Preparing for College

Plan Early for Your Future

Start your planning with Federal Student Aid's  College Preparation Checklist . 

Families should also review  Costs Add up - Even Before You're Accepted for helpful tips about the application process.

Check out our special page for high school seniors interested in enrolling at Loyola University New Orleans .

In this Section:

Presentations | General Resources | Scholarship Search Advice | Local Early Awareness Programs | Early Awareness-Middle School and Junior High| Saving for College | Financial Literacy | "First In My Family to Go to College" | Serve Your Country and Earn Money for College

Presentations

Loyola's Office of Scholarship and Financial Aid is proud to serve the larger New Orleans community by offering presentations on financial aid and college preparation topics.  If you would like to download and view a copy of previous presentaions saved in "pdf" format, visit our School Presentation Archives.

• February 10, 2012 -International High School
• February 25, 2012 - Upward Bound (9 a.m.)

General Resources

College.gov aims to motivate students with inspirational stories and information about planning, preparing and paying for college. Designed with students' input and participation, College.gov was created by the U.S. Department of Education to be a go-to online resource for credible information about college that also provides real life experiences of peers who are already attending college.

Myths About Financial Aid(PDF) is a fact sheet created by the U.S. Department of Education that clears up many common misunderstandings about qualifying for, applying for and recieving financial aid.

               *  Changes for the 2012-2013 Academic Year

KnowHow2Go is a new web site geared towards high school students who want to apply to college.

College Navigator is a site developed by the U.S. Department of Education's National Center for Education Statistics . The site aims to help families find basic information that they can use when evaluating their options for post-secondary education.

Going2College is another new web site that provides information about all the resources available in your state to help plan for a career, prepare for college and pay for college

A College Education Opens Doors to a Better Job and Many Other Benefits

Pathways to College Network is an alliance of 38 national organizations and funders committed to advancing college access and success for underserved students, including those who are the first generation in their families to go to college, low-income students, underrepresented minorities, and students with disabilities.  The Pathways to College Network site has a multi-lingual online directory of resources for use in helping middle and high school students and thier familys plan and prepare for college.

Online High School Planning Program from the National Endowment for Financial Education ("NEFE")

The Sallie Mae Fund's Top Ten Tips for College Admission and Financial Aid. This document is also available in Spanish and Vietnamese.

SallieMae's Education Investment Planner- guides you through interactive tables and graphs to help you better understand important planning and paying for college questions.

Tools to Evaluate Colleges:

• Know Before You Owe from the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau

Scholarship Search Advice

• General Information on "Outside" Scholarship Programs 
• Financial Aid Consultant and Scholarship Search Fact Sheet
• Avoiding Scholarship Scams
  • Identifying scams, protecting yourself against scams and reporting scams
  • Alert from the Department of Education: Telephone scam offering to replace loans with grants

Updated February 8, 2012