Too late for aid? Not yet, pros say
By next weekend, more than a million high school seniors will have made their final decisions about where to attend college.
And millions of parents will be wondering: Can we really pay for this?
As the cost of a college education continues to rise, families are scrambling for more financial aid to shoulder the burden. But at this point in the season, long after many private colleges have made their offers, it may seem too late to find help.
Not necessarily.
Aid comes from many sources -- colleges, the state, the government, banks, and independent groups that hand out scholaships. And though most private colleges have already decided how much of their outright grant money to hand out, public-sector grants are still available, as are some private scholarships. Loans, which pay most college expenses, generally do not have a deadline at all.
State grants The magic word for most college students is grant, since a grant represents an outright gift that does not need to be repaid. Though private colleges make their grant decisions early, grants in the public sector follow a far more flexible schedule.
The state of Massachusetts hands out gifts known as "Mass Grants," which are based on student need and the type of institution a student is attending. The grants provide $300 to $2300 toward college and can be used at both public and private colleges within New England or Washington, D.C.
The state sets a "priority deadline" of May 1 for Mass Grant applications. Missing that deadline, however, does not disqualify a student, it just moves him or her to the back of the line.
The deadline is not "a hard and fast cut-off," said Jane Horton, of the Higher Education Information Center, a Boston nonprofit that advises students about applying to and paying for college. "But people who applied early are far more likely to access that pool of money. They are going to need to pick up their feet and run."
Individual public colleges, which hand out their own aid on top of Mass Grants, have a similar system, though their "priority deadlines" may be earlier. The University of Massachusetts at Boston likes to get applications before March 1, which allows the university to send out its aid offers in time for applicants to weigh them against offers from other schools. But students who apply now should still be fine, said Judy Keyes, director of financial aid at UMass-Boston.
"You wouldn't see a change in your financial aid package if you apply through the first of July," Keyes said. But as time goes on, the pool of aid money starts to run low. "In July and August, you would not see as nice a financial aid package as you would if you applied earlier on."
Students planning to attend UMass-Amherst in the fall can still apply for federal money, but their chances of getting institutional merit or need-based aid at this late date are rapidly waning, said Michael Gargano, vice chancellor for student affairs and campus life.
"That's not an endless pot of money," he said. "There's a deadline only in the sense that we use up all our funds."
At community colleges, where aid tends to come from state or federal sources rather than the campus itself, students just need to keep an eye on the deadlines for public funding. Because student costs are lower, potential Mass Grant aid tops out at $800 for community college students.
Other grants For Pell grants, the chief form of federal aid, the schedule is even more forgiving. Students can fill out their financial-aid forms for the coming year until June 30, 2005, getting the money retroactively if necessary. "In terms of federal aid, if you qualify, you get it. It doesn't matter whether you submit it early or not," said Jane Glickman, a spokeswoman for the Department of Education.
Outside the fairly orderly world of public financial aid, students are on their own in the vast universe of private scholarships. Deadlines for many of these awards, such as National Merit Scholarships, are long since past. But some are still wide open, if students and their parents are willing to do a little sleuthing. Both the College Board and independent sites such as www.fastweb.com allow searchers to type in their particulars and find programs that apply to them.
Loans For the many families that cannot make ends meet with grants and scholarship awards -- or those who have simply missed their school's aid deadline -- loans are an option.
Loans, from both the federal and private sector, accounted for more than half of all college financial aid in 2002-2003, according to the College Board. And unlike most grants, loan applications do not carry a deadline.
A need-based Stafford loan is the most attractive to families that qualify, says Joe Cronin, president of the Student Loan Network, a private online financial aid guide. Such loans are subsidized, meaning that while the student is in school, the government pays the interest on this loan. With an unsubsidized Stafford loan, the student is charged for the interest, at 2.82 percent, but can defer payment until after graduation.
For undergraduates who cannot demonstrate need, a PLUS loan (Parent Loan for Undergraduate Students) helps meet the gap between what a school expects a given family to contribute to their child's education and what that family can afford to pay. Though federally guaranteed, these are administered by individual banks -- and in some cases directly by the college. Parents can apply for these loans, which currently have an interest rate of 4.22 percent, throughout the year.
