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survival
guide
Financial aid
time consuming, but worth it
By Marissa Tschiedel
Special to the On-line Forty-Niner
Ulysses Baje, a
student in the kinesiology department at Cal State Long Beach,
needed money for school. He found the solution to his financial
problems by applying for financial aid.
"The financial
aid department was very helpful, I got the funds I needed,"
Baje said.
Baje and other
students getting ready for the fall 2001 semester, have at
least one thing in common: needing money. Tuition, books,
supplies and other expenses that go along with attending a
university can quickly add up. One way to relieve stress on
the pocketbook is through financial aid.
CSULB has about
16,000 students receiving some kind of financial aid, said
Dean Kulju, director of financial aid. The financial aid office
on campus offers various sources to assist students in obtaining
funds for education.
However, the responsibility
to find out about the process is on the students, Kulju said.
An average scholarship
award is $1,200. Various types of grants are available for
eligible students, depending on financial need. A grant award
can range from $1,500 to $3,500 per academic year.
Online sources
offer many options to find out about scholarships. Students
interested in finding suitable scholarships can visit sites
that offer free student scholarship searches, expert advice
and tools to calculate how much money a student will need.
FastWeb and FinAid were sites suggested by Kulju.
"On campus
there are not a lot of scholarships, but it's better to go
through departments," Kulju said.
Checking for scholarship
information through the department in which a student is studying
is another option. Corporations and private donors offer scholarships
in specific areas of study, Kulju said. Often a department
will have listings of available scholarships.
If a student does
not have a declared major, scholarship information can be
found in the Career Development Center. Counselors are on
duty to discuss available resources. In the career source
library, more than a dozen catalogs are on hand, listing scholarships
available to students.
"We help students
with scholarship applications on an informal basis,"
said Angi Carrillo-Humphreys, a career counselor with the
CDC.
If the counselors
in the center see a student who needs help in financial aid,
they will assist, Carrillo-Humphreys said, though they are
not officially responsible for helping students with financial
aid.
Of the three, only
the financial aid offices offer grants. The first step to
finding out if a student qualifies for grant money is by filling
out a "Free Application for Federal Student Aid,"
better known as a FAFSA.
The financial aid
office and Career Development Center do not offer any programs
or workshops to assist students in developing scholarship
applications. But, most professors are more then willing to
review an application, as well as writing a letter of recommendation.
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