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Frequently
asked questions
Interested in Knowing More About StudentAid.com?
What is StudentAid.com?
StudentAid.com offers a breakthrough for students and families planning for college! Our service demystifies how much college will cost and how much aid a student is eligible to receive before applying to colleges. We empower students and families with comparative information, so that they can make the smartest college choice possible.
What is the College Cost & Planning Report® ?
The College Cost & Planning Report® is a custom-created report prepared for an individual student before he or she applies to college, and is based exclusively on their specific colleges of interest and their unique financial circumstances. Each report:
To learn more, watch our video or read more here.
Why is the College Cost & Planning Report® unique?
Today, a student's out-of-pocket cost of college is not known until after a student is accepted by a college. The College Cost & Planning Report® makes the net costs of college transparent by allowing families to understand what college will cost and how to pay for it, years before they even apply.
StudentAid.com is the only organization that allows you to compare your true net cost of multiple colleges side-by-side.
What is "net cost" of college?
The net cost of college (sometimes referred to as the out-of-pocket cost of college) is the amount of money a student or family must pay for their college education after accounting for grant and scholarship aid. Net cost is NOT the published cost of college (often referred to as the "sticker price") you see on college web sites. Instead, net cost equals a college's published cost of attendance (which includes such items as tuition, fees, room and board, books supplies and other expenses) less grants and scholarships.
The net cost of college is the amount of money that a student or family needs to fund either from savings, work-study programs, or loans to pay for college.
How much does the StudentAid.com service cost?
You can use our service for less than half the cost of a new pair of sneakers! Choosing the right college is one of the most important financial decisions you will ever make, and our Basic package puts 6 personalized, comprehensive college comparisons at your fingertips for the cost of one college application.
Our Basic package (self-serve with a PDF report comparing up to 6 colleges) is priced at $44.00 and our Preferred package (with professional support and a printed four-color report comparing up to 10 colleges) is priced at $89.00.
For more information on our prices and product packages, click here.
If your household family income is less than $40,000 we are pleased to be able to provide our Basic report to you free of charge under our Access for All® program (please don't use this program if your household income is more than $40,000 because the information contained in your report will NOT be accurate!). Our Access for All program is limited to one report per household.
Can I change, update or reprint my report if my college choices or financial circumstances change?
Yes. At any time, you can login, update your details, and order a new report. We suggest you do this if your financial circumstances change (as this may affect your eligibility for student aid) or if you have additional colleges you are considering as part of your college selection process.
Preferred or Basic clients: You can create another report online with updated information or new colleges. The new report will be just $29.00 for Preferred clients or $39.00 for Basic clients.
Access for All® clients: You will need to create a new report. We can only offer one Access for All report per family. Fortunately, our Basic service plan starts at only $44.00, and you will be able to get future updated reports at a discounted rate.
Can I get assistance to help me interpret my report?
Yes. We have two available resources if you need help interpreting the information in your College Cost & Planning Report® . Clients who purchased a $89.00 Preferred package can discuss their report with a professional Student Aid Advisor. For $44.00 Basic and free Access for All® clients, you may upgrade your package to include 30 days of unlimited professional telephone support for $39. In addition, we have published a comprehensive guide to the College Cost & Planning Report® on our web site that can be accessed free by all clients. This guide explains every aspect of the College Cost & Planning Report® in detail, including discussions of how the data was gathered and calculated, and important ways that it can affect a student's college decision. To access the guide, log in to your MyActivity page on StudentAid.com. Scroll to where you see a link for "My Resources."
Should I purchase a College Cost & Planning Report® for every year that I am in high school?
The College Cost & Planning Report® is designed to provide accurate estimates of your net cost of college, based on your current financial and academic situations and the student aid regulations and awarding practices used at the time it is produced. It will project costs for you assuming you were going to college in the next academic year. It is important to understand that the student aid industry is highly dynamic, and many rules and regulations change yearly. For this reason, we recommend high school students and adult learners planning for college update their College Cost & Planning Report® annually to ensure that their financial plans are based on accurate information. However, students currently enrolled in college do not need to continue updating their College Cost & Planning Report® unless they plan to transfer to a different college.
Do I need to purchase a College Cost & Planning Report® for every child that is going to college?
Because the College Cost & Planning Report® is an individualized and personalized service that is based on a specific student's college choices and academic scores, you will need to purchase one for each of your children. This will allow us to provide more accurate information and guidance for each student. If you select our Preferred package, you may order a report for another family member for as little as $39.00.
Can I still take advantage of the College Cost & Planning Report® if I have already filed my FAFSA?
Yes. The College Cost & Planning Report® is separate from your federal student aid application(FAFSA) form and can be created after you have completed your FAFSA.
