education-loan

Now, I really can't tell you if this book WILL suceed in paying for most of my college tuition but, frankly, I realize it is really up to me. If I am ready to put in the time, if YOU are ready to put in the time, I am sure either you OR I could win, with or without the book. But, this book will surely make it a lot easier. It has strategies of how to win as well as a fair selection of scholarships to begin applying to. Enough to keep you busy for a very, very long time. Even if these aren't enough, it offers suggestion of how you can find more scholarships you're eligible for. Supposedly, the author is also putting together a companion book with many more scholarships, though it's not out yet. All and all, I highly recommend you get this book. It won't win the scholarships for you, but, with a little preserverence, it will certainly assist you win the contests yourself!

The book is well organized and written on a level that will not challenge a high school student. However, there are tips for a wider audience including the very young, older returning students, graduate students, and students that fit into special groups.

Clearly, the competition for scholarships can be intense, but with a logical game plan engaged in consistently, an applicant's effectiveness can be increased. The one consistent theme in the book is that a steady approach will lead to success.

I will take issue with a combination of techniques mentioned in the book. Kaplan suggests that students get their recommendations in electronic format so that they can print them out as needed. He also suggests that you solicit "small" changes to recommendation letters to make them "great" letters. I feel this may present many an ethical challenge to some applicants. To be clear, he does not suggest manufacturing recommendation letters.

He also provides access to his companion web site to add extra punch to the process.

In the final analysis, it is hard to argue with his success, and Kaplan was very successful on his own behalf. He interviewed many of the people involved as applicant and administrators and their tips appear in the book.

Financial advice columnist Kenneth Hooker recently wrote the same thing:
"You can take some comfort in the fact that buying a college education has become a good deal like buying a new car -- virtually nobody pays the sticker price. There are a wide variety of financial aid programs available, both through the government and through the schools themselves, and the real costs are likely to be dramatically lower than the figures supplied ...."

As the completely middle-class, full-tuition-paying parent of a child at an Ivy League college, I feel like a total chump when I read this stuff.

Well, maybe I have missed something in all of my researches and walk-throughs with family contribution calculators, but I'm not sure.

Since there has been such a marked reduction, even disappearance of merit scholarships, and almost everything now is needs-based, parents should know that if your child applies to a private school that includes home equity in its EFC (as many now do, maybe most), and
(a) if your debt (mortgage and home loans) is not huge, and/or
(b) if you make a decent salary, and/or
(c) if you have saved and invested over the years and now have a moderate portfolio (however much it's down from 1-2 years ago),

then you almost certainly are NOT going to qualify for any financial aid whatsoever from any number of competitive private schools. Loans, sure. Aid, most likely no.

So far as I can determine, you are expected to take out a home-equity loan (if your house debt is low enough) and pay the full fare. And/or sell some of those "substantial assets."

I am not saying this is wrong, or even unfair for those of us who are comfortably middle-class. But unless I have made some major omissions, similar parents should not be misled by the broad promises and assertions by these college-financing "experts."

Don't let the anecdotal experiences of the guy you work with disuade you, there is a lot of help out there and this book will give a leg up on finding it.

As I tell my clients, the more you know about the rules of the college funding game, the more money you will save. So get this book and save some money.

Now if they only wrote it with a good index.

Good note is that this books as like 5,000 scholarship keeping in mind of the doubles/triples of a quite a few of the awards. Catagories are within from state, to nationality, to what you want to major in, race, sex etc! So it covers just about everything!!!

Granted nothing is totally free! You have to work a little to receive the money. Either sending a SASE with some basic info. about yourself. But even the FAFSA isn't totally easy on filling out all that paper work either! So if you receive that award then you know what I am talking about.

The best feature of the book was that it listed scholarships by major - science, english, etc. However almost all the scholarships listed were specific for a certain reason - for instance, students of Sacred Heart Academy or residents of Montgomery County. These scholarships are easily accessible for those people that qualify for them, such as at local libraries and schools, and are not helpful to include in a book for students all across America, only a small percentage of whom could qualify for those certain scholarships by living in that area.

I was excited to get this book and thought it would help me find some college money. However it was absolutely useless to me and I wish I wouldn't have spent my money on it - I don't even know anyone I can give it to that would benefit from any scholarships listed in it. If you are a college-bound student or are already in college and are looking for scholarships and loans suited to you, I don't recommend this book. ................................. Although this book has many many scholarships, they are so diverse and hard to qualify for that it would be better if they only had even a few that would match most students.

This is not to say that anyone should rely on this book by itself. Things often get complicated when you proceed past the general-purpose advice to the specifics of your own case. The primary value of this book is to alert the reader to the overall shape of the problem or solution.

My copy describes itself, on the back cover, as a "substantially updated 2nd edition." Its title page indicates it was last revised in February 2000. This may well be true. If so, I would distinguish "substantially" updated from "fully" updated. The book repeatedly refers to court decisions that are now a number of years old -- describing a 1993 case, for example, as "recent."

In addition, I have some concerns about the book's accuracy. For instance, in discussing the legal defense known as "laches," the author says, "[I]n only one case has a former student defended against a lawsuit claiming laches." (Pg. 7/37.) This is incorrect, and I believe it was mistaken even at the time of the first edition.

I would say that the author also misphrases the state of affairs when s/he says, "In general, you cannot assert the defense of laches against the government." A more accurate phrasing would be that "the defense of laches is unlikely to succeed against the government." There appears to have been some softening on the issue in other contexts in recent years, and other courts reviewing the one case to which the author refers have not generally said that the case -- granting a discharge to the student on grounds of laches -- was decided wrongly under its particular circumstances.

To provide one other example of error, on page 10/13 the author lays down the blanket rule that a student loan cannot be discharged in bankruptcy if it was made by a government unit. This is not what the law says. In context, I suspect the author meant to say that it CAN be discharged in bankruptcy if it is NOT made by a government unit. The book does explain the relevant laws more carefully elsewhere; the net effect of this error will probably be (a) to mislead a few people who do not read those other sections and (b) to confuse everyone else.

The important thing is to use a book like this to gain a general orientation to the issues, and take seriously its final chapter, which offers a bit of advice on how to do your own legal research. If you proceed that way, you will tend not to be confused by the occasional imperfection in general-purpose books like this one (and at this point, I don't believe anyone can help making at least an occasional mistake), and with a fair amount of effort you will probably be able to save yourself the expense and hassle of making obvious, costly, time-consuming errors in deciding how to proceed with your own case.

I have not found another book with anywhere near as much useful information on the subject of handling student loan debt. I highly recommend this book to anyone who is willing to use this book as one should use any legal authority: read it, understand it, and double-check its conclusions.