A Common Financial-Aid Form

The Common Application has become a fixture of the admissions realm, and many people in the field think that’s a good thing. After all, it’s a tool that simplifies the complexity of the application process for students.

But what would happen if colleges also adopted a common form for their financial-aid offers? It’s an idea that Nina W. Marks endorses in an opinion piece in today’s Washington Post.

Ms. Marks is president of Collegiate Directions Inc., a nonprofit group that works with low-income, first-generation students in Maryland. In her op-ed, “Simplifying the College Aid Maze,” Ms. Marks describes April’s annual fat-envelope fever from the perspective of students who lack both wealth and college savvy. “Aid offers differ markedly in their delivery date, format, language and presentation,” she writes, explaining how those differences tend to complicate the process of reviewing and comparing offers among families who need the most time to make a final college choice.

“In simple language and a user-friendly format, the ‘common offer form’ would highlight the cost of a year’s attendance, including books, travel and living expenses,” she writes. “This would improve on the current practice of highlighting costs per semester and of aligning grants with loans and student/family contributions under ‘awards.’”

Recently, I visited Ms. Marks and her colleagues to learn more about what they do. Next week, I’ll be writing about a collegebound student with whom the organization has worked for the last year.