Economy Impacts Students College Plans

In tough economic times students may be tempted to cut out or scale back
college plans. That's a tough nut to swallow and not necessarily the best alternative
to follow. Certainly one should investigate all possible funding alternatives before
canceling or scaling back college plans. Dropping the level of the schools you apply
for may be a good strategy alternative especially if the career choice is not going to
be a top level income career choice. As an example if your goal is to be a corporate
lawyer the top schools may help you achieve that goal. On the other hand if you
want to work in company in a department full of computer programmers a local
university or even community college may meet that goal with a substantial
reduction in the total cost of the education.

Cappex.com LLC just completed a study of almost 3,000 prospective college
students. Over 15% have indicated that they are putting their college plans on
hold because of the concern that they won't be able to fund college. Over 55% are
considering downgrading the quality of the school they will be applying to in an
attempt to make their college costs more affordable. An even larger percentage
are increasing the amount of time spent on searching for scholarships in an
attempt to reduce the costs. All of these were strategies included in the study.

All of these are valid strategies. One should also consider seeing if alternative
strategies may be able to increase your college affordability. This is an area where
some professional help might be appropriate. We have two different alternatives
that may help.
First lets find out if we can increase your eligibility for need based financial aid. We
utilize the information needed for the (FAFSA) Free Application for Federal Student
Aid. This information is what is used to generate your Expected Family Contribution
or (EFC). This is the dollar figure that you have to come up with before you are eligible
for financial aid. We can often lower your EFC and that makes you eligible for more
financial aid.
Second there are a number of Corporate programs available that can help you pay for
school. Some of these programs are not need based and do not discriminate against
families with significant financial resources. Some of these are available to our clients.

Struggles saving for retirement and college

A recent Putnam Investments Reseach Study has confirmed what many of us already know. In the absence of a true pension plan at work saving for a young childs college education at the same time we are trying to save for our own retirement is a daunting challenge! To make matters worse, almost 50 private lenders and non profit lenders have quit writing student loans in the past year. Some of this is aggravated by the bank lending mess we are currently in. Some of todays headlines suggest that the mortgage lending mess is not yet at the bottom.

Now more than ever we need to be able to look at all possible avenues for obtaining college funding. We need to be thinking scholarships and grants first, followed by maximizing our eligibility for Need Based Financial Aid. Some forms of Financial require repayment and some do not require that the money be repaid.

Several dozen extremely well endowed colleges and universities are prepared to guarantee that if you are admitted. you will be able to graduate Student debt free. You will still have to contribute the Expected Family Contribution (EFC) but after that the College or University is prepared to kick in enough Financial Aid or Work Study income to allow the student to graduate without student loans.

There are perfectly legal techniques that we can often use to increase a students eligibility for Need Based Financial aid. That is one of the services that we offer our clients.