choosing a college

5 Ways to Save Money on College Costs by Using School Data

December 17, 2023 by Brad Baldridge

Paying for college is expensive for most families, but even if you’re wealthy enough to pay for it without worrying, you’d probably like to get a better deal.

When you’re having to pay tens or even hundreds of thousands of dollars to send a single student to college, any significant savings is welcomed. Fortunately, there are several strategies you can use to save money on college and lower your costs.

As a college planning specialist and Certified Financial Planner®, I’ve taught hundreds of families how to use these strategies over the years. As many of them have been thrilled to discover, these tips can make a big difference in how much you pay for college and allow you to make your child’s college dreams come true.

With those goals in mind, let’s take a look at my 5 Strategies to Lower Your College Costs and
how they work.

1. Get a feel for your local state colleges.

When I advise families on ways to reduce college costs, I tell them to start by using the public colleges and universities in their state as a baseline. This gives you a quick sense of how expensive it is to attend college in your state, and how costs compare between individual schools as well as public colleges in neighboring states.

EXAMPLE A

In California, there are two major public college systems. Schools in the University of California system average about $35,000 per year to attend. But schools in the California State University system are typically much less expensive and cost an average of $25,000 per year. They are all public universities, and their academic standards and requirements differ, but there’s a big difference in cost between the two systems.

EXAMPLE B

Public colleges in Illinois have a total cost of attendance of $24,000 to over $32,000 per year, including $32,636 per year at Northern Illinois. But in neighboring Indiana, the range is only $19,000 to over $24,000 for public colleges, including $24,427 per year at Indiana and $22,812 at Purdue.

Researching these costs as a starting point is a good way to get a feel for how expensive your state is and whether you could potentially save money by attending a school in a neighboring state, especially if there are tuition reciprocity agreements or policies in place. These are arrangements that allow students from certain states to be considered in-state students or receive discounts for tuition purposes.

For more on these possibilities, let’s take a look at the next college cost strategy you can pursue.

2. Look into less expensive and adjacent schools

Once you’ve reviewed the costs of public colleges in your state and you’ve compared them to costs in neighboring states, there may less expensive options you can consider.

EXAMPLE A

In the state of Texas, the total cost of attendance for in-state students is over $25,000 per year at the University of Texas in Austin. That’s cheaper than Texas A&M at over $28,000 per year, but it’s more expensive than Texas Tech, where the baseline cost is around $23,600 annually.

You may also find less expensive options in neighboring states, and an important factor is whether your student might qualify for in-state tuition or tuition discounts at an out-of-state school.

EXAMPLE B

There are regional college organizations where schools have banded together to offer in-state tuition rates or discounted out-of-state tuition to students from neighboring states. One is the MSEP, the Midwest Student Exchange Program, where over 50 colleges from Illinois, Indiana, Kansas, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota, Ohio and Wisconsin offer savings of $500 to $5,000 per year for out-of-state students from one of these states.

EXAMPLE C

The Western Undergraduate Exchange is a similar program available to students from Alaska, Arizona, California, Colorado, Guam, Hawaii, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, North Dakota, Oregon, South Dakota, the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, Utah, Washington and Wyoming. Through the WUE, Students can attend certain schools located
in other member states and pay only up to 150 percent of the in-state tuition rate.

Some states have their own tuition reciprocity agreements and arrangements with other states or institutions. For example, the state of Minnesota has agreements with the states of Wisconsin, North Dakota, South Dakota, and one institution in Iowa that allow Minnesotans to attend public colleges in those states at discounted rates.

The states of Colorado and New Mexico have an agreement in place to offer tuition reciprocity to students from the other state, although spots are limited and they must maintain at least a 3.0 GPA. At the University of Toledo in Ohio, the school has an agreement with the state of Michigan to allow all students from Monroe County, Michigan, which borders Ohio, to attend college at Toledo for in-state tuition rates.

Tuition reciprocity policies or agreements can have restrictions based on geography, academics, majors, or a maximum number of students who are allowed to receive reciprocity. But some have no restrictions other than where you happen to live. To learn more about these possibilities, you can check with individual colleges and search their websites to find out if they have any tuition reciprocity agreements. Or you can do a Google search for “tuition reciprocity” and add other keywords such as your state or the name of a particular college.

3. Find more generous colleges.

One of the biggest revelations about college costs for many families is that the price you see on school websites or from many other sources is not the actual price your family will pay. The real cost of college is what you’ll pay after any federal and institutional grants and scholarships are awarded, which are based on your family income and assets as well as your student’s merit.

If you’ve been accepted to a college and have submitted your financial aid forms on time, you’ll eventually receive an offer that shows how much financial aid your family will receive and what your real bottom-line cost will be.

To get an idea of what your net cost might be for each year of college, go to my Cost of Colleges by State page, choose your state, and view the average annual net price of college for families in your income bracket. My data tables are based on the actual cost data that colleges report to the federal government, and they’re broken down into public vs. private colleges and different income brackets. Find your family’s income bracket and then look at each column to see the average in-state costs that families like yours paid for one year at each college.

As you’ll quickly see, some colleges are more generous than others when it comes to financial aid, and this is especially the case at private colleges, where schools often need to lower their costs to make them more attractive and affordable to prospective students.

By looking through the data in your state and for other states, you will likely be surprised. A school that appears expensive at first glance will sometimes be far less expensive for your family. And your student could potentially attend some private colleges for the same price or less than going to a public university.

It all depends on the school, your income, and your student’s merit, but keep in mind that these net costs are only averages, and they’re based on in-state tuition, room and board, books and supplies, and travel or personal expenses. Your family could be above or below the average, and if your student won’t qualify for in-state tuition, these numbers may not apply.

However, by looking at net prices, you can find schools that are more generous than others and may help your student attend college for a significantly lower cost.

4. Negotiate for a better deal.

Another big surprise for families who are planning for college is that, under the right circumstances, you can actually negotiate a better financial deal from colleges where your student has been accepted. There are a few ways to do this.

One is to apply to and get accepted at cheaper colleges so you have some leverage with more expensive colleges.

Generally this won’t help you much with public colleges, where it’s difficult to get a better deal because they often don’t have budgets to provide much more financial aid than what they initially offer.

As public institutions, they’re already the low-cost college option, and many are not in the business of negotiating beyond that. But private colleges usually have more flexibility, and some may be willing to negotiate and offer you a better deal if your student tells them they’ve been accepted at a much cheaper school.

For out-of-state public colleges, there’s more room for negotiation than there used to be. We hit peak enrollment at colleges a few years ago, and now there are not as many students enrolling.

Colleges lower on the pecking order may not be able to fill their classes, so they may be willing to work with you. The big schools like the University of Wisconsin-Madison or Harvard don’t have any issues. But other schools do, and they may be willing to provide out-of-state students with scholarships or grants that bring their cost down to the in-state cost or
something closer to it. In rare instances, especially if your student shows exceptional merit, they may lower the price even further.

However, when it comes to getting a better deal at any college, it all depends on your starting point. If you’re being asked to pay the full $60,000 per year at Marquette University, and you’re asking for $5,000 or $10,000 off that price, you can probably get it. But if Marquette has already offered you $25,000 in scholarships, you don’t have much leverage. You might even be asking the school to take a loss on your student.

Make sure to ask if there’s anything the school can do to help you with the cost, no matter what your situation is. The worst a school can say is “no.” And when you’re negotiating, you’re not really negotiating. You’re asking the school to help you make your colleges dreams a reality or to appeal its financial aid decision.

Take a constructive approach such as asking, “Can you help me make this more affordable?” It’s also helpful if you can say something to back up your request. For example, you might say, “My dad says I can’t come to college there because it’s too expensive. But I love your school.”

Whatever you do, avoid a combative approach, and don’t make ultimatums. Don’t say, “If you don’t lower the price, we’re going somewhere else.” Colleges don’t like the alpha-male approach you might use with a car dealer.

5. Take advantage of opportunities late in the process.

The last strategy typically comes last in the college process as well. You can take opportunities to get a better deal late in the game, when colleges might have more scholarship dollars available or might need to admit more students.

As we get into the later stages of the college process, some schools may suddenly have more scholarship funds available or may be looking to convince more students to choose their college and enroll there. This sometimes happens because some of their admitted students have chosen to attend college elsewhere, and the scholarship dollars they would have awarded those students are now available.

In other cases, the school realizes it isn’t going to make its numbers for incoming freshmen, and it may be willing to get more of its admitted students to commit by offering them a better deal.

You can’t necessarily count on opportunities like this being available, but it’s something you can certainly explore, especially if you still haven’t chosen which college your student will attend. Just keep in mind that some schools will offer you a better deal at this late stage, but they may put short time limits on it to force you to make a quicker decision.

Want More Help with College Planning?

Subscribe to my free e-newsletter and get great tips and advice on how to plan and save more money for college, how to reduce your costs, and how to put your student on the path to a bright future.

You can also check some of my other helpful blog articles and resources below.

Helpful Articles

The 5 Key Components to a College Financial Plan

Learn the 5 key parts of a good college financial plan and how to get started.

The 5 Types of Federal Financial Aid

Find out if the 5 types of federal aid are available to your family and what they mean for you.

6 Ways to Pay for College

Find out the 6 ways to pay college and the crucial things to keep in mind for each one.

The 20 Core Areas of College Planning

Learn the 20 things virtually everybody should work on when planning and saving for college.

10 Things to Consider Before Choosing a College

Don’t make one of the biggest decisions of your life without reading this article.

Top 10 College Planning Mistakes

Learn the major mistakes that cost families thousands of dollars or derail their college plans.

More Resources

Expected Family Contribution Calculator

Calculate your need-based financial aid eligibility based on federal formulas.

The Free Scholarship Guide for BusyParents

Find out if scholarships are worth your time and a viable option for your student.

10 Things to Consider Before Choosing a College

September 25, 2022 by Brad Baldridge

Like other decisions in life, when choosing a college, a portion of the decision is logical, but much of it is emotional.

As parents, we want to do the best for our kids, but giving them the best in a college education means spending money and potentially impacting our long-term finances.

So how do you decide what is best for your child and family?

You need to strike the right balance between logic and emotion, consider the key factors in choosing a college, and make a truly informed decision.

Here are 10 things every family should consider before choosing a college.

1. Prestige

As a parent, you might love to say your child is enrolled at Yale or Harvard. Going to an elite college may be great for personal pride and bragging at the water cooler, but for some it’s going to come with a big price tag.

I have worked with many families trying to decide if paying big money for a name brand school is worth it. For the right student, that elite school may open doors, provide great contacts, and get them on their path to big goals.

On the flipside, students that are strong enough to be accepted at the elite institutions should do well with an education from any college.

The important thing to know is that name brand schools are not necessarily going to cost more than the alternatives. Since they are so expensive, elite schools usually offer financial aid, and sometimes they use their endowments and generous scholarships to lower the cost dramatically for an ideal student, especially if there is high financial need or your family has under $100,000 of income.

This means these schools might be the lowest cost in some cases, but they may be the highest cost for students from wealthier families.

In the end, only your family can decide if paying extra for a prestigious school is worth it. In addition, you won’t know how much of a premium you may have to pay for a particular college until you’ve done your research and you can see the numbers.

2. College Fit

Finding a college that’s a good fit for your student will save you money and heartache. Dropping out or changing schools is often costly in both time and lost credits.

Going with a good fit may be less expensive in the long run because your student might be more motivated and have a better chance at success. Going with the wrong fit could lead to a costly transfer or dropout.

Sometimes your child falls in love with a particular college and might say, “I know it’s expensive, but I love it so much! It’s the perfect fit!”

In the vast majority of cases, there are multiple schools that would be a good fit for your student. There are usually several good options at different price points.

Ideally, you don’t want to fall in love with a particular school, especially if you don’t know the final price. You won’t know this until May of your senior year, after the schools provide a financial aid package.

So it’s best to look at multiple options, find several good fits at different prices, and avoid focusing too much on any single school. When it comes time to make your decision, you won’t feel forced into anything.

3. The College Experience

I’ve had many parents tell me, “College was one of the best times of my life! I want my child to have the same experience.”

Many parents want their kids to live in a dorm, be away from home, and gain some independence, even if it may cost more.

Other parents worked very hard to put themselves through school and feel like it was a struggle and a lot of work. So they want to make it easier for their children by paying for everything and sending them to a better school than they could afford.

In either case, you may want to spend more money to provide that true college experience. But living at home or starting at a community college are great strategies to save money.

Before you choose a college based on the experience it will provide, consider the costs, the fit, and whether that experience is truly in the best interests of your child and family finances.

4. Return on Investment

College graduates earn more! We’ve all heard about the studies that claim college is the path to good jobs and good wages. Based on the statistics, the higher lifetime income makes college well worth the cost.

Forbes and other major publications are now calculating the return on investment for particular colleges.

However, study results on college ROI can be misleading. They’re based on large groups and averages. In reality, most kids are not average. They are above-average or below-average.

As much as we would like one, there is no formula that will help us calculate which college is the best investment for our student.

In reality, a highly motivated, highly skilled student could make more money regardless of college choice, or even by not going to college. A less motivated student may not be successful, even with a chance to attend a prestigious school.

When looking at ROI, one way to save costs is to start at a local community college or a local four-year state school and then transfer to a more expensive target school later. That keeps your costs down while still giving you a high-powered degree. However, it sometimes conflicts with the factors above, such as prestige, fit, and the college experience.

5. Net Cost

The real cost of college is the net price, which is the total cost minus financial aid. It’s important to keep this in mind when evaluating and choosing schools.

Some schools are more generous than others, and sometimes you can go to a private school for less than a public school—if you do your homework, choose the right school, and you’re the right student.

Your family income will be the biggest driver of potential financial aid, but the desirability of your student can lead to some schools offering you more aid.

Unfortunately, you won’t know the final net cost until you near the end of the process, after aid is offered. However, if you can figure out the likely net cost of schools ahead of time, it might change your shortlist or priorities earlier in the process.

Look for resources on the average net price of schools for families in your income bracket. The National Center for Education Statistics is a good place to start.

6. Lifestyle

A key consideration for some families is how college choice and costs will impact your retirement savings and your lifestyle.

When giving financial advice to families, I often tell them:

“You can afford to send your kid to college. You can afford to retire early. You can afford to have a lake home or vacation home at the beach. You can even take a big vacation every year.. But what you can’t afford is to do ALL of those things. You have to pick and choose.”

Some families are more concerned than others about their lifestyle. Some are willing to sacrifice lifestyle or retirement savings to make college a reality or send their kids to an particular school. Others are not.

To make the best choice for your family, you may have to balance college choice with your preferred lifestyle and future retirement goals.

7. Career Plans

What does your child want to do for a living? This is a fundamental question when it comes to college choice.

I once advised a family with a son who wanted to study jazz. He wanted to attend a college where the trumpet instructors were jazz musicians and didn’t teach classical music.

Also, as musicians with connections in the industry, the instructors might help him launch his future career in jazz. That was a big impact on his school choice, and it narrowed his choices dramatically.

In other cases, career plans might allow you to choose a less expensive college or open up more possibilities.

If your child wants to become a teacher, it may make more sense to attend a good teaching college rather than an expensive private school known more for producing business leaders or researchers.

If you have a student interested in law enforcement or criminal justice, there could be a number of possible options, including going straight from high school to a police academy, or starting at a local community college and landing a job with an associate’s degree.

Whatever your child’s career ambitions, keep them in mind when making your college choice.

8. Grad School

If your child’s ultimate goal is to go to grad school, the choice for an undergraduate degree might be more or less important.

For example, it might be better for your child to complete an undergraduate degree at a lower-cost and less prestigious state school and use the savings to pay for a graduate degree from a more prestigious institution.

If attending a better school for a four-year degree would increase your child’s chances of getting into the right grad school, this might lead you to choose a more prestigious school for undergrad.

Of course, if you don’t plan to pay for grad school, that could also have a big impact on your child’s choice of undergraduate college.

When choosing schools, it’s never too early to think about grad school.

9. Affordability

None of the other factors will matter if your family can’t make a particular choice work. Affordability may effectively make the decision for you.

It’s easy to say “no” when it’s the obvious right answer, and it’s easy to say “yes” when it doesn’t cost a lot. The challenge emerges when a college choice is possible, but it’s a financial stretch.

It may come at the expense of another goal, such as an early or comfortable retirement, buying a new home, continuing to go on family vacations, or putting other children through school and giving them a fair choice.

You may have to choose a less expensive school or face some tough choices among your family goals to send your child to a school of choice.

10. What Your Student is Willing to Do

When it comes to choosing a particular school, what is your child willing to do to make it possible? What will your student be willing to do to help you manage the costs?

I’ve talked with parents who borrowed money and loaned it to their kids to pay college costs, and their children were expected to pay back the parents so they could pay off the loan. Others co-signed a loan for their child, who was then required to repay the lender.

Is your student willing to work hard during school or over the summer to pay back loans?

When kids are young and they want to borrow 20 dollars, they often have no intention to pay it back. When they borrow 20 dollars, they really mean, “Can I have 20 bucks?”

So be careful about loaning money to your child, particularly if must be repaid promptly. Set terms for the loan, determine what happens if your child doesn’t pay, and talk to your child to find out what he or she is willing to do.

Consider setting rules, such as stipulating that your child must pay off any loan before buying a new car, or share an apartment with roommates until it is paid in full.

Next Steps

Now that you’re familiar with these 10 things, it’s time to figure out which ones apply to you and how they might influence your college choice. Based on the factors that are important to you, it may be time to have a family meeting and start talking about the best course of action.

You can also visit the Resources section of my website, to access more college planning resources and financial advice. Or check out the links below to find some of my best college planning articles.

Want More Help with College Planning?

Subscribe to my free e-newsletter and get great tips and advice on how to plan and save more money
for college, how to reduce your costs, and how to put your student on the path to a bright future.

You can also check some of my other helpful blog articles and resources:

Why College Doesn’t Cost What You Think

August 13, 2022 by Brad Baldridge

When it comes to thinking about college and how much it will cost, many of us start with some preconceived and overly simplistic ideas. Here are some common examples:

We can’t afford a private college or university.
It’s way too expensive to attend an out-of-state college.
We earn too much money. Our student will never qualify for any aid.
My student has good grades, so colleges will offer a bunch of scholarships.

However, assumptions about college costs are often wrong. The real cost of college for most families is far different from what you might think, so never make any assumptions. Doing that can cost you many thousands of dollars, and they can kill your child’s dream of attending the right college for their life and career goals.

In this article, I’ll show you why college doesn’t cost what you think, and I’ll teach you how college costs actually work at different types of schools. The insights might surprise you, and they’ll help you make a much more informed decision about which colleges you’re considering. By knowing the truth about college costs, you hopefully won’t waste thousands of dollars or kill your child’s dreams.

By the way, this is all based on real college data, and it’s based on my work as a college planning specialist, where I’ve helped families plan and save for college for more than 20 years. Let’s start by challenging your assumptions and taking a look at the six types of colleges and how costs typically work at these schools.

Challenging Our Assumptions

When we’re considering the vast array of colleges out there, most of us think about schools in terms of basic categories:

Public or private
In-state or out-of-state
Two-year or four-year colleges
Liberal arts, business or STEM
Prestigious vs. less prestigious

Then we make pricing assumptions based on these categories:

Private = expensive
Out-of-state = expensive
In-state = less expensive
Two-year colleges = cheap but perhaps undesirable
Liberal arts colleges = expensive
Prestigious = expensive

This often leads us to make further assumptions about what’s affordable and what kind of financial aid might be available. But the reality is that these assumptions aren’t reliable.

