eCampus News - FAFSA 1

Sock puppet web video can help you apply for college financial aid

The web has a growing number of free resources that can help students and parents fill out the Free Application for Federal Student Aid, or FAFSA, which is the form that qualifies college students for grants, scholarships, and low-priced student loans, says Kim Clark for U.S. News & World Report. Unfortunately, like everything else on the web, there’s plenty of misleading and boring FAFSA videos, too. A YouTube search for FAFSA videos, for example, turns up several “webinars” that are really sales come-ons for high-priced private consultants.

I’ve searched the web for free FAFSA videos that appear to be accurate, helpful, and somewhat fun to watch. Here’s a list (in alphabetical order)…

Click here for the full story …Read More

Technology makes student aid more accessible

Students have increasingly looked to the web for financial aid.

Over the past decade and a half, the internet has made it easier for families to learn about, find, and apply for college scholarships, government grants, and other types of student financial aid. This transformation of the financial aid industry continues even today with a simplified federal aid form and a new XML data standard that will make applying for scholarships easier than ever.

I have acted as a catalyst for some of these major developments and have a unique perspective on the role of the internet in paying for college.

I founded the FinAid web site in the early 1990s to help people plan for and pay for college by making the process easier to understand and more efficient. FinAid was one of the internet’s first web sites, not just one of the first web sites about student financial aid. It is also one of the oldest web sites still in existence.…Read More

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Feds roll out simpler FAFSA form

Education Secretary Arne Duncan helped introduce the newest online FAFSA form.

The new online version of the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) will allow college applicants to skip series of questions that don’t apply to them and includes help text and easily accessible instructions, federal officials announced Jan. 5.

Education Secretary Arne Duncan and Jill Biden, Vice President Joe Biden’s wife and a former community college educator, promoted the streamlined FAFSA form at Banneker Senior High School in Washington, D.C., where college hopefuls filled out online applications that gauge how much student aid they are eligible for.

About 20 million students submit the FAFSA every year.…Read More

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