Do
you have to give up a great college match in order to afford an undergraduate
education? No, but you do need an action plan!
The most important principle for matching a great college experience with an affordable price tag is to find schools that meet your criteria and have an admission profile that is close to your application profile. Identifying schools that provide merit aid (academic, service-oriented, or talent-based) is the best way to expand your options, whether or not your family will also qualify for need-based aid. Using a combination of affordability tools, like College Raptor or Capex, and the colleges’ own Net Price Calculators (NPCs), you can begin to gauge the probability for receiving merit aid from the schools you are researching.
There are four additional variables to consider if you want to build affordability into your college search: a strong academic profile; a willingness to look outside of your region and to consider schools you might not have heard of; an understanding of which schools DO NOT provide merit money; and time to do your research well.
Academics front and center! Nothing replaces the importance of good grades in any admissions process, even if you have an outstanding talent. Grades aren’t where you’d like them to be? An upward trend is also important, as is making sure you are in the most challenging curriculum you can handle and that you are taking five solid academic classes each semester. Make the most of your testing opportunities by practicing and studying for the SAT and/or ACT exams. The stronger your academic profile, the more likely you will be to qualify for merit aid.
Re-examine the importance of “name brand.” Name recognition is all about who you talk to, so beware of regional prejudices or ignorance! Considering schools that you have never heard of and being more flexible with your geographic criteria are great ways to maximize your options on the affordability front. There are hundreds of small private schools that provide great merit packages, but the misconception is that their higher price tag will mean more out-of-pocket expense. At a public school your family may not qualify for either need-based or merit aid, and therefore, the end cost of attendance for both choices may be the same.
Know which highly selective schools do not offer merit scholarships! Many families are surprised late in the process to discover that most of their dream schools do not provide merit money and are now off the table. If you know that paying more than $250,000 out-of-pocket is out of the question, then you may need to limit how many of these schools are on your list!
Add time on the front end of your research process so that you can identify colleges that have likely admission probabilities for you. It is easy to keep adding dream schools to your list, but take more time to work on the lower half of your list. This will allow you to identify any early, college-sponsored scholarship deadlines (often four to eight weeks ahead of other scholarship/admission deadlines) as well as other special awards that many families discover too late in the process.
Beginning early will also give you time to apply for outside scholarships—keeping in mind that the local ones often have the best odds.
Remember, the price of a good-fit education does not have to require tens of thousands of dollars of debt. Good grades will help tremendously in the pursuit of merit aid, but these college awards are not given only to the top 10% of students in the country. In fact, according to the College Board, more than 50% of students choose to attend an institution that has awarded them a merit-based or recruitment grant. You do have choices, if you look carefully for them.
The news this week about the egregious and truly horrible abuses of the college admissions process have given further rise to questions about equity, access to college, and the integrity of the college consulting field.
At College Options, we stress ethics from our very first client meeting because we believe in the power of modeling for our students. We want to inspire confidence in conducting a search and application process that is centered on genuine good-fit, where a student can transition to college as a happy, challenged, and engaged student.
I believe that this kind of process is more the norm than not. I believe that college admissions can be an ethical and thoughtful process, on both sides of the equation. And I believe that, while not an anomaly, the scenarios that unfolded in the indictments this week are a tiny percentage of the admission stories for the nearly 2.5 million students who applied to college this year.
When I read the headlines, I am conflicted about what should happen to the students who were admitted under false pretenses, and who were unaware of the mechanism that their parents were paying for behind the scenes. I imagine the hit to their self-esteem, knowing that their parents were not happy with the prospect of letting their child’s authentic self lead the way towards a college admission.
So, for me, the lesson here is not that college admission can be bought, this is not new. It is rather a reminder of how crippling it can be for a young person to feel that who they are is not enough.
One of the pieces of our process that I am most proud of is how we work together with our students to help them tell their story in their own words, choosing a message that is meaningful to them. Our commitment to promoting self-advocacy and ownership of the college search process helps students feel confident and proud about the integrity of their applications.
As departing Standards and Ethics Chair of the Higher Education Consultants Association (HECA), Vice-Chair of the American Institute of Certified Educational Planners (AICEP), and a proud member of the Independent Educational Consultants Association (IECA) and the National Association for College Admission Counseling (NACAC), promoting ethical standards of practice in the college consulting community is my primary professional volunteer focus.
I encourage families looking for guidance in the college search and application process to seek out consultants who are Certified Educational Planners (CEP) www.aicep.org as well as those who are members of HECA www.hecaonline.org , IECA www.iecaonline.com , NACAC www.nacacnet.org , or a regional College Admissions Counseling association. These organizations promote professional development and the highest level of ethical practice. All require an annual agreement to abide by a statement of standards and ethics.
I am grateful to be affiliated with wonderful, thoughtful, and ethical colleagues across the country who are all as committed to a healthy, good-fit college search process as we are at College Options.
Katelyn Gleason Klapper, CEP
Founder, College Options
The College Options team works hard to educate families about the realities of ranking lists and why discerning the formula values is so important. Ranking systems were developed years ago to sell magazines, and have devolved into a college competition that compromises the very essence of a good-fit college search.
When we discuss the best resources for our clients to use as they research schools that are a good fit for their needs and interests, we often field questions about the newest editions of annual college rankings. These are issued by publishers like Princeton Review , Money Magazine , Forbes or, the most popular, US News and World Report . Most questions are accompanied by a little chagrin because we suspect that families KNOW they shouldn't be paying as much attention to these as they do—but ranking lists are seductive and they are a national obsession.
With the likelihood of educational quality really not changing all THAT much in a year, why do the rankings always have so much movement? Well, in the case of US News , it's because they are frequently changing the ranking formulas! This year’s formula was adjusted by 5% to include a convoluted “social mobility” measurement.
The variations in the delivery of an education at a small liberal arts college, versus a large privately-endowed university, or a major public flagship institution are all quite different. What's most important is, "What are the factors that are most important to the student who is searching?"
Like any resource, rankings provide one way to assess good fit, but please pay attention to what measurements are being used. Are they quantifiable factors or are they opinions? Factors like student retention and graduations rates, number of faculty with terminal degrees in their field, and dollars raised per student are all verifiable. I personally like to look at "outcome numbers" (i.e. graduation rates) more than the "input numbers" (i.e. admit stats) because this gives me more information about what happens when a student gets to campus.
Student, faculty, and "peer administrator" opinions are often uninformed or one-sided (peer evaluation & reputation is still a whopping 20% of the US News formula). Admissions numbers can be manipulated (like not including students removed from waitlists in their reporting). Statistics from career services only represent those who fill out graduation surveys and rarely represent the entire graduating class--so user beware. College ranking lists can be an interesting place to start a search, but they shouldn't end it.
