Financial Aid

One of the big components of the college process is the financial side - applying for financial aid and scholarships.

On Thursday, January 8th at 7:00pm there will be a presentation about financial aid and filling out the FAFSA form at WKHS. (FAFSA stands for Free Application for Federal Student Aid.) Most students will need to fill out the FAFSA form and it is essential to meet the deadlines established by your colleges of choice to determine what amount of aid they can offer. (Many deadlines will be February 15th.) So this is definitely not something you can put off. There are some people who will automatically assume that they do not qualify for financial aid and it is important not to make assumptions and to read the fine print from the colleges carefully as there are some colleges that won't offer any financial aid packages (including merit scholarships) without having a FAFSA on file. Specific questions about each college's requirements and deadlines should be addressed to the financial aid offices at each respective college.

To complete the FAFSA, you and your parents will need a pin number - it is a number that you will NEED and you must keep this for the future as it is the same number for all of your future FAFSA applications (which happens every year of college). To apply for a pin visit this website.

Also, be sure that you are researching and applying for any outside scholarships that you qualify for as this can be a helpful financial resource. And yes, I know that the scholarship applications are often a lot of work and include essays, but if you end up earning one of the scholarships it would be worth it. You can visit the scholarship section on PrepHQ for a list of all of the scholarships that we are aware of at WKHS and you can also do general internet searches using lots of scholarship search engines. (But please, remember that paying for scholarships is a scam… so don’t do that.) Good luck!