After the college acceptance letter comes the financial aid offer. But beware: The offers are not always easy to decipher, and different colleges often use different jargon for the same types of aid or loans.

Despite calls for colleges to adopt more uniform, user-friendly formats, institutions remain free to devise their own aid letters, and the information they include varies. Some don’t clearly label student loans and often omit details about the total cost, making it a challenge to figure out how much you’ll have to pay.

A study in 2018 by the New America think tank and uAspire, a nonprofit group that promotes college affordability, examined thousands of award letters and found that not only was the financial aid insufficient for most students, they often used confusing terms. Among the colleges that offered a common type of federal loan, for instance, researchers found more than 100 terms for the loan, including two dozen that didn’t even mention the word “loan.”

“As a result,” the report said, “it is exceedingly difficult for students and families to make a financially informed college decision.”