The 2015 college application season has officially opened.
But in our desire to help our kids navigate this land-mine-fraught road,
we might actually be doing some things that harm them. Lynn
O’Shaughnessy, a nationally recognized college expert, author of "The
College Solution: A Guide for Everyone Looking for the Right School at
the Right Price, and blogger at
The College Solution, helped us develop this list of 8 mistakes parents frequently make when attempting to help their kids apply to colleges:
Ignoring schools you never heard of.
If you limit your search to the same 200 schools where everyone else is
also applying, you are shortchanging your student, said O'Shaughnessy.
One of the realities is that when so many people apply to the same
places, those schools become highly selective in who they pick and far
less generous with financial aid. O'Shaughnessy suggests adding some
smaller, lesser-known schools to the list.
Colleges That Change Lives , a consortium of smaller liberal arts schools, is a good place to start, she said.
Smaller
colleges also provide a more intimate learning experience, she said.
Students get to know their professors, can find role models and mentors
to help shape their future, and in general, don't get lost in the
masses. You are more than just one of the bodies warming a seat in a big
lecture hall taught by a TA who never really wanted to be a teacher in
the first place, she said. "Even dance classes at big universities are
taught 'lecture style'," she said.
But don't those big brand-name schools mean a happier college experience and a higher jobs placement rate after graduation?
Au contraire,
O'Shaughnessy said. It turns out that your future happiness at work and
at home has more to do with what you do at college than where you went
to school,
according to a recent poll by Gallup and Purdue University.
College is what you make of it, O'Shaughnessy, whose own daughter when
to a school you likely never heard of and can't spell and propelled
herself into semesters abroad, launched a business while an
undergraduate, and is now the head of marketing for a toy company.
Not knowing what you can actually afford ahead of time.
Amazingly, she said, many parents get sucked into this quicksand trap.
Their kids start the college application season without knowing how much
money they have to spend. This is the educational equivalent of looking
at $2 million homes at open houses when you can realistically afford to
buy a $300,000 condo. And we all know what happens after we do that:
Those $300,000 condos just look so darn uninviting afterward.
Why
let your student apply to schools that you can't afford? asks
O'Shaughnessy. Affordability is a conversation to have with your kids
before they apply, not after they get accepted to a "dream" school and have no viable means to pay for it.
O'Shaunghnessy
says everyone should run their numbers through the Expected Family
Contribution calculator to learn what colleges and universities are
likely going to say about what your contribution should be.
To get your Expected Family Contribution (EFC) number, you can use the EFC calculator on the College Board site.
"You
need to obtain your EFC to get an idea of what any college will cost
you at a minimum," said O'Shaughnessy. But, she notes, usually you will
have to pay more than that. When you know what your EFC is, you start
looking for schools that would be a reasonably good match financially.
If
you have a lower EFC (you are low/middle income), look for schools that
are very generous with financial aid. If you have a high EFC (you are
wealthy) and don't want to pay full price, look for schools that give
merit scholarships to rich kids.
Then there is the Net Price Calculator, which provides a personal estimate of what a
particular
school will cost your family. Here's where it can get a little dicey:
About half of the schools' calculators are bad because they used the
federal template that doesn't ask enough questions.
Counting on your brilliant student to get a full merit scholarship ride.
Yes, Abe Lincoln rose from poverty and became President. Sure it
can happen,
but it's hardly the norm. If one of the pillars of your college
planning includes having a miracle occur -- which would be the
definition of a full-ride merit scholarship -- chances are your student
is going to be disappointed. Here's the reality: The kids who get the
full ride with merit scholarships are a tiny minority; they are
generally kids with great potential and no money. Everybody else? Get
your checkbooks out.
O'Shaughnessy tells the story of a two
parents -- both doctors -- with a daughter with a 4.7 GPA bolstered by
about a dozen AP classes, nearly perfect test scores and major notable
extra-curricular accomplishments. She was admitted to the top schools in
the country -- and not one offered a penny in merit scholarships. Her
mother bemoaned how unfair it was that a "less meritorious" student
whose parents hadn't scrimped and saved the way her own family had would
get financial aid and her daughter would not. Foul, she cried.
O'Shaughnessy
says that elite schools receive an overabundance of high-income
applicants so they can turn away teenagers whose parents balk at paying
full price. "These schools do tend to provide excellent financial aid to
students who need it, but these institutions are largely dedicated to
educating the nation’s most privileged teenagers." Another reason to
maybe steer away from those schools?
