Financial Aid Offer Decoder
Upload two to four college financial aid award letters - PDFs or photos, in whatever format each school sent - and get one normalized comparison table: what each school actually costs, what's a grant you keep, what's a loan you repay, what's work-study you have to earn, and what you'd really pay over four years. Free, no signup, no account.
Drag & drop files, or click to browse
Award letters as PDFs or photos - up to 4 schools at a time
Why award letters are so hard to compare
There is no required format. One school sends a full cost of attendance breakdown with housing, books and transport itemized; another lists four award lines and never states a total cost at all; a third subtracts aid from tuition only, so housing never appears. Award names differ everywhere, and a Direct Unsubsidized Loan is often printed in the same block as the grants, under a heading like “Your Awards” - which makes borrowed money look like free money at a glance.
This tool pulls every letter into the same four buckets - cost, gift aid, work-study, loans - and computes the same figures for each: net price (cost minus grants and scholarships) and out of pocket (net price minus loans and work-study, i.e. the cash you actually need). Anything a letter never stated is listed as a gap rather than quietly counted as zero, because a school that omits housing costs must not win the comparison by default.
अक्सर पूछे जाने वाले प्रश्न
Can I compare college financial aid award letters free with no signup?
Yes. Upload two to four award letters, get the full side-by-side comparison and the four-year projection, and download it as a CSV - all free, with no account, no email address and no paywall. There's no limit on how many times you can run it.
How is net price different from out of pocket?
Net price is the cost of attendance minus grants and scholarships - the part of the bill that aid you keep doesn't cover. Out of pocket goes one step further and also subtracts loans and work-study, leaving the cash your family actually has to produce from savings and income. The distinction matters: an offer can have a great net price while filling most of the gap with loans, which is money you repay with interest rather than money you were given.
Does it tell the difference between a grant and a loan?
That's the main thing it's built to do. Every money line is classified by what it is rather than by which heading the school printed it under, so a Direct Unsubsidized Loan listed among the grants still gets counted as borrowing. Grants and scholarships are shown in green as money you keep, loans in amber as money you repay, and work-study separately as money you have to be hired for and actually earn.
How does the four-year projection work?
By default it holds every award flat at its first-year amount and multiplies out four years - which is what "assuming aid holds steady" really means, and it's how a generous one-time first-year scholarship gets exposed. You can add an annual cost increase, let grants rise with costs, and set a loan interest rate and repayment term to see an estimated monthly payment on everything borrowed. Those are your assumptions, not predictions: your actual aid can change each year based on your renewal FAFSA, your GPA and the school's own budget.
What if a letter doesn't list housing or a total cost?
It's flagged. Any figure a letter never stated is listed under that school as a gap, and if no total cost of attendance was printed the tool adds up whatever cost lines it found and tells you it did so. You can type missing numbers in yourself - the school's website usually publishes a cost of attendance for the year - and every derived figure recalculates. Comparing a school with housing costs against one without them is the single easiest way to pick the wrong offer.
Are my letters uploaded anywhere?
Each letter is sent to a secure AI service to be read - its extracted text, or page images if it's a scan or photo - and is not stored afterward. The comparison, the projection and the CSV are all built in your browser. Nothing is saved to an account, because there are no accounts.
Should I use this to negotiate or appeal an offer?
It can help you see clearly what you'd be appealing, and a school-by-school table of net price and out-of-pocket cost is a reasonable thing to have in front of you when you call. But this tool isn't financial advice and doesn't know your circumstances. Financial aid offices can adjust offers after a change in family circumstances or a competing offer, so talk to them directly - and always confirm any figure here against the letter itself before you rely on it.