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FAP831: Need based financial aid, Free Stuff Thursday

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Student Financial Aid News
+ Inside Higher Ed: A shift back to need-based aid isn’t hurting at least two colleges. In the last few years, some colleges have pulled back from the policies everyone else says they’d like to pull back from. Notably the sky hasn’t fallen (and neither have their admissions numbers). Consider the cases of Hamilton College, which completely eliminated merit aid to spend more on need-based aid, and of Tufts University, which imposed a limit on its use of early decision. Both colleges are competitive in admissions, with excellent academic reputations – but neither has even close to the endowment or admissions clout of Harvard or the other institutions at the top of the admissions pecking order.
+ IHE: Many University of Chicago graduate students will need to find new loans — quite likely under terms less favorable than they are used to receiving. The Chicago Tribune reported that the university has had to end its use of the “school as lender” program for graduate students because of the inability of the Illinois Student Assistance Commission to renew its line of credit. Chicago officials believe that the graduate students who have used the program will be able to find loans elsewhere, but will likely not find some key benefits of the old program, such as the lack of origination fees and a reduction in interest rates after four years of on-time repayment.
+ In some ways, what people were talking about legislating last year, the market has corrected this year
+ Prudence and caution are back in style
+ Had an interesting case yesterday when the computers would have said yes, I said no – and with good reason

Scholarship Update
+ Scholarship Idol SLN Scholarship
+ A Scholarship Points Contest
+ Watch the embarrassingly poor quality YouTube video

Free Stuff Thursday
+ Free cotton shopping bag
+ Free Snuggle fabric softener
+ Rhapsody free album with signup
+ Astroglide… uh, yeah.
+ Swurl is pointless fun
+ Make your Mac sing in Terminal
+ Joys of Summer Gift Pack – 50 ziploc bags
+ Free pretzel from Auntie Anne’s
+ Get lost a lot? Free Atlas
+ Sell Back Books – they pay you, including shipping

Free Song of the Week
+ David Usher, Kill the Lights
+ See the YouTube video

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Direct MP3 file download: Click here to download the MP3

Reminders

+ Financial Aid Podcast Show Notes at FinancialAidNews.com.
+ Free scholarship search secrets eBook at StudentScholarshipSearch.com/ebook

+ Private student loans
+ Student credit card information at StudentPlatinum.com
+ FAFSA tutorials and free help
+ Financial Aid discussion forums

+ Stafford loans | Other federal student loans
+ The Financial Aid Podcast is a publication of the Student Loan Network.