That’s $5,000. You’re paying directly off the bill, which is $5,000. You’re not borrowing, not paying the interest on. The only thing that’s left after financial aid, past income and present income is future income or loans.

Now, as I said, the fact is most people will have to borrow something to get through four years of college. That’s not necessarily a problem in and of itself. The problem is when they borrow more than they can afford to pay back comfortably. So remember, the student has their own federal direct student loans through their own, in their own name as part of the financial aid offer.

Anything after that is gonna have to be approved based upon credit or credit and income. And most students can’t be approved for a private loan or, or an educational loan. An alternative educational loan without a parent, uh, or somebody else acting as a co-applicant. So, uh, and co applicants are equally responsible to pay with student applicants.

So if [01:01:00] you’re on the loan, it’s gonna show up in your credit report, uh, you’re gonna be responsible to pay. Borrowing 10,000 would be about a 100 to $125 a month monthly payment, somewhere around there. Um, versus a 200 to $250 a month monthly payment may not seem like a lot at the time, but remember this is year one, so multiply it by four, that’s 400 to $500 versus 800 to a thousand dollars a month.

So, uh, that is going to be important to you as a parent in particular. Which leads us to our important kitchen sink conversations. So determine, you know, once you’re ready to make a decision and you’re trying to figure out what your balance do is at every college and, and what is gonna be a good investment for you and your student and your family.

Determine what is each school’s net price. So you have your cost there, maybe you have your aid, but what are you really gonna end up paying for a year at this college? Um, multiply that by four. So think in terms of total debt. [01:02:00] I talk a lot about, you know, talking with families who are stretching every dollar to make it through the first year in college, and you think, what about next year?

And they say, well, I’ll worry about that then, but it is going to come. So, uh, if you need to make a decision based upon cost, better to do it. At the beginning and transfer into the more expensive college that is probably, you know, maybe your student’s top choice. So would starting at a community college save significant money?

Especially nowadays, I have a hard time thinking in cases that it would not. Um, you wanna think about the number of children that you’ll send to college? So do you have more than one college student coming through? Is the student continuing on to graduate school? How much debt do you want to accumulate or want to have the student accumulate and then.

What is the career that the student is going to be embarking upon? Is it something that is going to pay them a lot, especially early? Um, I, I can need to think of other examples, but I only ever think of, uh, engineering or pharmacy. These are, uh, professions that pay a lot [01:03:00] right away. So maybe if you’re going into those fields, you don’t mind taking on a heavy debt burden.

Uh, if not, maybe you do it. It just things to think about. Not easy conversations to be sure, but good to have them before you start college. Now, I mentioned Massachusetts State Aid being, uh. Sort of resurgent now. And that’s true. Uh, there are lots of new programs at the state level, the tuition equity law.

So some undocumented students can receive Massachusetts state aid and in-state tuition rates. Mass Aid portal is a portal that students can use to check their availability of state-based financial aid. Um, mass Grant is a program that has always existed, but it’s now amplified by Mass Grant Plus, which is a free or reduced tuition and fees for low and middle income students.

Along with a potential book stipend. So, um, this is really going to make college, uh, much less expensive for students in Massachusetts. Free for a lot of [01:04:00] students. Mass Educate means free community college for all students in Massachusetts, which is awesome. This is something that has been happening over the past few years and really excited that it’s happening in Massachusetts.

That’s why I’m saying I, I, it’s hard to think of when starting at a community college would not be, um, less expensive. Uh, to that point, there’s a existing program called Mass Transfer, um, and this is a program where students can earn. Their ba, their associate’s degree at a two year community college and then use the mass transfer program to transfer all of those credits into a four year public college in Massachusetts.

And depending on their, their profile, I mean, there are certain tiers to this program. Um, you can qualify for things like a tuition freeze, guaranteed admission in certain programs, even a tuition rebate if you’re maintaining A GPA and moving through that, uh, four year program, you can be rebated 15% of your tuition as you’re going through.

So great [01:05:00] program and great to use in conjunction with Mass Educate. Tuition Break is a New England program where if you’re, if you want to, uh, attend a public college or university. In your state of residence in New England and Massachusetts in our case, ’cause you like the low cost of a public college.

Um, but you wanna study a particular program that they don’t offer a major, they don’t offer in Massachusetts. Uh, but they do, let’s say at the University of Vermont. Well then you can attend the University of Vermont, of Vermont at a, a discounted rate through the tuition break program. So there’s lots of state and regional programs.

Um. To help students and to, to keep college costs low. Now, free resources is the last thing we’re gonna talk about. Um, FAFSA Day is a series of events, uh, uh, events that are going on digitally or virtually, uh, throughout the fall and, um, and winter. Uh uh, and basically you can go and get on a Zoom room [01:06:00] with, uh, somebody from MEFA, somebody from a college, somebody from, uh, a, a nonprofit that will help you file your fafsa.

And this is, I. Um, through FAFSA day.org offered in both English and Spanish, mass edco. The, there are Massachusetts Educational Opportunity Centers. There are six of them throughout Massachusetts. They are free resources. You can sign up, make an appointment, go down and, and get help filing your fafsa, get help, filing your profile, get help with your essays or get help with anything.

It’s completely client centered, so they’ll help you with whatever they can help you with and whatever you you need help with. That’s within their scope, which is quite a lot. And so there’s six of them throughout the state. They’re headquartered in Worcester mass. edco.org is the website and they’re phenomenal.