For example, public universities have a cheaper sticker price than private colleges, but that doesn’t necessarily reflect the total cost of attendance. And it definitely doesn’t reflect the net price that families pay after receiving grants and scholarships from federal and state programs as well as the colleges themselves.

Additionally, public universities typically don’t offer much financial aid to middle-income or higher-income families. In contrast, many private schools do, which means their costs could actually be similar, the same, or even less than attending a public university. It all depends on the school and your family income.

Example #1: Public vs. Private Colleges

In my home state of Wisconsin, the University of Wisconsin-Madison is considered the top public university academically. But it’s expensive, and, in recent years, the total cost of attendance has exceeded $27,000 per year for in-state students, and it will eventually reach $30,000 and more. Marquette University, a popular Wisconsin private college in Wisconsin, has a list price of $63,000 per year, which is more than $30,000 more than UW-Madison. But when we look at the federal data on the actual cost that families pay at Marquette, we get a different story.

For the average Wisconsin family making $75,000 to $110,000 per year, the difference in cost is only about $7,000 per year ($21,708 for UW-Madison vs. $28,638 for Marquette). That’s because Marquette offers a lot more financial aid than UW-Madison, to compensate for the difference in cost and help students pay for college.

Example #2: In-State vs. Out-of-State Public Colleges

Here’s another example. Historically, public universities charge double or triple tuition to students from out of state compared to the tuition for in-state residents. For example, recent tuition at Texas A&M (College Station, TX) was $11,550 for state residents and $39,796 for out-of-state residents. But some out-of-state public schools won’t necessarily cost more. Some offer scholarships to attract students from other states. Some have reciprocity agreements with neighboring states, and they charge in-state tuition to students from those states. As a result, your costs at an out-of-state school could be the same or less than an in-state school.

Unfortunately, many families don’t find out about the true costs of many colleges because they start their planning with basic assumptions and never challenge them. They don’t do the research or apply to enough schools to find out that their costs might be very different.

This is why it’s important to understand the difference between a school’s sticker price, its actual total cost of attendance, and your net cost after grants, scholarships or other aid.

To do that, we need to start with a few definitions.

Important College Cost Definitions

Cost of attendance is a financial aid term, and it has a strict definition. It’s the total cost to attend a particular college for one school year, and it includes all of the following items:
- Tuition and fees
- Room and board
- Books
- Travel
- Personal expenses

All colleges that participate in federal student aid programs must report this data to the U.S. Department of Education, which makes it available to the public through an online database.

Sticker price is a school’s published price before any discounts or scholarships. Similar to a sticker price on a car, many people don’t pay the sticker price because grants, scholarships and other discounts lower the cost.
Net price is the price that families pay for a particular college after receiving grants and scholarships from the federal and state government as well as the college itself. For example, the total cost of attendance at a given school might be $50,000, but your net price might only be $30,000 because your student receives a federal grant and a scholarship from the college.

Finding the Net Price at a Specific College

To find out what families in your income bracket recently paid for college at the schools you’re considering, check out my Costs of Colleges by U.S. State. These are based on the actual cost of attendance and financial data reported by each college to the U.S. Department of Education. By clicking on a state, you can see how much families in your income bracket paid at each college in that state during the academic year in question.

Understanding the 6 Types of Schools

It’s also crucial to understand how different types of colleges impact your costs and what you can expect. This is why I’ve put together a list of the six types of colleges, with proper categories for evaluating the colleges you might be considering and understanding what each one means for your student.

Each type of school has some general similarities in how it will work out for a particular type of family and student. But not every college fits neatly in a bucket.

For example, a private school that really wants your student may offer more aid and be more cost-competitive than an in-state public school. But the result at the same college could be completely different for a student that isn’t as attractive to the school. It all comes down to how each school fits your child’s educational goals and your family finances.

With that caution in mind, let’s take a look at the six types of schools and what they mean.

In-State Public Schools
Out-of-State Public Schools
Public Schools Offering Out-of-State Student Scholarships
Private Schools That Will Accept Your Student
Private Schools that Will Pursue Your Student
Elite Private Colleges

1. In-State Public Colleges

These are public colleges in your state, and they have the lowest sticker price. That price is usually considerably lower than private colleges and is often the price to beat when considering different schools.

However, these schools don’t offer a lot of financial aid for the typical middle-income or higher-income family, so you may end up paying closer to full price than you would at other schools. But that full price is usually a reasonable number.

In certain states such as California, Michigan, Wisconsin and Florida, the top public colleges are also quite strong academically. If you can get into one of these stronger schools and it’s in your state, it may offer the best value for your money.

Some state schools are relatively easy to get into, but others can be quite difficult. Some might also pursue your student if you’re a top applicant.

Another thing to keep in mind is “satellite schools.” These are schools within the state system that are not the flagship school.

For example, in Texas, the University of Texas-Austin is the flagship school, but there are a number of other UT schools across the state. These satellite schools generally have cheaper tuition and costs.

2. Out-of-State Public Colleges

Out-of-state public colleges are schools outside your state with similar selectivity compared to what you might see among private colleges. The selectivity of Out-of-State Public Colleges depends on the school in question. They can range from being almost as selective as an Elite Private School (see below) to being fairly easy to get into.

For example, there are elite out-of-state public colleges, such as the University of California-Berkeley, the University of Michigan, the University of North Carolina- Chapel Hill and many others. These are out-of-state colleges that expect you to pay out-of-state tuition. They often don’t offer much in scholarships. They get plenty of applicants willing to pay, so those are the students they accept.

Regardless of selectivity, state taxes subsidize lower in-state tuition prices for public colleges, so out-of-state residents usually have to pay higher tuition. Local residents would get upset if they were paying taxes for spots given to students outside their state.

Many state schools also see out-of-state students as a way to balance their budget, so many don’t offer significant amounts of aid to out-of-state students for this reason.

3. Public Colleges Offering Out-Of-State Student Scholarships

Some out-of-state public colleges are trying to attract great students and are willing to offer merit scholarships to help bring the price down. If your student qualifies, you might receive a scholarship that could negate all or part of the difference between in-state and out-of-state tuition costs.

But the price won’t usually end up being lower or much lower than what in-state students will pay. These schools are careful to avoid any backlash over state taxes being used to support out-of-state students.

Of course, there are a few exceptions for star athletes or truly elite students, but these schools will generally bring the cost closer to in-state tuition and won’t lower it below that.

As with other Out-of-State Public Colleges, selectivity depends on the school and could be comparable to an Elite Private School, relatively easy, or somewhere in between.

4. Private Colleges That Will Pursue Your Student

If you’re in the top 25% of applicants, there are private schools that will pursue your student. These are schools where your student is better than the average applicant, and colleges will more likely offer you merit-based aid, need-based aid or both.

For example, if your child has an ACT score of 32 and the school’s average ACT score for admitted applicants is 26, your child will be deemed an applicant worthy of consideration for a merit scholarship or similar aid.

These schools will probably offer more money in merit aid than Private Colleges That Will Accept Your Student (see below) because they’re trying to encourage your student to attend. These schools also accept more students than Elite Private Colleges and are less selective than Private Colleges That Will Accept Your Student.

5. Private Colleges That Will Accept Your Student

In this category, we find schools that accept slightly more students than Elite Private Colleges, but they’re still highly selective. Great students stand a better chance of being accepted at these schools, but they’re still competing against other top candidates. This means an outstanding student might be more of an average applicant, and many students might be just barely good enough to get in.

Unlike Elite Private Colleges, these colleges offer merit-based aid and not just need-based aid, but your student has to stand out among the best to qualify for it.

If your student isn’t among the best of the best or is only an average or below-average applicant, you’re unlikely to receive merit aid. Also, if your family doesn’t have a financial need, you won’t get need-based aid either. In these cases, you may be better off applying at a school where your student is a top candidate.

For example, let’s get back to our ACT score of 32 from an earlier example. This is an outstanding score and puts your student in the top 10% of test takers. But this number is your standing among everyone who took the test nationally. It doesn’t necessarily reflect your standing compared to students applying to a specific college. A score in the top 10% of all test takers might only be the average score of an accepted student at certain schools. As a result, you may not qualify for merit-based aid for your test score.

If you don’t qualify for merit aid and don’t have enough financial need, then you might have to pay full price or nearly full price. Financially, these schools are a good fit for students who qualify for aid or families that aren’t as price-sensitive and are willing to pay to get into a top-notch school.

6. Elite Private Colleges

We’ve all heard the names of the Elite Private Colleges. They’re schools such as Harvard, Yale, Stanford and MIT. They’re the top private colleges in the country, and they do their financial aid differently than most.

Many of these top schools award aid based solely on financial need. They don’t offer merit-based aid such as academic scholarships. This is because all their accepted applicants are academically exceptional. It’s difficult to pick a “rockstar” student from hundreds or thousands of other “rockstars” admitted each year.

Schools that only offer need-based aid often say things on their website such as:

“Princeton financial aid is awarded solely based on need; there are no merit scholarships.”

“MIT awards financial aid only on the basis of financial need. We do not award money based on any measure of merit—academic, athletic, artistic—or anything else.”

However, these schools cover 100% of the financial need for all accepted students, so if your family demonstrates a need, it will be covered. For families that show a high need, the cost of attendance could be lowered to $10,000-$15,000 per year or even free. In fact, the top 5-10 Elite Private Colleges even use financial aid formulas that are more beneficial to students than the average need-based formula.

For example, Harvard and Stanford have “bonus” formulas that are more generous in awarding aid than most. Students with family incomes at certain levels can even attend these schools for free, such as Harvard students with family incomes under $60,000 per year.

If you know you’ll show a high financial need, schools like this that meet 100% of financial need could be ideal options to consider (assuming you qualify for admission)

However, you typically need to be in the top 1% to 2% of your graduating class academically, and you need to be in the top 1% to 2% of performers on college entrance exams.

You need to truly stand out in a highly competitive field, and it’s not even enough to have outstanding grades and test scores. There has to be more.

For example, when it comes to extracurricular activities, it might not be enough to simply volunteer at the local soup kitchen. You might need to be the person who founded the soup kitchen. Of course, if you happen to be the son or daughter of a U.S. senator or the child of a prominent business leader or celebrity, that can help too, but most students aren’t in those categories.

Nonetheless, if you have a truly amazing student, it might be worth applying to an Elite Private College that doesn’t offer merit aid because it provides significant need-based financial aid packages.

It’s also important to know that not all Elite Private Colleges limit their aid to financial need. Some cover 100% of student financial need and offer some merit aid. They may offer merit scholarships or other forms of merit-based aid to exceptional students. However, you need to be among the top applicants at that school and not just a top student nationally, and some schools only offer merit aid to a very limited number of students or to athletes or those who qualify for specific programs such as a national merit scholarship.

Here are a couple of examples of how schools communicate their limited merit aid offerings on their websites:

“Each year, Vanderbilt awards merit-based scholarships to applications who demonstrate exceptional accomplishment and intellectual promise.”

“Generally, scholarships are reserved for students with special qualifications, such as academic, athletic or artistic talent” (University of Southern California).

“With the exception of the Bowdoin National Merit Scholarship Program, all financial aid at Bowdoin is need-based.” (Bowdoin College)

Elite Private Colleges Category #1:

Schools That Meet 100% of Financial Need But Offer No Merit Aid

Here’s a list of the Elite Private Colleges that provide only need-based aid. All of these schools, meet 100% of students’ financial need but don’t provide merit-based aid. No matter how good your student is academically, it will only get you admission at best. It won’t get you any merit-based scholarships or other merit aid from these schools.

College	City	State
Amherst College	Amherst	MA
Barnard College	New York	NY
Bates College	Lewiston	ME
Boston College	Chestnut Hill	MA
Bowdoin College	Brunswick	ME
Brown University	Providence	RI
California Institute of Technology	Pasadena	CA
Carleton College	Northfield	MN
Colby College	Waterville	ME
Colgate University	Hamilton	NY
Columbia University	New York	NY
Cornell University	Ithaca	NY
Dartmouth College	Hanover	NH
Franklin and Marshall College	Lancaster	PA
Georgetown University	Washington	DC
Hamilton College	Clinton	NY
Harvard University	Cambridge	MA
Haverford College	Haverford	PA
Massachusetts Institute of Technology	Cambridge	MA
Middlebury College	Middlebury	VT
Northwestern University	Evanston	IL
Pomona College	Claremont	CA
Princeton University	Princeton	NJ
Reed College	Portland	OR
Stanford University	Stanford	CA
Swarthmore College	Swarthmore	PA
Thomas Aquinas College	Santa Paula	CA
Tufts University	Medford	MA
University of Pennsylvania	Philadelphia	PA
Vassar College	Poughkeepsie	NY
Wellesley College	Wellesley	MA
Wesleyan University	Middletown	CT
Williams College	Williamstown	MA
Yale University	New Haven	CT

Elite Private Colleges Category #2:

Schools That Meet 100% of Financial Need and Offer Merit Aid

Here’s a list of the Elite Private Colleges that provide need-based and merit aid. These schools meet 100% of students’ financial need and also offer some merit scholarships and other merit-based aid to select students. However, merit aid is usually limited and may only be available to students who meet specific requirements.

College	City	State
Babson College	Wellesley	MA
Bryn Mawr College	Bryn Mawr	PA
Case Western Reserve University	Cleveland	OH
Claremont McKenna College	Claremont	CA
College of the Holy Cross	Worcester	MA
Colorado College	Colorado Springs	CO
Connecticut College	New London	CT
Davidson College	Davidson	NC
Duke University	Durham	NC
Emory University	Atlanta	GA
Franklin W Olin College of Engineering	Needham	MA
Grinnell College	Grinnell	IA
Harvey Mudd College	Claremont	CA
Johns Hopkins University	Baltimore	MD
Kenyon College	Gambier	OH
Lafayette College	Easton	PA
Macalester College	Saint Paul	MN
Mount Holyoke College	South Hadley	MA
Northeastern University	Boston	MA
Oberlin College	Oberlin	OH
Occidental College	Los Angeles	CA
Pitzer College	Claremont	CA
Rice University	Houston	TX
Scripps College	Claremont	CA
Skidmore College	Saratoga Springs	NY
Smith College	Northampton	MA
St Olaf College	Northfield	MN
Union College	Schenectady	NY
University of Chicago	Chicago	IL
University of Notre Dame	Notre Dame	IN
University of Richmond	Richmond	VA
University of Rochester	Rochester	NY
University of Southern California	Los Angeles	CA
Vanderbilt University	Nashville	TN
Wake Forest University	Winston-Salem	NC
Washington and Lee University	Lexington	VA
Washington University	Saint Louis	MO

Taking Your Next Steps with College Financial Planning

Now that you have a much better understanding of the different types of colleges and how costs work at these schools, it’s time to take your next steps.

If you’re not already working on a complete college financial plan for your family, start right now with my College Planning Jumpstart. It’s a complete video course that will walk you through the entire process and show you the best ways to plan and save, so you can give your child a great education without wiping out your finances or your retirement.

The course features nearly 40 video lessons loaded with tips and advice that can potentially save you thousands of dollars on college. You’ll learn proven strategies that I’ve shared with hundreds of clients in my 20 years as a Certified Financial Planner® and an expert in college funding. Visit my College Planning Jumpstart to learn more and sign up now!

THCC Episode 147 – Making Wise College Decisions with the 5|10|20 Outcomes Rule

April 14, 2022 by Brad Baldridge

Today’s Guest:

Mike Flynn, Owner of Engenius Learning

Mike owns Engenius Learning, a tutorial center specializing in Math, Reading, Writing as well as ACT and SATs. They offer services from kindergarten all the way to college.

Over the last 35 years, Mike has been helping kids to get into college, and he believes in the importance of preparing kids for college as early as middle school. He helps them from test prep to picking the right college and the right major.

Questions Answered Today:

When should I start thinking of preparing my student for college?

Mike thinks that early planning is the way to go if parents want to make sure that their students are college-ready. As early as middle school, parents should already be taking baby steps towards college planning. These steps include:

Equipping yourself with good information about being successful in college
Helping your student succeed through middle school and high school
Preparing financially
Talking to your student about college.

In particular, Mike believes that preparing students for college starts as early as middle school, with emphasis on how middle school success is a better indicator of success in college rather than high school GPA and SAT/ACT scores.

Mike mentions the following program and resources to help explain why success in middle school matters:

The Knowledge is Power Program – a program that equips students to get into college, starting with helpful insights and guidance they can use as early as in the fifth grade. The program has an 85% success rate of getting kids (including low socioeconomic kids) into college.

The Forgotten Middle – a report produced by ACT that indicates how critical it is for students to reach college readiness in middle school.

Many colleges have become test-optional. Should I submit my student’s ACT or SAT test scores or not?

Because of the pandemic, the lack of available testing centers pushed many colleges to go test-optional and test-blind. Here’s what these two terms mean:

Test-optional means that it’s the student’s option to submit their test scores or not
Test-blind means that students don’t have to submit their test scores at all, since these colleges don’t require or consider scores at all.

Mike says it might be a good idea to submit your scores if your scores are near the 75th percentile of the college you’re applying to. Scores at that level may be helpful for your application. If you’re not in the 75th percentile, then don’t submit your scores.

Keep in mind though: good SAT or ACT scores won’t compensate for bad grades and poor academic rigor.

Many schools have become test-blind. Should my student bother taking the SAT and ACT at all?

Absolutely! These tests are good indicators of the student’s:

Critical reading
Grammar
Mathematical reasoning.

How does this help? Each college posts the average scores of accepted applicants on its website, and if your score is near the average, then that school may be a good fit. Mike thinks that ACT and SAT scores are a strong form of diagnostics to really tell if a student will thrive in a certain college or not. Take a look at this scenario:

Student A has a very impressive profile with a 4.2 GPA, lots of AP and honors courses, and a 1250 SAT score. Student A wants to go to Stanford, which is test-optional, but accepted applicants generally have an average SAT score of 1540, which is extremely competitive. Student A can apply to Stanford and may get accepted, but is it the right school? It may not be. Student A may be extremely smart and equally diligent, but might just be different from the type of students that thrive at Stanford.

Also, Mike believes that test scores won’t be gone for good because they’re data points that colleges (and especially the top ones) use to look at how high schools perform. The test scores and academic standards of your high school are a deciding factor for colleges when they’re deciding whether or not to accept a student. If test scores go away, then it will be even harder for students in lesser-known high schools to get accepted.

Here’s another example that shows how important testing is, despite many schools going test-optional:

A student takes eight hours to complete a four-hour test and gets a perfect score. This means that the student’s problem is not content, but pacing. Therefore, it may not be a good idea to go to MIT or CalTech, where 99% of the kids have 99th percentile scores. If you’re slower to get academic work done or perform on tests, then it may be hard to keep up.

Mike’s final advice is to assume that these tests are important. Taking tests won’t be a loss, even if the scores are unused for admissions. One way or another, tests help students determine their strengths and weaknesses, which can help greatly in the college selection process.

If college is not the parent’s decision to make, then what’s my role as a parent?

