Most students will eventually get to their senior year of high school, which means one thing: applying for college. 

Affordability is the number one concern for college applicants, only about half of them successfully applied for financial aid, leaving many college students thousands of dollars in debt, according to edsource.org. 

College is expensive, so students will want to save as much money as possible before getting there. Unfortunately, many students can’t sign up because they don’t know how. Financial aid can be in the form of grants, scholarships or loans. Many students, no matter their financial status, are able to apply for FAFSA to save some money. 

Log in at fafsa.gov or fill out the form in the myStudentAid mobile app, then complete the 2022-23 FAFSA PDF, according to the Federal Student Aid website. However, these are just words on a website, they are not really clear and understandable. This is why a one or two hour step-by-step assembly is needed to help students with this difficult process, to ensure that it is done correctly.

23% of students did not have enough detail about how to complete the FAFSA, according to publicschoolreview.com.

FAFSA can be a life-changing, amazing process, possibly allowing college to be free of charge, with scholarships, or at least cheaper. Some people might say that financial aid isn’t needed to be taught, because very few people even get accepted to get aid anyways. That statement is wrong. 

85% of students receive financial aid to help with the towering costs of college. FAFSA provides over 13 million students with nearly $150 billion for aid, according to collegeraptor.com.

There is a Spring Financial Aid Night, at Oakland University, that talks about financial aid once a year to seniors. It is a virtual event scheduled to happen on Wed., March 30th. The financial aid process should not only be talked about to seniors, but to all the high school grade levels to get a head start and start planning.

Getting good grades and doing AP classes are recommended by schools to make college easier, but what good would they bring if a lot of students can’t even afford college?