Tuesday, January 15, 2013

Call for Contributors

FAchat is looking for contributing bloggers.
FAchat is a community for Financial Aid Professionals created by Financial Aid Professionals.

What is your state or regional association up to? Do you have any content you would like to share on a national level?

Interested in writing an article on a financial aid topic? Want to share something that worked really well (or didn’t work well) for your financial aid office? Have a topic you really want to discuss with 
financial aid pros?

Are you attending an upcoming conference that you would be interested in telling us about? It doesn’t necessarily need to be a financial aid conference to be of interest to the FA community.

No long term commitment is necessary to contribute to the FAchat blog. Contact Justin Chase Brown, Melissa Haberman or Jayme Jarrett for more information.

Monday, January 14, 2013

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

Tuesday, January 8, 2013

January #FAchat Topic

#FAchat: Tuesday, January 8th, 12-1pm CST
From Federal Student Aid New Media (January 7, 2013):
  • FSA provides more than $150 billion in grants, loans, and works-study funds each year to help pay for college or career school and as many of you know, completing the FAFSA is the first step to access these funds. With the 2013-14 application having gone live January 1, FSA’s Digital Engagement Group is asking for your assistance in promoting FAFSA completion

Federal Student Aid has developed the following resources to help you promote the FAFSA

If you need additional information or assistance, please contact fsanewmedia@ed.gov.