Choosing a college is indeed your child’s decision to make, but it doesn’t mean that parents shouldn’t care. It’s best to let your student decide according to their best interests. Parents can help by:

Doing early research about the college planning process
Asking for help from college planning experts (which most parents don’t know exist)
Helping your student build a ‘lifelong network’
Ensuring your student is on the right path to college (i.e. getting good grades).

The most important role for parents is to make wise college financial decisions, which means:

Balancing what your student wants and the family’s financial capability
Focusing on the best overall option rather than the lowest-cost option.

For Mike, choosing a college should be similar to choosing a house or a car to buy. It’s always a balance between the family’s financial capability as well as what will be the best for the family.

What is the 5|10|20 outcomes rule in making college decisions?

After years of experience and after seeing a pattern among students failing to survive in top schools that Mike helped them get into, Mike realized that getting into the best schools (i.e. Ivy League) should not be the goal. It should be a balance of many aspects. Hence, Mike created the 5|10|20 outcomes rule.

Here’s what the rule asks you to consider:

“Is there at least a 70% chance that I will get my degree in 5 years?”

“Look for colleges where the 5-year graduation rate is 70% or better. Anything less than the national average of 63.8% should be concerning.” – Mike Flynn
Check out this data set for reference on graduation rate

“Will I get a positive Return on Investment (ROI) on my degree within 10 years?

In business, ROI is an indicator if an investment has made a profit or a deficit. This concept is equally useful in college planning because there are colleges and degrees that project higher ROI than others in a span of 10 years. Learn more about computing ROIs here.
Based on Mike’s College Expense or Investment Calculator, you should find colleges and degrees that will help you gain a positive ROI (at least 33) within 10 years or earlier. (Please note: the national average is 44).
Mike’s data is a good indicator if the cost of college and degree you’re choosing is a good gamble.

“What’s my outlook for 20 years?”

Choose a college and major that will be an investment rather than an expense in 20 years, which essentially means that you need to get a job that has the least risk of being phased out in the years to come.

Mike has the 5|10|20 outcomes rule database available for parents who need help with decision making. This resource features a list of colleges and their corresponding 5|10|20 outcomes.

Is this rule going to be the complete basis for making decisions?

No, but it will help parents see if college is going to be an investment or simply an expense.

Brad Recommends

Today, I recommend the book Deep Work by Cal Newport, where the author shares great insights the major challenges that we face in trying to focus while we’re working on tasks.

This book is perfect for:

Parents who are working towards their professional development, as well as those who want to understand kids that are having difficulties in focusing their attention on one thing

Students going into college other academic pursuits who may need more time to focus while studying or doing other academics-related activities.

Cal also has a book that may be a good resource for high school students transitioning to college. It’s called How to Be a High School Superstar.

Cal’s books are available in audio too, which is perfect for busy parents and students, so be sure to check out his works!

Links and Resources

Helpful Articles and Resources

Taming The High Cost Of College
Is College Worth the Cost? – The 5|10|20 Outcomes Rule
Knowledge is Power Program
The Forgotten Middle
Mike Flynn’s Contact Info:
Website
Facebook
Instagram
Twitter
YouTube

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Transcript

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Brad Baldridge
Today we cover college testing and "Is college worth it?'

Presenter
You have kids, they grow up, and before you know it, it's time to plan for college. Where do you start? How much is it going to cost? Will you qualify for financial aid? Should you be looking into scholarships? When will you be able to retire? What about student loans? The list of questions is never-ending. The good news is all the answers are right here. Welcome to the Taming the High Cost of College Podcast. Here is your host, certified financial planner, Brad Baldridge.

Brad Baldridge
Hello, and welcome to Taming the High Cost of College. I'm your host, Brad Baldridge. Today, we have a great interview with Mike Flynn, we're gonna delve into whether or not college is worth it in the second half. And then right out of the gates, we talked quite a bit about testing and test optional and how the landscape has changed around that as well. We got a lot of great information. As always, we've got show notes available tamingthehighcostofcollege/147. So you can get more information there. And then of course, we then roll into Brad Recommends where I talked about some books by Cal Newport. That's all we have for now. So let's go ahead and jump into the interview.

Alright, today I'm sitting down with Mike Flynn. He's the owner of Engenius Learning. Welcome, Mike.

Mike Flynn
Hi, how are you?

Brad Baldridge
I am doing well. So obviously you work in the education field. Can you tell us a little bit more about what you do and why you do it?

Mike Flynn
Sure. So I own tutoring centers, right? Teaching kindergarten through college, reading, writing math. But my specialty over the last, say, 35 years, is been on getting kids to college. And that's test prep, ACT or SAT prep, and then also dealing with kids on the right college to pick, the right major, and I've learned a great deal, made a lot of mistakes, a lot of failures. And everybody every five or 10 years, the whole system changes on me and I got to come up with something new. But I think the the path that we're on right now in terms of trying to guide kids from, you know, people always ask me, 'When should you start talking, when should we start looking at college?' And the Knowledge is Power Program, which is a program that's based in, it started in Chicago, but it's inner city kids, they start talking to kids about college in fifth grade. And it's really just talking about kids about getting to college, what it means and all the possible avenues. And they have an 85% success rate of getting kids to college. And these are kids that are low socioeconomic, struggling with that aspect. And those kids get into college. So middle school, high school was when we start thinking about college, start putting you in the right position. And then obviously, when you get closer, sophomore, junior, senior year, you got to play a different game.

Brad Baldridge
Right? For sure, exactly. And that's the, as I'm sure my listeners that you've been listening a while, you know that's kind of a transition from what I call 'early stage' to 'late stage' where, again, early stages, college is going to happen someday, maybe we should prepare for a fight financially, maybe we should talk to our kids about how they're going to love college someday. But we don't have a lot of detail. We're not even positive, it's going to happen for our kids. And we don't necessarily know when we get there. Once you have a kid in high school, now, whether you've done a great job early stage or not, now it's really go time. Now it's visits, and choosing a school and figuring out the finances and applying for admission applying for aid. There's a lot more to do. Again, even if you've done a great job prepping, you still got to execute at that final stage. So

Mike Flynn
Yeah, and you're 100% correct, right, that early stage, I probably steal that from you, thank you. But that concept of is the perfect way to approach it. And then what I think that you need to do is you need to arm yourself with some good information. And one of these early stage conversations taken a look at the importance of middle school for the success rate of getting to college and being successful in college, right? It's one thing to get to college, but I need to get you through college, right? That's maybe the push that I take

Brad Baldridge
Right.

Mike Flynn
And there's an older study done by the ACT called The Forgotten Middle. And it showed that success in middle school was actually a greater indicator of success than high school GPA, and ACT or SAT scores.

Brad Baldridge
Right.

Mike Flynn
So when I always tell all my parents in that early stage, right, borrowing your term, a we need to have a successful middle school. A lot of times the parents I deal with just, 'Listen, can we just get through 13 and 14? Can we just survive that and then we'll worry about this when we come through this scary dark period?' And it's like 'Nah, sorry, I hate to break it to you. That's the time that we really got to be focused to set yourself up for high school.'

Brad Baldridge
Right? Absolutely. So if we are, again, a lot of my listeners are probably focused on late stage, they're the ones that are searching us out and trying to figure it out. And they've got a limited time. So because you're involved in the testing and the test prep, can you give us a little quick update on what's been going on? I mean, it's certainly been in the news. But for most parents, that's something that's 'not their news.' They're not getting the newsletter from ACT or whatever. So, I guess there's a couple things going on. What is this test optional? Where do you see that going at this point? Have you, what's the latest news as far as a lot of colleges went optional, but what are they forecasting longer term? If I had a high school's freshman or sophomore, any ideas what I could expect at this point yet? Are we going back to testing, are we not?

Mike Flynn
So maybe a 30-second bit of history here, the University of California School System, UCLA, UC Berkeley, there's 10 schools, nine undergraduate, one graduate only. They're more or less the College Board maker, the SAT and the ACT, the other competitor for college entrance exams. They're the single biggest customer, right? And so whatever the UC system does, more or less, all the other colleges around the nation follow suit, because it is such a big powerful group. And the UC system has for years said, 'Hey, drop the SAT, it's biased, it's bad, etc.' And then college board goes and does whatever the UC system says. And they keep making the adjustments and just recently within the last 18 months, which is recent, and in test prep times, the Academic Senate, they're the ones that represent the professor said SAT and ACT are great. We think it helps find diamonds-in-the-rough kids that maybe had poor GPAs but great SATs. They voted 51 not in, keep the SAT. The regents who are the people that have served on the board who don't have any education, they voted say, 'Hey, SAT is gone.' So I ended up that their test blind, not looking at test scores, doesn't make any difference what you got, we don't want to look at them. Some other schools said, 'Well, I'm not quite ready to throw the test out, I want to go test optional.' Test optional is if you have scores, submit them, and we'll only use them if they look good. But if you have some really bad scores, I wouldn't recommend you submit them. So what I always tell people is find what the 50th the 75th percentile of a college you're looking at. And if you're near that 75th percentile, somewhere close and above, please submit your test scores because they could be beneficial. If you're below that, then either keep working on your test scores or don't submit as several college counselors, not counselors, but admissions officers said a bad SAT or a good SAT or the absence of a test score generally is not going to cure a lot of bills that you had from bad grades, course rigor, which is how difficult the courses are. So the tests, I don't think the tests are going to completely go away. You've got a lot of these small colleges that rely on this data. Right? Take a look at grade inflation. How do we determine from one high school in one part of the town to another that an A is an A right, so tests do help differentiate there.

Brad Baldridge
Right, I think there's a little bit of a cheat going on right now, where because there's a there's been a lot of testing, there's a lot of data or institutional knowledge where the typical college says I know that high school is stronger than that high school. And I know this high school has more grade inflation than that high school. And they can mentally correct for all the variability that's out there because they've got years of test scores and that kind of stuff. But I think if testing goes away forever, for good, it's gonna be really hard, long term for a high school then to turn it around, because they won't have any proof that they've improved or slid or whatever. Right. So I think long term, it's going to be some sort of testing or something to, again, try and level the playing field.

Mike Flynn
Yeah, and these things do follow, right, they swing on the pendulum, they go back and forth. I live in Silicon Valley, Stanford is just 45 minutes up the road, the local high school that both my boys go to are gone to excuse me, no one in the last 10 years has made it to Stanford. But we've had lots of kids from this school go to Ivy League schools. And it's, to your point, Stanford doesn't have any data points from this high school. So they're not going to accept a kid. Right? And you take away test scores, it's even going to be more unlikely that they're going to accept a kid.

Brad Baldridge
Right, exactly.

Mike Flynn
So it's really, really strange predicament. And there will be something that will come back. They're always this, these things go back and forth.

Brad Baldridge
Right.

Mike Flynn
The question is, is that if you've got a kid right now, you don't care what's going to happen in 10 years. You only care what's going to happen in the next two years.

Brad Baldridge
Absolutely.

Mike Flynn
So my recommendation for anyone is to take a diagnostic test of an ACTor SAT. Determine which one's better, right? You look at the relative percentiles. There's easy ways to figure out what that is. But use that test as a diagnostic to see if your child really fits in at a school. So if the 75th percentile at Stanford just because we just mentioned it, is 1540, the max score 1600. And you have a child that's very bright, 4.2 GPA, lots of AP and honors courses, bumping that up. But they have a 1250 SAT score, which is around the 80th percentile. Just because Stanford is test optional, doesn't mean that you should go to Stanford. Right, that number, that diagnostic that you took, said, 'I may not fit in this with this cohort.'

Brad Baldridge
Right.

Mike Flynn
It doesn't mean that I, I'm not smart, it just that they're letting in this group of kids that are all these machines

Brad Baldridge
Right.

Mike Flynn
And I just might be a different type of student.

Brad Baldridge
Right, for sure.

Mike Flynn
So we use, I still think that test scores are going to be incredibly important in terms of you finding where you match, instead of a college saying, 'Hey, you're not worthy,' right? It's like, 'I'm not gonna, I'm going to take control. And I'm going to use this test score to see what's going to be a good fit for me.

Brad Baldridge
Right. So here's the problem that I've been struggling with. And I don't know where it's going is, obviously, the pandemic came along. And, again, if you're just getting involved in college planning, what happened with the pandemic is, all the test centers were closed, therefore, no kids could test, therefore, colleges essentially had to say, 'Well, we're going to have to take students without test scores, or we're shooting ourselves in the foot, we're just not going to get any students because nobody can take a test, no matter how hard they try, and there's a big fiasco around that.' And that would have been, I guess, the spring of 2020, which impacted students that were applying the next year and so forth. Well, since then, the centers have opened, but many of the colleges said, 'We're going to be test, no test required, test optional, whatever.' They have various sorts for the next year or two, when they decided to launch that. Are they talking about the beyond this year or two thing now? I mean, is there a way to understand again, if you have a high school junior right now? What are they doing for high school juniors and our sophomores? Are they still test option for them? Are they even telling us what they're going to do? Are we just kind of guessing at this point?

Mike Flynn
Yeah, so this is what I call getting dressed up for the ball, you don't know if anyone's going to dance with you once you get there. But you've got to look good. You've got to shower, put on your best suit your best dress hair and makeup, you got to look good, and hope that when you get there, someone's going to dance with you. So you can't just assume I'm going to go in in my, you know, shorts and holy T-shirt and not have showered in two days and hope that someone, maybe someone will, but we don't know. So this is an unfortunate point in time, where you might have to be over prepared. Because you don't know what college, you know, University of Michigan, I've got a student that was applying to drastically different set of requirements than UT Austin, University of Texas at Austin.

Brad Baldridge
Right.

Mike Flynn
So we had to play two completely different games in order for her to at least be considered.

Brad Baldridge
Right.

Mike Flynn
So it's unfortunate.

Brad Baldridge
Right? So

Mike Flynn
It might change next year, it might not

Brad Baldridge
Right. So your best advice is assume that tests are important. And do the testing, do this prep if you need to all that type of stuff. And then if you, turns out you don't need the score, or they're not even taking the score, well, then at least you are prepared in case they did.

Mike Flynn
Correct. And again, that basic fundamental is what does that test score tell me? Well, can I read critically? Do I understand grammar? And can I reason mathematically? And so if I'm scoring below that number, that, I'm not going to use it for a test, but maybe that's not the school for me, right? So that's what I think

Brad Baldridge
It might be telling you one more thing, though, is, am I good at taking tests? Because I think some people that can read well, just for whatever reason don't know how to fill the right ovals. They can't line it up, you know? So let's talk a little about that. Since you are a tutor what, if I have a parent where I got kids, a lot of parents already know this, right? I've got a kid that just can't test. Well, whether that's because every high school test they've ever taken, or maybe it's the a lot of high schools will have some sort of state mandated progress tests where my kids gets all As, but when we get the progress reports, he's in the 32nd percentile, it's like, how can that be, right? I mean, he's one of the tops kids

Mike Flynn
There's a disconnet

Brad Baldridge
There's a disconnect, and is it the test? Is it their ability to take the test, or is it the actual knowledge that's on the test?

Mike Flynn
Worse, or D, all of the above, right?

Brad Baldridge
Right, exactly.

Mike Flynn
What has, whenever I engage people in social media or, dinner parties, right? Because I live in a big city, but in a small little neighborhood, and it's amazing, my wife and I get invited to a lot of dinner parties, whenever testing comes up, or people need to do something for college, I become very popular dinner guests. And I have to tell people, and it's a very unpopular opinion, that the ability to take a test is a skill. The ability to work under pressure, and know that this is going to have an impact on something is a skill. Now, you may not be good with this. And that is okay. I am, I tell my kids, 'I'm brilliant, but slow.' They question the brilliant, but they confirm the slow. In a sense, I'm not going to be a great tester because I need to really think about things and process right? I work very slowly, but I work. I'm a much better researcher than, say a courtroom attorney who has to be able to think very quickly. So law was not going to be a good fit for me, because that's not my skill set. I also can't learn, I think I'm every bit as smart as some doctors I've met, but they have to learn information so rapidly. I couldn't do that either. So these tests tell us something about who we are. Yeah, I got 32nd percentile, pardon me on this exam. What does that tell me? Well, I'm As in school and Ds on this. Okay, what could I work on? Could I work on my decision making? Right? And sometimes this goes back to the parents or the upbringing. I don't want to blame everything on the parents. It could be the school. You know, my children based on my upbringing with my father, everything was a challenge. Why are you doing this? Right, I had to defend myself, I had to show the logic. And I think I'm good with that. So I tried to raise my kids the same way. Consequently, both my kids were good test takers. Sometimes birth order affects where the older sibling, right, I have a two nieces this way. The oldest sibling just just explains everything to the other one, and the other ones happy to go along. Consequently, I fear that in 10 years, she's going to struggle taking these tests.

Brad Baldridge
Right.

Mike Flynn
So if we don't score well on tests, let's diagnose why. Is it knowledge? Well, the easiest way to learn that is to take an SAT or ACT untimed. How did you do? What was your content score? Right, you took eight hours to take a four hour exam and you got a perfect score. You'd have zero issues with content. You have a pacing issue.

Brad Baldridge
Right.

Mike Flynn
Okay, I take an untimed test and a timed test. And my score is exactly the same. Pacing is not my worry, content is.

Brad Baldridge
Right.

Mike Flynn
Right? So again, those tests can be really just just flipping the perspective. And let's use this test as a diagnostic for my skill set. And then determine what do I need to do now? I've maxed out on my pacing. I know all the content back and forth. But I'm going to struggle when it comes to going fast. Okay, maybe I don't belong in a school where 99% of the kids have 99th percentile scores. Right, MIT and Caltech? Not going to be for me, I have a degree in Humanities. Great, the test and the GPA told me that that's why think tests actually still have, some sort of test has some sort of importance.

Brad Baldridge
Right.

Mike Flynn
Right. We got to work out any biases and things like that. But that value of that test and working under pressure does have an impact.

Brad Baldridge
Right. And I think one of the arguments I've heard out there is, yeah, the people that can spend all this time and effort with tutoring and prep and all that kind of stuff. You know, they're the ones that get the good score. And I guess my answer to that is some colleges, that's what they're looking for, is somebody that can get a top score, they don't care how hard you worked at it, or how many times you worked at it, etc. But they want to know that eventually you can get there. I mean, there's some kid, there's lots of people out there that no matter how much tutoring, they get, you know, they're just not going to learn the high level math. It's just not their thing. And it's never going to happen. Raising your hand I see. Yes, yeah.

Mike Flynn
Yeah. So again, let's go back though, right, everyone says, and that was the Khan Academy coming out and making all of these, you know, hundreds of hours of free prep? Well, there's an opportunity cost there too, right? How much time do you vote studying for one thing when you could have been studying for your grades or you could have been playing a sport or learning an instrument or having a meaningful relationship with a group of friends, right? There's a bunch of very things that we can do there. So let's look at again, what is required to do well on this test? I've got to read at above the 11th grade level. New York Times is written at the 10th grade level. Law books are written at the 13th grade level, the USA Today, sixth grade level, right? That's why it's the most popular newspaper in the nation. Right? All those pretty more pretty pictures and graphs, we know it's not going to be too high on the readability index. So if you can read the New York Times comfortably and understand the vocabulary and go through, you have a better shot of succeeding on the SAT an ACT. But aside from that, you're going to do a better job when you get to college. You know, they pulled college professors and said 60% of the kids were not prepared and overstimulated. They couldn't function without their phones, they couldn't extend for in deep engagement, extended periods of time, and they couldn't read the material or do the math required. Over 50% of kids have to take a remedial course when they get to college.

