Page 29 - BusinessWest February 7, 2022

submitting FAFSA or getting an offer. “It’s not exact,” she noted, “but it’s pretty darn close.”
In addition, O’Connor noted, Western Mass. is rich with resources to secure outside scholarships, from entities ranging from com- munity banks to Big Y; from the Horace Smith Fund to the Community Foundation of Western Massachusetts, the latter of which provides access to scores of scholar- ship opportunities with one application.
“The importance of a lit- tle effort in writing an essay can yield you thousands of
dollars in outside scholar- ship money,” he added.
And high-school seniors shouldn’t overlook the smaller ones, Cole said. “Make this your part-time
time on the weekends to make an investment in their finances. “Now, the last thing you want to do is write another essay, but take Saturday or Sunday afternoon, and do some essay prompts; what you find on Fastweb can be reused and apply to a bunch. I’ve seen families surprised they got some of these national and regional scholarships — $1,000, $2,000, $3,000 ... every bit helps.”
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financial-aid process. It can be overwhelming — in particular, for anyone who has not had experience doing it before.
Meanwhile, he added, parents might reach out to their employers to see if they offer tuition- reimbursement programs they might not have even been aware of.
Once on campus, many students take advan- tage of federal work-study programs to reduce their tuition bill — and gain valuable work expe- rience to boot.
“It’s a job on campus, but it’s also a learning experience for students,” Cole said. “If they’re going to make mistakes, better to make them here, and be mentored and educated through the process, than make them out in the corporate world. Many of them don’t have office experi-
It’s important to normalize the
Kerry Cole and Richard O’Connor say students shouldn’t be hesitant to reach out if they run into difficulties with college costs during their time at AIC.
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FEBRUARY 7, 2022 29
“We make sure we’re ahead of all that,” Kemp said. “FAFSA can be intimidating, and we always want to make sure they know it’s coming and we’re helping them through the process.
“It’s important to normalize the financial-aid process,” she added. “It can be overwhelming — in particular, for anyone who has not had experi- ence doing it before.”
Cole said colleges offer an online net price calculator, where families can input data on GPA, expected family contribution, and other fac-
tors to generate an expected net cost well before
job on Sunday afternoon — take an hour or two, look for scholarships, write an essay, and send those out. Even $25, $50, $100, those add up; that’s a textbook.”
Gross refers students to fastweb.com, which he calls “a clearinghouse of lots of external schol- arships. A lot of students don’t realize these scholarships often have a lot fewer applicants than you would expect, especially those that require an essay.”
Like Cole, Gross suggested students carve out