This is where the search is so important and it’s vital to look beyond the usual suspects. Even the B student whose family falls in the donut hole can get discounts. Maybe no full tuition scholarships but definitely 40% off tuition and fees.
My child, the solid B student, applied to seven schools, was admitted to seven schools and received merit aid from six schools. Only one was out of reach financially after aid, and it was not the one that offered no aid.
As others said, the NPC was essential (and accurate), in our case, predicting net cost. I had warned DC about the expensive college, saying it was likely unaffordable so no real disappointment in turning down that acceptance.
Honestly I don’t think most high school kids/parents are even aware of College Confidential forums, NPCs, or how to effectively seek out financial fits, even assuming the NPCs worked for them (which I assure you, they do not unless you have a traditional income source). There have been countless studies on how the lack of transparency in college pricing has hurt the middle class, which is the sector most vulnerable to nasty “gotcha!” surprises when the FA package comes out, despite best efforts to investigate in advance.
The answer is not to say shame on these students and families for not investigating better. This was not a problem a genertion ago when pricing was upfront and obvious. Like so many things, it has become needlessly complicated.
I do like the souk analogy! But, most Americans are not accustomed to haggling at souks. It’s not a typical American free market pricing structure outside of private party transactions and car lots. And, I really haven’t heard of a college that permits such haggling over price. Usually it’s a “take it or leave it” price.
If more colleges would freeze tuition at freshman rates, that would be nice. Unfortunately, it is rarely the case.
Prospect – it is actually not that hard to be a savvy “net cost of attendance” shopper for your kids. SlackerMom figured it out and so did I.
For need based FA, you can use the net price calculators provided by the schools.
For merit aid, you can look at each school’s Common Data Set which is on the school website. Simpler, use the “best college values” database on the Kiplinger website. Also look at the merit aid thread here on CC.
For merit aid, basically your kid’s safety schools (from an admissions perspective) will be your money schools for merit aid. Because schools primarily direct merit money for kids who are above average (or significantly above average) applicants at that school.
As in Lake Woebegone, all children will be above average at some school. For merit money you do have to apply in order to find out and there are sometimes some surprises. But in the current days of the Common App and $50 app fees, it is not that hard (and a VERY good investment) to have your kid apply to 8 or 10 or 12 schools in search of $100k of merit money (over four years).
The usual advice about applying to a good mix of safety/match/reach schools applies to both admissions and affordability. Often, those two lists turn out to be quite similar.
You don’t get a good net price by haggling with the schools. That usually doesn’t work. You get a good price by figuring out and applying to those schools where your kid will be above average. The quickest/easiest identifier is a school where your kid’s ACT/SAT scores are near/at/above the 75% percentile quoted by the school.
You don’t get what you negotiate (which is how the souk works). Instead, you get a good price by resisting the Groucho Marx edict (“everyone wants to be a member of a club that won’t have them as a member”). Don’t shop at the schools your kid wants. Shop at schools that want your kid.
With all due respect to everyone’s opinions on this matter, many of which I actually do agree with (ie, the resources are out there for savvy people to investigate), I think there is a gross overestimation of the awareness of the typical family about these matters. It’s great that we, as parents, take the time to do NPCs (as inadequate as they were in my case, and countless others I’m afraid), and look into common data sets, and participate in this College Confidential forum, and figure out the importance of applying to colleges where your kid will be in the upper range of applicants, etc. etc.
But we are not the norm. And what’s worse is that the entire process has been taken from the students and put into the hands of adults. My parents gave me a budget, and I applied to schools within that budget. Kids today cannot do that without spending a ridiculous amount of time and resources investigating all of these pricing issues - and I’m telling you, FEW real life kids are doing this properly or accurately. The system is just not set up anymore for the typical middle class kid to confidently apply to a small handful of schools.
I’m one of those old fashioned parents who did make my kids do all the investigating and applying…and was ultimately FORCED to step in when the choices they came up with were not going to be affordable as best I could tell. And even then, I myself was wrong in most cases.
When you are talking about tens of thousands of dollars and the budget is tight, there needs to be far more certainty in the process. This whole, “don’t believe sticker, we give discounts, trust the NPC, apply where you are wanted, apply where you are top 25%” just is not good enough for a vast majority of Americans. It’s nice when it works out, and I admit it usually does, but I’m afraid there are many, many worthy kids not making it to the finish line due to the lack of transparency in pricing coupled with a lack of savvy adult help.
I consider myself to be a savvier than average parent, having to go through the hyper-competitive boarding schools admissions process twice for 2 kids, which included test scores, transcripts, recs, ECs, essays, interviews, visits. But it still took me a year of dedicated research and topic following to understand the issues around college admissions & cost-strategies. It took many months of following CC chatter before I became aware of Kiplinger, and the significance of the Common Data Set, FAFSA, CSS, etc.
