What’s in it for me? Make life-changing decisions with confidence.
For many high school students, choosing to go to college is the most important decision of their lives.
But once that initial choice has been made, a slew of new, perplexing questions follows.
Where should they apply?
What should they study?
Which offer should they accept?
And where on earth are they going to get the money?
While these questions can feel overwhelming, these blinks will help you make informed decisions.
From the world of merit aid to the downsides of research-focused schools, they shine some much-needed light on one of the biggest financial decisions that your family will make.
In these blinks, you’ll learn why great researchers aren’t always the best professors; how to weigh the merits of little-known schools; and how you can save for college for the price of a coffee a day.
Most students pay less than the list price.
College is expensive; there’s no getting around that.
In many parts of the US, spending four years at a state university costs over $100,000.
And if you opt for an elite, private college, then you can triple that figure – coughing up about $300,000 overall.
That’s a lot of money – and we’re still only talking about a single student.
Many families send several kids to college; multiply those figures by two or three, and suddenly you’re looking at a small fortune.
So, the stakes are high.
But it’s worth pausing to examine that price tag.
What really determines the price of a college education?
And do most students actually pay full price?
The key message here is: Most students pay less than the list price.
A university’s list price is the standard, undiscounted figure that you’ll find in its promotional material.
Often, it’s high – but the good news is that most students can expect to pay less.
Why is that?
Let’s start with familiar territory: need-based financial aid.
These are the grants and price reductions that colleges and the government provide to less well-off families.
Because these discounts are need-based, they don’t take your academic abilities into account.
But, in addition to this type of price reduction, there’s the murky and often confusing world of merit aid.
Merit aid is designed to make a school’s offer more enticing.
In general, schools offer merit aid for two reasons.
First of all, it’s a good way of attracting talented students.
A student whose grades are good enough for an Ivy League school might end up registering at a less prestigious institution instead if the price is right.
Second, lots of colleges recognize that their list price is just too high for families to afford.
If they want enough students on their books, schools often have no choice but to offer merit aid.
So what’s the upshot of this?
Well, merit aid and financial aid can add up.
At public universities in the 2019–2020 academic year, the average full-time, first-year student attending college for the first time got a discount of 52.
6 percent off the list price of tuition.
After discounts, families paid on average $15,400 for full-time, in-state students – including tuition, room, and board.
Students at private schools can expect to pay almost double that – $27,400 on average.
If you need financial aid, be sure to apply for it – but don’t expect too much.
If you’ve ever looked into financing undergraduate study, you’ve probably come across the FAFSA or Free Application for Federal Student Aid.
And that’s essentially what it is: an application for financial aid from the US federal government.
With the list price of some colleges topping $80,000 a year, financial aid is no longer just for low-income families.
In fact, if you have two or more children attending college, you could be eligible for need-based financial aid even if your annual family income is greater than $200,000.
Over the years, though, the FAFSA has earned something of a bad reputation.
It isn’t just that it can be confusing to fill out; for many families, the outcome is seriously disappointing.
The key message here is: If you need financial aid, be sure to apply for it – but don’t expect too much.
The government uses the FAFSA to decide how to divide its limited budget.
It can only offer so much in the form of Pell Grants, work-study campus jobs, and subsidized student loans, so it examines each family’s finances and tries to decide who’s the most deserving.
How?
By calculating an expected family contribution, or EFC.
That figure is the amount the government thinks you can spare every year to pay for college.
Unfortunately, many families find that the EFC is far greater than what they can actually afford and that the aid they’re offered is substantially less than they need.
What’s more, some schools ask for even more information to decide who deserves the discounts they can offer – often in the form of grants and scholarships.
This application for nonfederal financial aid is known as the CSS Profile form.
Because different schools make use of your information in a variety of ways, they can sometimes come to conclusions that are more generous than the federal government’s.
But that's not always the case.
Whether you use the FAFSA alone or end up having to fill out the CSS Profile form too, it’s best not to expect too much.
The financial aid you’re offered could be helpful – but sometimes it’s underwhelming.
