The waiting game is the hardest part of the college financial and selection process.  Everybody has to play this game.  But if you cut this game short, you could lose a lot of money and spend more on college than you need.

During the fall, students and parents are consumed with college admission applications.  For many families, they longed for the day when the admissions applications would be over.  Sometimes it took months to finish.  Then when December and January rolled around, the financial applications started.  Maybe yours only took a day.  For a few unlucky contestants, days turned into weeks.

But now for most of you, the admissions applications are done, and the financial applications are history.  So what’s the next step?  Do you jump at that admissions offer from your student’s top choice?  Do you take the school with the lower sticker price?  What if you haven’t heard anything out of the schools yet?  Have they forgot about you?  What do you do now?

This is where the hardest part of the college selection process starts.  It’s nerve-wracking.  It’s frustrating.  It’s going to play with your mind and make you feel like you don’t know what you are doing.  It’s… waiting.  Yes, waiting.  The one thing that Americans are the worst at of any people on earth… waiting.  Just think of it as a character building experience arranged for you by God Almighty.  He always said that patience was a virtue.  Now you get to prove it.

Colleges and universities need time in making these decisions.  They’ve got thousands of applications to sort through.  Some are faster than others.  Some are slower than others.  But don’t fret.  This is just the way the game works.  What’s the old proverb from the military… “hurry up and wait”

You need to wait for all of the financial offers to come in from the schools you or your student applied to.  Then you need to take your time to compare those offers.  Then you need to formulate your appeals back to those colleges (negotiate) if appropriate.  It is very likely you will not actually pick a college until April or sometimes as late as May.

Now in the meantime, you might want to consider putting down the housing deposits for any schools you or your student is exceptionally interested in.  Housing deposits are often non-refundable, so you have to be willing to give those up if you decide on a better offer at a different school.  But at least putting down a housing deposit will give many students comfort in the face of risking the dreaded “temp-housing”.

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College Finances 101: Introduction to college funding and financial aid is now available for review.  This recording was made on the evening of December 8th, 2009 and covers the following:

• The college funding environment
• The college financial aid system
• Expected Family Contribution (EFC)
• FAFSA
• CSS Profile
• Financial Aid Priority Deadlines
• College Financial Track Records
• College Application Strategies
• College Financing
• Strategies and Tactics to Minimize College Costs and Increase College Financial Offers
• Negotiating the College Financial Award

This overview runs about 71 minutes. After you have finished watching, click the link below the video to request a PDF of the presentation be emailed to you.

Should you have any problems viewing the video, you may need to update your computer’s flash player.  You can do that at the Adobe website.

Webinar Response Form

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US News and World Report is expected to publish its 2010 list of the “Best Colleges” this week.  In anticipation of the report, the journal Inside Higher Ed published a scathing review of US News’ faulty methodology.

After accessing the original survey responses, Inside Higher Ed found some very telling responses:

As already publicized, Clemson University leaders rated their school far higher than others in an effort to increase their school’s standing.

The University of Wisconsin at Madison gave top rankings to only two schools in the survey, itself and the school that the Provost’s son attends.  Every other college was ranked second to the bottom including Harvard, Yale, the rest of the Ivy League, MIT, Stanford, and UC Berkeley.  Only one school was given a different rating, Arizona State University, which was rated at the lowest possible rank.  The vice-provost at the university who completed the survey responded that he was trying to be as neutral as possible.

The surveys returned from the President of Ohio State and the university Provost were identical.

The Chancellor at UC Berkeley rated all UC schools but two as distinguished, the highest rating available.  Well higher than many nationwide and worldwide premier schools.

The President of the University of Florida gave his college the highest ranking, but did not rank one other Florida college above good.

These are just a few examples of the big problems with the US News college report.  Too much of the report is based simply on biased opinion of those who want to market their university as best they can.  There is nothing objective about it.

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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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