Most parents know that they will need financial aid to send their kids to college. But they don’t always understand financial aid actually comes from a variety of sources and can vary depending on the college. Do you know the answers to the following financial aid questions?
If you have even the slightest interest in college athletics, I don’t think it’s possible to have missed all the press on the college football post-season coaching changes. As coaches leave one school for another, there is the question about what happens to the players he recruited. And if you’re an existing, or hopefully soon to be, athletic recruit, the chances of finding yourself dealing with college coaching changes is more likely than you think. So keep up with the reading.
If you’re trying to figure out how to pay for college, if you’re looking for the best merit scholarship opportunities, you need to understand the basics of supply and demand in higher education. Why? Because we charge students to attend college. Granted, the way we pay for higher education is a complicated mixture of public finance and individual contributions but it’s still part of the market place. There’s a reason why colleges bury high school students in an avalanche of slick brochures and social media invitations–colleges are competing for students willing to pay to attend their version of the “collegiate experience.”
The list of colleges you apply to will make the biggest difference in how much you actually end up paying for college. Think about it in the most simplistic terms, your local community college is going to be a lot cheaper than Harvard or Stanford.
The problem is that most people don’t create their college list with affordability in mind. And unless you’re willing to pay the full cost of college, this can be an expensive mistake.
Even if finances aren’t a primary consideration, most people don’t do a very good job of creating a college list.
People are generally a little surprised when I recommend using 50% as the minimum graduation rate for looking for colleges. It does seem like a pretty low standard but the fact is that only approximately a quarter of colleges and universities have a four-year graduation rate of 49% or higher. If you use the five-year rate for public institutions, than then number increases to about a third of all schools.
This week we’re looking at which colleges spend the most on teaching students. Specifically, we’re going to look at the average instructional expenses per student. In some ways, you can consider it a monetary form of the student-faculty ratio. Theoretically, the more money spent on teaching the student, the better for the student.
Anyone who spends time on this blog should realize that very few people pay the actual published price for college. This makes it difficult to judge the significance of the rising prices of college tuition. A lot of schools, especially public institutions, justify increasing tuition by pointing out that a certain percentage of the increase will go to financial aid.
Is it possible to have college without athletics? The rest of the world pretty much thinks so. But we’re in the United States where college sports is a big business and can be a major selling point for universities. Students are interested in watching big time sports and the shared identity. For players it’s the next step, often the only or final step, in their athletic careers. For better or worse, sports play a major role in college education.
While college visits aren’t always possible, I don’t think the available virtual campus tours are the solution either. Don’t despair, there are useful alternatives to a college tour but it won’t happen with just a click of a mouse. Yes, it’s a do it yourself alternative but it can be just as useful as a campus tour and a lot cheaper.