Financial Aid & Fiction @CollegeAbacus

College Abacus is a free website (www.CollegeAbacus.com) that helps prospective college students access financial aid estimates, direct from schools, before they apply. They maintain that, unlike other similar websites, the estimated cost-of-attendance posted on College Abacus mirrors the estimates users would generate using the net price calculators of each individual school. Now available in Spanish, the College Abacus system includes SUNY, CUNY and the University of California system schools, in addition to 2500+ others, and is continuously expanding.

College Abacus recently began a "Financial Aid & Fiction" blog series campaign to demonstrate the importance of using College Abacus to compare schools' financial aid estimates before students decide where to apply to college. Their Chief Product Officer and Co-Founder, Abigail Seldin says, "Our strategy is to take a fictional character and use College Abacus to generate grant aid estimates for the character to attend different schools." Previous posts, Seldin says, have featured characters from Akeelah and the Bee, Spanglish, Modern Family, Glee (Rachel Berry and Kurt Hummel) and Twilight. This "Financial Aid & Fiction" series caught the attention of one of our @theFAchat contributors as a creative way to get the attention of young students today.  And, @theFAchat is curious if there is a particular movie or TV show (or profile of student) that you would like @CollegeAbacus to feature? Below is one idea @theFAchat has brainstormed.  We encourage you to come up with your own suggestions and tweet them to @CollegeAbacus.

• Larry Crowne
• profile of a non-traditional student who begins college later in life after losing his job - a chance to highlight the special circumstances process in financial aid - who is considering applying to a community college