The 5 Things You Should Be Doing Right Now To Make Sure That Your Child Has Great and AFFORDABLE College Options in April of 12th Grade

The 5 ThingsYou Should Be Doing Right Now To Make Sure That Your Child Has
Great and AFFORDABLE College
Options in April of 12th Grade

Dear friend and fellow beleaguered parent of a college-bound HS student,
Your College Concierge | yourcollegeconcierge.net
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There’s a very good chance that you’re in some heightened state of anxiety now, wondering how the
heck your child is going to get into a great college, let alone how you’re going to pay for it once they do.
It’s understandable. As we write this, college seems to be in the throes of a manic episode. Tuition
appears to have skyrocketed by more than 200%, student loan debt looks like it’s going to be the next
financial bubble to burst and is threatening to cripple our children with debt for years to come (and
perhaps their children as well).
There are also more students than ever applying to more U.S. colleges than ever before, making the
entire college process more competitive (not to mention complex) than its ever been in history. Admit
rates are in the single digits at more than a dozen schools; admission requirements are inconsistent and
in a constant state of flux, and all the former ‘safety schools’ are now ‘iffies’ at best.

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Now, combine those factors with the fact that you probably haven’t been able to talk to your child’s
college counselor at length (if at all) about what is likely to be the largest decision they’ve ever made,
one that has the potential to impact not just the next four, but the next forty years of their life, not to
mention the largest investment you are likely to be making since you bought your home…
This guide reveals the inside secrets that we have used (and you can use, too) that have helped more
than 1100 of our students find and get accepted to their dream schools… at comfortably discounted
prices that their parents could afford.
But before we get to the nitty gritty of what you can do to make sure that you’re one of these parents,
we want to share a true cautionary tale of what not to do..
A couple of years back, we got this email at the end of April from a distraught Dad (not a client) who had
just broken his daughter’s heart by telling her (after she had already gotten herself admitted) that her
dream school wasn’t going to be in the cards financially. As expected, she wasn’t taking the news well,
and he was enraged and raging!

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“I have a daughter freaking out at
home… The price of a college education
now is comical and… the struggling
middle class gets screwed. This financial
formula that FASCA (sic) figures… is
a joke. They decide that going into huge
debt seems to be the American way. This
country is going into the crapper.”
There was more, but you get the gist. We were so worried
about him (remember, a total stranger to us) that we called him
on a Saturday to lend an ear; because folks, deposits for college
are due on May 1st. By April of your child’s senior year, lending
an ear as you rant is often about all we (or anyone else) can do
to help. But…
Here’s a little secret
It doesn’t have to be that way!
You DON’T have to be this Dad. Believe it or not, all colleges
offer discounts; you just need to know which ones will give your
child a discount, and why. Dad above, he made a bunch of
critical missteps, not the least of which was thinking that he
didn’t have to worry about how he’d pay for college because his
smart and hard-working daughter would probably get a merit
discount (scholarship). And she would have - just not at this
particular school.

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They do, however, meet 100% of a family’s demonstrated financial need and pretty routinely do so with
large, as in five-figure, grants - even for families with high six-figure incomes.
Now had this Dad known this stuff in advance, like when his daughter was in 9th, 10th or even 11th grade,
he could have planned accordingly and totally averted disappointment and disaster at the end of 12th.
The biggest misconception in college today is that you can wait until you know where your child is going,
and then consider how you’re going to pay for it.
You see, the school his daughter was ‘freakin’ out’
about does not offer scholarships for being smart
and hard-working. They can’t -92% of this school’s
applicants - let alone those who were accepted -
were equally smart and hard-working. In fact, the
majority of the most competitive colleges do not
give out any scholarships for merit or talent. Not a
single Ivy. Not MIT. Not Tufts. Not Northwestern.
Not Williams.

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That’s because there is a prevailing and FALSE narrative that all ‘typical’ college bound students
and well-intentioned parents like us are screwed - caught in the cross-hairs of making too much
money to get any financial aid grants and too little money to afford the ridiculous sticker price for
college.
It doesn’t have to be that way. College doesn’t have to come down to a ‘lesser of two evils’ choice
between an education that is merely very expensive and one that is obscenely so… and it won’t, if
you take the appropriate steps now, well before your child has even applied to, let alone is
accepted to college!
Today the inverse is true! You cannot decide
where your child should apply to college
until you fully understand the amount of
financial aid and other non-need financial
inducements (scholarships /discounts) that
you may be eligible for (and why) at every
single school that your child is considering!

