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10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Insightful book written by a long-term financial aid expert, December 16, 2008
This review is from: Paying for College without Going Broke, 2009 Edition (College Admissions Guides) (Paperback)
Chany explains upfront that the most financial aid goes not to the "neediest" but to those who best understand the financial aid process. This happens for many reasons including the many financial aid loopholes. Structuring your finances to maximize aid awarded to your children entering and in college is legal and ethical says Chany. He argues that just as making decisions to legally minimize taxes is ethical, so too is maximizing aid so long as you tell the truth in aid applications.
Colleges and their financial aid officers don't explain the often mysterious process and formulas by which financial aid awards are determined. Chany has filled this void in his comprehensive book.
Chany is one of a handful of nationally recognized experts on how the college financial aid process works and what you can do to maximize your child's aid. His book, which has been in print since the early 1990s, is updated annually. Chany also discusses the college selection process, how state aid works, and he walks the reader through how to complete all the major aid forms.
For a more detailed summary of this book, please see my website (www.erictyson.com)
- Eric Tyson
Best-selling author of Personal Finance for Dummies
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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Excellent even for the procrastinator, May 29, 2009
This review is from: Paying for College without Going Broke, 2009 Edition (College Admissions Guides) (Paperback)
I wish I'd found this book 15, 10 or 5 years ago but even so, with my son in his junior year of high school (a CRUCIAL year in preparing your financial aid info), I am very glad I found this book! Why you ask?
Because it has detailed and easy to understand information about filling out those FAFSA application ~ yes! BUT MORE than that, because it tells me what to do in this year, the base year that the college where my son will be going and the FAFSA people will be using to determine how much the financial aid should be for the four years of college.
No, this isn't for students and it doesn't give you a list of places to apply for financial aid - this is mostly about the FASFA application, although it touches on others and goes over common ways to put money aside.
This book gave me sound advice on what to do and not to do with the assets I have now (I'm a low income self employed single parent - but it also tells what many other parents in other situations can do), explains what will and won't count and how differently FAFSA assesses your assets and values than the government does when you fill out your tax forms. I think reading this book and using it when I fill out the forms next year could save me thousands of dollars and a lot of time and heart-ache.
If you are the parent of a child heading off for college within the next 1 - 15 years, this book is VALUABLE in terms of telling you how to strategically, legally and ethically plan to do so -- how to play by the rules.
Crucial, excellent, valuable -- I can't say enough! I am eagerly waiting for October when the 2010 edition comes out, as it will help me fill out the forms for that year, but even on my tiny income, this edition was one of the best investments I made toward my son's college education.
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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Great information for a range of incomes and situations, March 30, 2009
This review is from: Paying for College without Going Broke, 2009 Edition (College Admissions Guides) (Paperback)
I'm a recent college grad that paid for college, and completed the financial aid process, on my own. I was reading this book specifically to review it, and was actually a little depressed. Not because the book is bad (that's far from true), but because I saw all the places where I could have done things differently, and gotten more money for school (and thus decreased the huge debt load that I'm now paying off).
I disagree with the reviewer that said there isn't much here for the average parent or child - I think there's more than plenty here for the average college applicant's family. The problem is that a lot of it has to be taken into account a few years before the student starts college. If you take "average" to mean "families that put off thinking about college until the last minute," then yes, there's less here for those families than forward-thinking ones. But there's even some information procrastinators can use.
All-in-all, I feel that the book breaks down the process really well, and that there's at least a little something for everyone: from parents of newborns looking for long-term planning, to current students looking to beef up their aid package next year.
My criticism of the book is this: it's very much written for parents. There's very little in it targeted at students directly. Students who are living through my situation, and doing it all on their own, may come away from this book thinking there is very little they can do on their own to increase their aid. That's not true - the book just requires a lot of "translating" for students in this situation.
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