Help! How do I navigate the college maze?
Nancy Davis works in the features department at The State newspaper. She has three young daughters. Our biweekly Help Nancy question gives you a chance to offer advice to her and other parents facing similar issues. This week’s question comes from a friend:
Help! I’m college-challenged.
My son is a junior in high school, and it’s time to start thinking about college for him.
There’s so much to figure out: tests, preparation for tests, campus visits — not to mention financial aid.
Where should we begin? Who should we talk to?
- We’ll publish selected comments in Tuesday’s Life&Style section.
There may be a SAT Prep course at school. Get through Algebra II before the SAT. Sign up for the SAT onlinecollegeboard.com and at the same time fill out a profile. They will send you e-mails about colleges that are a good match based on this profile. Spring break would be a good time to go look at colleges. In the fall of his senior year, he needs to fill out applications (by Oct. 1 for some colleges, Dec. 1 for others) and have the Guidance Dept. send transcripts. Most schools automatically consider him for financial aid based on his application. In January of 12th grade, you need to fill out the FAFSA. There is an online version at fafsa.gov. It takes several hours, and you have to do your taxes first, but almost all financial aid requires this report. If he is eligible for Palmetto Fellows (1200 on combined Math and Critical Reading SAT scores + top 10% of his class + GPA) there is a separate application for that, and the Guidance Dept. should help him with that.
As a fellow college student, the first step is to not stress out. There are a lot of steps each student must take in order to ensure that his future success comes at ease more than chaos. If he’s a junior in HS, he may not have even decided what type of school he wants to go to yet. If he has, then he may change his mind…so don’t get too ahead of yourself. Right now the best thing to do is find the type of test that best represents your sons skills. By this I mean, taking both the SAT and ACT. Some students will find that they score higher on one than the other which boosts their self-confidence through the jungle of starting school. Your Guidance Counselor should also be able to help your son more in his senior year when deciding what type of career paths will lead him in the direction of his long-term goals. Financial Aid Nights should be held at your school as well, so I’d encourage you to attend a couple to get information from more than one source. The FAFSA will also be something that you’ll need to complete once you have completed your taxes for his graduation year. The FAFSA is the Free Application for Federal Student Aid and provides results to up to five schools. These results help your son’s school of choice determine his financial aid eligibility. Many colleges will have scholarships if your son is not eligible for the more common ones, so I would encourage your son to look at the school’s website at this time as well. Like many students, scholarships and aid are not always enough, so you/he could take a step into the student loan direction. By the time your son is in college, federal student loans will only be available through the US Department of Education’s lender, Direct Loans. The school will determine the amount of loan he is eligible for along with other financial aid based on his FAFSA, grade level, and financial need. Hopefully this gives you some useful information and I hope your son isn’t stressing out about college already. Take one step at a time, and get through highschool first!