It’s college application season, and Senator Jack Reed is trying to make the financial aid application a little less daunting for anxious parents and students.

On Monday night, Senator Reed held his annual College Financial Aid Workshop at Community College of Rhode Island’s Knight campus in Warwick. More than 100 parents and students hoped to get answers to their questions.

“My son and I have had many conversations about keeping student loan borrowing in check, and I have stressed to him that his father and I won't put ourselves into significant debt via home equity borrowing, retirement borrowing, etc,” said one mother who asked not to be identified after the workshop. “I would love for [teen] students to hear the messages about borrowing from people other than their parents.  This meeting did help reinforce to me that my decisions in that area are right.”

Throughout the workshop, some parents were reminded of applying for their own loans.

“When you’ve been through it before, you kind of want to pull your hair out listening to it all over again,” said one with a laugh.

Reed brought along speakers Noel Simpson, Deputy Director and Chief Financial and Compliance Officer at the RI Student Loan Authority; Stacy Crooks, Director of the College Planning Center of RI; Michael Joyce, Director of Program Administration of the Division of Higher Education Assistance in the Office of Post-Secondary Commissioner; Ed Maroney, President of RI Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators; and Tracy Hess, CPA, Senior Accountant at Piccerelli, Gilstein & Company, LLP & RI Society of Certified Public Accountants

Reed is working to reduce interest rates on student loans and to make more Pell Grants available for students. He acknowledged the rising costs of post-secondary education.

“Just as college is getting more critical to success, it’s getting more expensive and less affordable for many American families, causing a great deal of anxiety,” he said. “We’ve tried to address this college affordability issue at the federal level, and we have to do much more.”

Though the topic is complicated, Reed stressed to the students and families that they would not be alone. All of the panelists were available to answer questions after the event. Reed urged people to call his office if they needed additional help with the process.

The panelists discussed options for aid, beginning with the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA). Simpson described cost differences between private and public schools, and how grants, including the Pell Grant for low income students, and several kinds of loans were available to students who apply for aid.

Crooks told the audience that the College Planning Center would be there for students and parents to receive assistance and advice with their applications. “Did I mention we’re free?” she said.

Maroney and Joyce gave tips on how to fill out forms, including how to use the IRS data retrieval tool that pulls information into the FAFSA from a tax return. Hess and others stressed the importance of applying for scholarships, which are tax-free when used to pay for tuition.

All the speakers answered questions after their presentations. Parents who were divorced asked how they should file and learned they should file as single. Others who had twins learned that having two children in college at once would impact their aid, the family’s expected contribution would be split among the number of children the family had in college. It is the schools that ultimately decide on how much aid to give, and whether the aid will be grants or loans.

A Toll Gate School parent, who works in the mortgage business and has met plenty of people who carry student debt well into their 30s, was thankful for resources being provided at the workshop.

“It was very informative, especially the part about the College Planning Center,” she said. “I didn’t realize they actually helped you with thinking about where your student wants to go to college and that they actually help you apply and fill out the forms.”

For her son, and so many others, the amount of financial aid offered by each school will shape the decisions he makes about college. She appreciated that the speakers talked about debt and encouraged students to keep an open mind about their school choices until they’d received their financial aid letter. In the long run, it’s a choice that could saddle students with debt or allow them to invest wisely in their future.