How accurate is the College Cost & Planning Report® ?
We have built powerful algorithms that calculate aid eligibility based on a student's specific financial, academic, and family circumstances. Our databases contain data and information about more than 6,500 colleges. We have individually analyzed and coded all nine federal aid programs and all of the major state aid programs (covering 90% of all state aid). In addition, we have individually coded all the colleges with publicly disclosed loan limiting and tuition discounting programs. Based on this, we can advise a family's eligibility for more than $100 billion of student aid. To ensure the highest possible accuracy, we have tested our algorithms on 25 million test cases and with 28,000 real families, who obtained the report during its two-year development period.
Does the College Cost & Planning Report® tell me the exact amount of student aid that I can expect to receive from a college?
No. The College Cost & Planning Report® calculates accurate estimates for out-of-pocket costs and the free grant and scholarship aid a student is likely to receive at each college selected. To do this, we process a student's financial and academic information through our comprehensive ThinkAhead Net Price Calculator® algorithm and determine the student's aid eligibility at each college. This utility aggregates data from hundreds of sources and consists of more than three million lines of computer code. We follow established regulations and formulas from the federal Department of Education, state higher education authorities, and colleges to determine a conservative package of awards. We subtract grant and scholarship aid from a college's published cost of attendance to determine a college's net cost for each student's circumstances.
We emphasize that the amounts contained in your College Cost & Planning Report® are estimates of your student aid and out-of-pocket costs. These figures are a planning tool that allows a family to evaluate relative cost comparisons. This information is not intended as a guarantee or a bargaining tool when interacting with a college's financial aid office.
Like retirement planning, college planning requires a student/family to use the best available information to make wise decisions about which colleges to apply to. We provide early insight into a student's college cost - something families have been deprived of, yet desperately need to ensure one of life's most important decisions is a smart choice academically and financially.
Where do you get the information for the College Cost & Planning Report® ?
The College Cost & Planning Report® estimates a student's personal aid awards according to current state and federal law, and using publicly-reported information from colleges and the Department of Education, and proprietary information gained through private research.
Where did you get the information for my college's profile in the College Cost & Planning Report® ?
The information in your college profiles was reported by the college either as a matter of public information or to StudentAid.com directly.
Does the College Cost & Planning Report® evaluate my eligibility for all the student aid available?
The College Cost & Planning Report® estimates your eligibility for 70% of the total aid awarded annually, including 100% of federal aid, 90% of state aid, and some college-specific programs. We are not able to estimate specific awards for some programs administered by colleges and private organizations. For those colleges, we provide data(where available) regarding average aid awards.
Is the College Cost & Planning Report® available for graduate programs?
No. Unfortunately, at this time the College Cost & Planning Report® is only available for students or families that are interested in undergraduate programs. We are currently working towards being able to offer our services to graduate students.
How does the College Suggestor™ work?
Our free College Suggestor™ uses the actual college choices and collective wisdom of more than 600,000 students to suggest colleges that may be of interest. College insiders and others have long known that if a student is interested in a certain college, they may be interested in certain other colleges. The College Suggestor™ enables a student to enter the names of colleges that he/she is interested in, and see other colleges most commonly considered by others who were also interested in the same college. It is peer-to-peer recommendations applied to college selections! View profiles of the suggested colleges, access contact information, and even add them to your College Cost & Planning Report® . Other college-recommendation utilities are based on web clicks, while our College Suggestor™ is superior because it is based on actual students' college applications.
How safe is my data? Do you share my data with third parties?
StudentAid.com does not share your data with any entity without your explicit request to do so. To help clients with relevant information on paying for college, college admissions, career options, and more, we ask clients if they would like StudentAid.com to make non-financial information available to colleges and leading companies. If a client does not consent, no data of any kind is shared with any third party. For further information, see StudentAid.com's privacy policy.
Your privacy is very secure. We maintain a variety of physical, electronic, and procedural safeguards designed to protect your personal information from unauthorized access and disclosure. In addition, we work to protect the security of your personal information when utilizing our service via the site by using well-known Internet encryption technologies, such as 1024 SSL Encryption and house our servers in the same facility as Google and eBay. If you would prefer not to exchange information over the Internet, our professional Student Aid Advisors will be happy to prepare the entire data set required via a question-and-answer session by telephone. StudentAid.com is a licensee of the TRUSTe Web Privacy Seal Program. TRUSTe is an independent, non-profit organization whose mission is to build user's trust and confidence in the Internet by promoting the use of fair information practices. Because StudentAid.com wants to demonstrate its commitment to our client's privacy, we have agreed to disclose our information practices and have our privacy practices reviewed for compliance by TRUSTe.