The Associated Press has a story on last-minute options for college financial aid. You’ll find it on page 9B of Thursday July 3 print and e-editions of The Monroe Evening News; or, if you are not a subscriber to my newspaper, I also found the AP article at CNN.

A snippet:

For starters, experts recommend contacting a college’s financial aid office before ruling a school out because of money. Sometimes the aid outlook can improve from what was offered earlier, perhaps because of a change in the family’s situation such as divorce or one parent’s loss of a job.

It worked for Debbie Bloss, who checked back with her son’s second-choice school, Drury University in Springfield, Missouri, so late that fall classes had begun. She had little option — Stephen had decided after five days at his preferred college that it wasn’t for him, walking away from a nearly full scholarship to enroll at pricier Drury instead.

Drury had given out all its need-based grants for the year and it was too late to search for outside scholarships or grants. But by working with the financial aid office, Bloss and her son were able to obtain a $400 federal Pell Grant, a $1,500 state grant and $500 in academic money, amounts bolstered by $6,625 in federal Stafford loans.

Along with an additional $13,500 in private loans, that was enough to get Stephen through the first year. The following year he started the process much earlier and secured much more federal, state and Drury grants along with work-study aid, so he reduced his loan amounts considerably.

I also got bit by a late financial aid snake when I was in college.

I got married to an Army soldier the summer before my senior year in school, which meant my financial circumstances would change drastically.

Bottom line: I was eligible for more need-based aid because my parents would no longer be financially responsible for me.

The problem: I couldn’t apply for aid under a change in circumstances until I had a signed marriage license to prove I was an financially independent student.

I sent in the paperwork as soon as I had all the documentation. But by then, summer had arrived. My last student loan did not show up at the tuition office by the time classes began.

I was allowed to move into my dorm room and start classes on an IOU basis. Somehow, I had money to eat. (I don’t remember how I managed the food bill. I probably put a little bit of my on my cafeteria account and brought some groceries from the apartment my husband and I shared near the Army base three hours away from my college. My dorm had a kitchen and I was allowed to use a hot water pot in the room.)

But I did not have enough cash on hand to buy all my textbooks.

It took about three weeks before my money cleared - dangerously close to the final drop date for classes.

I had a horrible time catching up with the assignments. There’s only so much you can do with reserve books and borrowing a classmates’ books. Further aggravating the situation is that I had to buy my remaining textbooks at full retail price because all the used ones had been snapped up.

Even though I had only 12 credit hours of classes, when I had previously done quite well with 15 to 18 credit hours, fall of my senior year was my worst semester in college.

Lesson: You really don’t want to be starting your financial aid paperwork in the summer.

But if you haven’t filled out the Free Application for Federal Student Aid for 2008-09 yet, I strongly recommend you do so now.

Why?

The FAFSA may be your ticket to getting whatever financial aid is still available for this academic year. A lot of the alternative options have vanished.

This is the fourth post in a series. For more information on this topic, follow my College financing 08-09 thread and also check out my college financing sidebar.