Students, parents, and guardians regularly ask questions about the financial aid process. Those questions begin as families work to complete the FAFSA for the first time and continue for the entire time a student is enrolled in college. Then, after graduation, students routinely seek advice as they check on upcoming student loan payments and may have new questions about graduate or professional school funding.
Although each student’s situation is unique, knowing how to respond to common financial aid questions can help you effectively advise the students you serve. Questions involving application status and refund status are very common, and the answers are rarely cut-and-dry. But even if you can’t offer students a firm “yes” or “no” — providing information specific to their situation can help ease confusion, as illustrated in the examples below.
Editor’s note: A version of this column was first published on the Minerva Project blog.
In the United States, summer is time for a much-deserved school break, family vacations, and for many students — college campus tours.
In fact, some students visit so many colleges over the summer it’s dizzying. When I was an admission counselor at a university that saw more than 50,000 visitors per year, I often asked groups of students and families at our information sessions how many schools they had already visited. Usually it was a handful or two at most. But one time a girl raised her hand and had a jaw-dropping list of 35.
This is not a knock on the college tour. It can be a valuable tool in helping students decide which school is a good fit for them. But herein lies the challenge: The more schools you visit, the more they tend to sound — and look — the same. This makes it even more important to ask the right questions when you visit.
