Building a college list used to mean coming up with a handful of schools students knew they could get into, some dream schools and a few others in the middle. But as families increasingly worry about the cost of higher education, counselors say affordability, not admissions probability, should be the organizing principle.
On a cost-conscious college list, a “safety” school is only safe if a student has a strong chance of both getting in and being able to pay for it without drowning in debt, said Evelyn Fajardo, a college counselor at Notre Dame High School in Los Angeles. She said focusing on financial fit early on is essential to avoid affordability surprises and heartbreak after students are accepted to a school they can’t afford.
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To start, Fajardo and other counselors recommend that when their kids are freshmen or sophomores in high school, parents begin discussing how much they’ve saved and how much they can reasonably afford to pay for college. Fajardo said families should keep having those conversations to set expectations as students get closer to applying.
“It can be uncomfortable, and some parents are ashamed to admit they haven’t prepared for college,” Fajardo said. “But from my experience with students, they would be a lot less stressed out if their parents were just transparent with them.”
With a budget in mind, students should write out their must-haves and dealbreakers that speak to academic interests and social fit, said Brian Ford, assistant principal of school and college counseling at Central Catholic High School in Lawrence, Massachusetts.
Juniors at his school fill out a survey to create a profile of colleges that could best meet their needs based on factors such as finances or the type of classroom environment they want. Counselors then use that data to build a list of schools that are a match using the online platform Scoir.
There is a wealth of college planning tools students can also use on their own, including College Kickstart, Appily and College Scorecard. Some tools include a college’s net price — the cost after grants and scholarships are applied — but students can go directly to a school’s website to plug in their financial information for an estimate of their actual cost. Those net price calculators can give a clearer picture of affordability, especially for students who are initially shocked by a school’s sticker price (the average annual cost of attendance before financial aid), Fajardo said.
Another critical resource is the Common Data Set, standardized self-reported data that most colleges release on their websites. Students can go to the financial aid section of the dataset to see the average number of grants a college gives out and how many people in the freshman class receive them.
They can also see how much the college typically provides in need-based grants (tied to a family’s income and assets) versus merit-based aid (scholarships for academic or athletic achievement). Many highly selective colleges offer more need-based financial aid, said Jeff Selingo, author of “Dream School: Finding the College That’s Right for You.”
“If you’re above their cutoff for need-based aid, then your chances for discounts are pretty slim,” he said. “If you look deeper into the rankings, you’re going to find colleges that are more generous in using discounts and merit aid for enrollment purposes.”
Digging into the Common Data Set can also give students a better sense of who typically gets an acceptance letter from their desired college. Students can look at the high school grade point average, class ranking and test scores of freshmen to see how they measure up.
These resources can help students build a list on two axes: academic likelihood and financial likelihood, Ford said. He constructs his lists as a nine-square chart, with affordable schools, stretch schools and out-of-reach columns on the financial axis, and likely, target and reach schools on the academic axis. A selective private college that meets full financial need, for instance, would land at the nexus of affordable and reach.
Ford said every list needs at least two easily affordable colleges that students are confident they can get into. Adding colleges where the student has a fair shot of getting in but are a financial stretch is fine, he said, but in small numbers.
At Notre Dame High School, Fajardo encourages students to rank their list of colleges on a scale of one to five, with one being completely unaffordable — the kind of schools that require taking out loans for the entirety of the cost. Colleges rated a five are schools that parents can pay for through savings and earnings, without any impact on their financial future.
Fajardo said most of her students are looking at colleges that are a solid three — financially reasonable but require families to cut back on discretionary spending or borrow a little to afford. She said the reality is many students will have to borrow to afford college, but she encourages them to keep it to a minimum.
With new lifetime limits on federal loans, Selingo said students who want to become lawyers or doctors should also be cautious about taking on too much debt in undergrad, as it could affect how much they can borrow for grad school.
He also recommends students have a mix of private and public institutions on their list, especially in-state options. He said too often, families ignore high-quality public colleges in their home state because their kids want to go away to school. But neglecting local options that are very similar in profile to out-of-state schools can be a costly mistake, Selingo said.
All told, high school counselors say creating a balanced college list is a matter of strategizing and being flexible throughout the process.
“Good college lists are like accordions,” Ford said. “They should get bigger and smaller. So that by the time you’re a senior, the schools have been tested against other institutions … so you feel really confident about where you’re applying.”
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