How to Save Money On College

1. Apply to inexpensive colleges. First of all, before you even attend college, make sure you’re applying to inexpensive colleges.  This is one of the easiest ways to save money. You can find plenty of lists of low tuition colleges via Google.
2. Consider a post-college career path that might offer student loan forgiveness. For instance, if you’re planning on becoming a teacher in the United States who works with low income students, it might be possible to have your student loans deferred or canceled via the U.S. Government.
3. Save for college while shopping with UPromise.com and/or BabyMint.com. These are networks of merchants that have agreed to deposit a small percentage of each purchase you make into your college savings account.
4. Consider transferring to a less expensive college.
5. Save on college by graduating in three years instead of four. You could also save money by going to community college for two years and then transferring to a university for two years.
6. Rent textbooks from Chegg.com instead of buying them.
   
7. Share textbooks with friends instead of buying separate copies.
8. Always apply for financial aid, even if you don’t think you’ll qualify.  All a college’s financial aid department can say is that you don’t qualify.  Incidentally, financial aid doesn’t just mean difficult-to-receive grants; it can be creatively-structured loans, including subsidized loans.
9. Save money on tuition by applying for scholarships. This is one of the best ways to save money without sacrificing your education. There are really two different types of scholarships: Restricted scholarships (money that can only be used at a particular college) and unrestricted scholarships (money, generally from corporations or associations, that can be used at almost any university).  Restricted scholarships are generally larger than their unrestricted counterparts and they can be found by searching the names of the schools you’re planning on applying to with the word “scholarship.”  Unrestricted scholarships can be found by going to scholarship aggregator sites like Fastweb.com and Scholarships.com.