College Funding Nightmare

How does your student’s dream school quickly become the parents’ nightmare?

When the college decides to not provide enough funding to the student!

One word comes to mind: Emotion.

Families still allow emotion to get the best of them.

While the numbers are dropping, too many families are still encouraging their students to apply to the best school they can get into, and “then we’ll figure out how to pay for it later.”

Gulp!

While failure can be a terrific learning experience, failing the numbers game with college planning is not the place to be “learning on the job!”

Let’s set out some realistic numbers first.

Paying for a four-year degree (did you know that less than 40% of students actually graduate in four years? SCARY!) comes from a family assessing how they will be expected to use their Hard Earned Money. The investment in a college degree, includes student’s and parent’s savings and equity, state and federal money, and college and university funds. And last, but not least – debt.

Now, if the average person wanted to “invest” these levels of funding in a house or building, or even a car, at least in the current economic climate, he or she would have undergo the scrutiny of several qualified “watchdogs.”

Credit ratings would be checked, and income verified. If a business were involved, the viability of the business plan would be evaluated. Whatever the basis, the project would be scrutinized by a small army of experts before you were allowed to move onward. And yet, for a nearly quarter of a million dollar investment in higher education, for just one student, no such analysis is applied. More often than not, parents enter the college admissions process only in the high school senior year, with little or no experience in the subject, nor any qualified guidance, leaving them exposed to the vagaries of the financial aid system.

There are several typical consequences of this lack of pre-planning:

• The student and family lose the power of choice in determining the “right” college
• The college “sticker price” discourages the student from even applying
• The parents get caught up in the confusing financial aid system, and sometimes even fail to apply
• The desire to attend college by any means results in the stripping of saving, retirement funds, home equity, as well as incurring significant debt
• The student decides to attend community college to avoid the cost of a four year school
• To call this situation dysfunctional is the height of “understatement!”

To learn how to avoid the extreme stress levels that come with planning for, and paying for college, take a look at the Blueprint for College Success – for free!

That’s right – no charge to take a look at how, and when the college planning process should begin. We at Strategies For College, Inc. are all about helping families get topical advice and guidance to help them “jump start” the process with their college-bound teenager.

We look forward to seeing you in the membership site and the forums.

Call us at 888-485-7299, or click here to send in your questions.