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The fact is that colleges are businesses. Big Businesses! And they are
as desperate to recruit students as your child is to be recruited. They
look for (and literally want to give money to) students who not only
demonstrate academic achievement but who will also add value and
contribute to the vitality of their campus life.

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There are more than 3900 colleges out there in the US alone! There are
plenty of things that you can do to make sure that you have a bunch on
your child’s list that will want them badly enough to meet your budget
needs. And if you take nothing else away from this guide, focus on just
this one piece of advice. If you want your child to have great, affordable
college options when they are in 12th grade, you have to arm yourself
with the correct information about the way college admissions and
funding work today, and then have the foresight to act upon that
information so that you can make it work for your family!

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So, here’s five things you need to do
right now to make sure
that your child will have great and affordable options in 12th grade
(Hint: you’ll want to do these things now, before the school year gets going and the
stress of the heavy academic lifting really restricts your time and tests your sanity).

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Learn Your Numbers!
There is what college costs,
and then there is what it should cost
you! Do Not Look At or Think That
You’ll Have to Pay The Sticker Price!
1.

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Did you know that every year an estimated 53% of families
needlessly leave colleges off their lists and loads of
scholarship money on the table? That’s because too
many parents fixate on sticker prices or on Federal-
based financial aid when in fact, they should turn their attention to the
pricing and discounting practices of each individual college or university.
And that’s because all colleges discount, just not to the same extent, for
the same reasons or with the same instruments. In this way, and in the
crudest terms, college is kind of like an airline ticket: what you pay for
your ticket is not likely to be the same amount as what your neighbor in
the middle seat paid for his.

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The college board estimates that more than ⅔ of
incoming freshmen should pay less than the sticker
price for college. Actually, a lot less. The average discount
rate is a whopping 46% (that’s a nice price break). What’s more a full 40%
of families who earn more than $100,000 would be eligible for a need-
based Institutional financial aid grant if they knew which colleges had the
money in their coffers to give it to them. Institutional endowment funds
are by far the greatest price equalizer in higher education.

So, the very first thing
that you need to do is
learn the answers to
these four questions:

1. What is my budget for college (how much can I
actually afford to contribute to college, based on
current savings, investments and cash-flow)?
2. How much will I be told (by the government)
that I can afford to contribute towards my child’s
education (also known as your Expected Family
Contribution and your target price)?

3. Whether and/how can I reduce that target
price (legally and ethically, of course)
4. How much and in what ways (with scholarships,
grants, loans) will the colleges that my children may
consider meet the gap between what I’m expected to
pay and the ‘price’ that’s published on their brochure?
All of these questions can and should be answered well before the first college
application is filed- and they should serve as the cornerstone of every child’s college
Admissions strategy. To help you out, we’ve included a list of the 60 or so colleges
that claim to meet 100% of your demonstrated financial needs.

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Make sure that your child is in position to
maximize his opportunities for both
admissions and for discounts.
In other words, put the Admissions Officers
at her favorite schools on ‘speed dial’.
2.

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So here’s a little sanity-saving tip. They call them
ADMISSIONS officers, not denial officers.
That’s because they’re people. And on average, they read about 200 college
applications per week (that’s a lot of reading). Most files will get 12 minutes
or less to make an impression. But… if they know your child, it does
become a lot harder to say ‘no’ to their application! This applies to financial
aid and scholarships as well. Even at colleges that still have 100% need-
blind Admissions practices, we have literally seen students who have built
good relationships with an internal advocate, get their initial offers
reconsidered and receive thousands more at the 11th hour. You see, colleges
want to accept students that they know are likely to say yes to that
acceptance (many even track interest).

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It improves their yield, which is an important
metric used in the ubiquitous (and from our point
of view, somewhat dubious) college rankings formulas. This represents a
huge opportunity for people who understand that dynamic. If you want
options, financial and otherwise, make sure that your child identifies and
builds a rapport with people on campus who might be able to influence the
admissions committee or financial aid office when the time comes. Go to
the college fairs as early as 9th grade… .it’s very likely that the person
‘manning’ the college booth is the exact same person who will be reading
your child’s application...some day. If you have a question, have your child
ask the representative directly. Once again, if you show them that you’re
interested, they will be your biggest advocate inside of admissions, and also
with financial aid..

