Embedded Files
Financial Aid
Financial Aid is a timely topic for juniors. There is a wealth of information that students need to learn about prior to diving in senior year. If students learn about it first, it saves counselors and other student-facing professionals time. It pre-teaches the basics so students can operate more independently. This, in turn, frees the student-facing professionals to give more specialized support to the students who need it most. Without pre-teaching, counselors spend a lot of time repeating the same information, over and over, to one student at a time. When you have a caseload of 300-400 students that is doing it the hard way.
Listed below are some Learning Targets for financial aid. This lists out some skills that students may want to master before embarking on the live financial aid process during their senior year of high school. These learning targets are covered in our modules and resources below. But should you wish to enrich these materials, having a learning target will keep you focused on the most important skills for students.
Learning Targets for Financial Aid
Learning Targets for Financial Aid
Identifying five sources of funding for college
Distinguishing between loans, grants, and scholarships
Purpose of the FAFSA
How to research scholarships.
How to locate scholarships for which they are eligible
How to organize financial aid efforts using a calendar
How to interpret a financial aid package from a college
The recommended sequence and timeline for accessing financial aid
How to respond to the need for FAFSA verification
How to request a professional judgment from a financial aid officer should FAFSA not accurately reflect their financial circumstances
Financial Aid Modules
Financial Aid Modules
We created a three module mini-course to pre-teach many of the learning targets for students BEFORE starting to pursue financial aid during their senior year. Having all junior students complete these in the spring of junior year would give them a base of knowledge for financial aid ahead of time. These can be downloaded and put into your school's learning platform along with the checkpoint assessments.
As with our other materials, if you wish to enrich these assignments or personalize them to your school, please do.
Click here to access the Financial Aid modules and checkpoint assessments.
For Parents
Linked in this section is an example of a slide deck to introduce parents to some key Financial Aid concepts. This is a good presentation to give parents as early as 9th-10th grade, but no later than 11th grade. You can host a parent meeting and lead them through these, as well as make this slide deck available on your school website for parents to view.
Topics included are:
5 primary sources of aid
Scholarship search information
The role of FAFSA
The different types of aid and their source
We conducted a classroom intervention with 30 high school students using this lesson. Students took the Financial Aid subtest of the College Admissions Knowledge Evaluation (CAKE), a validated instrument to measure College Admissions Knowledge. The subtest had 17 items about Financial Aid.
Participants average growth between pre and post-test was 6.27 points, a statistically significant increase (p<.001)
Financial Literacy
Another component of financial aid is financial literacy. Is your degree program going to give you a good return on investment? How do you manage your finances to minimize the use of loans? How do you manage your finances so your loan debt doesn't get out of control?
CFNC.org has a bank of financial literacy activities for teachers and students, including online courses.
Click here to browse their offerings, download resources, or sign up for a course.
FAFSA Events
One strategy to support FAFSA completion is having a FAFSA night or some type of live support sessions for FAFSA completion.
To access materials related to FAFSA events, click HERE
For additional resources, log in to Level All and explore all their lesson content
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Lessons for each standard are available with Level All resources below
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