Speaker 1: Hey everyone. Today we're talking about financial aid and yes this is long overdue. College is very expensive and there is so much that we need to know about all the avenues we have to actually ease the burden up a little bit. So today we're going to go through the different kinds of financial aid and how they determine how you qualify for it. So just going through that entire process, and also you do have the ability to actually negotiate with the institution once you get your financial aid letter. So we'll talk a bit about negotiation as well. If you're new to my channel, hi, I'm Priya. I graduated from UChicago a year and a half ago now in 2019, and yeah I'm just here to try to tell you everything I've learned along the way. So let's get straight into it. So the different types of distinct financial aid would be grants, loans and work-study programs. So grants are essentially when they give you the money and you never have to pay it back, whereas loans you're gonna have to join a student debt repayment program and you're gonna have to pay loans back. The good news is the loans would be interest-free for a decent amount of time, but our goal is to make sure you don't have any debt. So usually that's on the federal level and we'll talk about the breakdowns between federal, state, and institutional like in a minute. Essentially you have grants where you never have to pay back and you just get a grant and in the federal level that's actually called the Pell Grant and yes it sounds great to have money that you don't have to pay back but unfortunately the Pell Grant maximum allowance is about $6,200 which really like given the fact that colleges are over like you know $80,000 a year now some of them like UChicago is over $80,000 a year now $6,000 doesn't really make much of a dent, so we'll talk about better routes of financial aid other than the Pell Grant, but that's an example of a grant you don't have to pay back on the federal level. And when it comes to loans, you can take loans, I believe, if you're filing as a dependent up to $37,000. I'll add in the exact numbers in the corner, but you can take up to $37,000 as a loan if you're filing with your parents. If you're an independent and you are filing as an independent and you pay taxes by yourself and your family is not in charge of you, you could take up to $57,000. But these are all loans and they will have to be paid back at some point. And work-study is a kind of aid where you're given a job on campus that works towards paying your tuition off. So you would work on campus, get paid $12 an hour, hopefully more than that. So that would go towards paying your college tuition. So it's weird, it's like pocket money, but they just expect that the money you make through that job you use to pay college off, so that's just what work-study is. It's a pretty big assumption and a lot of people don't qualify for work-study, so there are jobs that are reserved for people who need the jobs so that they can work off their debt and actually pay to afford college. So now that we've gone through the different types of aid out, let's talk about my breakdown because this is how I personally think of aid. I think of it as federal, state, or institutional aid. And let me talk about institutional aid because that is what is going to save you. So federal aid, like I said, it's when you fill out the FAFSA. The FAFSA is the form that's due June 30th after you apply to colleges, after you get in, but many many colleges like the University of Florida requires that you submit it December 15th which is like six months, more than six months earlier than the actual due date. So you have to figure out deadlines, FAFSA deadlines for the schools you're applying to, but generally you would apply for FAFSA June 30th and that's when you get your financial aid letter in the mail later about what you actually can get from FAFSA. Personally I did not get any money from FAFSA so I didn't qualify for any Pell grants or federal loans. But that's generally what people think of as financial aid but let me tell you institutional financial aid is where it's at. So state aid also works very similar to federal aid and it's specific to the state universities you're going to. So obviously if you live in Texas and you end up going to UT Austin which is a University of Texas school, there might be state aid that also gets added on above FAFSA. But institutional financial aid, which is honestly so impressively good for private institutions, is where you can generally get a lot of tuition if not all of it covered if you meet certain criteria. So every private university has a tax calculator where they put in a ridiculous amount of information. It includes your family's tax returns assets, whether you have siblings or not, previous employment history, and just so many different factors that are vital in understanding whether your family can support you with $82,000 a year or whatever it is. There's a whole subset of schools, all T20 schools. I'd say most T50 schools are 100% meet-need institutions, which essentially means that they pay for everything your family cannot afford. They really do just whatever the calculator tells them that you can pay, you're only required to pay that and they cover the rest. I got $205,000 in grants from the University of Chicago because it is a 100% meet-need school. So in that, I have a complete breakdown in the video linked above about college costs but I got almost 70% of college covered straight from UChicago. I got no state aid and state aid is for public universities and I got no federal aid or federal loans as well. A really common misconception people have is that you should stay in state because it's cheaper but most cases like that's not actually true because financial aid at private institutions is just so good because of alumni donations and all of those private alumni pools that donate to school. Part of my aid package at UChicago consisted of a scholarship alongside the grant and the scholarship was I think $6,000 for a couple years and $8,000 for the last year I think. I don't know it's in the video I linked above. But I had tuition covered completely by the grant which was about $48,000 to $50,000 and college is a lot more than just tuition expenses like boarding, meals, everything. So this scholarship covered it and it was sent in by an alumni who wanted to cover someone who was in the physics department specifically. So it's like there are just so many additional avenues like I got that scholarship above already having tuition covered by the school. So private institutions are actually really good at that and I'm not telling you to apply to only private institutions but I want you to know that applying in-state because you think you can't afford private institutions is a huge misconception that most people have. So definitely don't discount schools because you think you can't afford them. You should google 100% meet need schools, see if your school's on the list, probably will be. So you can rest assured that if you don't get the Pell Grant you might still qualify for these large chunks of grants from your school. And we would love grants, like we love grants here because we don't