CollegeBoard

The College Board's Guide to Getting Financial Aid provides families with simple, step-by-step explanations of financial aid. It gives the hows, whys, and whens of the aid application process, and quotes the expert advice of financial aid administrators at seven colleges. The Guide also contains financial profiles of 3,000 colleges, universities, and technical schools. Each college's description presents the "money facts," including basic costs, undergraduate and freshman aid awarded, criteria for merit scholarship eligibility, and the average student loan debt carried by graduates. Similar information can also be found by using the College Search tool on the College Board's website.

The College Board Scholarship Handbook describes more than 2,100 scholarship, internship, and loan programs for undergraduates sponsored by foundations, charitable organizations, and government agencies. The information in the book comes from an annual survey conducted by the College Board, which employs meticulous criteria and quality controls to make sure that the programs included are both legitimate and accurately represented. The program descriptions can also be found by using the College Board's online Scholarship Search.

Meeting College Costs: What You Need to Know Before Your Child and Your Money Leave Home makes the financial aid process come alive for parents with "questions families should ask," student sample cases, and dozens of charts and worksheets.

In addition to the College Search and Scholarship Search tools, the College Board's website contains a wealth of information and advice in its Pay for College section.

Research

Tuition Discounting, Not Just a Private College Practice by Sandy Baum, senior policy analyst at the College Board and professor of economics at Skidmore College, and Lucie Lapovsky, education consultant and former president of Mercy College, was published by the College Board in 2006. Most of the discussion of tuition discounting has focused on private colleges, but this new study documents trends in need-based and non-need-based aid in public two- and four-year institutions, in addition to private colleges and universities. To read the report, visit www.collegeboard.com/trends.

How Much Debt Is Too Much? Defining Benchmarks for Manageable Student Debt by Sandy Baum and Saul Schwartz, professor of economics and public policy at Carleton University in Canada, was also published in 2006 by the College Board. Many discussions of student loan repayment focus on those students for whom repayment is a problem and conclude that the reliance on debt to finance postsecondary education is excessive. However, from both a pragmatic perspective and a logical perspective, a more appropriate approach is to develop different benchmarks for students in different circumstances in order to differentiate between those students whose repayment requirements are excessive and those for whom debt burdens are manageable. The purpose of this report is to establish a range of empirically derived thresholds for manageable student debt in order to (a) provide good advice to students as they make decisions about financing their postsecondary educations, and (b) inform the design of loan forgiveness and debt management programs intended to relieve excessive debt burdens. The report is available online at www.collegeboard.com/research.

To request review copies of any of the College Board's publications, please call Sandra Riley at (212) 713-8052, or email sriley@collegeboard.org.

Guide to Getting Financial Aid 2007. New York: The College Board. Price: $19.95 USA, $26.95 Canada. ISBN 0-87447-766-2. 1,004 pages. Publication date: July 2006.

The College Board Scholarship Handbook 2007. New York: The College Board. Price: $27.95 USA, $37.95 Canada. ISBN 0-87447-767-0. 626 pages. Publication date: July 2006.

Meeting College Costs: What You Need to Know Before Your Child and Your Money Leave Home (2007). New York: The College Board. Price: $13.95. College Board item #007751 (direct purchase only). Publication date: October 2006.