USA Funds Supports Free Access for Lower-Income Students to Powerful New College Planning Tool

USA Funds^®’ support is helping to make a powerful new college planning tool available without charge to lower-income students. 

Studentaid.com is unveiling its new College Cost & Planning Report^TM and its Access for All^TM program, which USA Funds is supporting. This personalized report provides prospective college students and their families with a detailed estimate of their student aid eligibility and projected out-of-pocket costs for up to 10 different colleges, as well as in-depth college profiles, projected monthly student loan payments and college planning time lines.

All of this information is available before students apply for admission to a college or university, so students and their families can make more-informed choices of a higher education program.

USA Funds’ support of the Access for All program is helping to make StudentAid.com’s basic service of a report with six college comparisons available without charge to students from households with incomes of less than $40,000.

“Higher education is one of the most important and one of the largest investments families make,” says Bob Ballard, USA Funds senior vice president, program and corporate development. “Unfortunately, many families select a college or university based on an incomplete picture of their out-of-pocket costs for attending that institution. Consistent with USA Funds’ nonprofit mission of support for postsecondary education preparation, access and success, our participation in Access for All enhances our efforts to help every deserving student, regardless of economic means, gain the greatest benefit from higher education.”

StudentAid.com’s College Cost & Planning Report has been in development for two years and has been tested on 25 million test cases and with 28,000 families. The service is being demonstrated this week during the national conference of the National Association for College Admission Counseling in Baltimore.