A holiday gift was delivered early – my son’s first college acceptance letter. Besides the general excitement of the moment, I noticed my husband, son and I all had a huge sense of relief to have at least one option. Throughout the college process, we have been bombarded with how difficult it is, even for good students, to get into schools. “Competition! Increased Board Scores! Huge Number of Applicants!” All of this had us thinking that it would be a struggle to secure an acceptance. We are equally bombarded with how hard it is to fund an education, so now it’s time to find out the reality. Much like the admissions process, is there a kinder, gentler system of student funding than we have been led to believe?

The day after his acceptance letter arrived, my son came home from school with “The Form” – The CSS/Financial Aid Profile. Going over it, he asked me the difference between a scholarship/grant and a loan. When I told him grants are gifts and loans will have to be paid back, he said, “Yeah, we’ll be going for those grants.” Good response.

And that now outlines my goals for the next month:

1. complete the CSS online profile
2. set up a list for my son of the web sites and local resources so he can research any scholarships that he might match
3. and, yikes!, get all of our 2007 tax information ready for filing so we have final numbers quickly to present to Financial Aid offices. (As a self-employed person, this is my most unwonderful time of the year.)

With that lined up, we keep coming back to that tuition benefit from my husband’s employer. He has worked at the university for 18 years. At times in the past five, he has seriously considered making a professional change, but that tuition benefit was always tugging at him. How could we give up free tuition – at this university about $35,000 annually – when our child’s education was already coming into view? We also realized this may not be the right school for him; fortunately, the benefit for college employees includes a “reciprocity agreement” with partnering schools.

We wanted to verify the benefit a few years ago and discovered the program had been modified during my husband’s tenure to remove reciprocity. Now, if an employee’s child attends another institution, a $5,000 grant is forwarded each year directly to the student’s bill. Of course, we will gladly accept that $5,000, but it is a far cry from current tuition totals. Whether the full free tuition or the smaller grant, both of these work as follows: the amount we are gifted is taken from whatever financial aid we may be entitled to. ie: If we are deemed in need of $10,000, then we’ll only actually receive an additional $5,000.

My son is sending a final application tonight. We are hopeful for at least one other acceptance as we head into 2008. So as the college search ends, the money search begins.