What's the Process of College Application?

Could you give me a blow by blow of the college "process," from the time of application to mid-year?

• After I apply, what next? Will I be notified by mail, interviewed, etc.? Will I receive a list of necessary books/materials? When should I start shopping for said books/materials, dorm stuff, etc.? When/how will I register for classes? Or extra-curriculars? How many classes does one typically take? What is the average day at college like? I have so many questions! Give me EVERY detail, por favor.

• Answer:

  After you Apply for FAFSA (Jan 1 of the year you need it for maximum benefit, you can do an estimate using the previous years taxes until you get your current taxes done and then make corrections on FAFSA home page column 3, so my daughter goes fall 2010, we used 2008 taxes to do fafsa January 1 as a guestimate and then we did our 2009 taxes as soon as we got our W2 and made corrections on FAFSA home page column 3 and resubmitted). You put on the FAFSA the colleges you are interested in. Apply to the ones you want to be considered for admittance during senior year. Another helper: http://www.finaid.org/ Then 4-6 weeks if you did FAFSA by paper or 2-3 weeks if you did not online (better to do it this way) you will get a SAR report. They will notify you by email it is ready and you go see your SAR report on the FAFSA home page column 3. This is a student aid report, which has your EFC, estimated family contribution on it which is how much you family should be able to help in the paying for your college, the lower the number the more financial aid you will get. They will send this report to all the colleges you listed on you FAFSA The colleges take the student budget which is the cost of attendance, the totall of all the things you will need to attend, tuition, books, travel, room and board, personal expenses, supplies and will subtract your EFC from that, which is the amount your family was determined to be appy to help pay based on your FAFSA information. Cost of attendance minus EFC equals your financial need. The colleges who want to offer you admission will send you admittance letters and also they will offer you financal award based your financial need, about mid April. You look all of these awards over, call the financial aid offices to interpret the award to make sure you know what all is included as some are not very clear and then you accept which college you want and deny the others. They will offer you federal and state grants (you dont pay back) , stafford loans (student pays back(, federal parent loans (parent pays back) that you qualify for based on your need. After accepting all of this, if it still doe snot cover the cost of attendance you need to come up with the rest of the cost either by savings, private loans, etc. You are given a college account online to see your account and to see your grades etc. The federal aid is deposited into that account usually by semester. My daughter starts 9-1 and her first federal aid will be deposited for that first semester 8-23. The college will take their charges out of their first. My daughters college ID card is actually a mastercard debit card which she can use anywhere to access the rest of the money and has to use it to make the laundry machines work, eat lunch, buy books etc. . After admitted you and parents go to a day of orientation and later you get separated and you are assigned an advisor for the term and they help you register for the right classes. During orientation you are also shown all the different extra curriculars which you can choose to join later when admitted. It is not like high school. My daughter has 3 classes some days and 4 others days and they are 50 minutes long. The thing about college is you work independently, so they expect you to be in class for 50 minutes and then spend 2 hours on your own per class working on homework, you need that much time cuz your work has to show that you put that much time into it or you will get a bad grade. Usually 12 credits is full time. Books you dont want to get until you talk to the professor, they sometimes want different books. Usually at the end of your senior year in the summer they will start bringing out all the college dorm stuff to buy and back to school stuff. Here is a timeline and helper: http://www.questbridge.org/resources/applying/index.html http://www.finaid.org/