Pick a college that prioritizes teaching and mentorship.
At its most fundamental, college is about teaching and learning.
Maturing, meeting new friends, and having fun are important, of course.
But when parents shell out hundreds of thousands of dollars for their kids’ education, they expect them to learn above all else.
But there’s a problem – believe it or not, teaching has slipped down the list of educators’ priorities in recent years.
The reason?
An increased emphasis on research.
After all, research is what gets professors promotions and tenure.
It also brings in money, and boosts schools’ reputations, so college administrators love it too.
But encouraging professors to focus on research means directing them away from students.
The key message here is: Pick a college that prioritizes teaching and mentorship.
With professors withdrawing to their labs and offices, the task of teaching undergraduates is increasingly being shouldered by adjuncts and graduate students.
Some of these people are capable teachers.
But not all of them.
And most of them are working in unfavorable circumstances.
Adjuncts are often hired on short-term contracts and may have to work at several schools to make ends meet.
The precariousness of their positions makes it difficult to form strong bonds with students.
Grad students, on the other hand, are often so focused on their studies that they have little time to devote to their undergraduate students.
This is a shame because mentorship is of huge importance in shaping students’ lives and careers.
In 2018, Gallup published groundbreaking research showing that having a mentor is one of the most important factors in determining young adults’ life satisfaction.
So how can you find out if the schools you’re considering encourage teaching and mentorship?
Well, first you’ll want to check out the websites of the departments you’re considering.
Scrutinize the titles of the academic staff.
Are there lots of professors, and can you find out what classes they teach?
Or are there lots of adjuncts, visiting professors, and lecturers?
If you can find a school with a high proportion of professors who regularly teach, you’ve struck gold.
If you want to know more about mentorship specifically, just ask.
Get in touch with someone at the school and ask if they have any mentorship programs in place.
Some schools are even willing to pick up the tab when professors sit down to dinner with students.
If you can find a school with a policy like that, you can expect a culture of mentorship and strong bonds between staff and students.
Consider how different schools are likely to affect your future earnings.
As we've seen, deciding to go to college is a big decision.
It involves a large amount of money, an element of risk, and the attraction of uncertain rewards down the line – in other words, getting a degree is a kind of investment.
Like any other investment, then, it stands to reason that you should ask a few questions about what exactly you’re doing with your money.
What do you stand to gain?
Will attending a given school boost your future earnings?
And is the risk that you won’t graduate worth worrying about?
The key message in this blink is: Consider how different schools are likely to affect your future earnings.
Fortunately for prospective students and their families, much of the data they need to make an informed decision is available on the internet.
The College Scorecard, which the US Department of Education publishes for every school, is the best place to look.
From an investor’s point of view, the worst use of your money would be to attend school for a few years without ever graduating.
That would mean losing money on room, board, and tuition without actually improving your employment prospects much, if at all.
So how do you guard against that?
Well, you can take a look at a school’s graduation and retention rates on its College Scorecard.
What percentage of students dropped out after their first year?
And how many ultimately graduated?
Although these statistics are useful, it’s worth bearing in mind that they don’t necessarily tell the entire story.
Some schools with bad retention rates are probably just bad schools.
But others might find it hard to retain students because they tend to draw applicants from disadvantaged and challenging backgrounds.
Their teaching could actually be excellent.
Still, the data matters – and salary data is of special interest.
The government can only track the income of graduates who qualified for federal aid, so the median salary you’ll see is based on their earnings post-college.
Again, that might not tell the entire story, but the narrative it sketches is informative.
You can even view the median salary for a school’s graduates in a particular field – so if both English and engineering are on the cards, this information will make the financial implications of each choice clearer.
Even if the data isn’t always perfect, it certainly makes your educational investment less of a shot in the dark.
Checking out a few key metrics can make it easier to assess unfamiliar colleges.
Some colleges have reputations that precede them.
For example, the names Harvard and Yale conjure up ideas of academic excellence even in people who know almost nothing about academia.
But most schools aren’t like Harvard and Yale – their reputations are more modest.
So how can parents and prospective students assess these less familiar colleges?
