Negotiating college financial aid packages can be a proactive way to potentially secure more favorable terms and reduce the burden of college expenses. Here are some steps you can take to negotiate...
Maximizing Financial Aid
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The Compass Academics Blog
Resources Designed for Academic Growth
Tuition-Free Colleges: What You Need to Know
College for free? For many American students, it sounds too good to be true (though there are plenty of places abroad where free tuition is the norm). While it might not be the standard practice in...
Should I Buy or Rent My College Textbooks?
You can’t “hit the books” without getting the books, but the choices for how to do so have expanded for undergraduate students (and, in many cases, so have the costs). Many of your undergraduate...
FAFSA and Financial Aid
How the FAFSA can make college more affordable. It’s no secret that the average cost of college has been on the rise for years, and many people take a look at the stated cost of a year’s tuition and...
The Costs of College
Before college, the most expensive purchase for most students is a cell phone or a car. For their parents, it is most likely a home. Given that the cost of an undergraduate degree often equates to a...
The College Costs of COVID
Lines of cars, piles of boxes, weepy parents, anxious students, packed quads, and an atmosphere of anticipation are all common sights on college campuses this time of year. Since the arrival of...
Get Paid to Wait: Virginia Tech’s Plan to Pay Students Not to Enroll
In much the same way as farmers are often paid not to farm in order to forestall and/or correct economic imbalances, it seems that Virginia Tech is taking a similar approach to mitigate the...
College (Con)petition: Scandals, Fraud, and Deception
Where there is competition, there will always be players looking to gain an unfair advantage. If the recent Operation Varsity Blues college admissions scandal taught us anything, it is that people...
Students for Sale
How much are applicants worth? In the world of Big Data and ever-increasing competition, universities are target-marketing to potential students like never before. What used to be a seasonal...
Degrees of Debt
How much should college cost? Recently, Reddit posted an excellent thread in their Life Pro Tips forum. For those of you unfamiliar with Reddit, it is known as the “Front Page of the Internet” and...