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December 2, 2025

Every year, uAspire reviews hundreds of financial aid offers with students and their families, and we consistently see how challenging it is for them to understand these crucial communications. Unlike other consumer financial products, such as mortgages and auto loans, there are no consistent standards for how colleges must communicate higher education cost information. This means each college uses its own terminology and formatting to describe cost and different types of aid, which leads to confusion for students and families about the aid they are eligible for and the financial commitment they are making. This research explores the current state of financial aid offers and how colleges are communicating college costs and financial aid to students and their families.

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