<p>Has anyone used or is currently using College Planning Network, LLC out of Ohio. For a fee ($3-4K), among other things, they work with you on positioning your money to improve your chances of gift aid, as well as doing all the FAFSA & Profile forms for you. Just curious if anyone has any real good or bad experiences with them.</p>
<p>Seems like it would be better to save your money and spend it on college than blow it on some sketchy sounding company that proposes to help you trick financial aid officers. It probably doesn’t work.</p>
<p>I bought a copy of How to Pay for College without Going Broke (Princeton Review).
It was about $19.95. It gives you advice on both long-term and short-term strategies along with pointers on filling out Profile and FAFSA.</p>
<p>Thanks, you both helped confirm my theory, and IloveLA - thanks for the book tip</p>
<p>What was your theory? My guess (theory?) is that this sounds like a scam. If you need FA, why spend an additional $3-4K looking for it?</p>
<p>Limabeans - My gut said not to bother & save my money and my theory was that posters would agree.</p>
<p>The woman at our high school’s financial aid session said NEVER pay anyone who offers to help you find scholarship money.</p>
<p>I LOVE how the posts endorsing a company are always by someone with 1-2 posts on the board. :)</p>
<p>I was thinking the exact same thing, ebeeeee.</p>
<p>I’m sure CC regulars are more than capable of figuring out “the college stuff” and “the FA stuff” themselves. But I’ve met a lot of parents who just don’t have the knack for this stuff … like my neighbor, whose D had good grades and very poor SAT scores. The D’s top choice was a SAT-optional school … but the parents insisted on sending along the SAT scores. “What could it hurt?” was their logic.</p>
<p>I’m not excusing lazy parents from doing due diligence. But for parents like my neighbor, an independent helping hand can be useful. (No, I don’t know anything about College Planning Networks.)</p>
<p>lots of endorsements of posters with <5 posts.</p>
<p>Hahaha. Seems like ZAC BISSONNETTE (BTW, dude, using caps is a dead giveaway) is a marketer, too… trying to make money at their expense! Seriously, I’d much rather hear the experiences of families who’ve actually worked with CPN in this thread.</p>
<p>Scott – You need to update your website. Princeton and Harvard require two, not three, SAT II Subject Tests.</p>
<p>I have been receiving info from CPN/Scott Weingold for about a month (yes, we, too, are on the search for help, both financial and in choosing a school) and last week went to a “College Funding & Planning” workshop, locally. To my amazement (am I naive!?), it was the exact/verbatim presentation and informational handouts (including bios format and “books” published) as Scott Weingold’s CPN. I thought I had just gotten sucked into an Amway party! So what’s up–is it legit, are these strategies helpful, do they have info that only they can ferret out (which schools provide the most/greatest percentage of free financial aid, tax strategies to hide income on the FAFSA, etc.)? Do they need all of my personal financial info (SS number, bank accounts, investment accounts, W-2’s, etc.) or can I just provide them with the $$ amounts?</p>
<p>I am following these posts with great interest as I recently had a free consultation with CPN and it sounds very interesting to me. I did not feel pressured in any way but I do have additional questions and wanted to know from someone who has used them
- Did you work with one advisor throughout the process?
- Did you feel comfortable throughout the entire process as far as which colleges they were directing you to.
- Did you need to provide bank account #'s and SS#'s? I would assume you would have to.
4 Did you ever meet your advisor personally or was everything done via phone and email?
We are planning on making a decision soon so this info would help.</p>
<p>Wow! Congratulations to all these new members! We hope to see you active in these forums discussing anything and everything besides this college planning network. If you are so passionate about this process, we will be happy to talk to you about your child’s search, selection process and results. As you can imagine, we are a site that is dedicated to helping each other make good decisions for our students and our families. We have figured out how to do many things ourselves, including improve test scores, apply for financial aid and select excellent colleges that are not known to all. Enhoy being a member of the CC family.</p>
<p>VegMusicMomof2-</p>
<p>I would say there is nothing you can’t accomplish with enough time, resources, experience, and a good computer (along with good search skills). The real question is do you really have time, will you invest it, and will it be productive. All questions that only you can answer and old father time will verify. But you sound like a go getter so good luck!</p>
<p>mulberrygirl-</p>
<p>Pretty new here but have had a wonderful experience AND a bad experience with college planning help/support. Like most things, there are good/bad/ugly in most every situation. I can speak from experience that the majority of my friends (parents of students either heading to college, in college, or aspiring to go to college) know very little about the behind the scenes, “what it takes” to get a solid education at the best value. Honestly, most everyone i know makes financial decisions with little to know first hand knowledge and experience in some facet of life. What i would say is all i know in terms of college and the incredibly horrendous cost that continues spiraling up faster than my healthcare insurance does is that it is “THE single largest expense” my family will EVER incurr in a short 3-4 year period of time. </p>
<p>You have to do your research, due diligence, but most of all ask the questions you are asking here of them. Get your “proposed advisor” on the phone. You are the consumer and you have just as much of a say in the process of how you want your experience to be as does the provider…its called service. However, the most important thing to remember with any service is there is a reason some people specialize vs running every “deal” or “MLM” that comes down the road…its because hopefully they are passionate about what they do, committed to an exceptionally positive and valuable experience AND at the end of the day leave you in a much more beneficial/positive position than when first engaged.</p>
<p>I can tell you that with all things, you must make your own decision but i will say you will benefit considerably if you find someone whom knows what they are doing like i did the second time around, the folks saved us over $47K over about 5 years… so guess you gotta do the math and see if trading $2-3 grand like we did is worth the return… it was for us :~)</p>
<p>What’s this? Something is weird with so many new members. Do you suppose someone’s creating lots of new names to stir up some noise about CPN?</p>
<p>DKatDadof2 - 11 posts
AuRunner - 2
VegMusicMomof2 - 2
lizard001 - 2
mulberrygirl - 1
doublel - 1
jaschneider - 2
Hawker - 1
ColPlanNet - 3</p>
<p>I stand by my earlier comment, made last year: if money is already tight for college, why spend $3-4K to get help filling out the forms?</p>
<p>Don’t trust this thread.</p>