The College Money Method 
Crunch

The Crunch provides information and resources around financial aid and paying for college that you can use with students and families in your college counseling practice. 

 September 2022 Issue

Deadlines, deadlines, deadlines!

This issue is dedicated to providing you with resources to support students, families and yourselves to meet important fall deadlines. 

Need-based financial aid: Supporting senior families with FAFSA submission (comprehensive video walkthrough)

Merit-based financial aid: Educating students about the merit application process (visuals on merit submission deadlines)

Public Service Loan Forgiveness: Helping you and other counselors apply for loan forgiveness (Counselor Coffee Break on how to apply)

Supporting seniors families with financial aid applications 

October 1st is just days away! Students and their families will be eager – or hesitant – to get financial aid applications submitted. 

There is often a misconception with parents that the earlier they submit the FAFSA or CSS Profile, the more money will be available in need-based financial aid. While it's important to reinforce timely submission of financial aid applications, we can help reduce parents' anxiety by educating them how to find priority filing deadlines based on their admissions cycle - Early Decision, Early Action or Regular Decision. 

My rule of thumb it to tell students that their financial aid applications need to be submitted to schools at the same time as their admissions applications.

Whether eager or hesitant, I want to help parents and students have less stress and more success. I've created a start-to-signature, section-by-section walkthrough of the 2023-24 FAFSA. The video contains chapters so students and parents can get to specific FAFSA sections they need help with. And in the coming days, I will be adding Spanish-language subtitles.

Feel free to share this resource via email or on your resources page!

Educating about the importance of merit deadlines

With many of our families relying on merit-aid to make college affordable, I have one mantra:

"Merit deadlines are as important as admission deadlines!"

The college merit process has become increasing complex, with each college creating its own rules on when it expect students to apply for admission to be considered for merit aid. Numerous colleges are abandoning full consideration for merit for students that submit their application by the "standard" Regular Decision deadline. Instead, the are creating "preferred" admissions deadlines for students that want to be considered for the most – or sometimes any – merit aid.

One visual that I have created that helps drive this point home shows students the various timelines of colleges that may be on a target list. I've seen this visual aid to be effective to show the timeline complexity and importance of planning for "preferred" admissions deadlines. You can click to download the PPT slide and adapt this for your own presentations.

How to apply for the Public Service Loan Forgiveness (PSLF) Waiver

October 31, 2022 is the final day for you or your colleagues to apply for the Public Service Loan Forgiveness Waiver. Join a Counselor Coffee Break to get all the information you need!

Even if you haven't ever applied for PSLF, now is your chance. The waiver allows you to count all prior loans payments while you have worked for qualified employers toward the 120  payments to get your balances forgiven!

Qualifying employers include:

• Public and private (independent) non-for-profit schools 
• Public and private non-for-profit colleges

To sign up for a Coffee Break below:

Thursday, October 13 at 11am ET/8am PT

Wednesday, October 19 at 2pm ET/11am PT

Please share this opportunity with friends, family and colleagues. All welcome!

If you enjoyed this issue, please forward  to colleagues. 

Until next time...

Paul