Which Colleges Give You the Best Shot at Getting Money

This is a big misconception. How to pick schools. Which colleges give you the best chance to get money? One thing I can promise about this topic is you are going to be suprised by this one!

A lot of people pick schools haphazardly. Especially people who have lower incomes and they just assume because they have lower incomes every school's going to give them tons of money.

It doesn't work that way. Some schools can give a lot of money. Some schools cannot give a lot of money. Some schools give a lot of it in free money. Some schools give a lot of it in loan money

You'd better know these things before you start applying because interestingly enough, most kids get into most of the schools they apply to these days.

Schools have a problem of filling seats and they need new dollars. So, most people will get accepted unless you're talking about Ivy League's and the most competitive schools. The big problem these days is not getting in, it's paying for it. You want to know before you ever apply to these schools -- what percentage of need do they meet.

Meaning, the difference between the cost of attendance and your expected family contribution -- if you have a gap of let's say $10,000 -- do they normally meet 100% of that $10,000? Do they meet 30 to 60% of that?

You want to know these things before you apply because if they only meet let’s say 60%, you're not going to just pay the $10,000 expected family contribution; you're going to have to pay the $10,000 plus whatever they leave you short, which could be another $4,000. So you could actually have to pay $14,000 at a school that you might only have had to pay $10,000 at if they met 100%. You want to know this information in advance.

The second thing is percentage of gift aid. Now some schools meet most of the need in free money and some meet most of it in loans and work-study.

It's nicer to pick schools where they meet a huge percentage of the need, if not 100%. Also, try to pick schools that meet most of that need in free money so you don't have to pay it back.

You have to know what the statistics are historically from the different schools and what they normally are able to give. If you pick schools that meet very little need, and most of the need that they do meet is in loan money, you're going to be an unhappy person because you're going to pay a lot more out-of-pocket and you're going to be a lot more in debt. So that's something you really, really want to pay a lot of attention to.

Again, as I was just saying, percentage of self-help is another thing you want to know about in advance. The only way you could know these things is by knowing the statistics of a particular school.

In the next post, I will show an example of why it is important to know these things ahead of time and show you how in some cases it is cheaper to send you child to an expensive private school rather than a cheap state school or community college.