Don’t pay attention to the panic button pushers.
I was recently reading an article in a Florida newspaper about this year’s funding freeze for the Florida Bright Futures Scholarship Program. You’ve probably read very similar articles recently. Education costs are rising… financial resources are dwindling… there’s no money available for loans… and so on, and so on, and so on. The sky is not falling, and the fear mongers need to quiet down.
There is still plenty of money out there to help send students to college, but no one is going to show up at your front door and just hand you a bag of cash. You have to take a well thought out, strategic approach to the college selecting and application process.
At a bare minimum, your student should apply to at least six different colleges. One college should always be a safety school. The community colleges are often the most common safety schools. 4 to 5 colleges should be core schools. Core schools are those where your student will have a good opportunity for placing in the top 25% to 50% of the incoming freshman class. 1 or 2 of the schools can be stretch schools. Those are the schools where you’re not sure your student will get in, but it would be a real sense of pride if they did.
If you select colleges in this manner, and never underestimate the importance of the financial track records, you will have much, much better opportunities for the monies that are available out there.
Really, I can’t overstate this enough.
For more detailed information on this topic, I encourage you to get a copy of The Secrets to Real College Savings.
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