Student financial aid in the United States

And again, it's immediately just upgraded from the older feel to like they got the new music.

But we still have some classic HBCU tropes, starting with standing in a hotline to get your room assignment and your financial aid.

Mari, I know you got a story.

Everybody has a story.

I just feel like this is an HBCU staple.

You know, I love my HBCU, but damn it.

If there's not an issue with housing or financial aid, then are you really even at an HBCU?

I don't know.

You're great job paying it there.

What's the need based money look like? Do you know like how that goes in terms of the financial aid or like what's the best way as a parent to learn about that?

Uh, so I believe there's a website that you can go on and get, get kind of a prediction.

No, it's, it's through the actual financial aid.

Oh, FAFSA.

Yes.

Because everybody knows that you can do fairly well in school, in high school, if you just put in the work and have discipline.

What's the single most common thing families get wrong about Ivy League recruiting?

And Kelly's with admissions.

And Amber is the Assistant Director of Financial Aid.

Welcome, ladies.

Hello.

Definitely.

Definitely, folks, huh? Yep.

Now, when we try to go through all of this with financial aid these days, with changes and everything, I imagine you get calls quite a bit.

Yes.

How, you know, as the students talk about all the different ways that they come down from that higher sticker price, is it mostly about academics? Are they getting anything from an artistic perspective from your department? Is it mostly need-based? How do we get potentially scholarships in there for

80% of our students receive some form of financial aid.

So what we are constantly saying is the price tag should not be a detriment to students applying and to students being involved.

Once students are on campus, one of the things that I think is important that really makes Drew unique, we have a student support system on our campus that is just staggering to me.

Our students get advisors from the jump, and I recognize that you just asked about tuition, and I'm gonna answer this by talking about something a little bit different, but this is relevant.

All of our first year students take what's called a DSEM, a Drew Seminar, which is a seminar, and which is basically an introduction to college, how to be a college student, you get to pick your topic so i off you know i have a colleague my colleague chris teaches a class an acting class on acting and truth that is a drew seminar i teach a class about queer performance in the 80s that is a drew seminar it's a way for students to get involved on campus and then you also create a safety net through that because you have your students and you have your faculty member who's also your advisor, which I bring up to say that part of what we're doing also there is we're helping with things like financial aid, with FAFSAs, with helping students renew their scholarships, find new scholarships, things along those lines.

We have within our department individual funding that is arts-based.

We also have college-wide funding, scholarship opportunities, things along those lines.

But before I get to the last question, I always like to ask, and we've covered a lot, but is there a question I didn't ask you that you wish I had, or perhaps a topic that just didn't come up in our conversation that you'd like to share with the listeners now?

We hit it on the fringes, but when you talked about scholarships, I want to make a plug for financial aid in general.

I think that one of the things I'm trying to make sure my team and I do is talk about the importance of applying for financial aid on time.

I think that sometimes families get so caught up in applying for admission that that they're thinking about financing college later.

And really, you know, financial aid is part of a lot of admission offices work in terms of how do you stay on budget as a university? What are the resources we have that we can allocate? So I've just put a plug into families to say, if you're seeking need-based financial aid or merit scholarships, pay attention to deadlines.

Make sure you're submitting everything on time because those pieces matter.

And at a lot of places, they matter just as much as the admissions application.

It's not just a one-year commitment in terms of the finances.