You did all the work of getting into your dream schools—researching the colleges, visiting campuses, getting great test scores, putting together a polished application—and still have to deal with one major obstacle: paying for college. Few students can pay for a full year at college without some assistance, but almost 2 million students graduate with a bachelor’s degree each year in the US—they must be paying for school somehow, right?

Whether you’re a high school student or a current undergraduate, it’s never too early (or too late) to think about minimizing your college costs to make school more affordable. In this post, I’ll go through everything you need to know about how to pay for college.

I’ll start off by talking about what college actually costs before moving into application strategies, figuring out how much money you need, how much aid you can get, and how much you should actually be paying. We'll cover all the major ways to pay for college that families usually use. At the end, I’ll offer some more creative options for closing the gap between your financial need and your actual cost.

Big changes are coming to the SAT this year, and the impact that they will have on students is a topic of fierce debate. Will they provide a leg up to students who are put at a disadvantage by the current test format? Or will they make disparities between the scores of high and low-income students even more pronounced?

In this article, I'll go over both sides of the argument and provide my own take on how the changes to the SAT will affect the education gap. 

The question of how to pay for college is usually one with a complicated answer. Your own unique financial situation, interests, strengths, weaknesses, and preferences all come into play. Some of the most important factors that come up center around your ability and willingness to take out student loans.

In this guide, I'll thoroughly cover how to pay for college without loans. This can help you pay for college without going broke, or at least graduating without a load of student debt.

Maybe taking out loans for college isn’t a good financial option for you. Maybe your parents can’t or won’t co-sign on the necessary loans. Maybe you just hate the thought of having student debt. Whatever your reasons, choosing to pay for college without loans is a completely valid decision. I won’t sugarcoat this—it might make paying for college more difficult, especially if you don’t have many other financial aid options available. That isn’t to say, however, that there aren’t some viable options available for almost any student who wants to avoid taking on debt.

Before going through all these options, I’ll briefly talk about college expenses and the reasons why some people choose to take out loans. Then, I’ll give non-loan aid options for students based on whether they demonstrate high or low financial need. I’ll finish off with info on how much aid you can expect to receive without having to take on debt.

Many colleges use a holistic process to evaluate applicants, seeking to understand the "whole person" and not solely rely on grades and test scores. One way they accomplish this is by reading recommendation letters from teachers and counselors.

This guide will discuss what exactly admissions officers are looking for in your recommendation letters, and why they’re so important to your overall candidacy. By understanding the purpose of rec letters, you’ll be in a better position to gather strong ones for your application.

To begin, let’s take a closer look at what admissions officers mean when they talk about using a holistic admissions process.

If you're currently scoring low on the ACT, you should make sure that you tailor your prep methods to your current needs and ability. Low ACT scorers and high scorers should prepare differently for the test and use different methods to get the best possible results.

In this article, I'll go over why students with low ACT scores should prepare differently and which strategies will be the most helpful for you.

If your scores on the SAT are on the lower side, you will benefit more from prep strategies that are targeted towards your specific situation. High and low scorers usually have different struggles and goals on the SAT, so the methods that work best for each of them will differ significantly.

In this article, I'll cover the reasons why high and low SAT scorers should prepare differently and which strategies SAT low scorers should and shouldn't use to have the best chances of improving their scores.  

ACT practice tests can be a great tool in preparing yourself for the real exam. In order for these tests to be worth your time, however, you’ll need to learn to evaluate your mistakes effectively. In this article, I’ll show you the most productive ways to reflect on ACT practice tests so that you can use them to your best advantage.

Choosing the best way to practice for the SAT can be difficult; there are a lot of study options out there, but not all of them may give you an accurate indicator of how well you’ll do on test day. Taking SAT practice tests under realistic testing conditions is a great way to practice for the SAT and get an estimate what your score will be on the real test. 

There are many free SAT practice tests available that you can take in your own home, however; it can be challenging to simulate real test-taking conditions. The closer the conditions of your practice test are to the real SAT, the more useful and accurate your results will be. Read on to learn how you can recreate realistic testing conditions at home in order to get the most accurate results from SAT practice tests.

Have you been significantly involved in community service or volunteer work? Will you be applying to college soon? Good news! You can use your community service experiences as a way to help pay for college or to fund future volunteer projects. 

Read on to learn what community scholarships are, how you can find one, and how you can increase your chances of winning one.

By now you probably know that one thing colleges want to learn about you is how you spend your free time. Did you spend high school sitting around playing video games? Or did you get out, actively involve yourself in an activity and your community, and make a difference?

One way of doing just that has become increasingly popular over the past several years: volunteering abroad.

Read on for more on why students volunteer abroad, tips for choosing a volunteer abroad program, and our pick of some of the best volunteer abroad programs out there.

You took the ACT and got your score, but you don’t know how to interpret your ACT score. What does your ACT score measure? Is your score high or low? Will your score be enough to get you into your target schools?

In this article, I'll answer all of these questions and more, so you can go toward understanding ACT scores.

You got your SAT score back, and you're not sure what to think of it. What does your SAT score mean? What does your SAT score measure? Is your SAT score high? Is it low? Will it get you into the college you hope to attend?

I'll answer all of these questions below so you can start understanding SAT scores.

If you took the SAT after February 2016, your test is significantly different from the old SAT. What're the main differences between the old and new SAT? How do you convert between the two tests? How do these changes affect you as the test taker?

Every year nearly 2 million students take the SAT, but what's it out of? I'll answer this question and more in this article.

On average, you’ll need to use an SAT math formula once every four to five questions. This accounts for approximately 20-25% of the combined math sections, which means it is crucial that you understand how and when to employ your formulas on the SAT.

We’ve put together the list of your need-to-know SAT formulas (prioritized in the order from greatest to least that you’ll see them on the SAT) as well as how to best use them for test-day.