Let’s mention how universities decide whether you be eligible for a need-based help, making you entitled to a subsidized direct loan and other help like Pell funds and federal work research.

Simply speaking, you be eligible for need-based aid in case the expected family members contribution won’t address your cost of attendance at a specific college.

Your anticipated family members share is not fundamentally the total amount of family will have to cover for college — it is an index determined utilizing information you distribute in your Free Application for Federal scholar help (FAFSA). Your price of attendance includes tuition and charges, room and board, publications and materials, along with other qualified costs.

Therefore if your price of attendance is $16,000 along with your anticipated household share is $11,000, you’re eligible for approximately $5,000 in need-based help.

One other element restricting just how much of the college expenses you can easily protect with subsidized direct loans are yearly and aggregate limitations for both subsidized and unsubsidized loans that are direct.

Being a freshman, it is possible to just simply take down a maximum of $3,500 in subsidized direct loans. The lifetime limit on subsidized direct loans for undergraduates is $23,000 while the amount gradually scales up to $5,500 a year for juniors and seniors.

That you turn to unsubsidized direct loans to cover additional expenses (unsubsidized direct loans are covered in Part 2 of this series, “Hidden costs of federal direct unsubsidized student loans“) after you’ve maxed out your subsidized direct loan borrowing, financial aid advisers typically recommend. Continue reading →