Adding child care to your cost of attendance

What the dependent care allowance covers

Federal rules let a college include an allowance for the care of your dependents in your cost of attendance. For a student parent, that usually means child care during class time, study time and travel to campus, and at some schools the hours you work. The amount has to be reasonable, and each college sets its own way of working it out.

Some colleges add the allowance on their own when your FAFSA shows a child in your family. Plenty of others wait for you to ask. Look at the cost of attendance listed with your aid offer, and if child care is missing, the office may simply not know what you pay.

How to ask for it

Write to the financial aid office and ask for a dependent care allowance to be added to your budget. Give the number of children, their ages, who cares for them and what you pay each week or month. A short, factual request is easier for the office to act on than a long one.

Expect to be asked for proof. Offices commonly want a statement from the provider showing hours and fees, receipts, or a form of their own that you and the provider sign. Paid care from a relative can sometimes count, but the office decides what it accepts, so ask before you rely on it.

Send the request early in the year. Once loans have gone out and the term is underway, changes take longer, and some offices set a cutoff date for budget changes.

A larger cost of attendance raises the ceiling on the aid you can be offered.

What a higher budget changes

A larger cost of attendance raises the ceiling on the aid you can be offered. The room it opens is often filled with federal loans, and sometimes with campus grants or emergency funds, depending on what the college has left for the year.

That room is still useful, because it can let you pay for care through aid rather than a credit card or a dropped class. Read the revised offer carefully before you accept any loan, and take only what you need for the term.