College Admission Help

College Admission Help: If you haven’t started saving for your child’s college education yet, don’t panic
By DIANNA HUNT
dhunt@star-telegram.com

Don’t panic. Calm down. It’s not too late to pay for college — a good one — even if you didn’t start your child’s college fund within weeks of his or her birth. Even if your college fund is shrinking at the rate of banking stocks. Even if you don’t know a FAFSA from a 529.
Rob Franek, the chief expert on higher-education issues for The Princeton Review, says parents can find ways to pay for college educations with a little knowledge, a little hard work and a persistent attitude. "It can be a truly delightful process — not one that is not going to require work, but one that is going to be enjoyable," he said. "And when you find that perfect fit between student and school, the process pays off."
Franek is the lead writer of The Review’s annual Best Colleges book and oversees the publishing organization’s nearly 200 titles, including test-preparation and career guidebooks. He personally visits more than 50 colleges a year and learns firsthand about admissions trends.
Franek spoke recently with me — a parent with a junior in high school and an economy-hammered college fund — about how parents can find a way to pay for higher education. Here, the highlights of our phone conversation, with tips all parents with college-bound kids can use.
What do you tell parents who haven’t started yet? You’re certainly not alone.
What’s the biggest mistake parents make in planning for college?
The biggest mistake is that they are crossing off schools that have high sticker prices. In my mind, that’s a tragic flaw that lots of college-bound students and their parents are making. [But] many schools that have high sticker prices tend to give out a good bit of financial aid to students.
Is financial aid only available for academic merit? What’s out there for the student who isn’t valedictorian or a football star? . [but] if a student comes from a very . Much is due to academic merit . high-achieving school district, it is the job of the admissions team to understand that a B-plus average at a particular high school might not put students in the top 10 percent of their class. But they should know that it’s a competitive environment.
Aren’t most families somewhere in the middle — not poor enough for need-based assistance and not parents of high-achieving scholars or athletes?
The message for those families in the great middle is that there is still . . funding available for those students. One of the things I tell students is . to remind them that schools are not in the business of making a college education prohibitively expensive. They are in the business of educating students. We understand that some schools are going to have more financial wherewithal to make that happen.
Do you need to pick your school first, then, before you find your funding?
Picking a cross section of schools is important, whether it’s 10 or 12 schools, whatever the magic number is, and for some of those to be public, some of those private, but for all of them to be an excessively good fit for the student. I strongly disagree that students should be unhappy at a school just because of financial aid. There are 3,500 four-year colleges in the country. There are certainly 10 or 12 that are good matches for the student. We understand that financial aid is part of that consideration. But it’s also, are your professors good teachers? Do you want to be engaged in the classroom? Do you want to go to an urban, suburban or rural school? Do you want a school on the right or the left of the political spectrum? Or religious or nonreligious? All of those will factor in to finding the best fit for the student. You should have a good list of schools that you’d be happy to go to.
Then what?
Before you apply, equip yourself with the right financial-aid information, and that is finding out the tough-to-uncover numbers. We have much of this information on our Web site — www.princetonreview.com — numbers like the average indebtedness that a student would graduate with, the amount of merit aid that a first-year student would likely receive, the amount of merit-based aid that the average student will receive. You should also look at how much of the cost is covered. Average indebtedness is important as well. Students are wary of mortgaging out their future to earn an undergraduate degree.
Getting the colleges and universities to defray some of the costs appears to be the first step. What other options are available for financial aid?
Students should know that much of the funding that they will receive based on academic merit will come directly from the universities, but there are certainly other scholarships available. A database of scholarships is available on our Web site.
Can a child’s special interests be a source of funding? Music, for example?
I always encourage students to follow their passions, both academically as well as outside the classroom. Some of those things could yield performance scholarships, but many of them, whether they have a performance scholarship or not, define students in many ways. You don’t have to be pigeonholed into one particular pursuit or career.
In addition to ruling out certain colleges, what other mistakes do parents make?
Simply being afraid of the financial-aid process. It’s totally understandable. [But] you can equip yourself with the right definitions, whether its a 529 plan (a college savings plan), a FAFSA form (Free Application for Federal Student Aid) or the dates around which you have to apply for financial aid. Lots of families, especially first-generation college families, get intimidated by that process. Becoming a smarter consumer around both admissions and financial aid directly impacts the process and makes the process more enjoyable, and frankly, makes everybody more accountable.
It’s a much different process than it was 30 or so years ago.
There are simply more students going to college. There are more high-school students, and many more of them are applying for college compared to 30 years before, and many of them are first-generation college kids. Many of those students are coming from very specific states, Florida, Arizona, California and Texas.
Does that increase the competition in those states, including Texas?
I believe that many of the states are prepared for the numbers of students coming in. Arizona State University is pretty unapologetic about saying they are going to be near 100,000 students. It’s sort of a humbling number, right? The interesting thing is that many schools are gearing up for that for a number of years, knowing that the student population is going to continue to grow. Where we’re seeing some problems this year is that many students are cropping expensive schools off their list and applying to public schools. Public schools are seeing more students than they had intended.
It sounds like you’re saying, "The more information you get, the easier the process is."
That process of gathering information helps you fill in the answer to the question, 'Can I find the best-fit school for me?’ That’s the essence.
Ideally, when should parents start saving for college?
I hate to say, yeah, start at birth. It’s never too early to start. I think that the savings process should be ongoing. Find out what an independent 529 plan is. Do you have another couple of kids coming? You should start as early as possible, but you’re still part of the norm even if you haven’t started when your kid is in high school.
What is your key message for parents beginning this process?
Your student is choosing not only where they are going to be studying but where their home is going to be, as well.


College Admission Help: If you haven’t started saving for your child’s college education yet, don’t panic