Special

Do You Really Need a College Financial Aid Consultant?

Would you pay $200 to save $10,000? Or $25,000? Or $40,000? Let me start off by saying that hiring a college financial aid consultant is not absolutely necessary. Many families manage to put in the time and effort to research the financial aid process, and end up doing just fine. Having said that, I’ve seen firsthand how being uninformed and making mistakes when it comes to financial aid can lead to devastating consequences.

A friend of mine (we’ll call him Rob) is a prime example. He hired a “financial aid consultant” to help him navigate the bewildering financial aid system when his oldest son was applying to colleges. I don’t know the exact qualifications for the man who showed up at Rob’s house to “help” him, but, he was clearly not qualified. Rob’s son was subsequently admitted to the expensive private school of his choice (which was no surprise, since it wasn’t a selective school), and they paid full price for the privilege. The son graduated, and now, 4 years later, both Rob and his son are still struggling every month to cover the payments on over $80,000 in student loans. I look incredulously at Rob and ask him, “What were you thinking?!?” His response: “We just didn’t know.”

Read the rest of this entry »

Related posts

Online Continuing Education For Medical Professionals

After a decade and a half of the information superhighway there are very few claims made for the Internet that people won’t believe. Of course, simply surfing random waves of facts and figures will never lead to wisdom, but using today’s online resources for continuing education clearly leads to better trained, up-to-date professionals. For medical professionals, in fact, most states and federal certifications require CEUs (Continuing Education Units) to maintain good standing, and these are increasingly available online.

It didn’t take long for educators to see that the vast network of interconnected computers, databases, archives and individual users could offer more than dictionaries and encyclopedias, not to mention cartoons and the modern version of French postcards. Some people are content to be entertained and titillated by the Internet while, fortunately for society, many others are interested in continuing their education via online colleges – and the medical profession has, as expected, been one of the biggest adopters of this high-tech distance learning.

Read the rest of this entry »

Related posts