Students should be applying for scholarships now, experts say

Local students interested in going to college next fall should begin thinking about how to pay for the ever higher cost of higher education right now. A number of different options for keeping the cost of college from breaking the bank exist for local students.

One of the first things a prospective college student should do is fill out a Free Application for Federal Student Aid of FAFSA as it is known. The application can be filled out online or printed and filled out and mailed. Students can begin filling them out in January of their senior year. The FAFSA is designed to determine, by income level, how much and what kinds of federal aid a student is eligible to receive.

One type of federal financial aid is the PELL Grant. This grant from the federal government is just that, a grant; it does not have to be paid back. However if you decide to take out student loans, they have to be repaid. Sometimes they can be low interest, and the payments can be deferred until after graduation, but you have to apply first, and now is the time to get started.

If you are a student in the Nevada R-5 school system, the place to start is in the Counseling Center. The counselors can help with the FAFSA and other forms of financial aid. "The Counseling Center offers tons of scholarships," according to counselor Patty Murray. About 75 different scholarships are offered through the Nevada High School Scholarship Foundation and they are available only to Nevada students.

Many of these have different requirements and deadlines, so the earlier you begin the process the better off you will be. Murray says there is a common application for students to fill out that is used for all of the different scholarships. Of the approximate $100,000 available last year, Murray said, "Everybody who applied got some money."

Scholarships vary in amount. They may range from $100 to $500, and then there are the bigger scholarships. The Ellis Foundation of Fort Scott offers several scholarships to students in Missouri and Kansas. According to Danny Ellis, founder and president of the foundation, they offer at least a dozen individual scholarships to Nevada students each year.

They offer $1,000 per semester for eight semesters as long as students maintain the necessary requirements. Ellis said that their goal wasn't really to get kids into college, but to help them get out the door with a degree. The counseling center works with the Ellis Foundation and can assist students with applying for that money.

College expenses aren't just limited to tuition. Even with tuition paid, living on campus can put a strain on a family's budget. Take heart though, there are scholarships to help cover those costs too! Missouri State University offers a Presidential Scholarship to 40 incoming freshmen each year, according to recruiter Sean Kliethermes. It covers all costs: tuition, room and board for the full four years that it takes most students to earn a degree. Again, students must maintain a high level of academic performance to retain the scholarship.

A lot of financial aid, in a number of different forms, is available, but students shouldn't wait too long to get the ball rolling or the student might find himself rolling it uphill. Many colleges and universities reported record enrollment last fall. a similar situation this fall could mean competition for some forms of financial aid, especially scholarships. Many of those same schools will also assist students in obtaining financial aid if the student expresses an interest in their institution.

For more information visit the Nevada R-5 Web site at www.nevada.

k12.mo.us. From there, visitors to the site can click on the Nevada R-5 Foundation link or click on high school and then counselors. To find the online version of the FAFSA go to fafsa.ed.gov. There, students or parents will find all of the information pertinent to the FAFSA and links to other useful sites.

WiseChoice debuts state aid finder

With more families looking to financial aid to finance their children's college education, WiseChoice, www.wisechoice.com, has announced the debut of its State Aid Finder, which shows students what types of financial aid they may be eligible for within his/her state of residency, as well as from neighboring states -- ranging from tuition discounts to competitive grants one can apply for. The online college guidance solution that uses proprietary matching technology to pair students with colleges that meet their academic, personal, financial, and lifestyle needs also updated its Scholarship Finder feature, which contains detailed information on 2.4 million scholarships worth more than $14 billion in student aid.

Additionally, WiseChoice recently increased its already extensive database with the addition of more than 1,300 accredited, two-year schools and nearly 1,000 four-year colleges. WiseChoice now features details on 3,725 schools in its "Explore Schools" section of the Web site.

"WiseChoice realizes that a growing number of high school students are looking more closely at two-year colleges, largely due to the current economic climate, and we wanted to ensure that those schools were included in our database," said WiseChoice president Richard Taylor. Locally, Cottey College is among the newly added schools to the WiseChoice database.