28 Free Resources for FAFSA Help

hand out of water looking for free FAFSA help

Hand reaching out of water for FAFSA helpWhy should you care about FAFSA help? In case you haven’t heard, the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) for 2023-24 is available on October 1st. That means that it’s time for high school seniors to collect all their documents so they can fill out the FAFSA. Why? Because you will need to have submitted the FAFSA to be eligible for financial aid awarded by the federal government, colleges, and many states. And the sooner, the better. While filling out the FAFSA isn’t the key to great financial aid, it is a necessary step.

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7 Things You Need to Know When Looking for Private Scholarships

A maze with money at the center and the text, "7 Things You Need to Know When Looking for College Scholarships" at the bottom, highlighting insights into securing private scholarships.

A maze with money showing difficulty in finding private scholarships for collegeWith all of the college scholarship search websites available, it would seem that getting a private scholarship to pay for school has never been easier. Unigo’s scholarship match offers to match students to 3.6 million college scholarships and grants worth over $24 billion. And Scholarships.com tells you that there are over 3.7 million scholarships worth $19 billion just waiting for you. How hard can it be to get a scholarship?

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COVID-19 Wreck Your College Plans? Here’s the One Thing You Must Do

College student happy about post COVID-19 College plans

Student happy about post COVID-19 college plans at TuitionFitThe excitement generated by acceptance letters so many high school seniors received before April 1 has morphed into anxiety if not outright panic as families’ finances have been turned upside down. What was an affordable college before COVID-19 may not be any more. Athletes face uncertainty about scholarship availability. And there are students who would just rather stay a little closer to home than when they first created their college list.

So now what?

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12 Useful Resources for Creating Your Own Softball or Baseball Recruiting Video

Person with video camera representing how to create a baseball recruiting video

man showing how to create your own recruiting videoYou do not have to pay for a professional skills video for college baseball recruiting. If you have a video camera (or smartphone), a video stand, and a basic editing program, you can create your own baseball recruiting video that will be perfectly fine for college recruiting.

There are plenty of websites offering information on how to create such videos. After reviewing a few of them, you’ll find that there are some common elements that should be included in every video. The websites below provide a good overview of what is available for baseball and softball. If you only want to read one website, GoBigRecruiting is the one to visit. It offers detailed video guidelines for both Softball and Baseball.

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DIY College Rankings: Where to Start

woman using laptop to start using DIY College RankingsAs I went through the college search process with my son, I was constantly amazed at the way numbers are and are not used in the process. Everyone talks about student’s GPA, class rank, test scores, and college acceptance rates but no one seemed to know anything about their Expected Financial Contribution (EFC), four-year college graduation rates, or percentage of students receiving non-federal student loans.

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What Athletes Need to Know About the Ivy League Academic Index

A brown dachshund stands on its hind legs and looks intently at the screen of an open laptop on a desk, perhaps analyzing the ivy league academic index.

dog on computer looking up ivy league academic indexIf you’re interested in playing your sport for one of the Ivy League schools, you need to understand the Academic Index. I’m assuming that you already know that the Ivy League does not provide athletic scholarships and that you’re hoping to use your athletic abilities to help you get admitted. After all, recruited athletes have approximately a 30 percentage point advantage in being admitted compared to non-athletes with no legacy status. And a recent analysis of data from Harvard showed that “Athletes with the highest or second-highest academic rating on an internal Harvard admissions scale have an acceptance rate of 83 percent—compared to 16 percent for non-athletes.”

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College Search Websites: College Navigator

Table showing average net price by income from College Navigator

College Navigator landing page(You can see an updated evaluation of the College Navigator here.) The College Navigator website is part of the National Center for Education Statistics.  They are responsible for collecting all kinds of education related data including that in the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS). The College Navigator is just the user-friendly way of accessing the IPEDS data. If you don’t like the user-friendly approach, you can access the data directly through the IPEDS Data Center.

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Pros and Cons of Using College Navigator for Creating Your College List

Person smiling and making an "OK" gesture with their hand while sitting at a desk with a laptop. Text reads, "College Navigator pros and cons for creating your college list.

Student using laptop to search college navigatorWhy should you use College Navigator as your starting point in creating your college list? Two reasons. The first is that College Navigator is provided by the federal government which is also one of the two major data sources for college search websites and the more reliable of the two. Really. When US News College Rankings wants to check their data, they use the federal government’s Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS) data to check the Common Data Set (CDS).

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Pros and Cons of Using College Board’s Big Future for Creating Your College List

Person sitting on the floor with legs stretched out, typing on a laptop placed on their lap. They are wearing jeans and a t-shirt, contemplating the pros and cons of their Big Future. The surface appears to be a light-colored carpet.

woman sitting on floor using laptop representing Big Future's pros and consIf you do a web search for “college search” chances are you’ll find the College Board’s Big Future at the top of the results list. It’s not surprising since they have historically already have access to some of the information many students and colleges have considered the most important in college admissions–test scores. But just how good is Big Future in helping you create your college list?

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