Brad Baldridge
Right, absolutely.

Mike Flynn
And and that doesn't go towards, I took six units, I took you know what they call 'bonehead English' and 'bonehead math,' those intro level course, those don't apply for graduation credits. So now all of a sudden, you're taking a four-year degree and making it four and a half or five, right, dependent upon how many things I have to do, which then causes a whole other set of downstream problems. So having good scores is less important than having the content required to score well.

Brad Baldridge
Right? Absolutely. So and I think another thing to really understand is what the goals and the capabilities of the student are, right?

Mike Flynn
Yes.

Brad Baldridge
I mean, if you've got the valedictorian or the salutatorian, at your high school, you're going to have a different goals around testing and different school lists and that kind of thing, then if your kid is struggling to just get through high school, and you're thinking, well, maybe community college, maybe four-year college, maybe no college at all, we're really struggling with what the next step is going to be. So I think that it's important that people take that of it into the mix as well, again, because a lot of times, when you talk with test prep people or other academic coaches and that kind of stuff, they have their niche, and a lot of them are working with those high fliers. And they don't really comprehend what a B student thinks and and how they, it's like, they're just not that motivated to just work that hard. That's why they're getting Bs. Lot of times they are capable of As, they just don't care enough. And it's a different path potentially, for those types of kids. And as many parents have multiple, I have a wide spectrum of kids. Let's put it that way. So you know, and again, it's...

Mike Flynn
We call ours North and South. So if that helps you out.

Brad Baldridge
Exactly right. I mean, so it's that challenge of some are motivated, some aren't. And there are different paths. And there's not, there's a right answer, potentially, for a particular student, or many right answers for a particular student, and many wrong answers for that same student. And those same answers aren't necessarily the right ones for the next student. So you need to take it and contextualize it with the abilities of the student, the desires of the student, the capabilities of the student.

Mike Flynn
And that's the perfect summary, right is that its capabilities and desires, that's such a smart way to go about it, because you automatically put that child's future in their hands.

Brad Baldridge
Right.

Mike Flynn
Right, I'm going to do my very best to give you all the things that you need to be successful. But now it's up to you to be successful. Right? And is there something that I can do as a parent to help that out? Well, content wise, hey, let's make certain to read, write. They have good study skills. Habitual academic behavior is what that's called. Let's go through and we make certain we have that, but now it's all on you. And sometimes, kids need to fail in order to find motivation. Sometimes they need to have success to find more motivation. And sometimes they just need to get a little bit older.

Brad Baldridge
Right? They just, yes, absolutely. All right, let's change gears a little bit, because you have another concept that I want to get into. You call it the 5-10-20 rule. And I'd love to dig into this as I'm a little bit of a data geek, as are you apparently. So can you tell us a little bit of what that's about and why we would care?

Mike Flynn
Sure. In Silicon Valley, by the way, geek is a, that's like a badge of honor. Right. So you know, yeah.

Brad Baldridge
Right. Ever since the Big Bang, geek doesn't mean what it used to. So

Mike Flynn
Right, right. It's amazing how all of a sudden I became less dorky, right? So 35 years of doing college planning, and my first several years, the way I was taught, was, 'Hey, get them into the best college.' Best college right? US News and World Reports, the magazine used to put out right when, when you could buy a magazine would put out this list of the top 10, top 50, top 100 colleges and my whole goal was to get kids into those because it was great for my marketing. And because I live in a small neighborhood, I would see these kids that I sent off to college. I'd see them a year later and I affectionately call them boomerangs, right. I sent them out but they came back and they're working at the sandwich shop, and I go, 'What happened? You got into Stanford, Harvard, Yale,' and 'It just wasn't for me.' So after a lot of failure, I stopped blaming the kids and said, 'Well, it's got to be my fault.' Right? I'm putting kids into the wrong situation. So through a lot of different variations, I started to recognize well, the longer that a kid goes to college without a degree, the more unlikely they are to actually get the degree. And that degree kind of unlocks a lot of things. Right, you know, it's just easier. And then, once I have that degree, what can I do with it? When does this become an investment? My college experience is an investment versus an expense. And then finally, what is the sector that I'm going into, what's kind of the 20-year tailwinds? What do I do? Am I going to have to worry about a job? And a quick example of that is journalism right now. Everyone with a phone, and a Twitter account is a journalist. So for you to go spend a lot of money going into journalism, I think it's a noble pursuit. But you know, that's going to be tough, but that sector is going to look a lot different in a handful of years. I don't think there's a 20 year outlook. So 5 stands for, 'Can I graduate within the national average, which is 63.8%?' So I set my number at 70% cannot, just my college and my degree have a 70% chance of graduating within five years? 10 years. So by age 20, excuse me, 33. Right? If I graduated 23, 18 to 23, that five years? By 33, what's the ROI? Average ROI, right? I know, averages can be a sticky word there. What's the average ROI on this degree from this university? And then what's my outlook for 20 years, and there's no data that gives us all of this. Now for you, because I respect the fact that, hey, not everything can be average, that's true. Just because some other person failed in this doesn't mean that I will. And that has to be factored into all this. So we want to use this data to help our logical process. But we still need to figure out the emotion when we go to decide for this college in this major.

Brad Baldridge
Right.

Mike Flynn
So I'm hoping that we'll be able to put, a link to the database that I've created.

Brad Baldridge
Absolutely

Mike Flynn
And parents can go there. And it's a database that I would want as a parent. And as my son, I have a senior who's going through this, this is my baby, right, is going through this process. And every time he wants to apply, I go right to my database. I said, "Well, Case, I don't know if this is a, this doesn't have great long term prospects at this school. But then, 'Oh, look at this one, this does.'" So it helps guide us. Is it going to be that final deciding piece? No. But if I can keep him from boomeranging, right, I feel good. So this is, what I've got on my website is exactly what I'm using for my son. And I think it will, I'm looking into the future, I'm looking at student outcomes, future student outcomes, to try and help determine whether college is going to be an expense, or an investment. And in 10, I don't really know, right, I'm just kind of using housing in my area, you buy a house, and it's going to be a handful of years before you're actually going to start to make any money because of all the fees etc. But 10 years seem to be a pretty good number. If I would invest, and I could double my money in the stock market every 10 years, that's pretty good. So if I can get out of college and have my money I spent now start to turn positive. And that's how I came up with that 10, should it be nine, maybe. 10 sounds excellent. 5-10-20 is the concept.

Brad Baldridge
Right? So let's kind of break this down a little bit. 'Cause I think we use a little bit of jargon in there. So some people might be a little last as far as. So essentially, what you're saying is, if I go to this certain college, and let's say I spend 30,000 a year for this particular degree, after four years, I've spent 120,000, I go out and get a job that pays 50,000 a year, that has a certain ROI. But if I can go to that same college, pick a different degree, and get a job that pays me 80,000. Well, that gonna have a better return on my investment, so to speak, because obviously, I get more money at the same expense. So you there's two levers you can pull there. One is you can lower the cost, essentially and say, 'Well, if I keep costs low, then a $50,000 a year job looks just as good as an $80,000 year job. If I can keep the education costs low enough, because again, the person that's earning 80,000, might be spending 30,000 a year on loans.' So yeah, I guess, to conceptualize, what we're talking about, right is

Mike Flynn
A lot, a lot of calculus involved here. Yeah

Brad Baldridge
Right, exactly. So the basic gut instinct logic applies here too, right? If you can get a nursing degree and you start it, whatever, nurses start at 40-ish dollars an hour, and then you can work a swing shift or nights and work 45 or 50, and work on a holiday and make 120, that looks pretty lucrative relative to the average student goes to a below average college and to get a sociology degree, and they end up at Starbucks. I mean, that's a real thing. And people pick on that. And, again, that's why and then there's a little bit of truth to it. And that's why it rings. So people do it. Right, that return on investment is not there, unfortunately. But I'm not saying sociology is bad. I'm just saying

Mike Flynn
We need sociologists.

Brad Baldridge
Absolutely.

Mike Flynn
They just don't know, if I would spend $200,000 on a sociology degree, I would maybe spend 100,000, and then think about going for my masters at a school that was that next step up, maybe that was the better approach

Brad Baldridge
Or find a hospital system or something to work for that will pay for your master's degree, etc, etc, etc. Right. So there's many paths. And I think that's where spending the time and effort to explore. And I think that's another return on investment that most parents don't think much about is when we get to this late stage college planning. If we blindly stumble through it without a lot of effort and reflection, often we're gonna pick a path that isn't optimal, whether it's, again, leads to changing careers, changing majors, changing schools, none of which, at the price of college these days, that's a bigger deal. When you and I went to college, it wasn't unusual to run into the guy that's, well, I'm on my sixth year, because I changed majors four times. And I'm thinking about changing in a fifth. Because I like college. It's fun to be here. And, and it wasn't so expensive. So lots of people did that. And it didn't have a huge financial consequence. Of course, today, the fifth year is a huge penalty. And whatever you can do to avoid that can make a big difference as well.

Mike Flynn
Yeah, and you can certainly find, so if you notice that I use 5-10-20, right? We talked about a four year college, well, that term for your college is actually becoming a misnomer. Right? Few people are, in terms of out of all of the students that go fue get out and for. Right? But as you've noted, what a huge difference, right in for your ROI, when not only are you picking the college, but you're you're choosing the the length of time, there's so many different factors there. And again, sociology, maybe that you're gonna have to do some hours afterwards of volunteer work in order to earn some sort of credential or license. And my gosh, right, all of a sudden, now, it's just extending that out. So any of this stuff, just to try and help so that you don't go blindly into the night?

Brad Baldridge
Right?

Mike Flynn
It's just, and if you're a late stage, parent here, I would hope that this would just do nothing but actually clarify. So you introduce one more tool and like, oh, there's too much. There's too much. No, I think that this tool is so so simplistic. This concept of like, 'Oh, okay, checks that, checks that okay, all right, this now becomes one of the schools.' There's 2000 schools that we can look at. So everyone says, 'Well, it's what's going to be the best school to go well, no, it's what's going to give me the best future outcome.'

Brad Baldridge
Right.

Mike Flynn
But I don't actually look at it that way, I start looking at all the ones that don't fit. Right, and I use the needle in the haystack, right? You could straw by straw, you can go through and be there all day, or I throw a match into the haystack. And then when it's all done, burn, and I'm just going to look for the shiny thing. That's the way I find colleges, right? Let's eliminate everything that doesn't work. And now I'm left with 50 to 25. Right. And now it's going to be a whole lot easier for me to sort.

Brad Baldridge
Right. But I think the challenge I have with this kind of data is again, going back to the averages, right? So I don't know, can you share what for as far as pricing? What did you use for pricing in order to what did the student pay for the ROI calculation? Was it no list price or net price? Or?

Mike Flynn
Yeah, so there's a couple of different numbers that were brought in. And the most consistent number, the best data comes from Pell Grant numbers, right, which is a federal grant. But not everyone does that. So we could have tried to take the average from the Pell to the maximum. So what we did was we went with sticker price, right? What is that maximum amount. And, again, that led to slightly different outcomes when I use Pell Grant numbers, but not everyone had that. So I'll be the very first to admit. It's a guide. It's not the be all end all because my son wants to go into screenwriting. And he wants to go to a school called Chapman which is in LA which is, you know, they accept 4 and 100 kids, right? It's going to be very hard for him to get into, UCLA Film is the other one. So it shows you what I'm up against here, right. And it's the sort of thing that, you know, it's not a huge ROI thing. But it's when we take a look at the school and what the other things you can do for it. And also the fact that he can get a degree in business and maybe minor in screenwriting, there's all these other things now of a sudden movie producing novels and his options open up. So all it does is it's trying to give me a little more context, in terms of is this college, rather than someone's opinion? 'Yep, that's a great school. Oh, okay. so and so said, That was a great school, I got to go with that.'

Brad Baldridge
Right? Well, again, so here's my recommendation or thought to pile on here a little bit, which is, if you've used list price, if you're the kind of kid that's going to get half off of list price at some school and pay list price at other schools. Now, all of a sudden, that changes the ROI at the schools that are really cheap, right? It takes Stanford as an example. It can show a need at Stanford and you're at $100,000, it's probably gonna be the cheapest option out there.

Mike Flynn
Right.

Brad Baldridge
You got to get in, which is the hard part. But it will be really reasonable if you can't, yeah. And on the flip side, going out of state to Michigan, where everybody pays full price for out of state price at 50 plus thousand. You know, again, did you use that full out of state price of 50 plus thousand? Or did you use the in state price at 27? Right?

Mike Flynn
So simply the variables to adjust there.

Brad Baldridge
Exactly. So on my website, I have the net price of colleges, which essentially shows after scholarships and grants, average price. And again, another big fallacy, right? So the net price of Marquette. Something right here at my neck of the woods is 35,000. If you earn 110,000 plus, does that mean you're gonna pay 35? No, because I've seen families pay full price. And I've seen families go at a much get a substantial scholarships, right? Like the basketball player at Marquette. He didn't pay anything. But he's balanced out by the son of the surgeon who didn't care what it costs. He just liked Marquette for whatever reason, and he wrote the check. Right? So that's

Mike Flynn
My zip code in Silicon Valley, you would think that I was wealthy. But if you saw that I drive a 2008 Acura in my wife's car is a 2013 Chevy Bolt, you would say no, we're not rich, but it's just the neighborhood we live in and the price and anyway, so there's just all these things. One of the reasons I could not go with the net price, you're not afforded that information when you're doing the search?

Brad Baldridge
Yes.

Mike Flynn
That's the information you get after you get accepted and you receive your financial aid package.

Brad Baldridge
Right? Well, that's changing. That's what I help families do where we actually can get that price before we apply. And again, when we can get an estimate at that price. You know, it's not always 100% accurate. I mean, it's never 100% accurate, but it sometimes works. Sometimes we're not

Mike Flynn
Yeah.

Brad Baldridge
But yeah, the challenge is it's highly variable. So even if you can figure out your net price, to figure out the net price of the various participants in your the study that you did, would be essentially impossible.

Mike Flynn
Yeah, there's multiple sides to all of this data. And I'm trying to take and allow this data to be a guiding factor a not a center rail, but just a guardrail. Right.

Brad Baldridge
Right, exactly.

Mike Flynn
Again, that net price calculator for Purdue where my oldest son goes for engineering never materialized. Right, I pay full boat, for out of state were there even though that we were told going in that are, well, we were guesstimating, that it was going to be something different? It just, again, I had to pick a path and I just went with that path.

Brad Baldridge
Right, exactly. And I think that right, for sure. I mean, it's better than nothing as always. I think that's where I talk to families and try and encourage them to understand that. If you want someone to give you the quick answer, it doesn't exist, unless they boil it down to averages or something. And then which case that quick answer is not worth much, because it doesn't factor in much of your reality. So then you essentially just have to do the work yourself and really understand what college is going to cost. And then, as you mentioned earlier, I think he said if you've got the means or something and you're I think it's, if your family is going to give up the lake home so that you can spend crazy money on college, more power to me, I mean, go do it. Right. But if you're gonna bury your kid in debt, or you're gonna delay your retirement substantially so you can spend crazy on college. Well, you know, that's a different decision. Obviously. Many of us earn our money and we spend it foolishly one way or the other if we spend it foolishly on education. Great, right, right. I mean, but on the other side of that coin is we were talking before the we started the recording that parents should be the adult in the room and they're the ones that should try and put some sanity back into this decision process.

Mike Flynn
Yeah, there's so many different issues there. One for parents, it has to be your child's choice. It doesn't mean that you can't give an opinion. You know, your child will look forward to your opinion. I just don't think that it has to be your IDIC that decides, right? You're going here or there? Oh, gosh, whoa, could I maybe go there and we make these accommodations wherever those modifications or accommodations are. When it's a teenager's choice, I call it my Jedi mind trick. Right as I never give them a yes or no answer. Because if I'm expecting to guess, and they give me a no, now I have a fight. So I give them the illusion of choice. Would you like to do this? Or would you like to do that and either one are acceptable by me, I now am giving them that opportunity to think through logically what would be in their best interest. And when it comes to money, and if you are a parent that's paying for this, you would not, you buy a $500,000 home, a million dollar home, $2 million home doesn't make any difference. You have to buy a home that's going to be within your financial means. And that you hope is going to be in a good neighborhood. So it's going to have a good resale value, or it's going to be something you'd want to give to your child when you move on. Why would you not look at college with that same perspective? Right? Let's look at this as, 'Gosh, that just doesn't make good financial sense to do this.' Now, we don't know if the tree is going to fall in the backyard in a big storm and knock this house down and insurance is going to build me a new one. Or if the neighborhood's going to go to pot, right, we just can't control that. But we have to have something to help us make that choice.

Brad Baldridge
Right. Exactly. And I think the challenge with the education, right, is the people out there giving advice are not known as well. I mean, we're it's a relatively new profession, right? Certainly, there's a lot of you out there that are advising students and helping pick majors and careers and write essays. And now, myself, but more on the financial side, working with parents, we're even newer, so most people don't even know we exist. So your pipes are leaking in the basement, you know, to call the plumber, right, your tax mess, or you call your accountant, trying to figure out how to pay for college, well call me, but you got to know I exist and know what to call me when you search the internet. And that's the challenge that we're up against. And I think there's a wide array of help out there now. And it makes more and more sense because life's getting more complex, and

Mike Flynn
Dollar amounts are going up.

Brad Baldridge
Right, the prices are higher, the complexity is higher around how the system works. I think education in the long run is due for some reforms similar to the publishing industry. But it's also slow to change. Because there's, again, as a parent, you and I are both paying, and sending our kids to college, part of it is a little bit of nostalgia, right? It's one of the best times of our lives, and we want to give that experience to our kids. And we're willing to pay for it.

Mike Flynn
Right

Brad Baldridge
You know, it certainly wasn't the lowest cost option that educate our kids, it was what we consider the best option. Again, just like some people have drive expensive cars, because they think that's best.

Mike Flynn
Right? When I tell kids when, before kids go off to college, right? As I, I maintain relationships with these kids and follow up and mentor them to make certain that they're on that path and go when you graduate college, it's great to get good grades, but it's better to have a better network.

Brad Baldridge
Right?

Mike Flynn
And right, if the only thing that you got out of college was a decent GPA and a great network, you really did that one well, right. You know, as opposed to me, I got great grades and have zero network. All of my friends are from high school, I had my head down and didn't go to parties didn't do it. I went to play sports in college and all that I was also a geek, as you happily mentioned, and my focus was elsewhere. And there was no like net where I didn't understand them that value. So we have to kind of go into what else would you do with an 18 to 22 year old?

Brad Baldridge
Right.

Mike Flynn
What are the things can they do where they can go, grow, learn, make mistakes, fail with a safety net and develop this network, right? We don't have. We have bars for 21 year olds, but that doesn't always lead to a great place. We have golf courses for some older folks. Where is it that we take 18 to 22 year olds and let them develop a lifelong network?

