I trust that you had a great Christmas and wish you a Happy 2018! I am not sure if you are one to make New Year’s resolutions, but I have one for you just in case you are. How about not paying as much for college as you should pay? I am going to treat this post as a teaser for my College Planning Night on Tuesday, January 16th at 7:00pm in the DeMoss Auditorium. If you are reading this but your child does not attend DC, you are also welcome to attend this College Planning Night presentation. The title of the presentation will be just what the title of this post says, “Cutting The Cost of College”. I am not going to talk about the FAFSA or where to find scholarships even though these two things are very important to paying less for college. In the beginning of October I hosted a Financial Aid Information Night and this information is what was talked about. What I am going to present on at the College Planning Night are the many areas that you may not have considered that factors into paying less for college.
- Location
- Type of School (Public, Private, Large, Small, Christian, Art School, etc.)
- Pre-college opportunities (CLEP, AP, Dual Credit, Online courses, et.)
- Talent (Music, Art, Drama, Dance, Athletic, etc.)
- Work Colleges, Honors Colleges, Special Programs, Bridge Programs
- Importance of major
- Importance of diversity (factors out of our control)
- Opportunities while at college (on-campus job, ROTC, Residence Assistant, etc.)
- Importance of interest and when you apply
- Community College and other 2-year colleges
- Patience
- Having the proper perspective
I will be going into more detail at the College Planning Meeting on Jan. 16th on each of these factors and how they may be able to cut your cost of college. Below are two non-negotiables when it comes to cutting the cost of college:
Test Scores– Each year I see a number of juniors and seniors not take the SAT and ACT as seriously as they should. I hear phrases like, “I don’t have time to prepare with all of the other things I am doing”, “I have other school work to do that takes up my time” , “I just didn’t prep for it”, etc. Now, I know that we have busy schedules and a number of students do commit their time to a number of extracurricular activities, but they should not have an excuse to preparing as much as they possibly can for the SAT or ACT because their scores on these tests are a very important factor on whether they may earn merit-based scholarship money from a college. You can get strategic about location, size, competitiveness of admissions, etc., but if your score(s) are not where the college needs them to be to offer merit based scholarship money, you are out of luck. These standardized tests need to be taken as seriously as your math or English class.
Deadlines- Every year I work with seniors who are completing applications on October 31st so they can submit it right before the deadline on November 1st. Every year I have a handful of seniors who didn’t apply by the deadline they were supposed to and now they can’t be eligible for scholarship money from that school or if it’s the regular decision deadline, they can’t be considered for admission at all. You should always make your deadline to apply to a college a week before the actual deadline. This gives you time to take care of any unforeseen issues that arise that always pop up when you least expect them to. I hear the excuses like, “I didn’t decide to apply until last night”, “I have so much other work to do”, etc., but if you manage your time well and plan ahead, you should not need to use these excuses. Here is a quote from a college admissions counselor about missing deadlines:
“Students may have lost an opportunity for huge scholarships that are offered at the university they applied to. This could be a $40,000 mistake at some universities,”
This also applies to deadlines for scholarships. These can be separate and are typically earlier than the application deadlines. Also, colleges are clear to communicate that to be considered for merit based scholarships, you must apply by a certain date which can be different than their actual application deadlines.
