• Financial Aid

From Afehandbook

In my experience financial aid seems to be largely a matter of finding out about all kinds of obscure forms and then getting them filled out and returned or sent in to the various colleges before all kinds of obscure deadlines that you also had to find out about.

A very important thing to do is that as soon as you find out about or fulfill a requirement or deadline, WRITE IT DOWN! Make a paper calendar, or use an online calendar or to-do list program, or what have you, but write down every single thing, or pretty quickly you will start losing track of which college you sent which form to when, and what they still need and when.

Read the latest (an updated edition comes out each year) copy of the book Paying for College Without Going Broke -- it's extremely helpful in giving you an overview of the whole process, how to fill out the FAFSA, tax laws, planning, negotiation, and so on, even if it does assume that everyone has a personal accountant regardless of how poor they are.