Brad Baldridge
Right. Exactly. And I've talked with others about what if we had communities where young people went there and lived but they don't necessarily take classes there. They could take online classes somewhere else but they lived in a commute. You know, we could separate the whole campus from the education theoretically, hasn't happened yet? Will it happen? I don't know. And that's a whole other podcast, probably. But yeah, as

Mike Flynn
Colleges are struggling, so right, think about that one when you start looking at the number of bankruptcies and all of that, the college landscape is going to change dramatically in the next 5 to 10 years, the big colleges, and they get bigger and the small colleges are going to go away.

Brad Baldridge
Yes, yeah, I think there's room for consolidation, if you've got a strong college brand. Maybe you go by a bunch of little struggling colleges and share your brand and consolidate. You know, again, a lot of the stuff that happened in the publishing industry, the broadcast, where lots of newspapers are all bought up by various, became conglomerates. Why aren't colleges doing that? I don't know. But you'd think it would happen? Maybe it will happen? I don't know. But yeah, it's been great talking with you. If people want to learn more about us, first of all that data 5-10-20, can you specifically give us a directions on where to get that? I'll certainly put it in the show notes as well. But better on your website, I believe, right?

Mike Flynn
Yeah, if you go to in engeniuslearning.com and as I like to say we spell engenius, the right way, E-N-G-E-N-I-U-S learning dot com, then there will be a link to college prep. And it'll be the very first link that you see, Is College Worth the Cost. And on there, I have the instructions and that formula 5-10-20. And then the full database of 30,000 different colleges and majors or majors at colleges, I should say, where you're able to go and you're able to take a look at that 5-10-20. And again, it's data, right use it as you will, don't set your clock by it, but do recognize that, 'Hey, wait a second, maybe I need to just consider this school before I sign that commitment paper.'

Brad Baldridge
Right? I mean, I think even if you just spent the time to drill into how you decided to do the math would be a great guide for someone to start thinking about what is ROI? Why would I care? That alone would be worth the time and effort for most families to just drill into it and say, 'Am I getting what I'm paying for,' which is really the bottom line.

Mike Flynn
Right? I'll tell you something interesting. Is that on that webpage, because there's data and statistics on everything. Most of my web pages get to three minutes, I have an SAT. You know how to take the SAT, PSAT, 10-11 minutes, this one, the average length of time on the page is close to 30 minutes. So I know that once someone discovers it, they're like, oh, okay, it opens up a whole other world that just to get, if all I can do is to help you think about this process, so that you go in to college with that commitment that you're about to make financially and time wise, and you have your eyes open, I'm gonna feel real successful.

Brad Baldridge
Right? Absolutely. All right. And then if they want to reach out, there's also ways to get you through the website or you want to share some of your social or what was going on?

Mike Flynn
Yeah, you can follow me on Twitter at Engenius Prep, ENGENIUS Prep. You can also find me on YouTube under Engenius Prep, or Mike Flynn, not the General Mike Flynn. But yeah, I was number one, I finally got myself to number one nationally on Google until he came about and now I'm buried on page 10.

Brad Baldridge
Well, that's the way it goes.

Mike Flynn
It's the way it goes.

Brad Baldridge
All right. Well, it was great talking to you. And I'm sure we'll stay in touch.

Mike Flynn
All right, thank you very much. Appreciate it and real pleasure to speak to you.

Brad Baldridge
All right, that was a great interview with Mike Flynn. Hopefully you enjoyed it. Stay tuned for Brad Recommends, where we talk about Deep Work by Cal Newport.

Presenter
The latest tips, tricks, and tools you can use today. This is Brad Recommends on Taming the High Cost of College.

Brad Baldridge
Today, I'm recommending Deep Work, a book by Cal Newport. In this book, Cal talks a lot about how, as a society, we're struggling with the distractions of social media and computers and email, etc, etc. And I think he has a great point in this book where he talks a little bit about the major distractions and how challenging it is to get focus time in order to get into a project deeply. Now if you're as old as I am, you can perhaps appreciate it a little bit more because I didn't own a cell phone my entire life, obviously. I didn't get a cell phone till I was 25 or so. So for a long time, we didn't have the distractions, at least not in the same ways that we do now. And I think for many of our kids, our students out there, they don't know anything without a cell phone. And so I see it my kids and I think many of us parents see it that generally kids don't really have the capability of focusing on something for a longer extended period of time. And so the reason I'm pointing out the book is as parents, for your professional development and understanding, but it also might be something then that you can delve into a little bit with your kids. Because I think going to college and academic pursuits and those types of things do require at least so far that you'll be able to focus and spend some time studying or spend some time reading or synthesizing ideas and writing. All the creative ideas that many people have to work on, requires some focus time and deeper thought. And it's hard to get into the groove and get to work. And many times we get interrupted and distracted by all the other externalities that are out there. So again, it's looking through the reviews, many people appreciate Deep Work. And Cal Newport is an author that I recommend off, he actually wrote a book when he was just out of high school on how to do well in high school and he's got other books as well. A lot of his work are very good. I've listened to his audio books of a couple of these different books now, I recommend, again, as self development and some ideas that I haven't seen elsewhere as much as I have in his work. We'll put links to his work on Amazon, etc, where you can go out and get it. I tend to listen to his audio books, which are pretty good. Alright, so that's all that we have today. I appreciate you listening. As always, if you can give us reviews on iTunes, or wherever you're getting your podcasts that would be fantastic, it helps people find our podcast. As always, show notes are available at tamingthehighcostofcollege/147 for this episode, we will talk to you again next week.

Presenter
Thank you for listening to the Taming the High Cost of College podcast. Now it's time for you to take action. Head to tamingthehighcostofcollege.com for show notes, bonus content, and to leave feedback for Brad. The next step on your college journey starts now.

Brad Baldridge is a registered representative of Cambridge Investment Research and an investment advisor representative of Cambridge Investment Research Advisors, a registered investment advisor. Securities are offered through Cambridge Investment Research Incorporated, a broker dealer and member of FINRA and SIPC. Brad owns two companies: Baldridge Wealth Management and Baldridge College Solutions. The Baldridge companies are not affiliated with Cambridge Investment Research.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai

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THCC Episode 123 – How to Research Colleges

August 19, 2021 by Brad Baldridge

Access This Episode’s Free Resources

Subscribe to my free college planning e-newsletter or confirm your subscription to watch or download my helpful tutorial videos on how to use the Big Future and College Navigator websites to find and research colleges.

Today’s Guest:

Chuck Erickson, Independent Educational Consultant from College Connectors

As an independent educational consultant at College Connectors, Chuck Erickson has worked in higher education for 15 years, helping students and families with college applications, admissions, and career planning. Along the way, he’s learned many great tips to help parents and students research schools and find the right college. Join Chuck and Brad to hear their best advice for researching colleges, including how to get started, which resources to use, and whether you should trust college rankings.

Questions Answered Today:

How do I start researching colleges?

There are nearly 3,000 colleges in the United States, but you can narrow down the list based on the characteristics and qualities you like in a college.

The first stage in finding a college is to look into the very basics. Try to filter college using the simplest things: location, size, possible majors, and such. Unless you’ve fully considered the basics, don’t look into other deeper aspects, to avoid wasting time.

What are the tools I can use in researching colleges?

Databases are the tools you use in researching the best colleges out there.

There are four major databases that are helpful for college research:

College Navigator
Big Future
College Express
Fairtest.org (for filtering colleges based on college testing requirements)

As you start your research, these are just some of the questions that may help you categorize and narrow down your list of schools:

Do I want schools near, or away from home?
Do I want to go to a particular state?
Do I want to be in a rural, urban, or suburban area?
Do I want to be in a public, or a private school?
Do I want a single-sex school, or a co-ed school?

Does this school respect my religious affiliations and my beliefs?

Which college research database should I use?

Each database is special in its own way. Here are some guides that might be helpful for you:

College Navigator is run by the government. It uses data collected from U.S. colleges by the government. Brad recommends this database if you’d like to sort out colleges according to their size.

College Board is a ginormous resource helpful for navigating exams such as the SAT, ACT, and AP tests, but it also provides a lot of information about specific colleges. One of its databases, Big Future, is specific to narrowing the list of colleges you could choose from through the process of elimination. The best part about it is it has a slick and easy interface. Big Future has lots of sorting criteria that you can choose from such as:

Selectivity (e.g. ultra-selective vs. 100% accept rate)
Distance (nearby colleges/colleges within 25-50 miles)
Male-female ratio
Commute and campus-living
Much more

Brad warns that Big Future may not be for people with major privacy concerns as it collects data and sells them to colleges.

College Express is a great website that has lists of colleges readily available.They’re posted publicly by experts like school counselors and independent consultants. The lists are free, but the website requires the students to sign in to collect contact information. It’s helpful for students with something very specific in mind. The lists could look like these:

Small schools with engineering programs
Colleges great for vegetarians
Colleges that have strong school spirit
Schools with the largest football stadium
Campuses that are located in the beach

Fairtest.org keeps track of which colleges are test optional, and which colleges are test blind.

Test-optional colleges do not require SAT and ACT scores for admission. It depends on the student if they want their scores to be used. According to Chuck, over 50% of the nation’s colleges now list themselves as test optional.
Test-blind colleges do not use SAT and ACT scores at all. The schools listed as this type are small but growing.

Test-optional or test-blind colleges could be an option for students who:

Are unable to take the tests
Do not do well in exams
Have learning challenges
Are non-native speakers of English

How do I maximize information form a college’s website?

Chuck says that the biggest chunk of valuable information about colleges is through their websites. Pay closer attention to these parts of the website to maximize information value:

The front page gives you the vibe of students from the pictures, the school environment, etc.
Net Price Calculators help families understand how much college is actually going to cost at a school. Make sure to check if the prices and costs are up to date.
The Common Data Set form helps families get the factual numbers about the college. It’s information overload, so it’s for families who want the statistics specifically. This gives you great information on the college’s:
- Retention rate
- Graduation rate
- Financial aid eligibility
- Average financial aid award
The Admissions tab provides admissions information such as:
- Application deadlines
- Required documents
- Contact information of the admissions representative that’s assigned to your city, high school, or state
The Visit info tab allows you to book visitations, tours, meetings, etc.
The Request More Information tab lets you leave your personal information should you wish to be contacted by the school. This also gives you mails and emails about the college.

Should I trust the college rankings I see online?

No, you shouldn’t. Here are the reasons why:

Ranking companies need rankings to make money. There is a certain demand for this kind of content, so companies like U.S. News and Forbes do this for profit.
Rankings could be just a way for schools to brag or to make themselves look good.
Some of these rankings are not even reliable, especially when the ranking is done by the participating colleges themselves.
Employers almost never consider college rankings in choosing a candidate suitable for the job.

Instead of rankings, look into colleges’ accreditation. Once you choose a major, find out if the colleges on the top of your list are accredited for that major. Since accreditations are standardized, they ensure quality way better than rankings do.

Links and Resources

Helpful Resources

Brad Baldridge’s college planning website: Taming the High Cost of College

College Navigator
College Board
College Board’s Big Future
CollegeXpress
FairTest
Chuck Erickson’s contact info:
- Website: College Connectors
- Linkedin: Chuck Erickson
- Facebook: College Connector – Wisconsin
- Twitter: Chuck Erickson

Brad Recommends:

Today, on Brad Recommends, we will talk about two great databases that can help you and your student in college research: Big Future and College Navigator.

When you log into Big Future, you’ll be asked to either “go to a particular college” or “do some college research.”

When you choose college research, there will be 6 categories to choose from:

At a glance – shows a quick overview of college’s statistics
Deadlines – shows the deadlines for application, financial aid, etc.
Majors or learning environment – shows population of graduate and undergraduate students, majors available, etc.
Campus life – shows housing available, student body, location, etc.
Applying – shows selectivity rate, criteria they look for in applicants, etc.
Paying – shows cost of attendance (tuition, room and board, books, fees, personal expenses, etc.) and financial statistics like need-based aid criteria, average first year financial aid package, and all sorts of scholarship available

Note: Under these 6 major tabs are sub tabs that you can use to dig deeper, especially if you have detailed specifications in mind. It provides the same amount of information for all colleges.

Pro tip: While Big Future provides easier access to college details compared to website-to-website research, you may still want to visit the actual college website to make sure you don’t miss any important details posted directly on the college’s website.

If you already have a particular college, just type the name of the college, then you’ll get the same details (from the 6 categories).

Both Big Future and College Navigator allow searches that begin with a broad search then narrow the search bit by bit. When searching, here are some of the categories you can use:

Distance (e.g. all the colleges within 100 miles)
Size (e.g. all the colleges that are large or small)
Selectivity (e.g. high, medium, low selectivity rate)
Setting (e.g. all colleges that are in rural or urban setting)

You can also mix and match categories to find what exactly you want!

Distance and size (e.g. all the colleges within 100 miles that are large or small)
Selectivity and setting (e.g. all colleges that are highly selective and have an urban setting)

Want a more visual explanation of how to use these databases? Scroll up to the top of this podcast episode page and look for heading: Download This Episode’s Free Resource. Click the button and subscribe to my free college planning e-newsletter or confirm your subscription, and I’ll end you straight to my videos on how to use Big Future and College Navigator.

THANKS FOR JOINING US!

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If you find our podcasts helpful, please share us on social media and tell your friends!

The bottom line is that we care what you think and want to help you out, so we’d appreciate you reviewing us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or your preferred podcast platform. Even better, to receive automatic updates, please subscribe to Taming the High Cost of College on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

Transcript

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Brad Baldridge
Welcome to Taming the High Cost of College. This episode is going to be all about college research. We're gonna have information for those of you that are just starting out. We're also going to talk about how you can dive deep into colleges that you're interested in.

Presenter
You have kids, they grow up, and before you know it, it's time to plan for college. Where do you start? How much is it going to cost? Will you qualify for financial aid? Should you be looking into scholarships? When ill you be able to retire? What about student loans? The list of questions is never-ending. The good news is all the answers are right here. Welcome to the Taming the High Cost of College Podcast. Here is your host, Certified Financial Planner, Brad Baldridge.

Brad Baldridge
All right. Chuck and I are back this week. Welcome to Taming the High Cost of College. I'm your host, Brad Baldridge. And Chuck and I today are going to be talking about college research. So in this episode, we talk a lot about college databases, big future, and college navigator. And we also talk about how to use the colleges website and other great information as well. And then on Brad Recommends, I talk a little bit more about the college databases and give you access to some videos that will help get you started.

Hi, Chuck, welcome back.

Chuck Erickson
Hey, Brad, how you doing?

Brad Baldridge
I'm doing great. We're rolling off a nice long weekend. So like to say I got a lot of rest, but I didn't. I had a lot of fun though.

Chuck Erickson
Yep, same here.

Brad Baldridge
All right. Today we're going to talk about research. And it doesn't need to be that threatening thing like we remember back in college, we need to do a research paper. But this is, how do we learn about colleges and find the ones that might be a good fit for us. So we were talking the other day, and you mentioned something about stages of research. So can you explain a little bit about how a typical family does their research?

Chuck Erickson
Yeah, there's lots of phases to research and stages to research because looking at colleges for different reasons at different times. What we're thinking about right now is just getting started, what do you need to figure out to get started to narrow the list down from the 2700 colleges in the United States that are four-year down to a reasonable amount that you can further investigate into deeper detail. So the real start of the research is figuring out what are the characteristics and qualities that you need to use to narrow that list down to start off with? Could be very simple things like location, size, possible major program, if it's something that's important to you, or other characteristics to whittle this down a little bit. That's the first stage.

Brad Baldridge
Right, exactly. And as you move further into the process, you can start doing deeper dives into things like how the majors work for that particular school, or what dorm life would be like and that type of thing. But really, there's no point in digging deeply into some of those things until you make maybe a first pass and a first cut. Because there's a lot of colleges, you'll eliminate. And you don't really need all that information. Because they were eliminated early on.

Chuck Erickson
Right. I hear parents often worrying too early in the game about, 'Okay, so what are the jobs that this college provides after my kid graduates? I said, 'Woah, what we first have to figure out if the college has things that your student will like before we start seeing if they have a promising career services office. So let's start with a little bit bigger picture. And then let's narrow down into something a little bit more concrete and detailed once we get farther along.'

Brad Baldridge
Right? Yeah. So I think one of the first stages, I spent a lot of time working with families and just teaching them the basics of the college databases. So there's two relatively easy to work with databases out there. One's called Big Future, and one's called College Navigator. Google either one, and it'll get you right there. College Navigator is run by the government, so that's their data. And they put it out there for use, obviously, for free. And then Big Future. That's College Board, which also they do all kinds of education related things like SAT test. And what's the other test they do? Help me me out here.

Chuck Erickson
Well, they were doing their SAT Subject Tests, but those are now a thing of the past. They've also done some of the graduate school exams for various grad programs as well.

Brad Baldridge
Do they also do the AP?

Chuck Erickson
Yep, they also oversee the APs exam. So yeah, so College Board is really ginormous resource for both navigating some of the exams that colleges are looking for. But also understanding all of the database points because they really come up with a slick, easy to use interface that's that I think is fairly intuitive. It might have a couple questions on it. But I think it's fairly straightforward for families to be able to start narrowing that list down. But I also like about the College Board Big Future website is that every time you add a characteristic to your search, you can look to see how many colleges are left that have that characteristic. It's slow process of elimination. It's fun.

Brad Baldridge
Right, exactly. So then the other important thing about Big Future is another revenue source for College Board is collecting your data and selling it to the colleges. So when the colleges say we want to send out a mailer, where do they get their email list or their actual physical address list, well, College Board is a big source of that type of information. So if you have major privacy concerns, which I don't think you need to worry about it personally. But some people are more concerned than others. Just be aware that they are collecting data, especially when you set up an account, which makes your life easier because it saves your work, but then they're also collecting more and more information and starting to collect, connect your student that was a test taker at some point, with their college search at another point, etc, etc.

Chuck Erickson
Yeah, so actually, I have a little tip about that, when you register for things like ACT, SAT, or even these college websites where you're trying to get information, I encourage students to have an email address that's dedicated just to that. So then all of your college stuff goes to one particular college email address, it could be the student's name.college@whatever your server is. But that's the way you can keep all the college stuff located in one email address.

Brad Baldridge
Right. And it's also a way that once college is over, you can shut it down or just ignore it. And you're not going to inundate your work email or other important email addresses with stuff you're no longer interested in.

Chuck Erickson
Yep, exactly. That's exactly what I would recommend.

Brad Baldridge
Yes. So I guess moving on to a little bit more about the databases. What's useful about them is you can, and I get, where you might start as, 'Well, show me all the colleges within 100 miles of my particular zip code,' let's say, and you'd be shocked for most families that how many colleges are near you. And most of the time you if you really sat down and thought about it, you'd come up with 10 or 20, again, depending on where what metro area you might be in or whatever. But when you actually look at the numbers and realize that, 'Oh, yeah, there are a lot of colleges, and there are a lot of them are close by,' and how do we start differentiating? And that's where these databases are useful. You can certainly start with geography near home, away from home, in a particular state, that type of thing. Then what are some of the other criteria that help us narrow the list that we might start at the beginning with?

