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Put aside rose-colored glasses and remember: loans must be repaid!

May 9th, 2011

Jane Shropshire | Founder – Shropshire Educational Consulting LLC

Congratulations – if you’re reviewing financial aid awards you’ve been admitted to college and hopefully one that excites you. But now it’s time to look through clear lenses at what the awards actually tell you. Look at each college’s billed costs including all fees, then subtract the total amount of grants, scholarships and federal work-study offered. The net figure remaining is what you and your parents will have to cover through family contributions and loans. A word of advice: be conservative in taking out loans, despite colleges offering PLUS (parent) loans by the cartload. Make sure that you and your family will be able to pay off debt incurred without mortgaging your collective future. And if you’ve received more generous offers from other colleges, it can’t hurt to ask a financial aid office politely whether your award can be reviewed and adjusted.

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