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The new Simplified FAFSA is here! Here’s a quick video with some tips that will help you get through it with a minimum of chaos and maximum of financial aid. 🔗
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Unemployment for Degree Holders
The most recent unemployment figures from the Bureau of Labor Statistics once again reinforce the value of a college education. While the overall unemployment rate was 13.3% nationally in May, the rate for those with only a high school diploma was 15%. The unemployment rate for those with at least a bachelor’s degree was less than half that, 7.2%.
What Year? (2020 Edition)
It’s hard keeping track of what matters when in the prior-prior year world of the FAFSA and CSS Profile. Here is a table summarizing tax year and asset dates for the next few college years:
To Defer or not to Defer
Many students are considering deferring enrollment for the fall; surveys show that perhaps as many as 15% of college-bound students in the high school class of 2020 are likely to defer.
About that Facebook Live Event…
My apologies to anyone who tried to access my event on Facebook yesterday. The short story is, the stream went to the wrong place and when you’re in the middle of a live interview there isn’t much you can do to change that!
Common App and Coalition App Essay Prompts
Does your student have some free time on their hands? If so, now could be a great time to start working on college essays. The Common App and Coalition App release their essay prompts well ahead of time– January for the Common App, for example.
CARES Act College Funding: Cash for Students
Following up on yesterday’s post. How does a student get cash from his school’s emergency student aid grant under the CARES Act? It depends on the school, and most have not formalized their policies yet.
College Students and Stimulus Payments
Parents of college students have likely heard that those students– if claimed as dependents on their parents’ 2019 taxes– are not eligible for the $1,200 stimulus payment.
What Can You Learn From a Crisis?
You know the saying, “Experience is what you get when you don’t get what you want?” 2020 is setting itself up to be a year full of experience.
What Now? What’s Next?
If you have college students like mine, you’re probably figuring out how to move them home. If they’re seniors, they’re probably wondering about whether they’ll have graduation, how they’ll get job interviews, even how they could get started on a career.
It’s tax time, which means it’s time to claim education tax credits you may be eligible for. Unfortunately, a lot of tax software programs don’t provide good instructions for doing so, so it’s a good idea to pull up the instructions for Form 8863 and review them before filing.