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Check Your Existing College
Savings Plans/Investments… now
and then regularly from now on.
3.

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Although fewer than 3% of us have enough money to
actually pay for college from savings or investments
(deep breath - see point # 1), most families have set
aside something for higher education either in UTMAs, UGMAs or in some
sort of‘ a ‘qualified’ college plan like a 529 plan, a state-based pre-paid
tuition plan (also a form of a 529 plan), or an Educational IRA. Often,
these plans were purchased years ago, or by grandparents; and despite
the fact that the college funding landscape has changed dramatically, they
haven’t really been reviewed since.

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There are more than a couple of serious landmines
inherent in this ‘fixadent and forget it’ approach. The first, and probably
most obvious, is that most 529 plans are professionally managed’ or tied
to state tuition rates. In either case, you don’t have much control over
how your money is invested. Many of these plans remain in more volatile
instruments, which was fine when your child was born, but becomes very
risky as college approaches. We can tell you countless tales of whoa of
parents who went to cash out a 529 plan only to find that the plan had
actually DECREASED over the years or that they were ‘upside down’ on
their pre-paid tuition plan.

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Also problematic is that while these
college savings plans can provide certain
tax advantages, including reducing estate-
tax exposure for grandparents (w/ 529s) or sheltering income in
your student’s name with UTMAs,, the tax advantages are often
offset by penalties inherent in the Financial Aid Regulations that
can cause you to lose out on tens of thousands of dollars in
Institutional Grants.

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None of these plans are sheltered from the
financial aid formulas; and in fact, the asset
protection allowance for parents has
plummeted so much that for every dollar saved
in one of these nonexempt assets above $6,000, most families will be
taxed 5% in the financial aid calculations. Students have no asset
protection allowance, and their assets face a 20-25% “tax” in the
financial aid calculations. The point is this: it’s time to take a hard look
at your current college plan and make sure that it’s still actually current
and appropriate for today’s realities!

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Take the Road Less
Traveled and Open
Your Mind to the Possibilities.
4.

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While it’s well documented how competitive applying
to college and seeking a financial award has become,
there is one sure-fire way to increase your college options and improve
your odds of acceptance and getting a great award to boot. It’s simple,
really. Don’t run with the herd! There are amazing colleges out there
with smaller marketing budgets perhaps, but more than ample funds
available for need and merit scholarships. For example Union College, a
smaller school in upstate NY, has great educational outcomes, a strong
engineering program, is very generous (need and merit-wise) and just so
happens to have a test-optional admissions practice.

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Translation: Perhaps Union’s a better fit for your hig
achieving, good test-taking child than say, Georgia
Tech. Or, maybe Guilford College, which places 61% of its students into
medical school and is one of the Colleges that Change Lives,. and
awards generous merit scholarships would have been a better fit than
Johns Hopkins and that Dad above would not have had to deal with a
daughter ‘freakin out at home.’

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Too many people focus only on brand-name
schools with big marketing budgets
and give little thought to lesser-known universities
that might actually be a better educational fit or environment, with
better graduation outcomes, than the schools that your best friend’s
brother’s soccer coach said is THE SCHOOL. Every year a different
crop of schools gets hot for one reason or another. In years that follow
cold winters, Southern schools see an uptick in applicants.

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UF enjoyed the ‘Tebow’ effect for years, just as
Boston College basked in the Flutie factor decades
earlier. It is well documented that success is not
based on where you go to college, but rather what you do when you get
there. Bottom line - if you treat college like it’s a ‘match to be made’
and not a ‘prize to be won’ then you will have a bevy of options in 12th
grade from which to choose.

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Download our FREE college guide
to learn how to save $5K - $54K/year on college,
PLUS understand the 3 changes in college
planning and how they affect YOUR child.
5.
You can get the guide from the our website:
http://yourcollegeconcierge.net/
This guide will explain what you need to know about preparing
for college this year with your high school student and exactly
how the recent changes will impact you.

The 5 Things You Should Be Doing Right Now To Make Sure That Your Child Has Great and AFFORDABLE College Options in April of 12th Grade

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