I’ve mentioned before that not all 50-50 schools are affordable or generous with financial aid. Recently, I’ve started looking at Parent Loans for Undergraduate Students (PLUS) loans. As the name indicates, these loans are usually not taken out by the student but by parents on the student’s behalf. This means that they aren’t generally counted in the student debt statistics because it’s not the student’s debt but the parent’s. And the fact the parents can borrow up to the total cost of attendance each year can make them very dangerous loans.
50-50 Highlights: Colleges Where Parents End Up With Debt
There are common stereotypes of public and private colleges. Public universities offer a much lower sticker price than private institutions while private colleges have the reputation of being small and personal but expensive. And while these perceptions contain some truth, you really shouldn’t let them limit your college search.
Should you start your undergraduate education at a community college to save money? As usual, there is rarely a simply yes or no answer. So many factors for college success vary from institution to institution and so much depends on the individual that any answer is going to have to be qualified.
Believe it or not, spending time on Facebook can be a good thing for parents involved in the college search and admission process. In fact, Facebook can be an efficient way of collecting information from a variety of sources to help figure out what you need to know about finding and paying for college. And I’m not talking about simply following colleges that might eventually make the final college list. 
What does it mean if a college or university has a relatively high percentage of international students? Does it indicate better tuition deals for foreign students either in terms of financial aid or lower out-of-state tuition? Or does it mean that the school is better at recruiting international students for full pay students?
When I went to college, back in the 80’s, my Pell Grant covered my tuition. My parents were usually able to help pay for books and my student loans and part-time jobs paid for room and board. Thanks to financial aid, I was able to graduate from an honors program at my state flagship university in four years.
Sometime ago, I listed