How can they cut through the noise and marketing and judge what each school really has to offer?
Once again, the internet is your ally.
Take a glance at the president or chancellor’s page on the school website, and skim through any speeches or articles they’ve posted.
Their vision of the college might be a little rosy, but it’ll give you some idea of what their values are.
Don’t stop there, though; there’s more important information to gather if you know where to look.
The key message here is: Checking out a few key metrics can make it easier to assess unfamiliar colleges.
One thing you should always look for is a school’s strategic plan.
These plans lay out colleges’ strengths, weaknesses, and strategies for future improvement.
Because they aren’t aimed at prospective students, strategic plans are often honest and unvarnished – which makes them invaluable for our purposes.
Unfortunately, not every college has one or makes one available online.
After looking for the strategic plan, you should turn your attention to the school’s financial-aid page.
Some of these pages will tell you exactly what grades and aptitude scores you need to earn different amounts of merit aid.
Many schools are tight-lipped on this topic, though – in which case you’ll need to dig a bit deeper, in search of the school’s Common Data Set, or CDS.
A school’s CDS contains the data that it makes available for rankings and college guides – but it also includes some juicy information that should be of interest to any potential students.
Tucked away in the CDS, you’ll discover how many first-year students applied for need-based financial aid, how many actually got it, and what the average payout was.
You’ll also come across the heading “Number of Enrolled Students Awarded Non-need-based Scholarships and Grants” – in other words, the number of students who received merit aid.
The CDS won’t tell you what their grades were, but elsewhere in the document, you can find the range of test scores achieved by admitted applicants.
If your own results put you in the top quartile, then there’s a decent chance some merit aid will come your way.
Aim to save a quarter of the sum you’ll need.
Saving for college can seem daunting.
That’s understandable – as we’ve seen, the price of attending certain schools can sometimes be dizzyingly high.
When it all seems overwhelming, it’s worth bearing in mind that very few people can actually pay for four years of college using only their savings.
Most people rely on a combination of their current income, savings, and loans.
It’s not always a convenient arrangement, sure – but families get by.
So rather than being paralyzed by the size of the sum you think you’ll need, aim instead to save a substantial chunk of it: say, a quarter.
The key message here is: Aim to save a quarter of the sum you’ll need.
According to financial planner and author Kevin McKinley, families should think about financing college in terms of fractions.
Let’s take an example.
Say the total bill for a student’s undergraduate degree is going to come in at around $100,000 – more than the average net price of four years’ in-state education.
McKinley would advise the student’s family to divide that sum by four.
One quarter can be paid with savings of $25,000.
Two quarters can be paid using loans – $25,000 in the student’s name, and another $25,000 in their parents’.
The final $25,000 can be paid using current income – spread over four years that amounts to just over $6,000 annually.
A hardworking student could earn most of that sum by taking on a summer job.
Of course, it sounds easy when you put it like that.
But how difficult is it really to save $25,000?
Well, assuming you save over the course of 18 years, and supposing your savings earn 5 percent interest annually, it’s actually not terribly hard.
Seventy-five dollars a month would do it.
If you looked at your credit-card statement from last month, do you think you could shave off $75?
Most of us could – over a month, that’s about what you’d spend if you bought yourself a coffee every day.
Thinking about your savings in terms of monthly sums is far less daunting, and feels far more achievable, than any twenty-five-thousand-dollar end goal or hundred-thousand-dollar price tag.
Final summary
The key message in these blinks: College is expensive, but for most students it won’t cost quite as much as it says on the price tag.
If you want to make sure you’re making the right choice, then do some research and look into colleges’ mentorship programs, graduate salaries, retention rates, and financial aid grants.
Actionable advice: Take a look at the Alumni Factor rankings.
This is a unique and illuminating college-ranking system that measures schools according to their alumni’s satisfaction levels.
It’s the only college survey based wholly on students' own experiences, and some of its findings are intriguing.
Sure, the top ten schools include some old favorites like Yale and Princeton – but the relatively unknown Centre College in Kentucky also makes an appearance!
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