Congratulations on your college acceptances and success in receiving scholarships and need-based financial aid! If you don’t mind, I’d like to give you a little assignment.
Those financial aid statements and award offers are full of information, and it’s not always easy to compare offers. Some colleges may include student and parent loans on the actual financial aid statement, while others mention them in a cover letter accompanying the statement. The school’s financial aid and merit scholarship offers may arrive in different letters, or you may still be waiting to hear about one of the two.
So your assignment is this: create a spreadsheet, and move the information on each of these non-standard forms into a format that allows you to compare apples to apples, instead of grants to pears! Once you have your spreadsheet set up, follow the next two steps.
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