College is a huge milestone for a lot of students after high school. This is extremely exciting, but the numerous factor you have to consider can be stressful. Probably one of the biggest stressors for most is the cost to attend college.
The average in-state tuition for a public four year institution is around $27,000 per year making it just over $100,000 for four years. This price may fluctuate depending on if you are going out of state, or if it is a private or non-profit institution.
Although this may seem impossible to make this even somewhat affordable, there are steps you can take to decrease this price significantly.
First, fill out the Free Application for Federal Student Aid, more commonly known as FAFSA. This is an application for federal student aid. By filling this out you can receive scholarships, federal grants, and you could even get work study funds.
The three main things that FAFSA looks at when deciding how much you will receive in financial aid is your cost of attendance, student aid index and expected family contribution. From there they will then calculate how much aid you will receive.
Unlike loans this is money you do not need to pay back and there are two types when it comes to FAFSA. Merit-based scholarships and Pell grants. Merit based scholarships are awarded for a range of many different things like your academic and or athletic performance.
Pell grants are need based scholarships. Other than that you can also apply to different national and local scholarships. To find information about them it’s important to do things like ask your guidance counselor, ask organizations that you are involved in, look at scholarships students at your school received in the years prior to you and more.
Although the typical things you think of when it comes to college is living on a campus at a four year institution and gaining the “college experience”, but as stated before this “experience” is quite pricey. So another approach to college is community college.
Starting in fall of 2024 all residents of Massachusetts are eligible to attend any community college free of charge. This is called MassEducate which is an upgrade to what we had before which was MassGrant Plus that was only available to students 25 years or older. With this new program set in place, financially community college could be a great decision for most students. This is because you can take all your prerequisites there and then later transfer to a a four year institution leaving with a degree that is half the price.
