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Introduction

Welcome to Paying for College For Dummies! I know this may be a stressful and challenging topic. But, not to worry! You’ve come to the right place — this book will help you to lower your anxiety, increase your knowledge, and take control of the process.

In this book, I emphasize these important topics:

 Making the most of your finances and developing your children’s potential without breaking the bank.

 Getting the best education at an affordable price. Spending more doesn’t equate to getting a better education or better employment prospects. You should look for value — meaning seek out service providers that deliver quality at a reasonable, or in some cases even an attractive, price.

 Understanding proven alternatives to traditional and costly college education. Increasingly, high-cost, four-year colleges are seeing their enrollment squeezed while far lower cost and faster alternatives to college are seeing enrollment growth.

 Navigating and making best use of financial aid. After baring your financial soul to colleges, they will tell you how much they will charge you. They aren’t actually giving you money when they award aid so much as they charge different customers widely differing prices based upon the college’s assessment of your ability to pay. I help steer you through understanding the various ways to get better pricing as well as filling out all those forms.

About This Book

College price increases, for too many years and decades, outstripped the general rate of inflation. While particular degrees from leading schools do still seem to provide a ticket to some well-paying jobs and careers, now more than ever families are questioning the value of a college degree. A recent Wall Street Journal poll found that 47 percent of Americans no longer believe that having a college degree will lead to a good job and higher lifetime earnings. Among Millennials, only 39 percent continue to believe in college.

Paying For College For Dummies helps you to sort through the range of post-high school options, including attending a traditional four-year college. If you think buying a car or a home was complicated, just wait until you begin to understand the intricacies of how colleges set their prices. Colleges charge each of their customers different prices based upon their own (hidden) analysis of your supposed ability to pay. I will explain how various colleges determine what to charge you and how you can best complete college financial aid forms and position your finances to receive more favorable pricing.

As a former financial counselor, I have counseled thousands of clients on a variety of personal finance, investment, and spending decisions, including higher education and college. With four years at the “best” private colleges having broached $300,000, and the best public college educations costing well into the six figures, more and more people who aren’t wealthy are questioning the value that such an experience will provide. And increasingly, folks are wanting to evaluate and consider the alternatives, which this unique guide will also help you to do.

Foolish Assumptions

Whenever I approach writing a book, I consider a particular audience for that book. Because of this, I must make some assumptions about who the readers are and what those readers are looking for. Here are a few assumptions I’ve made about you:

 You want the best for your kids and would like to understand the pros and cons of different options before making an informed choice. (Note: While the vast majority of readers of this book are parents, I expect that some inquisitive teens are readers too — that’s great! For simplicity, please accept my apologies for choosing to write as if parents are the readers so that sentences like the one before this aside aren’t more complicated.) Because money doesn’t grow on trees and you’re not super-wealthy, you want value for your money and need to contain costs.

 You have some understanding about the reputation of particular colleges but don’t know how that translates into post-graduation job and career prospects.

 You’ve heard some rumblings from young adults and perhaps even your own teenagers about alternatives to college, and you’d like to know more about those options and whether they may make sense for your offspring. It’s not unusual these days for parents and teenagers to have different aspirations and expectations. I hope and expect my book to get both sides to see the other’s point of view and bring you closer to a happy agreement or compromise!

 You’d like a more detailed understanding of how college financial aid, scholarships, student loans, and such works.

If any of these descriptions hit home for you, you’ve come to the right place.

Icons Used in This Book

Throughout this book, you can find friendly and useful icons to enhance your reading pleasure and to note specific types of information. Here’s what each icon means:

This icon points out something that can save you time, headaches, money, or all of the above!

Here we’re trying to direct you away from blunders and boo-boos that others have made when making college and other post–high school decisions.

Here we point out potentially interesting but nonessential stuff.

Look for this icon to find real-life examples of college decisions to help exemplify a point.

We use this icon to highlight when you should look into something on your own or with the assistance of a local professional.

This icon flags concepts and facts that we want to ensure you remember as you make your college and other post–high school decisions.

Beyond This Book

In addition to the content of this book, you can access some related material online. Head to www.dummies.com and type in “Paying For College For Dummies Cheat Sheet” in the search box to find additional tips.

Where to Go from Here

If you have the time and desire, we encourage you to read this book in its entirety. It provides you with a detailed picture of how to best make post–high school decisions to maximize your returns while minimizing your costs. But you may also choose to read selected portions. That’s one of the great things (among many) about For Dummies books. You can readily pick and choose the information you read based on your individual needs. Just scan the table of contents or index for the topics that interest you the most.