Believing that your student-athlete will win a scholarship.
This is a dream you share with every other soccer, basketball, baseball,
tennis, cross country and football parent. Many are called; few are
chosen. Only Divisions I and II schools offer athletic scholarships;
Division III teams do not.
Division I students are essentially
employees of the school and the best chance for a full-ride athletic
scholarship is to compete in one of Division I's six head-count sports
-- which your student will either get a full-ride or nothing. For men's
basketball, there are a grand total of 13 scholarships. How's that for
sobering?
In other sports, known as equivalency sports, there are
lower scholarship amounts available; some of these could only cover
books.
Excluding the glamour sports of football and basketball,
the
average NCAA athletic scholarship is about $8,700 -- nowhere near a
full ride. For track or baseball, it's generally about $2,000. College
expenses at NCAA schools range from $20,000 to $50,000 a year. So the idea that your left-handed relief pitcher can write his own ticket to any school is pretty much a myth.
As
for scholarships in general, thinking local tends to yield more money.
Better to try your local civic organizations where there is less
competition for money. Remember, it takes a village.
Believing that student loans will be your salvation.
Student loans are the work of the devil, believes Zac Bissonnette, author of
"Debt-Free U: How I Paid for an Outstanding College Education Without Loans, Scholarships, or Mooching off My Parents."
Bissonnette
says "Student loans are one of the top three things teenagers can do to
ruin their lives. The others are heroin and pregnancy." O'Shaughnessy
thinks that parents who go into massive debt -- or allow their children
to -- are misguided at best.
College -- and retirement -- are
things that require planning. You don't just arrive at the doorstep of
college penniless and think it's all going to work out "somehow." And
should you be among those who do precisely that, maybe consider a gap
year where your student works and saves some money. Community colleges,
where you can take your general ed classes and then transfer to a
four-year school for an advanced degree, is another option. But loans?
You need to really consider what you are getting yourself into -- years
of debt that will strap you and hinder your ability to live on what you
can earn once you get that expensive college degree.
Worrying that your home equity matters.
Many people are house-rich and cash-poor, meaning they have their life
savings tied up in the equity of their homes and would rather not sell
their house in order to get at the money to pay for college.
The
good news is that at most state and private colleges and universities,
the equity in your primary home is a non-issue, said O'Shaughnessy.
That’s because most schools only require families to complete the FAFSA
(Free Application for Federal Student Aid) when applying for financial
aid and the FAFSA doesn’t even ask about home equity. What you just
heard was a collective sigh of relief coming from California and other
states where home prices have long been inflated and there are many
"paper millionaires."
There are, however, roughly 260 schools,
nearly all private, that are quite interested in the value of your house
and how these schools treat home equity varies dramatically,
O'Shaughnessy said. The schools in this category include the nation’s
most prestigious institutions. These colleges use an additional
financial aid form called the CSS/Financial Aid PROFILE.
Depending
on how schools treat your home equity, your chances of getting
financial aid could blow up while at other institutions your money in
your house won't be jeopardized even if you are living in an exclusive
zip code, notes O'Shaughnessy.
One big drag, she said, is that
while you can technically appeal any financial aid decision, you are at a
disadvantage time-wise -- you only get a couple of weeks to let the
college know if you accept its offer -- and you don't actually know what
the school considered when factoring what aid to give you. So did they
count your home equity or not?
Not knowing how to evaluate an offer.
O'Shaughnessy says financial aid offers are intentionally designed to
confuse families. The one thing parents really want to know is "what is
my EFC (Expected Family Contribution?") And sometimes, that answer is
convoluted. Does it include room and board, all fees, or just tuition?
Sometimes, schools don't identify loans as loans but insist on calling it "financial aid."
O'Shaughnessy recommends the website College Abacus to compare offers.
Thinking Community College is a great fallback.
For some, it may be. But let's take a reality check on community
colleges. They are inexpensive and allow students to go to school part
time and work. The problem is that overwhelmingly when they do that,
they don't finish. Many are eligible for Pell Grants -- which would give
them the money they need to live while they study -- but don't apply.
Yes, some motivated kids who do graduate two-year schools do go on to
four-year universities -- but many more never get to that stage.
Placement tests are required at four-year schools and students don't
know they need to prepare --practice -- for those tests, said
O'Shaughnessy.
If your student wasn't motivated in high school to
get good grades, why do you think he or she will be motivated in junior
college to get the grades for a four-year college?
