[From Myra Smith, Executive Director, Financial Aid Services, College Board]
When you’re applying for financial aid, terminology matters and all kinds of aid are not equal. Anything that’s a grant or a scholarship is usually considered gift aid, which means you don’t have to pay it back, and you don’t have to borrow, you don’t have to work for it. Now some of those things may have academic criteria and you have to meet a certain standard, so you want to be really clear about what the standard is for getting that money. Work-study is simply an opportunity to work. It isn’t money you get for studying, although people like to think that. And then loans are normally student loans that are usually backed by the government, and they’re non-secured loans. So the government’s really the only person who’s going to loan money to an 18-year-old, or someone who doesn’t have a job and is going back to school. They tend to be low interest, but you do have to pay them back — although there are some repayment criteria that make them not a bad thing to have. I would say, with loans, if you need the extra money, a student loan is much better than putting something on your credit card. So you kind of think of them in terms of that continuum.
