“Applying for college aid is work,” says former Idaho Attorney General Alan G. Lance. “No company can solicit recommendations, complete applications, or write essays or resumes for you. Students and parents need to be prepared to put in hours of paperwork, despite what a scholarship search company may promise.”

Did you know that Internet CIS has more than just hundreds of sources of scholarships, loans, and grants? Under Financial Aid Basics, you’ll find . . . Answers to common questions about financial aid. Definitions of financial aid terms. A suggested timeline for getting aid. A sample letter to help you draft your requests for financial aid information.

    There is much more to obtaining financial aid than making a list of scholarship sources. For example:

• Only students and their parents have the information required to compute “official” financial need and to accurately complete government and institutional financial aid forms.
• Students and their parents need to be satisfied that every avenue of financial aid sources is investigated, not just those from a single national database. This means using CIS, working with the financial aid office at the school one plans to attend, and researching government student financial aid programs.
• Only the prospective college student himself or herself can best understand their own goals and preferences in order to sort through the thousands of scholarships, loans, and grants that are available each year.
• And once a list of prospective sources of aid is assembled, only the student can complete the application materials in the way that convinces those bestowing aid that this individual is the one they’ve been looking for. At the very least there will be an application form to fill out; often much time and attention must be spent on an essay, project, resume, letter, or collection of references.