Ages 15–18 · A case, you decide
Read the letter like an accountant
A case · you decide
Three letters, one real number
Malik — a 17-year-old, first in his family to apply, holding three award letters
Three envelopes came this month. Letter A is printed in gold and leads with “$35,000 in financial aid!” Malik’s cousin says that means it’s basically free. His aunt, who has paid off her own loans for eleven years, is not so sure. Malik decides to read all three the way an accountant would.
Every letter mixes two very different kinds of money. Some lines are GIFT aid — grants and scholarships you keep. Some lines are SELF-HELP — loans you repay with interest, and work-study you earn by working. The letters print them together and call the whole stack “your aid,” because the bigger that number looks, the more generous the offer feels.
Malik draws two columns on a napkin. In the first he copies only the grants and scholarships. In the second he copies the loans and the work-study. Then, for each school, he does one subtraction: cost of attendance minus the first column. That answer has a name — the net price — and it is the only number that says what a year there actually costs his family.
Letter A leads with “$35,000 in financial aid.” To find what a year there actually costs, Malik should…
Letter A’s net price is $32,000, and it lists a $12,000 Parent PLUS loan — more than a first-year student can borrow, so his parent would borrow it, at 9.07% (2026–27). How should Malik’s family think about that loan?
The cheapest letter isn’t automatically the right choice, and the most expensive isn’t automatically the best school. But now Malik is choosing with the real numbers instead of the headline. Community college with a transfer plan, a four-year offer, an apprenticeship that pays while you learn — each is a real door, and the letter finally tells the truth about what’s behind it.