FAP736: 5 Things You Should Bring to College

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Student Financial Aid News
+ Inside Higher Ed: Michigan’s Higher Education Student Loan Authority announced Tuesday that it would suspend its alternative loan program, citing the agency’s expected difficulties in borrowing the money needed to finance future private loans because of the “credit crunch” affecting the U.S. capital markets. Officials of the Michigan agency said that the Michigan Alternative Student Loan Program, known as MI-Loan, provided about $68 million in private loans to 8,500 students at Michigan public, private and for-profit colleges in 2007. Agency officials said they had not seen any impact thus far of the credit crunch on the Michigan authority’s federal guaranteed loan program.
+ According to other banking sources, half of the securitizations yesterday on the market failed to find buyers, which was a shocker
+ Our private student loans are still open for business
+ Chronicle: Needless complexity in the federal financial-aid system costs students and colleges approximately $4-billion per year, according to a new working paper by two Harvard University scholars who are prominent advocates of a simplified aid-application process.
+ The authors — Susan M. Dynarski, an associate professor of public policy at Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government, and Judith E. Scott-Clayton, a doctoral fellow there — estimate that families spend 10 hours, on average, filling out the Free Application for Federal Student Aid, or Fafsa. Because the average hourly wage is now $17.50 and roughly 10 million Fafsa applications are filed annually, the scholars calculate that the Fafsa generates a “time cost” of $1.75-billion. Colleges and the federal government, meanwhile, spend $2.3-billion each year to pay the salaries of administrators who process and audit the applications, the paper estimates.

Scholarship Update
+ Doodle 4 Google!
+ Doodle 4 Google gives U.S. students in grades K-12 the opportunity to design a doodle for the Google homepage. Students will be asked to draw a doodle that best represents the theme “What if…?” We ask ourselves this question every day when we build our products, so we thought we would ask the same of the future doodlers. A panel of expert judges and Googlers will select 40 regional winners, who will be invited to the Googleplex in Mountain View, California, in May. Four national finalists will be announced as the result of a public vote. From there, Dennis will select one lucky student whose doodle will be on the Google homepage for a day in the U.S. This winner will also receive a $10,000 college scholarship and a technology grant for his or her school.
+ Other winners get shirts and other swag
+ $25,000 goes to your school for a technology grant
+ March 28 deadline
+ Details at our free college scholarship search site

News You Can Use
+ I was looking through my old shows and found that some shows were wildly popular, BUT the audio quality of those shows left something to be desired. Rather than continue to promote shows that hurt my ears, I’m going to re-do some of those segments with better sound, better quality. Here’s a segment called…
+ What *should* you bring to college? Five things you may not have considered
+ A laptop - the expense is worth being able to study somewhere else while your roommate has a kegger and an episode of Girls Gone Wild
+ Personally, I use a MacBook Pro, but either a MacBook or MacBook Pro are great computers - the MacBook Air, not so much
+ A digital camera - this foundation of new media tools will allow you to create tons of content for a relatively low price - plus store lots of memories
+ Ideally, a digital camera that has a movie feature, so that you have a 2 for 1 device
+ I personally use a Nikon D40 as my main camera and a Sanyo VPC-CG65 as my main video camera, but if you had to choose one, go with the Sanyo as it can shoot reasonable quality pictures, too
+ A decent knife - utility, multipurpose, and you’ll find uses for it you never imagined, like the night the dining hall serves tank armor masquerading as steak
+ Personally, I carry a Spyderco Delica - obviously, check your campus policies for things like pocket knives
+ A stored value card - leave the plastic at home
+ A USB headset - very handy for using with services like Skype, voice IM, etc.
+ Student loans from the Student Loan Network
+ Stafford federal student loans
+ Parent PLUS loans
+ Private student loans from Act Education Loans
+ Full disclosure, the links in the show notes are Amazon links and the Student Loan Network earns 5% commissions on any purchases you make.
+ A lot of the suggestions are multipurpose, because while you’re in college, you can be working on ideas and creating content that you can leverage later for projects, papers, and possibly even your own business
+ Get in the habit of using good tools to create with now - so that you can leverage a portfolio later!
+ Financial Aid Podcast episode 331 is hereby retired

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Reminders
+ Student Loan Network $10,000 Scholarship - Apply in 32 seconds or less!
+ Financial Aid Podcast Show Notes at FinancialAidPodcast.com.
+ Free scholarship search secrets eBook at StudentScholarshipSearch.com/ebook
+ FAFSA form tutorials and free help at FAFSAonline.com
+ Stafford federal student loans at StaffordLoan.com
+ Student loan consolidation at StudentLoanConsolidator.com
+ Private student loans available at any time - visit AlternativeStudentLoan.com
+ The Financial Aid Podcast is a publication of the Student Loan Network.

I want to hear from you! Email me at financialaidpodcast {at} gmail {dot} com, visit http://www.FinancialAidPodcast.com, or call 206-350-1208.

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