"Students Need More Financial Aid Than What They Applied for. A Free New Tool Can Help."

“Called SwiftStudent, the website walks students through the documents and forms they need in order to submit a financial aid appeal to their institution’s aid office. It includes information about the different situations in which a student is eligible, and includes templates they can use to generate an appeals letter.

“In most cases, financial aid recipients are unaware that they can appeal for extra support, according to Abigail Seldin, co-founder and CEO of the Seldin/Haring-Smith Foundation, which helped to produce SwiftStudent. ‘Most students think that the offers they get are immutable,’ she says. Oftentimes, and especially during the current pandemic, ‘the financial aid package most students will get does not reflect their current circumstances, because the financial information they submitted will not be relevant anymore,’ she adds.”

View the full article in EdSurge.