Parents (especially of seniors) should plan to attend our annual evening College Financial Aid Night on December 4 with timely information presented by Brian Lindeman, Assistant Vice President for Admissions and Financial Aid at Macalester College. Mr. Lindeman will lead parents through the financial aid application process, which formally begins in the fall of your student’s senior year. He will review the two major financial aid applications, the FAFSA (note this year’s deadline in December v. October), required by nearly all colleges, and the CSS Profile, a second application required at approximately 300 colleges nationwide (typically well-endowed private colleges that distribute a significant institutional funds in the form of need-based grants). The specific colleges on your student’s application list will publish priority filing deadlines for the FAFSA and/or CSS Profile that will allow the college to share information about the financial aid package at around the same time that students receive their admission decision. For further reading, we recommend The Financial Aid Handbook, Revised Edition: Getting the Education You Want for the Price You Can Afford by Carol Stack and Ruth Vedvik, at a minimum, read Chapter 4 (students) or Chapter 5 (parents).
Also, parents planning to sign on for our annual morning college conversation about financing college on December 7 should consider registering an account via College Aid Pro’s custom page for PA families (made possible by our partnership with CAP), to help identify colleges that could be a financial “fit”. To register for the December 7 morning virtual meeting “How Financial Aid & Scholarships Work”, please click this link. Even if you cannot attend live, you will receive an email the next day with the recording from the presentation (but you still need to register!). Questions? Contact Mrs. Hogan or Mr. Wolf.