The average college student is graduating with $20,000 worth of debt.
Most graduates take 10 years or more to pay it off. If you spend a little time applying for scholarships you can trim or eliminate what you need to borrow.
There are always ways to save on college costs from scholarships to lodging to books. We cover lots of these strategies in our January, February, and April 2005 back issues.
1) Financial Aid — get thousands even now
FAFSA Free Application for Federal Student Aid www.fafsa.ed.gov. This is a two-step process: First, you’ll also want to register for PIN number, which will take a few days to receive—do that at this website FAFSA Pin Number.
Second, You’ll need income tax and savings information for the student and parents. Allow about 90 minutes to complete the online application. The deadline is September 15.
Visit your university’s Web site or financial aid office. They should provide you with a packet of information on specific scholarships they have available. Be careful . . . if you indicate that you are willing to take out loans, most financial aid staffers will stop looking for scholarships and just submit your application for a loan.
For more information on saving money on college subscribe to our website and you’ll have access to hundreds of money saving articles and several which deal specifically with college costs.
2) Don’t Pay Retail for Text Books
The average college student is paying between $500 to $900 per semester for books. By doing a little sleuthing, we found savings as great as 87% on books needed for this semester.
Save on College Text Books on Ebay
.
Or rent them for about 1/3 of the purchase price at Chegg.com.
Related Article: Saving money on College textbooks
3) Get Quality Instruction
With the average class costing anywhere between $185 at community colleges to $900 at some universities, be sure to get your moneys worth. You are purchasing a service, so get the best quality you can.
Go to www.RateMyProfessors.com This is a free Web site where students can rate their professors teaching ability . . . and looks. There are more than 700,000 professors from 6000 schools represented on this site.
www.RateMyTeachers.com for K-12 This is the same type of Web site as RateMyProfessor.
Read our January 2005 (Navigating College) and April 2005 (College Wrap-Up) back issues for more information.
Don’t be average, find ways to go to college without debt!