A federal Perkin’s loan helps low income students pay their college tuition.
What is a federal Perkins loan? These are student loans that are offered by the federal government to students who definitely need the money. Scholastic abilities are not taken into account when these loans are given out, they are solely based on the economic needs of the student in question. Therefore, while these loans might not be the best choice if your parents have plenty of money, you should definitely think of applying for one of these loans if your parents have little to contribute to your education.
Even though these loans are funded by federal dollars, it is up to the colleges themselves to determine who gets the money. However, these colleges also only have alimited amount of money that they can spend on the people who need Perkin’s loans. Therefore, only a few people get Perkin’s loans each year. If you think that you’re going to need a federal Perkin’s loan, then you should definitely apply to your school as soon as possible.
Since these loans are awarded by the individual schools, you cannot get detailed information from a general source as far as how much money you should have in order to have a chance at getting one of these loans. Therefore, if you’re curious as to what your chances are of getting a Perkin’s loan, you should ask at your college for the statistics.
The easiest way that you can apply for the Perkin’s loan, though, no matter where you go to school is to make sure that you fill out the Federal student aid application, which is called the FAFSA. This application will give your school all of the detailed information that it needs in order to determine what should be in your student aid package and whether or not it should include a Perkin’s loan. The benefit of filling out the FAFSA is that you can sometimes be given loans or grants that you do not even apply for.
The Perkin’s loans also have a limit, however, so if you are going to an expensive college, your loan might not be enough to cover the entire cost of your education. The limit for a Perkin’s loan is $4,000 each year or $20,000 total.