Chuck Erickson
Sure, one of the common ones is, 'Do you want to be more in a rural area, a suburban area, or an urban area?' Keep in mind that these are defined by the federal government. So your interpretation of what an urban area might not be what the federal government thinks is an urban area. So that's a very common one. Other one would be are you looking more for a public institution or a private institution, I encourage families, as we've talked about in previous episodes, to keep an open mind and see if public and private could be a possibility for you. One that most families don't even think about is that you can, there are also colleges that are either single-sex or co-ed, so that could be a different experience for certain students. We do know that students that attend single-sex institutions end up reporting better satisfaction. So that's something to look out for. There's amazing women's colleges out there. And there are a few all-men's colleges as well. So those are some of the criteria. Another one that's common is religious affiliation. So if you are a particular faith-base, you can sort the colleges based on that as well, if that's something that's important to you. So those are a few things that can help narrow it down.

Brad Baldridge
Right. I think another big one would be size. I know Big Future offers three categories. I guess, they're considered small, medium, and large. And one of the reasons that College Navigator is useful, is they have categories and they're slightly different. So if you think, they're medium-sized, Big Future is something like 3000 to 15,000 or something like that, which encompasses a lot of colleges. So if you're trying to get a little more nuance, you can use College Navigator as a way to maybe change how the buckets are used. That's the one big difference between the two that I tend to use because I don't think Big Future does the size well. I mean, it's certainly a good place to start. But if you say, 'I want between 6000 and 9000,' that's hard to do and Big Future.

Chuck Erickson
Right. And it's also just hard to understand for some families because you're thiking, when you say six to 9000, I assume that you're meeting undergraduate population, but for some colleges that could also be graduate student population. And truth be told, you don't really run into the graduate students as much on a college campus as you would think. So I really encourage families to focus on the undergrad population, because that's really the people that your student will be attending college with.

Brad Baldridge
Right? Yeah, no, I guess I didn't did that clarify that. But yeah, I was talking about number of students that attend, that's typically how I set, how a college is ranked as far as size is concerned. And then I guess there's also, you get a little more demographics, if that's important to you, where you can just look at the data. And or you could sort out as well, like the male-female ratio, whether or not it's more of a commuter school, or if most people live on campus, etc, etc. So there are lots of different as you build, go a little deeper, you can start to narrow things down. Or at least say, 'Hmm, that's interesting.' Whether or not you're going to decide to make that a criteria or not, might be further down the road.

Chuck Erickson
Yeah, there's even one criteria on Big Future that I know about that you can also decide how selective you want your experience to be. So they even have an option that says, 'College accepts 100% of the applicants.' Now, some people may go, 'Oh, well, I don't want to go to a place that accepts everybody.' And I said, 'Well, but keep in mind, that could give you a place that says, 'Yep, you know that you're going to be admitted. And you can also look at a possible cost for that particular place. And it might be actually very affordable.'' So if a college accepts close to 100%, that could be something to look at. But also Big Future goes all the way down. So you can see colleges that accept less than 25%, which is considered a selective institution, or highly deny institution, as I like to call them. So that's another priority. And there's there's different numbers on that scale that you can adjust first activity, I always encourage families is start broad with selectivity. Don't start with the ultra selective ones, because you're just going to get yourself stressed out a bit by seeing that list.

Brad Baldridge
Right? Absolutely. All right. So yeah, I mean, I see the databases being very useful at the very beginning. Show me the colleges that are nearby that's just a memory jogger and say, 'Oh, yeah, I forgot about those colleges in that college. And I've been on that campus, it's right here in town, I just forgot it was here,' especially if you live in a larger metro area where there could be 40 or 50, colleges within 25 or 50 miles. And then from there, you can also use it as you start narrowing things down. Or if I want this, or I don't want that, you can start adding that to the criteria and kick out colleges, or include colleges based on an ever longer list of criteria till you get it down to the 10 or 15, or whatever that might be appropriate for you to really consider.

Chuck Erickson
Right. And speaking of those lists there, there is a great website that already has some lists made up for people. So if you're saying, 'Hey, I really want a small school with engineering,' or, 'Hey, what colleges are great for vegetarians, or what colleges have strong, school spirit?' CollegeXpress, if you google CollegeXpress, it is a website where high school counselor, school counselors, independent educational consultants, have made lists of these things. And I've posted them publicly. And it's free to use, you do have to sign up to get an account with CollegeXpress, of course, they want your contact information. But there is a website that offers different lists out there. So you can already check out and find out what schools have the largest football stadiums or what campuses are located on a beach. So it's it's something that's helpful if you have a specific thing that you're looking for.

Brad Baldridge
Right? Oh, yeah, I've not used that one. So that's a great tip as well. Next, let's talk a little bit about fairtest.org college testing, at this stage is very much under upheaval, and changing almost daily, it seems. So tell us what fairtest.org is about.

Chuck Erickson
Yes, so fairtest.org has been around for a couple of decades now. It is a website that keeps track of which colleges are test optional and which colleges are test blind. Okay, so now we got some terms to define here. So test optional is a process in which you can apply for admission to a college and your scores are optional. They're not required as part of the application process. And you typically have to select the box when you apply that says, 'Please do not use my test scores.' And a lot of students and families are going, 'Yeah, but is that real? Because test scores were used so much decades ago,' and I said, 'No, it's it's completely real. Actually right now, over 50% of the nation's colleges are on Fairtest as a test optional college. So that provides opportunities for students for whom they were either unable to test or maybe they really don't do well on the exams, or maybe English isn't their first language, or they have a learning challenge, looking for colleges that will look at students and not have to look at their test scores. I also mentioned the term test blind test blind is this newest trend that's coming out with college admissions process, which is the college if they decide that they are test blind, they don't want test scores at all for anyone. So you just do not submit your scores, it is not considered the application process or the scholarship process. That list is small, but growing right now there are about 100 colleges on the test blind list, meaning they do not require the test scores for anyone, either for admission or for scholarship consideration. So that's another resource that you can look at. Fairtest has a great list literally, that you can sort by state. So you can see what colleges in your state or in your region are test optional.

Brad Baldridge
Right. And we actually have a podcast scheduled coming out in a few weeks where we're going to dive deeper into testing and talk a lot more about... again, because it has changed a lot. And it has not only has it changed a lot, but it continues to change as things evolve. Obviously, COVID had a big impact on student's ability to test and present score. So a lot of colleges took this opportunity to, I guess, redesign whether or not they want to deal with testing and how they want to deal with testing. And like I said, we'll get into that coming up in a few episodes here. So that's another great source of college information when you're researching a college. And it's relatively obvious, of course, is their actual website. So I encourage families to go to the colleges websites and learn what they can. But let's give a couple quick tips here. As far as once you're there, there's obviously a lot of information there. How do you deal with the overwhelm of well, there's hundreds, maybe even 1000s of pages of information? Where do I start? Or what do I look for?

Chuck Erickson
Yeah, my biggest tip to families is to say that the college website is where the official information of the college is posted. So there's lots of college websites out there that talk about information and rankings and all these things about colleges and their third party sources. But if you want directly from the horse's mouth, you have to go to the college website. Across the top of almost every college website, there are various tabs, it typically these things like the about tab, which will give an overview of the college, admissions, academics, campus life or student life, athletics, research, some big big tabs out there. And those can be very overwhelming. And so I really encourage families to look over the whole website, at least the front page, I mean, and get the vibe, figure out, 'Okay? Do the students look like students that my kid wants to go to college with? Are the topics on the front page of the website interesting and relevant to me? Do I like the colors do I like the pictures?' Remember all the pictures, everyone's going to be happy, everyone's going to be in a great mood. It's almost always going to be sunny and delightful. They never have a raining or a dark stormy picture on their website. But yeah, so once you go over the front page of the website and get a view, there are some things that I encourage families to look for, and you can really use the search box and most colleges in the upper right hand corner have a little search engine spyglass type of thing that you can search for some specific things.

Brad Baldridge
Right. So from my side of it, I often recommend families to look at the 'net price calculator.' We talked about net price in a previous episode. But the net price calculator is a tool that helps families really understand what colleges will cost. The challenge, of course, is not all net price calculators are made equal. Some colleges and again, all colleges will have a net price calculator because the federal government mandated it that if they accept federal money, they have to have a net price calculator, and every college accepts federal money just about so they all have one. Now some did a great job and they keep it current. But occasionally, they go to the net price calculator and it will ask questions like, 'What was your income in 2015?' It's like, okay, there's a sure sign that they haven't updated it in six or seven years. And you probably want to take any answers or any information you get from it with a huge grain of salt. But again, the net price calculator from a financial perspective is one tool that you will use probably further into the process that you're not going to start there. Potentially again, unless price is of paramount importance, but it's something thing you should do as part of the process as you move along. What's areas that you send people too often?

Chuck Erickson
For students and families who are really big numbers geeks and they want the actual factual numbers that tell everything about the college, every college is required is required to complete what's called the 'common data set.' The common data set is a government form, that every college fills in with all of their admissions information, enrollment information, graduation information, it's loads and loads and loads of statistics about the college, it is a bit dense to read and not very fun. So if you're trying to fall asleep at night, great thing is looking at the common data set for college. But it's not always defined. So I use the search function, but every college is supposed to post their information for the common data set. And it's very, very deep numbers. And this is something that I use to research, 'Okay, what is the retention rate of a college? What is the graduation rate of a college? What is their or race or ethnicity? Or even other information about who gets financial aid? And what is the average financial aid package for that college.' So the common data set can be a whole lot of information, but it's a lot of great information. That's one thing I send some students too. And then of course, the big one is looking up admission information. So that admissions tab is going to talk about application deadlines, what documents are required for the admissions process? Who can contact if you have questions, so how to reach your admissions counselor, or the admissions representative that's assigned to your city, high school, or state. So admissions website is something that if you're interested in college, bookmark that page, because you're going to be coming back to it as a reference quite often.

Brad Baldridge
Right? Absolutely. And then another area would be the visit info. Colleges, of course, we'd like you to visit and come kick the tires and there's a process, again, some colleges will have different types of visits available. And so you can certainly get to the visit tab. And again, visits is another topic that we're going to cover in great detail actually is going to be next week. So the next podcast, we're going to talk in detail about visits and how to visit and that type of thing. But just be aware that there is a visit tab on just about every colleges website, where you can learn what types of meetings are available, and when and usually you can sign up there and book your spot. Colleges use it for a couple reasons, one to get the information out, but also to collect registrations and that stuff as an efficiency tool for them, where they want to know who's coming in when and it's just easy for them to put it all in a area of their website for families to use.

Chuck Erickson
Yeah, that leads me to one of my other big tips for families. I have families asked me all the time. 'So how do I get a college to notice me? How do I go to college to recruit me and be interested in me?' Well, right below that the visit tab, which is typically on the admissions page, it's typically right below it, it says 'request more information.' And it is a form that you fill out with your basic demographic information, maybe a little bit more information about your grades or possible subjects you want to study. And that is the best way to demonstrate to a college that you are interested in them. Fill out that form, they will send you mail, they will send you lots of mail, lots of email, but that is a direct way to say, 'Hey, XYZ college, look at me, I'm right here. I would you to send me stuff because I'm interested in you.'

Brad Baldridge
Right? Absolutely. And of course, remember to use that special email, because that is going to put you on a list that will be very hard to get off of. Let's move on to one other big batch of data that's out there around colleges, which is the various college rankings, the common ones, US News, Forbes. I know already what your answer is gonna be. But what are your thoughts on these various ranking agencies?

Chuck Erickson
Yeah, there's Princeton Review. There's Peterson's, there's a ranking out there for just about anything. I haven't seen the left handed frisbee player ranking yet, but I'm sure it's going to be coming out at some point in time. Look for it on a news stand near you. So yeah, my hardcore opinion is that rankings exist because ranking companies need to make money. That's really why rankings exist.

Brad Baldridge
Absolutely.

Chuck Erickson
My short answer.

Brad Baldridge
Yes. I mean, US News and World Reports is the company that launched it all way back when they had an in-print magazine.

Chuck Erickson
Yep. I remember that magazine.

Brad Baldridge
Right. I used to get the US News, that college ranking magazine, that issue was always two or three times thicker than the average magazine. And it was stuffed full of advertising. And it was a huge profit center for us news. So once they got into that business and realized that it made a lot of money, they continued with it and worked really hard. Then, of course, other agencies saw how well and how much money US News was making and then Forbes jumped on the list and the number of other companies decided, 'Well, let's get a piece of that pie.' So that's the history. Of course, how do colleges look at the rankings? And what do they do about rankings?

Chuck Erickson
Well, I mean, truth be told, the rankings haven't changed that much in the last 10, 15 years, if we were to pull the ranking list from 15 years ago, and compare it to the ranking list of last year, not a whole lot has changed. But colleges love talking about them, because they can say, 'Oh, we're number one on this, or we're number two on that.' And I don't know if it's a very American thing. But we'd like talking about the fact that something is number one for anything. And almost every college in the country is number one on somebody's ranking list, you just haven't read it yet. But yeah, that's why colleges love it, because it gives them quick little snippets that they can put out there and say, 'Hey, we are number three in the nation for this, we are number two in the nation for that, or we're number one in the region.' So that's why colleges enjoy it, it gets their name out there.

Brad Baldridge
Right? Absolutely. And lot of talk out there about how because there's formulas that most of these rankings use, some of the colleges are trying to maintain their status or increase their status. So they may try to increase whatever is being ranked. Not necessarily what their customers, what their students want. But now they're trying to make US News happy or make Forbes happy with better test scores, or more generous alumni, or whatever it is that the ranking agencies are putting into their rankings at this given time.

Chuck Erickson
And one of the rankings requires colleges to rank each other. Well, that's like having companies rank each other to say, who's better than who. If I work at a college, I'm not going to rank my competitor higher than me. So that's always an interesting layer to it. I mean, I remember working at a college and the vice president of enrollment would frequently, when it was ranking time and time to fill out that survey, would get things in the mail from colleges that were further down on the rankings list that were trying to raise their profile. And also in a box of chocolates would arrive or a really nice vase of flowers would arrive. And these were colleges that were lower on the rankings that were trying to impress the VP of enrollment at our school, so that they would get voted higher, because the other colleges opinions' played such a large factor into the ranking. I'm just going, 'Why is somebody else's opinion in your same competitive field part of your ranking? That doesn't make sense to me?'

Brad Baldridge
Right, exactly. So in the end, unfortunately, though, a lot of parents are very interested in, what ranking is this school compared to that school? And I mean, how often have you heard, 'Well, this school is better than that school.' Why? 'Well, this one's ranked 10. And that one's ranked 12, or this one's ranked 82. And that one's ranked 97. So it must be better.'

Chuck Erickson
Yeah, but when you talk to employers, the ranking of the college doesn't even fall into the top 30 things that an employer considers as far as what they're looking for a student. When you're, if your goal to go to college is to eventually get a job, which I assume that that's part of the goal of going to college, what are the employers and the job Hunters looking for in a college student? They're not looking for what rank of the school they went to. That's not a factor at all.

Brad Baldridge
Right? So I think rankings, again, the convenience of rankings is, it may give, if you look at the

Chuck Erickson
For sure.

Brad Baldridge
The rankings of engineering schools, well, it's a quick way to get a list of engineering schools. You don't necessarily have to worry about which ones above which one, but at least now you've got the 100 engineering schools that you can start to check out or add to your list or work with, assuming your interest in engineering.

Chuck Erickson
Yeah.

Brad Baldridge
So that there is some uses I think families can use it for, but I think you really want to avoid the, 'Well this school is better than that school' because US News' opinion of what a better school is, really isn't what critical in your decision is what your student and you feel is a better school.

Chuck Erickson
Right? The US News' opinion is someone sitting at a cubicle in an office somewhere who's decided what's better, what's not. But when you're talking about engineering, one thing I do tell families though is if you're looking for a major or a program that is accredited, so engineering colleges have a different accreditation than other schools, look to see if the college is accredited. Business schools have accreditations, nursing schools have accreditations, even music schools have separate accreditations. That can be much more telling than a ranking. So if you're wanting to see if a college is really serious about a particular program or a particular major, find out if it's accredited for that programmer, for that major, that will tell you a lot more than ranking.

Brad Baldridge
Right. And that would be a deep dive into the college's website to get to their accreditation pages, or I think that is available from the accredit agencies themselves, potentially. So that would be another example of a deep dive research. Again, not where you're going to start, you're not going to, first thing is find accreditation, perhaps. But as part of the process, you might say, 'Well, I like these seven schools equally well, as far as I can tell, these four are accredited, and these three are not, well, that might swing you to say, 'Well, these are the four I'm applying to that.''

Chuck Erickson
Absolutely, yeah. I've had families start with the accreditation list and like, 'I want to see what business schools are accredited.' And I was like, 'Well, that's hundreds, hundreds of campuses, that's not going to narrow it down for you very quickly.' Start with the other direction, and then look for accreditation as you move further along in the process.

Brad Baldridge
Right. All right. Any other thoughts as far as research? Otherwise, I think we're coming to a close here.

Chuck Erickson
Yeah, the only other thing that I really encourage my students, and I can't say this enough, is also check out videos. Most colleges now have a YouTube channel where they are posting updated videos about their campus about their experiences, what's going on, how do they handle COVID, all of those types of things. So, students, this generation really needs to see the visual aspect of a college. So once you've checked out the website, and you go, 'Oh, this seems pretty interesting.' Jump over to YouTube, find the college's YouTube channel and see what's going on.

Brad Baldridge
Wow, great advice. That's what I hadn't heard yet. All right. Well, this ends research. Stay tuned. Next week, we will jump into college visits.

Chuck Erickson
Awesome. Looking forward to it.

Brad Baldridge
All right, that was a great discussion. Once again, I'd like to thank Chuck Erickson, he's doing a great job in helping us understand the college process. Before you go away, I just want to remind you that you can go to tamingthehighcostofcollege/123. There you have access to some free videos that will help you with the college databases and how to work with them. So in order to access that, you'll need to sign up right under the podcast player, there'll be a place to provide your email, sign up for our newsletter and get all this great information. As always, we appreciate reviews. So if you're listening through Apple or any other app, if you give us a review, that would be great. It helps other people find our podcast. If you have any comments or questions, feel free to reach out at our website. Let's go ahead now and jump into Brad Recommends where we talk a little bit more about the databases,

Presenter
The latest tips, tricks and tools you can use today. This is Brad Recommends on Taming The High Cost of College.

