When evaluating the true cost of education, these numbers can be generous. More than 42% of people who have attended college took our some form of debt, while 20% of borrowers are behind on payments. Which means that more and more students wind up financing their education across multiple loans, subsidized or not, with varying interest rates. These loans are not forgiving, and many require students to begin making payments while attending school. This adds to the interest accumulated, pushing out the repayment plan even further, with even higher monthly payments.

The yearly cost of college is likely to increase by 5% in addition to the standard costs of education today. So if you're a student or even a parent, looking at financing a higher education cost, it seems discouraging that the financial investment is so steep for mere opportunity. However, there are a number of opportunities sitting in the palm of your hand that can help offset heavy burden costs.

Working with educators and other school administrators can be a key in finding financial opportunities for yourself or your student. These opportunities lie within the school's class availability and success thereof. Taking college level courses while attending high school is a way to not only push a student towards higher academic success, but to actually begin their college journey without the financial strain.

Other ways to offset college costs can come from success of specific standardized tests. All American schools are aware of the Scholastic Aptitude Test, or SAT, needed for most college acceptances. The preliminary rounds of the SAT provide practice and exposure at younger grade levels, while also screening for exceptional academic skills viable for scholarship opportunities. If you are unfamiliar with such opportunities, click here for more information about the PSAT/NMSQT, or National Merit Scholarship Qualifying Test.

Beyond the classes and test taking also lie more opportunities than most students, and even educators, presume. Scholarship specialist and educator Jean O'Toole has created her career off of leading students towards financial awards for their own college endeavors. As a public speaker and guide within school systems, her students have taken her advice time and time again to earn millions of dollars in scholarship awards. After years of success, O'Toole has finally compounded her literal "award winning advice" into this simple guide towards not only finding the countless monetary awards for endeavoring students, but also towards winning them.