College planning means knowing which strategies will work for you. Control your College Costs instead of college costs controlling you!
Learn the key terms in the college financial aid alphabet soup! For example, the Cost Of Attendance, COA, is like the MSRP (Manufacturer Suggested Retail Price) of a car. Unfortunately, colleges don’t announce the upcoming academic year’s costs until the summer before the student starts, so many parents are paying for college not knowing the sticker price until just a few months before the new academic year.
In a discussion with the Associate Director of Admissions at Boston University, said if parents have to borrow $100K it’s not worth it! It’s just a Bachelor’s Degree folks! If your costs are the full sticker price without any discounts, it’s likely you’re paying too much.
The COA is usually discounted by the federal aid that families receive when they file the FAFSA. There may be state aid that students may be eligible to receive. Finally, the college itself is likely offering some “merit” based scholarships.
You don’t have to rank in the top 10% of your class to qualify for merit scholarships. Your Grade Point Average and Standardized scores may be just fine at less selective colleges. In fact, only the elite colleges require high SATs and ACS.
Due to COVID-19 most colleges are not requiring students to submit their standardized scores. If you have high scores great, submit them because they may help you get a better scholarship from the college. However, if you didn’t test well and are not completely happy with your scores, don’t send them. If they are below your Grade-Point-Average (GPA) or don’t correlate with your grades, don’t send them.
There are 3800 colleges in the US and most of them require just a high school graduation diploma and average grades. There are colleges that work with students who may not have done well academically. For example, students with learning or physical disabilities may not score as well on tests. Many colleges understand that and accept students.
If you’re unsure of what to study, or, if you feel like you could use more academic preparation before going to college, consider taking classes at a Community College. These offer a great way to complete two years of college for next to nothing.
Going back to your COA, if you’re paying the full price, if your parents must take out mega loans they can’t afford, it’s the wrong school for you. Then it’s not your dream school. It’s your nightmare school.
A degree from a costly school isn’t going to smooth out your life – in fact -it’s going to hamper your ability to start off without debt burden. Let’s say that you graduate with 30K in loans but your parents too out $150,000 in loans. If a student graduates and finds a job right away maybe they can start making the standard repayments. If you don’t find employment right away, you may have to defer payments and thus accrue more interest and fees. As the pressure mounts, you’ll be taking any job that comes along.
Liberal arts degrees generally don’t immediately lead to specific employment. A community college degree in nursing, auto-mechanics, heating and ventilation, plumbing will almost always provide immediate employment as a degree in engineering will.
If you’re thinking of law school, consider the additional cost you will incur. Unable to find work and pay their loans, some students decide to go to graduate school and take out more loans. An analysis of the 1.75 Trillion dollars of student debt shows that graduate students carry the largest amount of debt.
My motto is “If it has a pre-before it, get it free!” By this I mean that if you’re studying a pre-law, pre-med, pre-engineering at the undergraduate level, you will spend much more in graduate school. Hence your undergraduate costs must be minimal.
