If you don’t know what your FAFSA pin is, you should – your fafsa pin number is the key to re-applying each year for Federal aid online, as well as giving you a complete history of your records with the U.S. Department of education online. Not only that, but your pin number often is used in lieu of your signature when agreeing to terms and agreements relating to your student loans online. In fact, the DOE actually devotes an entire website just to the FAFSA pin. The point is this little number is important – so get yours here.
If you’ve been looking into financial aid for college, one ominous sounding acronym almost certainly popped up: EFC. EFC stands for expected family contribution, and plays an important role in determining how much financial aid you are likely to get.
Right off the bat, students often assume that the EFC is either how much money you’ll get from the government, or how much you’re going to have to pay for college. These are both wrong. The Expected Family Contribution represents the amount that your family is expected to contribute to your education. It is by no means a guarantee, but… Read the rest
FAFSA, short for the Free Application for Federal Student Aid, is the application form for federal studnt grants, work study aid, and loans. In some msituations, the application can be used to apply for private aid as well. In short, its a big deal, and everyone looking to receive some form of financial aid for college will likely need to fill one out.
Because of its popularity, there are many methods available for filling out the FAFSA.
An option common with graduating high school seniors is the Electronic Data Exchange for schools. High schools often provide a method for… Read the rest
We’ve all heard of both federal and private student loans, but what is the difference, and how does the difference affect your ability to pay off the loans quickly? First, we’ll look at federal student loans.
Federal Student loans are a great starting point to fund a college career – with interest rates relatively low (under 10%, with some as low as 5%), they are a comparatively inexpensive source of money. There are 5 different types of federal student loans: Federal Perkins Loans, FFEL Stafford Loans, Direct Stafford Loans, FFEL PLUS Loans, and Direct PLUS loans. As a student or… Read the rest