It’s FAFSA season.
That’s right, it’s time for seniors planning to attend college to start taking steps toward securing financial aid and scholarships for their future.
Burlington High School will host a FAFSA Night from 4-7 p.m. Tuesday, Feb. 4, at the school. Financial aid experts from Southeastern Community College will be on hand to guide students and their parents through the FAFSA process.
Students should register for the event by contacting their school counselor. They should also plan to bring a parent or guardian, along with driver’s license, social security number, and 2023 tax returns.
What is FAFSA and who should fill it out?
FAFSA stands for Free Application for Federal Student Aid. Applications recently opened, and timing is of the essence.
“Seniors need to do it now,” Burlington High School guidance counselor Tamara Levinson said. “There’s a limited amount of funds that are available, so the sooner that you’ve completed your FAFSA, you’ve secured your spot for loans and grants.”
“If they don’t complete the FAFSA, it’s going to be hard for them to be accepted into colleges and get back their acceptance letter with their grant financial aid and everything so they know what the bottom line is, what it’s going to cost to go to that college.”
Guidance counselor Sarah Mumm noted that the FAFSA also opens doors to additional opportunities.
“It also gives access to loans from the government, which have better rates than a bank, at this point anyway, and access to work-study options,” Mumm said. “If you don’t do your FAFSA, you can’t do work study at your college.”
Angela Leinbach, another guidance counselor at BHS, said students who may not qualify for financial aid but plan to get scholarships through the college they attend should still fill out the FAFSA.
“The school still needs to have their FAFSA filled out if they’re going to get any scholarships through that school,” Leinbach said. “There’s going to be kids who won’t get financial aid, but that doesn’t mean they won’t get scholarships.”
Scholarships
Seniors also should start looking into scholarships if they haven’t already.
The Gold Form is a single application available only to BHS students. A committee will apply each application to any of more than 40 local scholarships for which a student may be eligible.
The deadline to submit the Gold Form is Feb. 28.
Additional scholarship opportunities can be found via the Counselor’s Web as well as via a presentation that was shared with seniors earlier this year.