want loans. It just scares me. I was so so fortunate to graduate without any student debt because my parents covered whatever the university didn't cover. So it's all in that, but I think we paid 70,000 plus like, you know, other expenses for like my life and living, but 70,000 over those four years to go to college, which is honestly very low, unfortunately, in this day and age. Something else I wanna say about private institutions, their benchmark is actually much higher. So for the Pell Grant, to get the full maximum Pell Grant, which is $6,000 covered, your family would have to make under $40,000 a year and then you would qualify for the full amount. But for private institutions, if your family makes, for example, in UChicago's case, in this private institution, if your family makes less than $125,000, the University of Chicago covers 100% of your tuition. And if your family makes less than $60,000, They cover tuition, food, meals, planes, everything. They cover your entire life. They give you a stipend. And this is really important to know because I know Princeton does this too and all top schools have this in some form or the other. So yeah, these institutions have a much higher threshold for family income and giving you aid based on family income because $40,000 is the cutoff for the maximum Pell Grant, which is also only $6,000, unfortunately. So keep in mind that there are a lot of options out there. So even if you think your family makes a decent amount of money, but you're still worried about how they're gonna pay for college, don't worry too much because they will input all of this information in. And if the cutoff for full aid is 125K, if your family's making around 150 or 160, you're still gonna get aid. It just won't be 100% of your tuition. It might be 60% of your tuition. So it is all proportional. So don't worry too much. And if you have any questions, always just email the financial aid office, like that's what they're there for, and no, it's not gonna look bad if you email them. It's good that you're trying to get all of this information. Okay, so if you get your financial aid letter, let's talk about negotiation. This is really important. So if you get a letter, several letters from the schools you're interested in, and you get financial aid from your dream school, and it is not enough, there are things you could do. The first thing is to double check your FAFSA application. Check to see if you have any minor errors. If there's any supporting documents you can add in, that could be your straight shot to getting more financial aid. Double check all of your information. The second way, and this is probably the most common, and in my experience, I think private institutions are willing to work with you on this. If your family circumstances change between whatever six to eight month-ish period, between submitting your application and getting your acceptance and your financial aid letter. If anything big changed, if there was anything that happened in your family, whether that was a loss in your family, job loss, transportation issues, like maybe your family lost their car, I don't know. Whatever it may be, those are things that they really do consider. So if something big happened in your life that directly impacts your financial situation, you would need to just write a quick email out detailing your new situation and send it to the school. And don't overthink this email, really just send them a quick email like, hey, thank you so much. Well, don't say hey, dear admissions board, thank you so much for this acceptance and for awarding me aid. I just wanted to give you some additional information about my family and what we've incurred since my application has been sent out. Just let them know what happened in a very straightforward manner. At the end, just let them know that you would love the opportunity to discuss further aid options because you would need X amount of money to be able to afford to go to this institution. And just ask them if you could have a discussion about this because that's a very relevant and human point to make. And the third is, if you got more financial aid from one institution compared to another, like let's say you got $40,000 from Georgia Tech and you only got 20,000 from UChicago, you can very respectfully, in a respectful manner, you could let the University of Chicago know that you got a competing offer of financial aid from another institution, and you would love the opportunity to chat to see if UChicago could match that aid. And this really shows them that other schools calculate aid in different ways, right? So every school has their own tax calculator. And if one school determined that you need more aid, That's a very valid thing to bring up to another school, especially if it's your dream school. And like 100%, if you Chicago matched that, you would go there for sure. If you know that, you would bring this up to them in the email. So kindly ask them if they could match an offer you got from another institution, which is, you know, a higher offer and let them know you're ready to commit. That is key. Like let them know that this is your only hindrance from accepting a spot at this school. If you get the aid letter early enough, if you've already committed, let them know that this would avoid you having any further financial struggles while you're on campus. And lastly, before we end this video, I have to hit on scholarships. Personally, I did not apply to any scholarships, and I'm not talking about university scholarships. I'm talking about the general private and non-profit scholarships. There are so many from Dr. Pepper, which is a hundred $100,000, Coca-Cola, McDonald's, Burger King, like everyone has scholarships for high school seniors to apply to and that covers part of college. And some of these scholarships are a substantial amount of money, but I also just want to let you guys know if you are applying to 100% meet-need schools and you genuinely know that you cannot afford certain tuitions, like they will cover it. Financial aid is a lot better than you think it is if it's 100% meet-need school, but these scholarships are a great alternative if you want to be 100% safe. You could always apply to these scholarships. They are a bit long. You would have to submit essays and just supporting documents, but there are some great scholarships. I'll include links in the description. And yeah, this is always just another route that you guys should be aware of before you start thinking about not applying to schools because you think you can't afford it. Well, that is it for my rant on financial aid today. I really hope this helped. I tried to just think of everything I'd want to know. So yeah, I hope this helped you and if you're new to the channel and you haven't subscribed yet and you got this far in the video, don't forget to subscribe. Smash that like button for the YouTube algorithm so they know that this is an important video because I feel like most people aren't searching how do I get financial aid but we want them we want them to know so like the video shoot me a comment down below you can also find me on instagram and i will see you guys on my next video thank you so much for watching