Friday Rant!
Did you hear the good news about the 2009-2010 academic year? In addition to the increase in Pell Grant money (which is great for students), Federal Stafford loan funds have been increased by $2,000! Terrific, let’s poor more student loan debt on the children of tomorrow.
Do you know what happens when the federal reserve [...]

FAP919: $10,000 Scholarship, Scholarship Points, Scholarship eBook
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Weekly Financial Aid Roundup
Notes from College Goal Sunday.
Scholarship Update
Our new Scholarship eBook is out!
Today is the deadline for our $10,000 scholarship drawing.
Scholarship Points
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Student Financial Aid News
From NASFAA and Reuters:
“The sponsor of a bill in the U.S. Congress to reshape the $92-billion student loan market told Reuters on Tuesday it will come to a vote soon and he disputed claims that its federal budget savings are overblown,” Reuters reports. “Representative George Miller, the Democratic chairman of the House of Representatives Education and Labor Committee, accused Republican critics contesting earlier budget savings estimates of ‘yet another predictable political gimmick.’ In an exclusive interview, Miller said ‘We are getting ready to take (the bill) to …

We are currently seeking a Senior Web Applications Developer to work full time in our Quincy, MA office. This person will work closely with other developers and marketing personnel to build interactive web-based applications on a LAMP platform. The ideal candidate has extensive experience building and maintaining complex web applications as well as managing internal projects from start to finish.
Responsibilities
* Transform high-level business requirements into functional code. Educate top management on pros and cons of various implementation options.
* Build and support complex customer-facing web applications in a LAMP development environment …

We are currently seeking a Senior Web Applications Developer to work full time in our Quincy, MA office. This person will work closely with other developers and marketing personnel to build interactive web-based applications on a LAMP platform. The ideal candidate has extensive experience building and maintaining complex web applications as well as managing internal projects from start to finish.
Responsibilities
* Transform high-level business requirements into functional code. Educate top management on pros and cons of various implementation options.
* Build and support complex customer-facing web applications in a LAMP development environment …

Student Financial Aid News
We’re proud to announce the release of the Sixth Edition of Scholarship Search Secrets, our free eBook on using Google and other technologies to find scholarships. Grab your copy today!
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From Inside Higher Ed:
Even as the Obama administration and Congress poured tens of billions of dollars into programs important to colleges in the economic recovery package last spring, higher education officials had a quiet anxiety. Would receiving this one-time money now mean less in the form of annual appropriations (which get built into the …

The Expected Family Contribution (EFC) number is not the amount of money that your family must provide. Rather, you should think of the EFC as an index that colleges use to determine how much financial aid you would receive if you were to attend their school. That means the EFC figure may vary from school [...]

Student Financial Aid News
On Friday, July 24, the national minimum wage increased by 70 cents – from $6.55 per hour to $7.25 per hour.
From NASFAA:
By a vote of 264 to 153, the House passed its FY 2010 Labor, HHS, and Education appropriations spending bill (H.R. 3293) on Friday. The bill would provide level funding for most Title IV discretionary programs. The bill would set the appropriated amount of the Pell Grant to a maximum award of $4,860. A scheduled mandatory increase from the College Cost Reduction and Access Act (CCRAA) …

Did you realize your Stafford loan may hold one of several statuses? The most common status these days is deferment (after you get out of school). Many can not afford to pay their student loans at this time so they are deferring their loans for a period of time. Stafford loans come equipped with up [...]

Student Financial Aid News
Notes from College Goal Sunday in Massachusetts:
1. Completed financial aid applications at a nearby community college are up 184% year over year; enrollments are up 30%, while state funding is down.
2. As the FAFSA changes more and more under the new Administration, the differences between federal methodology (which most public schools and community colleges use to determine your eligibility for aid) and institutional methodology (which many private schools use) are widening significantly, and in more than a few cases, methodologies have discrepancies in the thousands of dollars. …