Financial Aid Comparison Worksheet

What will college actually cost your family, school by school?

Financial aid award letters can be confusing — every college structures theirs differently, which can make them hard to assess. This worksheet breaks down every offer into a standardized view of costs and aid, making it easy to directly compare schools. You can also adjust awards to reflect the aid the student actually intends to accept, giving you a more accurate estimate of what each college will really cost. Created by an educator with 40 years of experience in college admissions, college counseling, and financial aid.

1 · Add the costsThere are two types. Direct costs are paid to the college — tuition, housing, meal plan, fees. Indirect costs are ones you pay on your own — books, travel, clothes, shampoo. Use the numbers on each college's award letter.
2 · Subtract free moneyGrants and scholarships never need to be paid back. Grants are usually based on financial need; scholarships are often based on merit. This is the best kind of aid!
3 · Subtract loansTaking out a loan is borrowing money. It needs to be paid back, with interest. See the descriptions of each kind of loan on the Key Terms page.
4 · Find the bottom lineThis is what each school expects your family to pay for each year of college. Compare it with your family's SAI from the FAFSA — there's often a gap between the two.

Enter each school's information using the form below — it will automatically appear in the side-by-side comparison sheet too. You can go back and forth between the two views, adding schools' financial aid information as award letters arrive. And if you decide to remove something (say, you choose not to take out a loan), simply delete the number and the calculator will automatically readjust your bottom line.

How does saving work?

On this device, saving is automatic. As you type, this page remembers your numbers in the web browser you're using. Close the page and come back next week — same device, same browser — and everything will still be here. One caution: clearing your browser's history or cookies erases these saved numbers, so save them to a file first if you're about to do that.

To keep a backup, or move your work to another device, click “Save my numbers to a file.” A small file (it will be named something like my-college-costs-year-month-date.json) goes to your Downloads folder. You don't need to open this file, and if you do, it will look like computer code — that's normal! It's not meant to be read. Just keep it somewhere safe, or email it to yourself or a parent.

To pick up where you left off, come back to this page, click “Open a saved file,” and choose the .json file you saved previously. All of your schools and numbers will reappear on this page.

Using a school or library computer? Shared computers sometimes erase what pages remember, so save your numbers to a file (and email it to yourself) before you leave.