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Financial aid basics

First-gen family guide

A warm starter guide for families making college funding decisions for the first time.

June 9, 20261 min read

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If your family is doing this for the first time, the process can feel like a wall of unfamiliar acronyms and rushed decisions. This guide is a plain-English starting point for understanding the order of operations.

Use it to anchor the family conversation, write down what is still unknown, and then move into the CollegeLens tools that answer each question one by one.

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