With yearly tuition increases exceeding twice the rate of inflation, aid packages contain a lot more loans than grants. Before applying to Our Lady of Perpetual Increase University, consider these 5 recommendations: 1. Look for the steak, ignore the sizzle. Financial aid is nothing more than a game played by someone else’s rules and on their playing field. Your opponent believes you’re clueless. Protect yourself with a skeptical attitude, which comes with being better informed. Just by looking at their stunning websites, you can conclude colleges are experts at selling sizzle in the thoughtless expectation you won’t wince at the price. Your best defense is to focus on the steak. How? 2. Ignore the frills. Colleges want to appeal, not to young, developing minds, but to their crass instincts. Here’s the college marketing mentality: let’s go for the lower common denominators to attract students. Instead of bragging of its two Shakespeare scholars, a university in New England boasts of its multi-million dollar swimming pool with a wave machine. An engineering school in New York prefers to advertise the presence of a Starbucks on campus, instead of its Nobel Laureate. The nation’s #1 party school has a massage parlor so students can relieve stress (I’m not making this up!); and, of course, every school must have a state-of-the-art gym. One Ohio university spent $140 million dollars on a sports complex that features canoes, batting cages, massages, and a climbing wall big enough to handle 50 students. Prediction: within 20 years, Disney World will be out of business because the colleges and universities will be local entertainment magnets that will match Disney’s amusement amenities. 3. Go shopping… Don’t waste your time traveling to a beautiful campus whose aid plan is weighted heavily towards loans. Ball State University’s published aid-package ratio approximates 60% loans to 40% grants, whereas Stonehill College’s is 60% grants to 40% loans. Two good schools, but one better aid package (steak). Making choices just got a whole lot easier. But where’s the beef? 4. …at this info market. Here’s a huge steak tip: to discover who has better grant-to-loan ratios, go to www.collegeboard.com and do a college search. Go to the school’s Cost & Financial Aid and look for the average percent of need met. Colleges which don’t disclose this statistical information are the first to tell you that they treat everyone as an individual, not as a statistic. It’s the first sign that you’re about to be snookered. If a college can’t make the slightest effort to help you make an informed decision on something as simple as their grant-to-loan ratio, perhaps the school should be off your radar screen of choices. Then again, many of these offices are filled with uninformed students on work-study. 5. Hire a private tutor. Higher SAT/ACT scores can mean more grant money from private colleges. Many will give you grants starting at $20,000 if SATs are just over 1100 and you’re in the top 20% of your class. Children of millionaires can get this money. Visit the college’s website, click on “Financial Aid,” and look for the school’s scholarships that list their requirements. See section, SAT & ACT. Colleges want you to believe there’s more to choosing a college than just money. Don’t be fooled. Colleges are in the game of marketing their own banquet of sizzle, and if Stonehill can do the same for your child as Ball State, your choice is easy. There are plenty of good schools like Ball State, but with better aid packages like Stonehill’s. With growing endowments, private colleges are private banks. That’s where the money is. More steak, please. Grant and scholarship monies are awarded mostly on merit (great grades and test scores) rather than need. This money is donated by corporations, alumni, government, or the college. It’s simply a discount off the sticker price. If you don’t receive a discount, it may be due to (a) your child’s in the bottom 50% of the entering class, (b) you don’t qualify for need-based aid, (c) you qualify for lots of financial aid, but were late in submitting your aid forms, (d) you were on-time but the forms had the usual errors, omissions, and inconsistencies, or (e) you were one of the 1.8 million families who didn’t fill out any forms. The life-isn’t-fair response won’t work. What works is doing everything right the first time. To get started, revisit item #4. Tags: college financial aid money admissions Related PostsPost a comment
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