We’ve partnered with them for many, many years. And, uh, finally MEFA Pathway is our college and career portal. It’s a free college and career portal for students in grade [01:07:00] six through 12 and their. Parents. So, uh, that may be used in schools, may be used at home that you can do college searches, you can search for scholarships and apply for scholarships There.

You can keep track of grades and activities and build your resume, uh, and do all of that and much, much more through mefa pathway. I would also add your high school counselors and financial aid officers offices, uh, of the colleges that you’re applying to, as well as MEFA. So where we are right now, many of you, if you’re juniors, you should start to be looking at colleges, start your college search, uh, ask your.

Call it your high school teachers for letters of recommendation before the end of the year. You can start planning college visits, uh, take your SATs or acts if you’re seniors. You know, if you haven’t filed your financial aid forms, you may have time to do that. You certainly have time to file the FAFSA and be eligible for your federal and [01:08:00] state aid.

And even if you think you missed a school deadline, I would reach out and ask for assistance there. Um, you know, you probably have applied and applied for admission and for aid. If you are waitlisted, keep in touch with your colleges. Uh, if your grades are gonna continue to bolster your case. To be admitted, you should be receiving, uh, financial aid offers and admissions decisions.

Shortly. Um, you know, some of you probably already have some, you have until May 1st to make your decision, except some or all of your financial aid offer and make your deposit at a college. So what you can do now, you can register for some other webinars that we have, including that paying the college bill that I talked about.

Uh, reference our timeline for admissions and financial aid and sign up for our emails as well. I’m gonna sh leave this for a minute here. This is all the ways that you can connect with Mefa on social media. So Facebook, [01:09:00] uh, Instagram, X, LinkedIn, YouTube, and our podcast, which, uh, selfishly I will, I’ll plug because I host it.

Um, but, um, and actually Stephanie is probably the most frequent guest on the show. Um, but there’s a lot of different ways that we can interact and, you know, uh, especially on social media, we’re posting a lot of content including scholarships. So, um, keep. Keep in touch with us that way and this is our contact information.

So, uh, any other questions, Stephanie? Um, no, I’ve answered them all. However, there was a really good one right at the end that I thought would be worth just mentioning. Oh yeah. You may know some off the top of your head, Jonathan. Um, so in addition to, um, tuition break, you know, other states that might offer mass residence deals and I believe Maine offers in-state [01:10:00] tuition.

I think you’re right about that. Yeah. At least certain colleges of their a applicants merit aids. So I dunno if you wanna touch on that. Yeah. And, and there and there may be some, um. You know, you may be eligible for in-state tuition if you live very close over the border from like Right. In New Hampshire, you might be eligible for Oh, that’s a good one.

Yeah. Yeah. For in-state tuition. Um, I’m kind of blanking at the, at some of the pro, I know some of the, uh, state programs. I’m not sure, uh, I can’t remember off the top of my head which ones you can go with you. But, um, but no, I, I, other than that, I don’t know. Do you have any other thoughts, Stephanie? No, just Maine.

Um, yeah, one of the parents had mentioned the SUNY system in New York and I, I don’t know that one for sure. I haven’t heard that. But it’s worth researching, I guess is the bottom line that yeah, a lot of out state colleges are gonna offer merit aid ’cause they want outta state students to come to their school.

Yeah. That, that’s a good, and you know, colleges will, will, um. [01:11:00] Build a class, right? And so they may want students from a particular area of the country and they may make it more attractive for those students to, uh, to, to come to that school. So, yes. Yeah. Exactly right. Yeah. And then there’s another one here, Jonathan, if you wanna mention it, ’cause I know we have good content about this.

Mm-hmm. Does speak have information on tax implications, tax breaks, tuition, payments? I know we have articles on our website about that, which Oh yeah. We, we should have articles on our website about that. Now there’s, there’s something called, um, well there’s the, the hope credit and there is, uh, was it lifetime Learning Credit?

There are federal tax credits that you can claim for paying tuition. And I, again, off the top of my head, I’m not sure the properties of each one, but I know that we do have articles on, on the website, and irs.gov would be the best place for that for sure. Yes. Yeah. For the IRS gov. Yeah. Yep. And so you’ll receive a, a form.

10 99 Q Right. Uh, from, uh, t [01:12:00] rather from, uh, colleges on, on tuition payments. And so that, that’s part of it. But I would, uh, I would look for the, the IRS publication, what was it, nine 70? Is that what it is? I, I don’t know off top of my head. Oh, okay. Yeah. So, uh, but IS dot go. And we do have content on that from MEFA, uh, on MEFA.org, but Right.

There are tax credits that you can claim for paying tuition. Yeah. And we did hear from, um, parent who’s online talking about, I see that SUNY system and I don’t know if the, everybody can read the comment, so I’ll just mention that it, they do have a, a program to match in state tuition at umas UMass Amherst.

So, and UMass Amherst is also gonna do the same sorts of merit scholarships for out-state students. So definitely, you know, do your research, check it out. Um, it could be a good deal because it is very expensive to attend a public college out of state. Yeah. So, yeah, so in, in case you weren’t aware that, you know, the, we should probably mention [01:13:00] in-state tuition is available, that’s a discounted tuition rate for residents of that, uh, to go to a public college in your state of residence outside you, you don’t, you’re not qualified typically for, for that tuition discount except through credit like that.

And it is a big discount. Yeah, it is. Yeah. Great. That’s all we have for questions in the, in the chat. All right. Well, thank you so much Stephanie, and thank you everybody for, um, you know, being here and spending the get it done in an hour. But, uh, I, I tried, um, and most of you stuck with,

all right, good luck everybody. Thank you. Thank you. Bye Bye.