Too many families do not bother to apply for financial aid. They may think college is too expensive to even bother. They may worry that applying for aid could hurt the student’s chances of admission. They may assume they won’t qualify. None of those are good reasons not to apply for aid.
Here’s another bad reason—student loan aversion.
With all the press about the mounting student debt, I’ve found that families have become far more averse to allowing their student to take on debt to attend college. Loan aversion isn’t necessarily a bad thing. But it’s a terrible reason to refuse to apply for financial aid.
Applying for financial aid doesn’t necessarily mean that you’re going to be offered loans, and it certainly doesn’t mean that you’re required to accept them.
If you receive need-based aid from a college, your financial aid award could contain a combination of grants (free money that doesn’t need to be paid back), loans, and work study. This is why the award is often referred to as a financial aid “package.”
But families have the option of accepting certain portions of that package, and refusing others. If you’re loan-averse, you could accept the grants and work-study and refuse the loan portion (assuming you could pay for the school without the loan).
Whether or not it makes sense for a student to take on debt to attend college is a big decision with too many factors in play to address here. If your family has committed to a no-debt strategy, I totally support that.
But in the same way that the decision to apply to college is separate from the decision to actually attend, the decision to apply for aid—and even to check the box indicating that you would like to be considered for loans—is separate from the decision to actually take on debt.
The debt decision may be complex, but the decision to apply for aid should be a no-brainer.