Moneyman's College Financial Aid Blog

Please pass

For many of you, final grades are in and the Spring semester has ended (in fact, some of you may already enrolled in Summer classes). Hopefully your Spring grade were what you wanted them to be and you are looking at a great end to your semester.

I recognize though that some of you may have had a difficult semester, especially with classes moving completely online, the changes in living and working situations, and the need to return home from your campus.

Remember, your grades have great impact on your eligibility for financial aid. Previously, I wrote about the Satisfactory Academic Progress (SAP) requirements for Federal Aid (and if you missed the post, I recommend going back and reading it). As a reminder, we look at three things when we examine your SAP:

1. Your completion rate (Federally required to be 66.67% or above).
2. Your cumulative GPA (required to be 2.00 or better).
3. Your maximum timeframe (150% of the number of credit required for the degree program you are pursuing).

Also remember that if you were already on Financial Aid Warning or working under a Financial Aid Academic Plan while on Probation, you may find yourself with a need to appeal this semester because of your academic difficulties. In a previous post on the CARES Act, I indicated that this semester the Federal Government has offered an opportunity for colleges to ignore classes for which you withdrew if the reason was related to the pandemic. There has been no final guidance offered from the Feds on this yet however so if you withdrew from classes this semester and you are now on a negative SAP status (like Suspension), I would advise speaking to your financial aid officer and letting them know about the CARES Act exemption.

Even if you didn’t withdraw from classes, this is definitely a semester to write an appeal for consideration from the consequences of negative SAP. If your school processes appeals, they can let you know how they prefer these forms or letters to be submitted (ask them or look on their web page), but don’t give up! Of all times, we understand this last semester was tough on you; it was tough on all of us!

The COLA

I also wanted to share a little more advice in this post for those of you looking at post-graduation jobs. With the recent April jobs report showing losses in every part of the job market, it may seem like the most difficult time to be looking for work. That may be true, but the national story is not the story of every part of the country. State and local metro unemployment rates (not yet updated for April) show that different parts of the country have differences in their experience of job losses.

Graduation from college is a time in your life where you can reinvent yourself; this may be the time to think about moving to a new part of the country, or even a different part of the state. You may want to think about relocating to a major city or metro so you can experience urban life if you haven’t done so before, or you may want to try something different than your big city and find someplace more suburban or rural.

Before you run off to start your new life, though, you want to make sure you understand the difference in COLA!

When I say “COLA”, I mean a Cost of Living Adjustment. Think about it this way: a $30,000 income is very different if you earn that in Pensacola, FL vs. Manhattan (NYC), NY. In fact, to maintain the same lifestyle in New York City you would need to earn slightly more than $78,000 (more than twice as much).

Why is that? Well groceries, housing, taxes, transportation, health care – it’s all more expensive in New York City. You may have intuitively known that, but how do you put a number behind that analysis?

Here is where I can help. There are lots of great calculators online that can help you figure this out. Try CNN’s, or the one at Nerd Wallet, or if you know the area of work you want to do, you may want to try this one at salary.com.

Just don’t forget that costs matter. As you are comparing salary offers and trying to decide whether a move to a new city is worthwhile, check the COLA.

Upcoming Plans

Just a reminder that we have a few more topics in our exploration of life after college! Coming up in the next posts: applying for financial aid as a graduate student, creating a post-college budget, and managing those “adult” things — like an apartment lease, car loan, etc.

Feel free to post your questions and suggestions. I’m here for you!