If you are a college student, work at a college, or ever stepped foot on a college campus, then you probably are very familiar with Amazon.com. Over the years it has topped the internet as a premium competitive resource to buy and sell goods. Amazon started their business as a book retailer but now you can not only buy books at rock bottom prices, you can purchase electronics, household supplies, and even groceries. It is absolutely amazing to see how the website has evolved over the years.

For those that know Amazon, you know that one of their features is a service called Amazon Prime. If you enroll in this program, you get free 2-day shipping on any product you order directly from Amazon and one-day shipping is available at only $3.99 for each item. The only downside is that an annual subscription to Amazon Prime will set you back $79. Which you would have to purchase a fair amount of items to recoup that investment.

The Good News For College Students

If you are a college student, you are currently eligible to receive the Amazon Prime service for FREE.. Yes FREE. Sign up is easy and the only qualifications are that you are currently enrolled at a college and have a valid .edu email address. That is it! So, if you are already using Amazon.com to score great deals on your textbooks or electronic gadgets to fill up your dorm room, then you had better take advantage of this free benefit and save a couple bucks on shipping while you are at it.

The Bad News For Alumni

In my research for this article, I found that a good number of college alumni are trying to enroll in this program because their college assigned them with a permanent .edu email address for life.  If your email address doesn’t reflect your graduation year (s86.johnsmith@harvard.edu) or the fact that you are indeed an alumni (johnsmith@alumni.harvard.edu) you may be able to enroll in the free offer. However, if Amazon finds out, they will more than likely cancel your membership and ban you from their website indefinitely.. just kidding…but they will probably cancel your Amazon Prime membership.

Good News For Faculty and Staff

Since you have a permanent .edu email address at your college, you are probably able to “work the system” to get a free Amazon Prime account for the coming year. Faculty are always adding to their literary collections, so I am guessing that this free benefit could be a huge savings for them.

Bad News for Colleges That Don’t Have a .edu Email Address

Over the past few years, many colleges and universities have migrated their email accounts to gmail (Google). This provides a huge cost savings for the schools and a great resource for the faculty, staff, and students. Unfortunately, depending on how this transition was performed, the .edu portion of the email addresses could be lost in the shuffle.  So… no Free Amazon Prime for you. Also, if you are attending a state college, it is very likely that your email address may not qualify as well. For example, a local community college in Ohio had their email addresses ending with “.oh.us”. If this is still the case, then those students will not be eligible for Free Amazon Prime.

At CheapScholar.org, we are always trying to help families and students find great opportunities to reduce the costs associated with going to college. If you plan on utilizing Amazon.com for any textbook purchases (or groceries, electronics, etc…) you will definitely want to take advantage of this FREE Amazon Prime offer.

If you know of anyone else that could benefit from this cost savings, please be sure to pass this information onto them using the “share tab” below.

Last year the University of Massachusetts adopted a 15.8 percent increase on tuition. However, this was on paper only because at the same time they implemented this tuition increase, they also provided students with a one time “rebate” of $1,100 to offset the $1,500 increase (netting students with only a $400 increase last year). This coming academic year the one-time rebate is following suit with it’s intent of being ONE-TIME ONLY and will not be available to students and thus they will be absorbing the full 15.8 percent increase that was put into place last year.  Is that clear? I know.. clear as mud…

Basically, the trustees for UMass are keeping tuition and fees the same (a freeze) as last year but they are not providing the additional discounting (rebate) so the bottom-line cost for the families is increasing. The tuition freeze part of that statement sounds great but the end result is not so palpable for families and students that are trying to make education affordable.

After the Board of Trustees for UMass approved the tuition freeze for next year, UMass president Jack Wilson stated that: “I don’t think there was much of a prospect to lower the fees. I think it was a great achievement not to have an additional fee increase over that which we had established last year.’’

The new tuition and fee rate for the 2010-2011 academic year for Massachusetts residents is $11,732 and room and board charges are $8,814. Out of state residents can anticipate paying $23,628 for tuition.

If you are a University of Massachusetts student and you find yourself scrambling to try and make ends meet and cover your increased tuition expenses, please don’t hesitate to use CheapScholar.org as a resource for ideas to help lighten the impact on your checkbook.

