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Financial aid award letters, explained

by Anand Katakam and Libby Nelson

Paying for college can be confusing. Grants and scholarships have different names. Student loans are sometimes subtracted from the amount of money you owe the college (even though you have to pay them back later). Efforts are underway to make financial aid awards more standardized, or at least to include a common set of terms and definitions.

Click on the highlighted areas to see what the terms mean:

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