Services for Colleges, High Schools, and Organizations
ScholarFITS helps institutions communicate financial literacy and college financial aid concepts to pre-college students and their parents. De-mystify the college cost, aid, and planning process for your audiences. Build a culture that values and understands the how and why of post-high school education.
Concepts include:
- The benefit of education beyond high school
- The concept of Net Price
- Costs and budgeting beyond published Cost of Attendance
- Understanding need, need analysis, and need-based aid
- Understanding competition among colleges and merit aid
- Strategies for paying for college from savings, current earnings, and loans
- Total cost of a degree as distinguished from one-year cost
- Debt service and loan balances in relation to earnings
- Interpreting aid award letters
- Multi-year budgeting and payment plans
What we do
- Residencies: For schools or organizations without dedicated financial aid counselors, we’ll travel to you for an intensive financial aid focused period ranging from a few days to a couple of weeks. This is a great supplement for schools with counselors well-versed in the college selection process, but less equipped to handle financial aid and college payment planning. A typical residency includes group college financial literacy presentations followed by one-on-one development of individual college financial plans based on each student’s need- and merit-profile. Cost of degree and affordability analyses for colleges identified by the student, as well as suggestions for alternative affordable options if appropriate, will be included.
- Presentation Services: We’ll make plans with you to prepare and present an instructional session tailored to your audience. Target audiences might be parents, high school seniors, early planners, high need groups, etc. Single sessions of one or two hours, or longer term curricula are available.
- Writing Services: We’ll compose brochures, booklets, or web pages for your target audience to communicate complicated college financial topics without jargon. Pieces will be written for your population – high school students or parents, and tailored for the audience’s familiarity with higher education concepts.
- Contact us to see how we can help your group.
Organizations
ScholarFITS is an ideal partner for groups promoting college access. Financial aid education often begins and ends with encouragement and assistance with filing the FAFSA or links to a variety of mostly-small outside scholarships. Those are great steps, but they’re not sufficient to give clarity and confidence to aspiring students.
ScholarFITS will develop educational approaches that go far beyond. Help your target population understand the cost of a degree, the nuances of need analysis, the leverage they may have to take advantage of merit aid, the multi-year financial plan that will ensure their degree remains attainable. Contact Bill Smith to develop a program so your students can confidently navigate the financial aid and college payment process.
High Schools
High schools are often well-equipped to offer students counseling to prepare a college-bound curriculum and to identify academically appropriate colleges. They’re often ill-prepared to help with the important financial aid and payment planning questions families need to answer.
Do more than offering FAFSA-filing pep talks and assistance. Let ScholarFITS help you give families a broader perspective on how colleges compete for students. The financial perspective is a great complement to your academic counseling. We’ll explain how merit aid can help families with little financial need. We’ll explain how families with need can manage the portion of cost they’re responsible for. We’ll introduce multi-year planning that combines concepts of need, merit, net price, and managing the net price. A ScholarFITS financial aid night is one your families will value, remember, and ask for again!
Colleges
Bill Smith of ScholarFITS has helped colleges present their statement of affordability and value in an effective, factual, plain-spoken message. Combining admissions and financial aid themes, Bill can help you manage your value-communication plan.
- Critique your website’s value messaging
- Maximize the impact of your NPC
- Integrate your marketing message into your financial aid communications
- Promote financial literacy in your messaging
A well planned communication strategy will improve prospective students’ knowledge and understanding, increasing the likelihood that students will matriculate, succeed, and persist.
Contact ScholarFITS
Bill Smith (see bio) at ScholarFITS will customize a proposal for your institution. Contact Bill today!