Even now, as we are waiting for RD results, I am just learning about tactical errors we made that may have cost DS award money.
I can easily see how less knowlegible, less educated, less english-proficient, lower income parents are at a big disadvantage at navigating the funding landscape.
At least there is the internet now. 20 years ago, it was virtually impossible to get a complete list of schools who offer full-tuition scholarships to NMF/NMSF kids.
I mean, there’s a max on the Federal Pell Grants via FAFSA, so why not cap the amount that students can take? If enough kids can’t afford the top colleges, either tuition will decrease, financial aid will be more generous, or tuition will have to go down. (I get with the Ivies that they can just give out more grant money so they may not be too affected.) In any case, omething will have to give eventually.
@wizmaster, Mark Cuban believes the same as you, and I agree with both of you that capping the amount of student loans could be one tactic to effect necessary change…eventually. Of course, that would take some time and would leave an awful lot of students in the meantime with extremely limited options, perhaps even a whole generation.
It’s even possible that these types of restrictions would not work anyway…colleges have shown an amazing amount of resilience to economic pressures by opening the doors wider and wider every year to foreign, full pay applicants. They don’t really need that many American students to survive. College could become a privilege exclusive to only the wealthiest Americans. I don’t really know what the answer is; I certainly don’t have an answer, but it’s just a shame for many striving, worthy middle class American students.
@prospect1 I get that this isn’t a thing you can just fix overnight, but it needs to be less expensive somehow. I’m a high school senior right now applying to some very expensive schools, and I hope I won’t drown in debt. Fortunately, my parents have at least saved some money…
What is happening is none of the above. Instead, colleges have gone to a High Tuition/ High Aid Robin Hood model, where the tuition is deliberately jacked up for fullpay parents, to generate funds to give out as FA to the other students.
The problem is that the fullpay parents are increasingly balking at paying inflated full prices for Volkswagon schools for which they can’t justify paying a Mercedes price.
Ergo why it’s becoming increasing easy to get “merit” aid/discounts at lower-tier schools.
Fin aid is going up at the top-tier schools while merit discounts are going up elsewhere. Granted, if you are upper-middle-class, you may not be able to afford the top-tier schools while if you are poor and aren’t good enough to get in to those elite meet-full-need schools or get big merit scholarships from somewhere, you’re screwed.
In California it seems they are encouraging more students to attend Community College. Prove yourself there for two years and then you can go to one of the UC’s. It’s a very attractive offering - being able to save nearly half on college costs over going straight to UC as a freshman. A son of a friend in our town wound up at Columbia on scholarship having started at the local CC. Not how that was all navigated - but impressive anyhow. The only thing I don’t like about this is I have such fondness of my freshman and sophomore years at my private college. Friendships that last to this day. And they inspired me. But perhaps parents could send kiddo to hang with other aim high students over the summer at some program to get some some of that freshman dorm vibe. ??
This has been the model of higher education in California since the 1960s. The UCs and CSUs are supposed to be 60% junior/senior and 40% frosh/soph for undergraduate enrollment, with many of the students coming in at the junior level after starting at CCs.
Granted, there are a number of student and family aspects that mean that the choice between starting at a CC versus UC or CSU does not result in the same better answer for every student*, but having the choice of starting at a low cost CC that gives good preparation for most majors at UCs and CSUs means more post-secondary educational opportunity for a wider range of the population, in contrast to the situation in states where the CCs are largely inadequate for frosh/soph course work for many majors.
*For example, students who are already very advanced due to AP scores or college courses taken while in high school, are more likely to benefit from starting at a four year school, since they are likely to take junior/senior level courses in frosh/soph years. But many non-traditional students may find the option of starting at a CC (possibly part time) to be helpful in managing school around their other commitments of work, family, etc… Of course, advanced high school students taking college courses while in high school may find the large numbers of CCs useful in making it more likely that one is within commute range and low cost.
Many of these schools know that they can fill half of their class with those willing to pay the increasing list prices. Growth in college list prices seems to track the growth in income at the very top of the income range in the US, even though it is outpacing income growth for the rest. It does make economic sense for the colleges to try to capture some of the income growth from the very top of the income range, while using financial aid and scholarships to make it possible for desirable students from the rest of the income range to attend.
Of course, that does not mean that people whose incomes are near the crossover point will like it.
Is PhD study an apprenticeship for college faculty? Is medical residency an apprenticeship for physician? (However, they require a bachelor’s degree and more of university course work.)
Why is it that the AVERAGE income at the high end of the income range gets compared to MEDIAN income of US households?
At the high end, if u take the avg of Bill Gate’s income and that of a 150k family, then yeah, the growth at the high end tracks the growth in college list prices.