The state of Missouri has had their fair share of budget woes but Governor Jay Nixon reached a deal earlier in the year with state colleges that promised education funding reductions to be no more than 5.2% if the colleges agreed to freeze tuition. Everyone seemed to be “ok” with this arrangement and moved forward with business as usual. However, Linn State Technical College took the gray area of the agreement and bended it to their favor by charging students an additional $3 dollars per credit hour for courses taken at the college.

University Officials at Linn State say they were technically abiding by the agreement because their increase was in the form of a fee and not tuition.

“It never was a tuition increase; it was a fee increase,” said John Nilges, the college’s vice president for administration and finance. “It’s a very complex misunderstanding in terms of the agreement versus the Department of Higher Education versus the institutions.”

After the dust has settled and all the calls from the Governor’s office have been appropriately responded to, Linn State has properly made the decision to rescind the $3 fee increase and abide by the original intent of the tuition freeze agreement.

Dr. Debbie Below is the Asst. Vice-President for Enrollment Management at Southeast Missouri State University and she states, “Students and families have expressed a feeling of relief as a result of this decision. Families do seem to be more conscious of the overall cost of education and they seem more likely to select a college based on the family’s ability to finance the education. I am hopeful that this means fewer students will find themselves borrowing excessively to finance the cost of college.”

The educational piece (lesson) that I want our readers at CheapScholar.org to take from this is that there is a distinct difference in the eyes of many colleges between fees and tuition. A college or university may promise a tuition freeze or a specific percentage increase in tuition but could adjust their “fees” arbitrarily to help with budgetary needs (This was the approach taken by Linn State). So, it is important that you factor in all the costs so that you are always working with a bottom line and know exactly how an increase in tuition (or fees) is going to impact what you pay from year to year.

Over the years, I have been tipped off to a number of scholarship search engines that can be found online. I review them to make sure they have the student’s best interest in mind and are legitimate before I share them with my readers. Some key factors that I use to make sure they pass muster is as follows:

• First and foremost.. It has to be free!
• It needs to be easy to use and navigate.
• The search engine should be updated on a regular basis.
• The scholarships are real and not too gimmicky.
• I prefer the ones that don’t require you to log in and set up an account but understand that this extra shared info usually provides benefit in matching up scholarships with recipients.
• The sources are reputable.

I recently came across two search engines that are provided by the Department of Education through the Federal Student Aid website. Since most scholarships are awarded to students based upon a particular profile (demographic info, GPA, Major, or a special talent), one search engine requires you to set up an account and answer a number of questions about you and you family’s background. The other scholarship database allows you to conduct a search using keywords.

Click Here for the Scholarship Matching Wizard

The Scholarship Wizard will perform a search based upon the personal information that you provide during set-up of your account. In addition, once you have your account in place, you can also use many of the other free features provided by the Department of Education (ie: apply to colleges online, track your favorite schools, research career options, import your profile info to the FAFSA)

Click Here for the Basic Scholarship Search Engine

This Basic Scholarship Search Engine allows you to search for scholarships by using keywords. No account is required but it does limit your chances of finding an applicable scholarship. I found this scholarship database to work best when you put in your state as a keyword or the college(s) that you are planning on attending. Another approach is to put in your major concentration of study.

I hope you find these tools helpful in your quest for extra scholarship dollars. If you know of anyone that may benefit from this information, please feel free to utilize the “share tab” below to pass this article onto them.

State budgets have been impacted hard this last year and it seems like most of the financial woes are trickling down in the form of funding cuts to various education programs. Now of course, I have come up with an alternative solution for state budget issues but for now it appears that the state of Missouri is following suit with a great number of other states and reducing the amount of money they will be providing to their students.

The Missouri Department of Higher Education has consistently provided a need based grant called ACCESS MISSOURI to Missouri students attending Missouri schools. Unfortunately though, this program used to dole out about $100 million dollars a year but after recent budget constraints they are lucky if they will be able to disburse $32 million for this coming academic year. Based upon this budget adjustment and the demand of students, it is estimated that the maximum award will be $500 for students attending public universities and $1,000 for those that are going to private colleges. The worst part about this reduction in funding is that it is going to be impacting the neediest students (since part of the qualifications are based upon your FAFSA results).

