助学金示例：部分2

why don't we go ahead and take a look at an example package just to see how all these numbers hang together okay so why don't you start me off at the estimated cost of attendance so let's say at the first institution we're looking at the total cost of attendance is about $25,000 so that might break out to tuition of $11,000 a room and board or housing and food costs of about $10,000 and allowance for books two thousand dollars a year transportation depending on where you're coming from of about a thousand dollars a year and maybe some other expenses that are unique to that institution that would add up to the twenty five thousand dollar cost of attendance great and and just to be clear the point you mentioned earlier you may see on a financial aid letter just tuition room and board included that's right and if that's the case you want to actually add in your own book allowance transportation allowance otherwise because those are actually to be costs that you're going to incur and so you want them to sort of you want to factor that in exactly the idea is that with the cost of attendance you've got an understanding of the total costs of being in that institution and your exact cost might be slightly different than someone else okay so that's we've got our cost of attendance here of 25,000 some dip you mentioned some different types of scholarships why don't we put in some numbers here you know from school let's say 10,000 what would be a reasonable on how it sort of from a Pell Grant let's say if a family had an income of around $50,000 what would be sort of a typical Pell Grant they might receive so family at that income level you know depending on what else is going on with the family family size how many family members in college let's say that they would qualify for $1,000 Pell Grant okay so we have $1,000 Pell Grant you know we'll go ahead and say there's a three thousand dollar grant from the state that this student has has obtained and then when we go ahead and also put in $1,000 outside scholarship and now this is a scholarship that's not coming from the school itself it probably won't be included on the financial aid letter unless you've already told them about it but it is something you want to include here because you know these are your own calculations of what your costs are going to be you know and one sort of side note is you do want to let the school know about those outside scholarships because it can have an impact on your financial aid they want to understand your true cost of attendance and if you've already gotten that scholarship you know your cost of attendance is going to be a little bit lower that's right we put in that thousand dollars that gives us a total scholarship amount of it's like fifteen thousand and so now remind me again how do I get to the net cost so that net cost is going to be the difference between the twenty five thousand dollars of cost of attendance - the fifteen thousand dollars of scholarships or free money that doesn't have to be paid back so what this institution is actually going to cost you is ten thousand dollars great so ten thousand is what I'm responsible for uneven run a yearly but that's not what I'm then that's that's right that's not saying that you have to come up with that cash upfront out of your pocket right away there are options offered to help you come up with that ten thousand dollars but that would be the annual cost to you okay and in this situation why don't you give me some what would be sort of a reasonable work-study and loan amounts that a school could offer so let's say a work-study amount of twenty five hundred dollars which would allow you to work you know less than ten hours a week I think is a really reasonable expectation and then a loan amount of another twenty five hundred dollars so there's five thousand dollars of that net cost that's taken care of between work-study and student loans so that leaves the family or the parents with five thousand dollars to cover of that total educational cost of twenty five thousand dollars and is that five thousand going to be due right away like day one of school day at a five thousand or when you actually have to typically no it's usually paid you know if it's a semester school it would be half of it at the start of the year half of it halfway through the academic year so it depends on that stool schools academic calendar and their billing cycle great and the last question I have for you is you know five thousand dollars for some families that may be completely doable for others that may be far above what what they can contribute the very first thing I would recommend to a family that's concerned about paying the expected Family Contribution that's showing up on their award letter is that they talked to the financial aid office and make sure that the financial aid office has taken everything into account that that family has in the financial situation that they're facing but after you've had that conversation if you're you're looking at a parent contribution that you're going to need some help with then it's time to start talking about additional loans and it looks like in this situation I mean you might be able to bump up the students work-study a little bit or the student could take out so these low interest rate loans that's what might be better options than the parent right as a first-year student actually from the Stafford loan program a student can borrow up to fifty five hundred dollars so that typically would be the first thing we would recommend to a student who's looking for some additional help great is there anything else that I should be looking at when you know I'm understanding the different components of a financial aid package well I think it's it's critical that you identify the difference between scholarships and loans and work-study that are being offered unfortunately it's not always readily apparent from the information that you're receiving from the school so make sure you understand what's a scholarship what's a loan that has to be repaid and what's work-study if you have any questions about that at all go to the financial aid office to ask okay so students really need to kind of put this sheet together for themselves it's not necessarily gonna be handed to them on a silver platter that's right I think that's the best thing to do to make sure you understand what's going on with your financial aid and how much are you signing for and student loans for example to to really understand the bottom line of what you're getting into