Brad Baldridge
Today, on Brad Recommends, I'm going to recommend both Big Future and College Navigator. Both of these other databases we talked about earlier in the program, Chuck and I did. These are great databases to help you find colleges and dig a little deeper into all the statistics for each college. Now it's a little hard to talk about these things just on audio. So we are going to provide, for those of you that are interested, a video training that I stole from my course. So stay tuned, I will explain how you can get access to a couple videos that will help walk you through and teach you how to use both Big Future and College Navigator. Let's go ahead and jump in and look a little bit at each of these. So if we look at Big Future, first, when you log into Big Future, there's two options. You can go to a particular college, or you can do some college search. When you log into a college, there's six different categories for the data. There's at a glance, which just like it sounds, it shows you a quick overview of each of the college statistics. There's deadlines for things like financial aid and applications, majors and learning environment, campus life, applying. And then finally paying. Underneath each of those tabs. There's a bunch of sub tabs that you can dig in deeper. But all this information is useful because it's all in the same format for each school. So especially early on, it's much easier to go to Big Future and get the basics by clicking to a particular college and looking at it because the same information is going to be presented the same way in the same area. As you move further into the process, you probably going to want to verify this information or dig deeper by going to the college website itself. Again, but because Big Future, once you understand how it works for one college, it works the same for every college. Whereas going from website to website can get quite frustrating because they all do it differently. Again, there's lots of basic information the stuff that I tend to use and most of the families I work with tend to use are the paying statistics. So they certainly give you the cost of attendance, your tuition, room and board books, fees, personal expenses, all that type of thing. But they also give you some basic information and percent of need met. In other words, how do they award need-based aid, the present of freshmen who showed need and then average first year financial aid package, need-based scholarship, average, merit-based scholarship, average, and a number of other financial statistics. And then, of course, they also have information on things like housing, and student body and location and that type of thing in campus life, so if you're trying to figure out how large the school is, how many undergraduates or graduate students they have, the majors that they have and that type of thing that's available. And then the applying information, how selective are they? What do they find important when it comes to applying to college? Well, that's, of course, one great benefit, right, you can drill into any one particular school and get more information. The other great thing about these databases is you can start with the universe of all the colleges and start narrowing it down, as we mentioned earlier. But now you can actually say, 'Show me all the colleges within 100 miles,' or 'Show me all the colleges within 100 miles that are large or small.' And as you narrow things down, you can start with something like 1900 different schools. And as you narrow things down, it shrinks and shrinks until you say, 'Alright, well, these are the 10 schools that are within 500 miles that are highly selective, and perhaps have an urban setting,' something like that. And then you can drill into each of those 10 colleges. Alright, so if you sign up for the newsletter and provide an email, we will give you access to three videos from our course. So I created some videos that show people how to navigate through both Big Future and College Navigator, and they also demonstrate how you can use the search features. But I think it's a great way for families to just get up to speed very quickly. Each video is between four and six minutes. And with these videos, you'll get up and running and go right to the pro status, and just a few clicks. Alright, that's all we have for today. I appreciate you listening. As always, we appreciate reviews. Feel free to share us out on social media. If you've got friends or family that you feel would benefit from this podcast. Please share it with them. And we look forward to seeing you next week.

Brad Baldridge is a registered representative of Cambridge Investment Research and an investment advisor representative of Cambridge Investment Research Advisors, a registered investment advisor. Securities are offered through Cambridge Investment Research Incorporated, a broker dealer, and member of FINRA and SIPC. Brad owns two companies: Baldrige Wealth Management and Baldrige College Solutions. The Baldrige companies are not affiliated with Cambridge Investment Research.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai

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THCC Episode 120 – Finding a Good Fit School

July 29, 2021 by Brad Baldridge

Today’s Guest:

Chuck Erickson, Independent Educational Consultant from College Connectors

As an independent educational consultant at College Connectors, Chuck has worked in higher education for 15 years, helping students and families with school selection and the college application process. He has lots of information and tips to help you get started, so listen to this episode to find out how to find the best school for your student!

Questions Answered Today:

What does a ‘good fit school’ mean?

A good fit school is where a student fits academically, socially, and financially. It’s a great school where your student can get a great education, be happy, and maximize their potential. This is also a place that you can confidently afford.

Why do we care about finding a good fit school?

In the U.S., there is a greater than 50% likelihood that a student will transfer or drop out of college in the middle of the school year if the school does not fit their preference. A student that transfers or drops out may end up not getting a degree or may need extra semesters to complete the right courses and graduate after transferring. These boil down to paying more for college but having an unsatisfactory experience. Hence, finding the best school not only benefits your student, but it’s better for you as a parent.

There’s some really direct impacts on families and students if a student is not finding the best fit for college.

Chuck Erickson

How do we find a good fit school? Is there a process?

Yes. Luckily, there is a process in finding a good fit school. To get started, independent educational consultants (IECs) such as Chuck normally ask you and your student questions like these:

What type of academic experience do you want? Do you want a small classroom or a big classroom?
Do you want something more hands-on, or something more audio-lecture style?
Do you want something that is going to be very academically challenging for you and possibly above your academic level, or do you want something that is a little bit more on your level or even easier?
Socially, do you want to be in an urban or rural setting?
Do you want a larger public university or something more private that offers more one-on-one attention?
Do you want a school that’s big on athletics? Or fine arts? What are your priorities?

Here’s the good news: it’s okay if your student doesn’t know the answer to these questions yet. There are online assessments to help gauge what they want. According to Chuck, one that’s commonly used is YouScience.

You can also start doing colleges visits where you visit some local colleges and have your students see what the experience is like and see what might fit them.

Here are some things that students often overlook when finding a good fit school:

Can you live on campus, or will you have to commute?
What is the academic challenge level of the school? Does the majority get a 4.0 in high school? Or is there a wide range of academic levels at this college?
Does the school draw students from the local area or a particular state, or does it draw students from many different states, and that might change who goes to the campus?
How’s the school in terms of inclusion? Is it a safe space for you to uphold your faith and beliefs?

To put it simply, if you spend a good amount of time making a valuable purchase, you should take time to pick a good school where your student can be happy in the long run.

Are summer camps or workshops at colleges worth the money?

You don’t need to spend thousands of dollars for summer camps or workshops because it’s uncommon for most colleges to ask about these in the admissions process. However, if your student genuinely likes to engage in these activities, allow them to do it so they can improve their skills.

What about using campus tours to evaluate schools?

We’ll be covering campus tours in detail in one of our next episodes, but here are a couple of things to keep in mind when you’re planning a college visit:

Most campus tours only last an hour, so you’re lucky if your area of interest is what’s showcased in the tour. However, that rarely happens, so be proactive and coordinate with the admissions counselor to specifically show you what you’d like to see. Also, you can explore the campus on your own using the college map.

I always tell families, ‘Take a look at what they’re showing you, and take a look at what they’re not showing you. Go check out what they’re not showing you to see if it still meets the standards of what you’re looking for in a college.’

Chuck Erickson

What else should I know as a parent?

You need to know that one school can’t have everything you’re looking for. In fact, even experts such as Chuck believe that there is no “perfect” college for a student. Hence, you need to outline your non-negotiables and pick the safest and the best bet. Here are some things to ponder on:

Over 80% of students go to a college that is within an eight-hour drive from home.
Milwaukee and New York City are both urban areas, but their “urban experiences” may be drastically different, so take that into consideration to avoid culture shock.
If sports is very important to you, take time to check if the college you’d like has them. Remember, there are big colleges that don’t even have football or any type of common sports students like. Never assume.

How do I make sure my student gets into a suitable college?

Working with independent educational consultants and college funding specialists at this point is critical. You’re now working with the experts towards one goal: finding which college will make the student feel at home, challenged, and supported.

Below are some scenarios that would surely help you decide which path to take:

If your student doesn’t know what they want yet, you can search for schools with no major in mind. If your student is a senior, help them at least narrow down options. It’s also helpful to know that most colleges allow undecided students to attend.

If your student wants something very specific, like learning jazz music or physics, take time to scrutinize the mode and quality of instruction in those areas. Do they have classical-music-trained instructors? Jazz musicians? Do they have functional laboratories?

If your student is an academic achiever, strategize and get the big picture. Would you want them to get into an honors college, or do you want them to get into selective institutions that provide a very specific experience?

If your student has a learning challenge (ADD, ADHD, LD, etc.), get a college that is big on support services. This is one way of making sure that your student’s learning process is successful.

If your student prioritizes athletics (D1, D2, D3, NAIA), find a college that offers a wide array of opportunities in sports. Once again, do not assume, as not all colleges have even the most common sports.

If your student has specific goals after college—for example, attending a med school or a graduate school—help them save money. It’s also critical that the transfer from one school to another happens seamlessly and timely.

If you’re not confident that your student can succeed in college, find a lower academic school that provides support for academically challenged students. You can also work with an independent consultant that can lead your student to a path that’s fitting for them.

Links and Resources

Helpful Resources

Brad Baldridge’s college planning website: Taming the High Cost of College
YouScience website: YouScience
Chuck Erickson’s contact info:
- Website: College Connectors
- Linkedin: Chuck Erickson
- Facebook: College Connector – Wisconsin
- Twitter: Chuck Erickson

Brad’s Recommends:

College planning activities held by high schools are normally being communicated to parents through students. However, you must know that you can’t completely rely on your student to tell you what’s going on in their high school.

Therefore, it’s you who must plug in to your student’s school. High schools, although many parents do not know, offer various services that help parents in college planning. Make sure to take advantage of those. If you pay enough attention to what your student’s high school offers, you may find out about:

Websites or subscriptions you will find extremely helpful with college planning
Classes being offered that are helpful to your student’s college planning (e.g. college essay writing classes
“Financial aid” nights to learn about college financial aid
“College planning meetings with other parents and students (possibly held for sophomores and juniors)
“Meetings and presentations

Good to know: Although private schools may offer a lot more services for their students, public schools have these activities, too! So make sure to connect to them and find out for yourself.

You may ask, “How do I connect to the people in charge?” Here’s how:

Pay attention to school newsletters
Email your student’s school counselor for any important college planning updates

THANKS FOR JOINING US!

We’d like to extend an invitation to our listeners to share their feedback and questions. Contact us to submit a question to our email.

If you find our podcasts helpful, please share us on social media and tell your friends!

Transcript

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Brad Baldridge
Welcome to Taming The High Cost of College. I'm your host Brad Baldridge. This is Episode 120. And this is the second episode in a series that Chuck and I are putting together to help you plan and pay for college. In all, we plan on putting out 10 episodes where we take a deep dive into 10 different important areas of college planning. As mentioned earlier, this episode is about finding a good fit school and future episodes will cover topics like visits, financial aid, scholarships, and how to do college research. Let's go ahead and get into it.

Presenter
You have kids, they grow up. And before you know it, it's time to plan for college. Where do you start? How much is it going to cost? Will you qualify for financial aid? Should you be looking into scholarships? When will you be able to retire? What about student loans? The list of questions is never ending. The good news is all the answers are right here. Welcome to the Taming The High Cost of College Podcast here is your host Certified Financial Planner, Brad Baldridge.

Brad Baldridge
Today on Taming The High Cost of College, we're going to talk about finding good fit schools. Chuck and I cover why it's important to find schools that are a good fit. And then we get into how to find schools that are a good fit, and give you some strategies and criteria that you can use in your search for the right schools. All right, we're here today. And we have Chuck with us again today because today we're going to talk about finding a good fit school. And when it comes to finding good fit school, I think, Chuck because this is his expertise, not mine. So we're going to spend some time talking about how to find a good fit school. Welcome, Chuck.

Chuck Erickson
Thanks, Brad. It's great to be here again.

Brad Baldridge
All right. So, I think the bottom line when it comes to college planning overall, and also good fit school is, most parents would say, bottom line, we want our kids to find a great school, get a great education grow up and be happy. Obviously, that's the highest level, there's a lot of nuances behind it. So let's start with the very basics of... Well, what do we mean when we say a good fit school?

Chuck Erickson
Yeah, I think a really big thing when it comes to good fit school is finding a place where the student fits academically, so their academic profile is a good fit, a place that supports them socially. And it has things that they can do inside and outside of the classroom to keep them busy. And then also that financial fit. So no, should the parents understand what the financial responsibilities are and feel confident they'll be able to afford that. That's really it. It's so academic, social and financial.

Brad Baldridge
Right. And obviously, I work a lot on the financial side. And parents used to say any college, any price will make it work with the prices where they are now. Most families say we need to put some limits on the financial side. And we're going to get a lot into the finances as we dive deeper into the some of the other programmes. So we're not gonna spend as much time other than how it directly impacts what we're talking about today as far as good fit, but we're going to talk a lot about how to plan and pay for college in the next few episodes. All right, so we're looking for a good fit and those three broad criteria. So why do we care about a good fit? Let's talk a little bit about, the train wreck that can happen? What have you seen where a good fit fails us?

Chuck Erickson
Well, as we know, from experience working with students and seeing what happens naturally, if it's not a good fit, there's a likelihood a strong likelihood that the student will transfer or drop out. And that can also be a financial disaster, because if the family has taken out loans, those loans Don't go away if the student drops out, and those loans could even get bigger if a student transfers to a new school, and that could also prolong the graduation period. So there's some really direct impacts on families and students if a student is not finding the best fit for college.

Brad Baldridge
Absolutely, I guess so. Right? The worst case scenario, they drop out, they don't ultimately even get the degree or they transfer, and they end up taking extra semesters or years. And they end up paying more. So what are the statistics? I think I've seen, somewhere in the neighbourhood of a third of students end up changing majors. What is that you have any stats on how often they change schools?

Chuck Erickson
Yeah, we currently know that in the United States, well, over half of students who had off to college this fall, will transfer to another school at some point in time. So it is over 50% right now.

Brad Baldridge
Right. So getting this right is a challenge for most families. And I think it's because they don't really understand the process and they just come up with their own system that isn't necessarily maybe that reliable. Or again, they just throw a dart pick a school and off they go. Okay, so how do we find a good fit school? If we want to take it a little more seriously? Is there a process that you work with or what do you recommend there?

Chuck Erickson
Yeah, so for college connectors, we really start with helping the student understand him or herself. So what type of academic experience do you want? Are you wanting a small classroom or a big classroom? Something more hands on something more audio lecture style? Do you want something that is going to be very academically challenging for you and possibly above your academic level? Or do you want something that is a little bit more on your level or even easier? So we're thinking about the academic experience. And then socially, we're thinking about do they want to be in an urban setting, rural, a big, large public institution or something more private that offers more one on one attention, something that is more athletic in nature, or something that's more fine arts. So there's lots of nuances that we think about socially. So we really start first with understanding the student and then helping them figure out what colleges provide those type of opportunities for them.

Brad Baldridge
Right. So now we come to the challenge of, when he asked a typical student, do you want a big school or a small school? Or do you want, kinesthetic learning? Or do you want hands on? Or do you want a big lecture hall? I think a lot of students maybe can't answer that question. Can you give parents some ideas on how to, I guess, gather that information and get some valuable and useful information out of the process?

Chuck Erickson
Yeah, there, there are a wide variety of assessments that students can use online, there are a couple of different websites out there to help students. One that we use very often is a company called you science, youscience.com. It is a great way to help a student understand what are their strengths, and what are their challenges. But as far as the class size, that's where we encourage families to start doing some college visits, visit your local campuses, find a bigger school or a smaller school, have your student see what those experiences are like, especially if the college is in session. And that can help the students see what might fit them.

Brad Baldridge
Exactly. And I think that's part of the process. And often why I recommend families start earlier is if you can get some visits where the student has an informed comment about, if you say to a student, are you interested in a big school, they may not really understand what big means, because maybe they've been on a big campus, maybe they haven't, but and that's where, again, just getting out there and kicking the tires a little bit, not so much that you're trying to narrow it down at first, but maybe you're just trying to gather some general knowledge and information, like when you do your first test drives of a car, right? Just gonna see if I like it at all. You might get it and say no, this just doesn't work.

Chuck Erickson
We're done. Yeah, there's, there's a lot of similarities between picking a car and picking a college or picking even your favourite pair of shoes and picking a college you've got a, you know, no one, rarely do people just pick up a pair of shoes off the shelf and take them home, they usually try them on walk around the store, put them back, they may even go back to that same pair of shoes and try again. And that's the same way that students and families will experience college, they'll do a first visit, check it out. And maybe they'll come back to that same college six months, eight months later for another visit to see it at a different stage in life and see if it still fits.

Brad Baldridge
Right. Absolutely. And that's the other piece of it, I think is you need to get some actual bounds around what's realistic and what's available. Again, as an example, if you say I want a really small school, I want a school that only has, you know, 300 students? Well, that may be you know, those schools exist, but they may not have the majors you're interested in or something like that, where you can't have everything. So you have to decide which pieces are the more important pieces?

Chuck Erickson
Exactly. It's in that instance, it's almost going to a buffet restaurant, you know, your plate is only so big, can't fit everything from the buffet table on your plates, you have to prioritise and figure out okay, what am I going to absolutely need? And what are things that would be nice if I could fit them, but they aren't going to drastically change my experience.

Brad Baldridge
Right. So what are some of the common I mean, initial search or initial criteria that families might use to narrow down their search? I mean, I can think of a couple like how close is the college to home and the overall size of the college you have other ideas that that differentiator that students can appreciate?

Chuck Erickson
I really believe that you're correct with the distance part. Most families think that students you know, get out of the nest and fly far away for college. The reality is, is most students over 80% of college students go to college within an eight hour drive of home. So you actually don't have to look that far from your own backyard. Things that tend to impact students are really the urban, suburban or rural experience. The hard part is that some students may not understand what a truly urban school feels like. They may be thinking, you know, Milwaukee, but you know, then they say, Well, I like being in downtown Milwaukee, but downtown Milwaukee is very different than say downtown New York City. Both of those are considered urban places. But the urban experience is drastically different. Same thing with rural There's a lot of awesome colleges that are located in smaller towns. And those size of towns can vary from only a couple 1000 people in the town to as many as you know, 50 to 75,000 people in the town, and that can make the experience very different. Another factor that students often comment about is athletics, they want to go to a big football game, or they want to go and cheer on the team. While there's some awesome colleges out there that don't even have football. So you think about it, how important is that for you? Or maybe their big sport is hockey or basketball or baseball? So is it different if the sport is not football? Or maybe another athletic experience might be exciting for the student to attend as well?

Brad Baldridge
Right. Okay, so if we're visiting, we're looking around, we've got some of the basic criteria. What about the colleges? Do the colleges help us? You know, again, if we said, you know, I'm this type of student? Will the colleges say, well, that's the kind of student we do well with? Or what kind of feedback can we get from the colleges themselves?

Chuck Erickson
That's a great question. And that's actually something that I wish more parents would ask me, there's an old mantra that a student has to be well rounded to go to college. So they have to be an athletics and the arts, they have to volunteer, they have to do all these things. And that's actually not true anymore. Most students need to be pointy, they need to be focusing or interested in a certain area, or have a certain style colleges will help a student understand if they're a great fit. And that's a way to reach out to an admissions counsellor, or ask it an admissions presentation and say, Hey, this is me, as a student, I mentioned these types of things, I would really be interested in studying these types of subjects are involved in these activities, is your college of good fit for me, and admissions counsellors can give some feedback and say, 'Yeah, you sound like a candidate that would really thrive here.' Or they would say, 'Oh, we don't have those particular programmes, so maybe this isn't the best fit for you.' So that's where admissions counsellors can be extremely helpful for students and families.

Brad Baldridge
Right? And so where do we get access to these admissions counsellors? Obviously, they're available when we go visit the college, but they also do you know, they're out and about in the community. So where do you recommend students connect with these people?

Chuck Erickson
Yeah, so colleges are currently offering virtual visit sessions, so you can do a virtual visit with the college. Or you can just go to the admissions website of the college that you're interested in. And many of them have a contact us button or a reach out to your admissions counsellor button. Every College has an admissions counsellor that's assigned to a particular area, a particular high school or even a certain state. So you can find what who's the admissions counsellor for your high school or your region or your state and send them an email? Or you can just pick up the phone and call the admissions office and say, Hey, we have a couple of questions about your school, is there someone that could chat with us, they are extremely approachable, whether it is via email or via phone

Brad Baldridge
Right? So you can always just reach out to the school and get the information you need. And that might be a good a good indicator as to whether you like the school or not, depending on how you get treated, right out of the gate, so to speak.

Chuck Erickson
All right, how they even the admissions experience will show you how they treat you as a student if you go there. That's a great point.

