Financial Aid Fun at Home

December is a fun time for families to get together. Families can be defined in a lot of different ways. Not only can a family be parents and children, but it can also be a group of related things or people. I am lucky to have many families—my parents, sisters, and brother, my Financial Aid Office family, and a close group of friends.

What’s my point, you ask? Well, every time I get together with any of my families, we end up watching a funny YouTube video or researching something online that a fellow family member doesn’t believe to be true. It’s amazing that all the information is right at our fingertips with our smartphones, iPads, Kindles, iPods, computers, and television. With so much information on the Internet, it’s easy to be confused about what’s true or not. Since it’s on the Internet, it must be true. Luckily, the University of Rochester keeps an updated Financial Aid webpage with lots of information. There’s the traditional “read this, read that” information, but we also have videos on the website (great ones to watch while you are with your family, hint hint).

Our Enrollment Communication team is one of the best around (in my opinion anyway)! They help us create videos for students who are unable to come sit down in our office. Right now, we have two great financial aid videos on our website:

The first video is about who we are in the Financial Aid Office and what we do. This video is great for students to see what our office looks like, and includes great information from our Deputy Director. Hopefully after watching it, you come up with some good questions to ask your Financial Aid counselor.

The second video is about outside scholarships. It highlights current students who have received outside scholarships and discusses the best ways to search for them. Looking for outside scholarships may be scary and tough, but in the end it can pay off—literally.

So while you are on break from school, spend some time watching these videos with your family. You can also spend some time looking at the vast amount of information on the financial aid portion of our website. Our office is only closed on Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, New Year’s Eve, and New Year’s Day. This means that if a question comes up that you don’t know the answer to, instead of searching for that random answer that may or may not be true online, you can give us a call (hopefully the question is financial aid-related, although we do have immense knowledge of many subjects).

Enjoy your holiday break and we'll see you in 2013!