The following are the requirements that must be met in order to qualify for the Access Missouri Grant:

For New Students

• Have a FAFSA on file by April 1, 2010.
• Have any FAFSA corrections made by July 31, 2010 (if you are eligible, you may add school choices until September 30, 2010 by contacting the MDHE).
• Be a U.S. citizen or permanent resident and a Missouri resident.
• Be an undergraduate student enrolled full time at a participating Missouri school. (Students with disabilities who are enrolled in at least six credit hours may be considered to be enrolled full time.)
• Have an EFC of $12,000 or less.*
• Not be pursuing a degree or certificate in theology or divinity.
• Not have received your first bachelor’s degree, completed the required hours for a bachelor’s degree, or completed 150 semester credit hours.

For Returning Students

• Continue to meet the eligibility requirements for initial students.
• Maintain a minimum cumulative grade point average (CGPA) of 2.5 and otherwise maintain satisfactory academic progress as defined by your school.
• Not have received an Access Missouri award for a maximum of five semesters at a 2-year school or 10 semesters at any combination of 2-year or 4-year schools, whichever occurs first.**

If you are a Missouri student that is being impacted by this reduction in funding, feel free to check out some of our approaches to assist you in bridging the gap in your educational expenses.

I need to preface this article by stating that I would never recommend a private education loan to cover your college expenses. That being said, if you have exhausted all of your other options available through the federal loan program (including Parent PLUS), maximized all your scholarship opportunities, and hit up your network of friends and family for financial support, then it is probably time for you to look at a private education loan.

Many of the banks that used to be in the private eduction loan market have long since dropped off of the charts and no longer actively participate in providing loans to students. Key Bank is one of the more recent ones that quickly comes to mind as leaving the educational loan sector. The following is a comprehensive list of all the private education lenders that I know to still be actively originating new loans. Surprisingly, your local credit unions are also a good source of private loans. If you know of others that are in the market, please feel free to share their information below in the comment section.

Sallie Mae Smart Option Loan: http://go.salliemae.com/

Discover Student Loans: http://www.discoverstudentloans.com/

Chase Student Loans: http://www.chasestudentloans.com/

PNC Student Loans: http://www.pnconcampus.com/

Sun Trust Student Loans: http://www.suntrusteducation.com/

EdAmerica Student Loans: http://www.edamerica.net/

Citizen’s Bank Student Loans: http://www.citizensbank.com/student-services/

Cedar Education Lending: http://www.cedaredlending.com/

Tips For Choosing The Right Private Education Loan

• Check Interest Rates: What is the interest rate today?, Is the rate fixed or variable?, If it is variable, what is the maximum percentage that it can reach?
• Repayment Benefits?: Does the loan carry repayment benefits for so many on time payments? Some loans used to give you a 1% capital reduction after 36 on time payments.
• Do I need a co-signer?: Chances are yes! In the past a co-signer was not usually required but the education loan market has changed and you better count on having a co-signer in place before applying for a private education loan. Besides, they usually give you a better interest rate and reduced origination fees if you have a co-signer.
• Read The Promissory Note: I know this is hard and your eyes are quickly going to glaze over as you look at the promissory note but this is a legally binding document and you want to make sure that you are not committing yourself to more than you thought.
• Shop Around: Lenders of private education loans are required to hold their loan offers open for a period of at least 30 days. This gives you time to check out the competition and make sure you are getting the best benefit.
• Don’t Pass on Federal Loans: I said this above but it is worth mentioning again. Don’t take a private student loan unless you have already exhausted all the loan monies available to you via federal programs. Statistics show that one in five students pass up less expensive federal loans for the private alternative just because they thought it was easier to apply for or they were not aware of all their loan options.
• Check out the Repayment Terms: Meaning, how long do you have to pay back the loan? (10 years, 15, 20?) Is the loan able to be deferred if you go to graduate school? How often is the interest capitalized? (once a year is pretty typical) Are forbearance privileges available? (if you are unable to secure employment)

I hope you find this information helpful as you are looking over different loan options to cover your tuition expense for the coming year. If you think this article was useful, please feel free to share it with others using the “share tab” below.