No merit aid? 6 ways to pay for college
More than 25 states award some financial aid to college students based on academic achievement, as opposed to need. Thirteen states award more than half of their financial aid based on merit. But students who don't quality for merit-based aid aren't entirely out of luck. Several sources of free aid-such as grants and scholarships that don't need to be paid back -are still available. And many are still being distributed based on a family's finances rather than a student's grades. Here is a primer on where to look. 1. Federal grants Federal grants for undergraduates are strictly based on need. To get them, families will first need to fill out the Free Application for Federal Student Aid. Most popular is the Pell grant, through which students can currently get up to $5,550 in aid per academic year. There's also the Federal Supplemental Educational Opportunity Grant through which families can receive up to $4,000 per year. Full Story

10 Best College Majors for a Lucrative Career
Many Millennials grew up hearing that they should study what they love. While that’s a nice sentiment, it’s also landed countless recent grads in quagmires of student debt and unemployment. In today’s tough economic climate, some college majors simply offer better prospects than others-and savvy students should want to know the difference. That’s why we came up with our list of the ten best college majors for your career. We analyzed the unemployment rates and salaries for graduates of the 100 most popular college majors, using data from Georgetown University’s Center on Education and the Workforce and Payscale.com. -More from Kiplinger: 10 of Today's Hottest Jobs- What did we look for? Fields of study with grads-both recent grads within the past five years and those well into their careers-who enjoy an attractive combination of big paychecks and abundant employment opportunities. The undergraduate programs that we ranked can take from two to five years to complete. Full Story

Five Associate’s Degrees with Payoff Potential
Check out these five associate’s degrees that may lead to career options with high average pay prospects. By Chris Kyle Do you want to earn a degree that could help you prep to pursue career prospects that pay? Earning a bachelor’s and/or graduate degree isn’t the only path to a career with big earning potential. According to ”The College Payoff: Education, Occupations, Lifetime Earnings,” a 2011 report co-authored by the Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce and the Lumina Foundation, 28 percent of people with an associate’s degree make at least as much as the average bachelor’s degree holder. While there are no guarantees that having a specific degree will lead to a specific career or salary, keep reading to learn more about some paths with the potential for some sweet payback. #1 Degree - Paralegal Studies: Want to pursue a career in the legal field, but not inclined to study for a bachelor’s plus law school? An associate’s degree in paralegal studies could offer you a possible return on your investment... Full Story

College ROI: What We Found
When people talk about the value of a college degree, they mean different things. A report last year by Georgetown University’s Center on Education and the Workforce pegs the median value of a four-year bachelor's degree at $2.3 million, which is the average earnings for a degree holder employed full-time from ages 25 to 64. The value of a college investment calculated by PayScale, a Seattle-based compensation data company, for Bloomberg Businessweek is a small fraction of that amount, and to understand why, you need to know a little bit about our methodology. The PayScale methodology differs from most others in several key respects. Instead of using lifetime earnings, it starts with earnings over a 30-year period. From that figure, we deduct the earnings of a typical high school graduate (since most people who don't go to college would still have earnings, albeit at a much lower amount). In our return on investment (ROI) calculation, the "investment"-or total net cost-is the amount spent on college over the actual time it takes students to graduate, whether four, five, or six years. Finally, our ROI figures are adjusted using each school's graduation rate. After all, if you don't graduate, you've made an investment with very little financial return. The result is a return that reflects what incoming students can reasonably expect from their investment. Full Story

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