Our Mission
To Demystify the college financial aid process and help families find schools they can afford.
When students and parents start the college search process, they are confronted with an enormous amount of confusing and often conflicting information about college costs and financial aid. We know how frustrating and exhausting it can be to find resources that are helpful, understandable and trustworthy. It’s an exhausting process for us – and we are experts in the field!
After spending hundreds of hours combing the internet, reading college financial aid web sites, blogs & articles; watching videos; and reviewing many tools and related services, we identified a number of specific problems and set out to fix them.
Problem #1 – Many college cost and financial aid websites are “mousetraps.” They provide some financial aid content, but require personal data about the students and parents. Often, this data is sold to third parties. Even sites that promise not to sell your data often use it to market other products, services and/or to sell advertising.
At Access Applied, we collect only enough personal information to facilitate your registration and to provide basic customer service. Because we do not collect ANY other personal or financial information, our users are in control of the security and privacy of their personal information.
The worksheets we provide are downloaded directly to our your computer, instead of capturing and storing your personal data on our site. All of your personal information remains on your computer – never on the Access Applied site.
The only service we sell is a subscription to use our website. You will never see any advertising on Access Applied. Although we provide links to other websites which we believe our users will find helpful, we have absolutely NO business or financial relationship with any of these websites.
Problem #2 – Everything seems to be written in confusing financial aid jargon.
“Financialaidspeak” is a jumble of acronyms and jargon. While college financial aid officers speak it fluently, it is often incomprehensible to parents, students and counselors.
Here at Access Applied, we have translated the jargon into language you can understand and then present it to you in a way that is helpful.
Problem #3 – Much of the information out of date.
Policies, procedures, requirements and deadlines change all the time. There are thousands of participants in the college costs and financial aid field, including the federal government, state governments, thousands of colleges and universities, scholarship organizations and more. There is a huge amount of information to track and keep up to date. We have found that many college cost and financial aid websites are not written by seasoned professionals and are not regularly updated – some are not updated at all. This results in outdated information on the web.
Problem #4 – A surprising amount information is misleading or inaccurate.
The subject matter of college costs and financial aid is complex and ever changing. Thousands of individuals write about college costs and financial aid, many of whom have only a basic understanding of the issues. Our co-foounders have decades of experience and understand the complexities and nuances of college costs and financial aid. This allows us to provide advice that is both timely and accurate.
Staying on top of all the relevant college costs and financial aid information is our full-time job here at Access Applied. Everything on our website is both current and accurate; the deadlines are updated regularly and the links to external sites are all working.
Your Feedback
Your feedback is important to us. If you find anything on our site that you feel is inaccurate, out of date or hard to understand, please let us know immediately by using the contact us link at the bottom of each page.
Getting Started
There is something for everyone on Access Applied:
- Students, Parents, Counselors and Advisors
- Freshman, Sophomores, Juniors & Seniors
- Students from lower income, middle-income or higher-income backgrounds
We recognize that there is an enormous amount of content on this site. Figuring out how to find affordable colleges, how to navigate the financial aid application process and ultimately how to pay the college bill is a big undertaking.
But, as the saying goes: “there is only one way to eat an elephant – One bite at a time.”
PLEASE BE SURE TO USE THE MAGNIFYING GLASS TO SEARCH FOR SPECIFIC TOPICS
We have created some checklists to help you get started.
