 I'm a rising junior at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. I am going to be a senior this year at George Mason University. I graduated from Harvard College. I'm entering my senior year, I'm a first-generation American first-generation college student. I'm also a first-gen student, I have low income status, I have a single parent and also both my parents are from Haiti so I literally went through everything by myself. I actually applied to nine schools. Figuring out what the total cost was and how much I would have to make up was very important to me. I remember my financial aid process being a little bit more tedious in terms of how long it took me to even understand the language. You can definitely seem very confusing and intimidating if you're navigating it on your own. I've been a God access counselor for a couple of different prophets in New York City for the last years. I'm the director of financial aid for the Chicago campus at Northwestern University. If I could guess how many students I've supported in the financial aid application and letter review process probably well over time, you can maybe double that. I will compare three award letters. These are the three letters? The letters. Okay. Huh. I don't know what that means. I'm not really sure. Not quite sure. It's interesting, that's what I would say to that. Interesting. Is that correct? Oh yeah, I missed red. Oh wait, no. Well on the first letter I have no idea how much it's going to cost them because there's no cost of attendance or room in force. So literally just doesn't have enough information at all. This seems to be missing a couple of important pieces that the student would need. I guess I don't really see a work study. I don't know what work assistance is. Like if that's something that I have to pay for. Oh I think it still works. I really don't know what to make of these. I don't understand what that means. It has too much jumbled text. It'd be nice if an award didn't require a spreadsheet, if they all do. I don't know what's supposed to come out of my pocket. That's difficult to tell. Not very clear. It's really not clear. This is very unclear to me. I guess I'm not familiar with some of the terms. Really the formatting is what's confusing me on all of these. And just kind of lists off a bunch of things that maybe I don't understand. Tuition waiver, cash grant, fee grant. Stack with loan, origination fees. College grant, state grant, federal pale grant. Direct cause, net direct cause. Subsidized and unsubsidized loans. These acronyms. Other family resources for my plans. Plus loans. Alternative loans. I don't know what any of those things mean. More explanation of these terms would be good. Not only to understand the letter, but to form a basis for comparison of letter. Now I know what that is because I'm going to be a senior, but I definitely didn't know. Like what a parent plus loan was my freshman year. Like when I was in high school. Being a first generation college student, I'm really not familiar with even just applying for admission college. Nonetheless, navigating the financial aid process. And so when it comes to tuition and loans and federal appell grants, I definitely don't know the jargon of the terminology of it. So that makes me not want any of these letters to be on it. I don't think that any of them communicate properly to an individual who hasn't seen this maybe ever. But if I'm looking at like eight of these and likely will not get any more clear, I'll just end up with more and more questions. Imagine signing up for like $10,000 in loans and not realizing how much of an impact that will have on your future. I think that we as a community could do better educating our students better and finding better ways to talk to them about why the amount that's on their student cap is different from the amount that they that they agreed to. I do think that there should be some standardization. Creating more standardized language would for sure help students to gain familiarity as they look through their offer letters to be able to compare exactly what is being offered in each category. Students shouldn't need a decoder ring to decipher their financial aid offers. It does seem that deciphering financial aid and a college's cost is a universal experience felt by all students, especially as students have had to bear far more of the burden than they've had to in years previous. It's just something that most students and families are going to face and instead what they need is clear, consistent, comparable information. And what this would mean is that they have a common financial aid offer that they get from every single school so that they can make an apples-to-apples comparison and really know what the difference is and what they're going to owe at school A and what they're going to owe at school B. And luckily there's a bipartisan bicameral bill called the Understanding the True Costs of College Act and it would set out to do exactly just that. It would standardize language and communications to students that they get from their financial aid office, but it would also provide a common financial aid offer so that students could finally make that apples-to-apples comparison. All students deserve to have good information at their fingertips about cost and about what their financial aid is going to be, regardless of the type of institution they're attending.