#HecklersHangout 14 – Summary – Talking College Financial Aid and FAFSA with @JodiOkun

We had  our typical lively Hecklers’ Hangout this week with special guest Jodi Okun. As a reminder, Jodi runs a weekly Twitter chat called #CollegeCash, and she provides a valuable service to college students through her company College Financial Aid Advisors.

The following video is the “edited version” to remove a few off-color heckles while still getting across the great suggestions and resources that Jodi provided. We encourage you to reach out to her via Twitter either directly or through the #CollegeCash keyword. Meanwhile, here are a few notes:

• Jodi starts working with families in the August before their students’ senior years. She helps establish the calendar for applications, FAFSA, and pursuit of other financial aid options.
• Private universities have a little more latitude with “marked up tuitions” where they can then offer discounting for students. As a result, they may be a viable option when compared to public universities’ out-of-state tuition.
• Based upon Sam’s input, Canada has it “going on” when it comes to reasonable application fees.
• Even if parents take the stance “I only want to contribute 50% to college tuition and have my kid pick up the other half”, colleges still look at the entire financial capability of parents to pay the whole tab for college expenses.
• Jon is going out to buy a book to teach his kids how to play softball, and then he is counting on Title IX for his girls to get full-ride athletic scholarships!
• Do not use Risky Business for guidelines on how to get into an Ivy League school.
• Here are two great college/scholarship resources that Jodi mentioned: Zinch and Fastweb

Good luck with taking time to do more college and scholarship applications over this holiday break. Have a Merry Christmas and a safe holiday season. We look forward to seeing you on Hecklers’ Hangout in 2013!!

Brian Vickery

I love my Vickery Girls - and now grandsons! I am blessed in that I also love my job as a VP of Enterprise Solutions for ProKarma. I appreciate the convergence of big data and data visualization in our Pulse Analytics social listening and analytics platform as well as our core software / mobile app development, business intelligence, and test automation services. I enjoy teaching and coaching, watching football and basketball, and playing tennis. I graduated UT-Austin. You can find Brian on Google+.

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