Links and Books, October 2022
Posted on 31 Oct 2022 by Steve Markham
October was busy. Kyle submitted his first college application on the 29th (though he’ll spend part of his birthday submitting a music portfolio before officially declaring that one finished). Let’s hope that future applications are less energy-intensive.
Tagged with: geek
FAFSA Cheat Codes
Posted on 16 Oct 2022 by Steve Markham
UPDATE 2022-10-31: I will, at some future point, update this post. It has two huge oversights (that were pointed out on reddit when I posted it there). First, it ignores the CSS Profile, which is how top tier schools avoid the gimmickiness of FAFSA. So, if the school you apply to doesn’t use CSS, everything below is right (except that a lot of it will change next year). But if it uses CSS, this is mostly irrelevant. Stanford, for example, uses CSS, so Sonny is at the whims of their merit aid department. Second, FAFSA is changing for the 24-25 school year, when EFC will become SAI, and there will be significant changes in how it is calculated. Most relevant to me: you no longer divide by the number of students in college, and there are new/easier paths to auto-zero.
Original post:
I have recently become very interested in how FAFSA works, and college finances more generally. I had a general notion of things, but between my oldest kid (whom I’ll call Sonny in this post, and I’ll call the next oldest Sister, so that I can repost this to reddit if I want) actually applying to schools, and my friend asking me lots of question about his kids, I have recently spent time getting a better handle on it. This post is meant to capture what I’ve learned. I’ll update it as I find errors or learn new things. Perhaps others find it useful, but as with most of this blog, it’s for me more than anyone else. This is all written to parents, so students and grandparents need to adjust accordingly.
Tagged with: geek
Leaf Peeping
Posted on 10 Oct 2022 by Steve Markham
Two outings during the peak of colorful fall foliage. Captions will come later–I’m headed out the door to Colorado Springs until Thursday night. If I make a stub of a post like this, I can hopefully update the text remotely.
Links and Books, September 2022
Posted on 30 Sep 2022 by Steve Markham
September was a crazy month of back to school, back to work, HC retreat, and COVID.
Tagged with: geek
About MΣ
Early-retired husband and father of four.
When I'm not backpacking, I do contract engineering work and coach mathletes.