Brad Baldridge
All right. So once we start getting out there and gathering some of the basics, right, okay, so now I've discovered I've won a school that's, you know, large and urban. And I'm a sports fanatic. So they need to have some teams that I can cheer on. What are their criteria? If we're going to go a little deeper? What are some things that, you know, maybe the typical family hasn't thought about as far as things to check or compare? When it comes to finding a good fit school?

Chuck Erickson
Great question. Some things that you might want to consider are? Do the majority of students live on campus? And so it doesn't have a residential experience? Or is this a school or ruin jority students live off campus? And it's going to have more of a commuter experience? That could be something that could impact them? What is the academic Challenge Level of the school? So did the vast majority of the students at the school have a 4.0 coming out of high school? Or is there a wide range of academic levels at this college should therefore there's going to be a wide variety of student backgrounds? They could also be asking about where the students from at this college. So does this college primarily have students from the local area or the local home state? Where does this college draw students from a wide variety of states and that might change who goes to the campus? So there's lots of different things to ask. If faith is important to students, they may ask about what the faith life is on. Same thing for students who are interested in finding Performing Arts. Do they have opportunities that they can be engaged with those? There's many different nuances that students can ask about is to figure out what is going to be the fit for them.

Brad Baldridge
Right, absolutely. And one of the questions I tell families when they're out doing their visits is the colleges, especially if you're doing like the group tours, or some of the more events that are geared towards large groups, they tend to show you the stuff that they excel at, and the stuff that's maybe shiny and new. So if they've built a new science building, you can bet that you're going to tour the science building, or if they've got a new stadium, they're going to tour you through the new stadium. But I think families need to catch on to that and say, Okay, but if you're not interested in sports, you don't really care about the stadium, maybe you need to go see the biology labs, or maybe you need to see where the musicians practice their instruments, or what the opportunities are, and what the theatre looks like, as far as how many does it see? And does it seem like it's an important part of campus?

Chuck Erickson
Say, that's an excellent point. The tours are very short, most campus tours are 45 minutes, maybe an hour, and they can't show you every building and every experience, you might see one residence hall, not all 12 that they offer, they will typically show you the academic departments that they are strongest in on that campus. And by strongest typically means that that's where the most students have enrolled and the largest percentage of majors that they graduate from the particular institution, it doesn't mean that the other academic areas are bad, it just means that they're showing off their best and they're great stuff. So you may have to after the tour is over, you may need to either ask an admissions counsellor saying, Hey, we didn't get an opportunity to see my area, can someone bring us over there, or they have a campus map, go see if you can go check it out on your own. I always tell families, take a look at what they're showing you and take a look at what they're not showing you and then go check out what they're not showing you to see if it still reached the standards of what you're looking for in a college.

Brad Baldridge
Yeah, that's a great point of trying to look at, again, some of the things that they're and I wouldn't say hiding, but again, they're not highlighting it. So again, it may be an important criteria for you. And it might be a reason that colleges is picked up one over the other. Let me talk about a couple of the different challenges that I have run across with parents. I have a lot of parents say things like, well, we, my student doesn't know what they want to be when they grow up. Therefore they can't pick a major therefore we can't start working on picking a school because we got to do it in the proper order. And again, you have a sophomore? How would you answer that? And if you have a senior How would you answer that?

Chuck Erickson
I think for a sophomore, I would encourage them to start exploring some different academic areas. have they taken some classes in some other areas? Have they done summer camps or other experiences that that show them what different academic areas are like, but for both is offering the senior you can totally do a college search without having a major in mind. for seniors, I would want them to at least start narrowing it down. So is it humanities? Is it social sciences, sciences, business engineering? Is there a certain category that you would like to be interested in and need more information about that, it may not be a subject that the student has had in high school, or in any academic experience. For example, students might be interested in the video game industry and they haven't taken any courses in that. So maybe you need to find some opportunities to check that out and see if you like it. Most colleges allow for undecided students to attend there. There aren't a tonne of schools that require students to know their major. Absolutely when going in. And as you said at the beginning of this show, a good chunk of students change their major because that is how teenagers operate.

Brad Baldridge
Right? Absolutely. So I've had another situation where a family mentioned something to the effect of I'm interested in this relatively high end expensive school. And they're offering us summer activities at the school. So we think we're going to spend five or six or $7,000 to do the engineering camp or the writing workshop, or the political, un or whatever it is and the school so that we can increase our odds of getting accepted. What are your thoughts on that?

Chuck Erickson
I'm going to completely call that fault. There are almost zero colleges that put an alignment between Have you attended this summer camp that gives you a leg up in the admissions process. It's just not common. Most of those summer camps are now run by outside companies, or they're run by a very particular division within the college that doesn't even talk to the admissions office. So those camps can be great to be able to explore an academic area and to check out that campus and get a feel for that campus. But it is not going to have a direct impact on your admissions experience.

Brad Baldridge
Right. Exactly. So you confirm what my feeling was. I didn't know that for certain. But my recommendation is typically if you want to go to a writing workshop, go ahead and go for the writing workshop, not because it's on a particular campus, I get unless, ma'am, maybe living in a dorm on that campus might give you a marginal benefit. But the idea that I have to go spend a lot of money to make this, again, that's playing to people's fears. And it's sold that way, unfortunately, where a lot of the literature, they make it feel like if you don't do it, you're going to be a match behind your competition, which I think it's patently false.

Chuck Erickson
Yeah, 100% agree with us that those camps make it sound like, Okay, if you want to get a foot in the door for the admissions process here, you should come into this camp. And I will completely negate all of that and say, go for the experience of being on a college campus learning to navigate a dining hall and go to, living in the residence halls, or just wandering around campus, those are great experiences for the summer camps. But that is not going to give you a leg up in the admissions experience. Here's the funny part, it might actually give you a leg up in the admissions experience for another college, because another college may say, Oh, hey, you went to that camp at that other school. That's pretty awesome. We're impressed that you went to that camp at that other school. Now, we're more interested in you, because you have had experience being on a college campus, even though it's not our own. So that's interesting.

Brad Baldridge
Right? So again, if digging into the, I think there's a overwhelm side of college planning, where, some families might, again, let's take another example, say a divorced family, an academic average kid, in other words, they get A's and B's like everybody else, you know, their activities are, participate in some of the sports, maybe they start, maybe they don't, but but again, they're not high academic achiever. They're not high athletic achievement, they're just your average kid, how much you know, time and effort do they need to spend trying to find a good fit, if your gut is saying we're just going to go to the local state school, most likely anyway,

Chuck Erickson
I still think it's worth checking out and going through the visit, and checking to make sure that the college still has all the things that that student wants. And for students who are saying, Oh, well just go to the local state school, just try and go and visit another state school in your same state. So just make sure that it's not just the one that's near you. And sometimes you can confirm that you found the right fit by going to visit another school that's either similar in size or similar in style. And going, Oh, you know what, that first school does it better. So I did pick the right school, because this second school doesn't impress me as much. So that could be a great way to gut check. But yeah, if a student is saying, I just want to go to the local four year school, I want to major in English, and I want to get out as in four years and become a teacher and the standard college has that. Yeah, you don't have to do a super huge search. But always gut check by trying another school and comparing it to your first choice,

Brad Baldridge
right. And then let's look at maybe a larger extreme now, where we do have the high academic achiever tap, not necessarily the number one in class, but maybe in the top five of their high school class, strong test scores. They want to spread their wings, they got ambitions in either astrophysics, or I want to be a doctor, or, again, they have these high dreams, and they, now what is the process look like?

Chuck Erickson
Now, it's going to possibly get a bit more complicated, because there are more students in those pools for a limited amount of college seats. So a limited amount of admission spaces. So that might be someone that wants to have a conversation with someone like me to talk about, what is your strategy, because selective schools have different admissions rounds? Whether it's early decision or early action, regular decision? Some colleges offer scholarships, some do not. So it's thinking even deeper on those criteria as to what you want the experience to be like, are you just trying to find any place that will support this student and offer an honours college at a big public? Or are you wanting one of those smaller, selective institutions that provide a very specific experience?

Brad Baldridge
Right, exactly. So I think it's important that families understand is you can do the basics, and just run with it as if it may be appropriate for family. But I think there is the college bit, discussion and exercises, etc, that can get much more advanced. Again, I tell people, there's, from a financial perspective, there's five or six different types of schools, and they each, all the schools can fall into one of those buckets and of course, then there's all these schools that are the exception and they don't fit into any bucket well, right. But based on once you understand the buckets, That's the first step, then understanding the exceptions to the buckets is the next step. But, I've had, situations with the, the jazz musician that really drills deep into the music department because he wants to learn jazz, from jazz musicians, not jazz from a classical trained instructor. So he's got to dive deep and really figure it out. I have had kids deep into physics that, want to get to a school that's got a big telescope. What What kinds of things have you seen where it is a bigger deal and more challenging?

Chuck Erickson
Yeah, some other categories that have students that have to drill a bit deeper students who are significantly involved in religious life. So I've worked with a lot of Jewish students, and they want to have a campus community that supports them and provides opportunities for them to enrich their faith and support their faith. So that might be something that needs to be examined at a deeper level, it could be a student that is identifies as a particular underrepresented category, and they want to find a community for them that feels at home. Another group of students are students that have learning challenges. So they have ADD, ADHD, LD, another type of learning challenge, that might take some additional steps. Because now we have to find a good fit, as well as support services to make sure that students can be successful at that college. So there are some different nuances there. Of course, the athletes, whether they're wanting to do D1, D2, D3, NAIA, there's lots of different athletic opportunities for students and finding the right fit there. So yeah, if you have a particular nuance, you might need some additional help to be able to make sure you're finding the right fit. And let's be real, I do not believe that there is one perfect college for every student, I believe that there are several colleges that could work for each student. It's finding which one will student will feel home for the next four years challenged and supported.

Brad Baldridge
Absolutely right. I think that stress that one, where again, the student that falls into in love with a particular college, setting themselves up for heartache, and potentially a financial disaster as well. So, parents, my ideal situation, from a financial perspective is, Oh, look, here's 12 schools, we applied to six of them, we were accepted at all six, we love them all equally. Now we can just figure out on the financial side, which one's the best fit financially. In other words, which one's the lowest cost? And we're done. Of course, that's never the reality. The reality is, I like these schools more than those schools, and this is my number one choice. And in an ideal world, your favourite school that has the best fit comes in at the best price and life is good. But it doesn't always work out that way. So you may have to make that tough call is having x worth an extra $15,000 a year to me,

Chuck Erickson
Right.

Brad Baldridge
And or, can I just say, well, this, at this school, it's not quite as good, but it's good enough that I'm willing to not spend the money.

Chuck Erickson
Right. And the other add on to that, and I 100% agree with everything that you said, Brad, I would add on to that is okay, what are your goals after college? So do they want to be in a particular place in the country. And so one college might be better in that place? Or do they want to go on into graduate school or higher learning, and maybe they need to save some money. For example, medical schools don't have a tonne of financial assistance for med students, maybe it would be better for the student to attend a lower cost institution for their undergrad to be able to save up money for med school. So there are some other long range decisions that can play into the factors as to where a student can go for undergrad. Also, we haven't talked about the fact that there's a great opportunity to go to to your campuses, really get some great education for those first two years and then transfer either to a four year public or for your private as a cost saving measure.

Brad Baldridge
Right. And I would agree with that, it's a great way to save money. But you have to be really careful, there's two steps to that process. One is you got to make sure that the stuff that you do at the two year or the lower class school will actually help you once you transfer wherever you're going next. And so you have to understand both schools before you start and that's critical.

Chuck Erickson
Correct. So if I'm working with a student who has that goal of I want to go to a community college first or to your campus first and then transfer to a four year we actually are doing a double search. We're first finding the two year college. And then we're also starting to think about what four year colleges that that community college helps transfer to, because it's just like a baton being passed in a race. It has to happen seamlessly. And it has to happen at the correct time. or someone's going to drop the baton and then everything's going to go down the wrong path. So yeah, you almost have to think, two years ahead of time, if you're thinking about doing a transfer process,

Brad Baldridge
right. And then, again, some of the people that I've run into a lot of times the money that the savings is, 10,000, or $20,000. And for many families, that's significant. And they, they need to save it. But I've seen many families, once they really drill into it and say, Well, maybe we'll just stretch a little. And instead of going to a four year degree or a two year school, and then a four year school, we'll just choose a lower cost for your school in order to, again, get the full college experience. So I think a lot of parents, that's their dream is no, it's my dream, right? I loved college, it was a great opportunity. And I want my kids to have that experience. And I think that's a reality for many families.

Chuck Erickson
Yeah, I've had family start off with me with the plan of 'Okay, our student is going to go to a two year and then transfer to a four year.' But as we go through the process, I think the student and the parents end up falling in love with a four year experience and just say, you know what, we're just going to go the four year route, forget the transfer process. So that's part of why you work with someone to help coach you is to help you reflect and think about those things over a period of time, so that you can reevaluate your decision as you go.

Brad Baldridge
Right? Last concept on the fit is, I've talked to parents quite often that are a little nervous about college success at any level. In other words, they're saying, Well, my manual, my kids, not real strong academically, we think he was going to go to college. But I mean, again, that in front of the student, typically they're saying things like, we're not real sure, he's actually gonna stick with it, I fear that he's gonna go a year, maybe two and then drop out? How does that impact how you choose a college?

Chuck Erickson
Yeah, that can be a very big factor as to how I help students and families Think about it. So there might be advantageous for the student to attend a lower academic school that may not be as academically challenging, and then providing wraparound services at that school to help them navigate that. So what college connectors, we also provide college achievement coaching, so I can follow a student to college and continue to meet with them during their first and second year, typically, every couple of weeks to check in on them and see how they're doing and making sure that they are acclimating well, and several colleges offer these types of services as well. And that might be something that they look to you. Or maybe they say, again, with the transfer idea, let's go to someplace closer to home, where we can check in on you and be supportive of you a little bit more and then either possibly transferring, or going to, if you go through the first four years going to graduate school farther away, or going to a more professional experience farther away. But yeah, it's usually when you're unsure of where to go. That's when being maybe within three hours of home might be important factor to consider as you're looking at colleges.

Brad Baldridge
Right, absolutely. All right. Well, I think we covered the college fit pretty well. We're going to cover other topics. I think the next topic is the net price of schools. So we didn't touch a whole lot on financial fit, because we're going to talk next time about the net price of colleges. And that's where we're going to delve into. It's not just what the sticker price is, but what you gonna actually pay. That's important.

Thank you, Chuck. I will talk to you again in a week or so.

Chuck Erickson
Sounds good. Thanks much, Brad. All right,

Brad Baldridge
I hope you enjoyed that discussion about finding a good fit school. Again, this was Episode 120. So if you're interested in links to the various things that we've talked about, all the show notes are available at tamingthehighcostofcollege.com/120 for Episode 120. Also, I recommend you subscribe on your favourite podcast app if you'd like to continue to get this directly to your phone or another device. And I'd appreciate it if you left us a review in Apple podcasts or Google podcasts or wherever it is that you are actually getting your podcast. So let's get into Brad Recommends.

Presenter
The latest tips, tricks and tools you can use today. This is Brad Recommends on Taming The High Cost of College.

Brad Baldridge
Today in Brad Recommends, I want to recommend plugging into your high school. While the high schools try and provide help around college planning, and some do it better than others. But it's important that families take the time to try and figure out what's available at your high school. You know what services do they offer? Do they have information on the website or do they offer subscriptions to outside websites that will help you with college planning? Sometimes we see things like English class is helping out with essays. So if you take a particular English class, you'll write college essays as part of the curriculum. High schools might offer things like financial aid nights. And then college planning meetings where you might meet with parents and students one on one, perhaps during the sophomore or junior year. If you're at a private high school, it's likely that there's a lot more services than at a public high school. So again, some public high schools do this as well. Now, the reason you'd want to plug in and so that you don't miss whatever is available. Again, they might have presentations or meetings. And the more you know about what's going on, the more likely you are to take advantage of the stuff that they're providing to you. And of course, don't rely on your student. Many students hear about these things, but for whatever reason, they don't bring the information home. And so a lot of times, high schools and counsellors are very frustrated because they put all this effort into these services and programmes etc. And the information never gets to the parents and the parents never know about it, and can't participate. So, try and plug in, pay attention to the newsletter, contact your counsellor, send them an email, and just see what's available at your high school and take advantage of it. Alright, that's all we have for this week. We look forward to talking to you next week.

Presenter
Thank you for listening to the Taming The High Cost of College Podcast. Now it's time for you to take action. Head to tamingthehighcostofcollege.com for show notes, bonus content and to leave feedback for Brad. The next step on your college journey starts now. Brad Baldrige is a registered representative of Cambridge Investment Research and an investment advisor representative of Cambridge Investment Research Advisors, a registered investment advisor. Securities are offered through Cambridge Investment Research Incorporated. A broker dealer and member of FINRA and SIPC. Brad owns two companies: Baldrige Wealth Management and Baldrige College Solutions. The Baldrige companies are not affiliated with Cambridge Investment Research.

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choosing a college

1. Get a feel for your local state colleges.

EXAMPLE A

EXAMPLE B

2. Look into less expensive and adjacent schools

EXAMPLE A

EXAMPLE B

EXAMPLE C

3. Find more generous colleges.

4. Negotiate for a better deal.

5. Take advantage of opportunities late in the process.

Want More Help with College Planning?

Helpful Articles

More Resources

1. Prestige

2. College Fit

3. The College Experience

4. Return on Investment

5. Net Cost

6. Lifestyle

7. Career Plans

8. Grad School

9. Affordability

10. What Your Student is Willing to Do

Next Steps

Want More Help with College Planning?

Challenging Our Assumptions

Example #1: Public vs. Private Colleges

Example #2: In-State vs. Out-of-State Public Colleges

Important College Cost Definitions

Finding the Net Price at a Specific College

Understanding the 6 Types of Schools

1. In-State Public Colleges

2. Out-of-State Public Colleges

3. Public Colleges Offering Out-Of-State Student Scholarships

4. Private Colleges That Will Pursue Your Student

5. Private Colleges That Will Accept Your Student

6. Elite Private Colleges

Elite Private Colleges Category #1:

Schools That Meet 100% of Financial Need But Offer No Merit Aid

Elite Private Colleges Category #2:

Schools That Meet 100% of Financial Need and Offer Merit Aid

Taking Your Next Steps with College Financial Planning

Today’s Guest:

Mike Flynn, Owner of Engenius Learning

Questions Answered Today:

When should I start thinking of preparing my student for college?

Many colleges have become test-optional. Should I submit my student’s ACT or SAT test scores or not?

Many schools have become test-blind. Should my student bother taking the SAT and ACT at all?

If college is not the parent’s decision to make, then what’s my role as a parent?

What is the 5|10|20 outcomes rule in making college decisions?

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Today’s Guest:

Chuck Erickson, Independent Educational Consultant from College Connectors

Questions Answered Today:

How do I start researching colleges?

What are the tools I can use in researching colleges?

Which college research database should I use?

How do I maximize information form a college’s website?

Should I trust the college rankings I see online?

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Today’s Guest:

Chuck Erickson, Independent Educational Consultant from College Connectors

Questions Answered Today:

What does a ‘good fit school’ mean?

Why do we care about finding a good fit school?

How do we find a good fit school? Is there a process?

Are summer camps or workshops at colleges worth the money?

What about using campus tours to evaluate schools?