Who Should Apply for Financial Aid?

“If we aren't likely to qualify for need-based aid, should we file a FAFSA?”  “Is it true that everyone should complete financial aid forms, regardless of need?” “Do I need to complete the FAFSA to receive merit aid?” These are questions I often get from parents who are trying to determine whether there is any benefit to filling out this "black box" form.  The Free Application for Federal Student Aid, more commonly known as the FAFSA, is the federal form that all colleges require students to complete in order to qualify for certain types of financial assistance and any federal student aid.  (Nearly 400 colleges also require submission of the CSS/Profile form, found on the College Board website, for the allocation of their own institutional aid). You will need to fill out the FAFSA to receive need-based aid, but that is not the only reason to spend the time and effort.

Who should complete the FAFSA?  Anyone who believes he or she may qualify for need-based aid should invest the time; filling out the form is the only way to know for sure.  There is no maximum income or set amount which precludes one from qualifying.  Rather, many factors in addition to income influence eligibility including the age of parents, assets owned, family members living in the household and number of children in college.  Yet the FAFSA is not only required to calculate demonstrated need.  Any student or parent who wishes to borrow under the federal Stafford loan program, regardless of financial situation, must file a FAFSA.  This even applies if a parent chooses to take out a PLUS loan.  A handful of colleges require that students complete the FAFSA in order to receive merit aid awards.  The single best way to find out a college’s documentation requirements is to visit the financial aid pages on its website.  

  

Completing the FAFSA is relatively straight forward for those who have already filed a tax return and meet the eligibility requirements to take advantage of the IRS Data Retrieval Tool.  This enables filers to fill in much of the financial information on the FAFSA automatically by transferring data from their tax return.  But here’s the Catch-22:  You must wait approximately 2 weeks if you process your return electronically, or 6-8 weeks if you file by mail before you can access this feature.  By then the college financial aid deadline might well have passed (check individual college websites) so you may still be faced with the challenge of estimating your prior year tax information (a word of advice: better to under than over-estimate earnings).  For those who estimate, you will ultimately have to amend your FAFSA with the actual numbers, and can take advantage of the data retrieval tool at that point.  If you are certain you will not qualify for need-based aid yet will complete the FAFSA in order to borrow either a Stafford student loan or PLUS loan, you are not constrained by college financial aid deadlines so file your tax returns first to simplify the process. 

For a helpful guide on filling out the FAFSA form, you may want to view the 7 Easy Steps to the FAFSA tutorial before you get started.

Keep in mind that qualifying for financial aid is not a guarantee that you will receive lots of free money so go into the process with realistic expectations.   As I have emphasized in many of my blog postings, your personally estimated need, your FAFSA determined “demonstrated need,” and the amount of assistance you might actually receive can and will likely be three different numbers.  Financial aid formulas may yield a higher Expected Family Contribution (EFC) and lower demonstrated need than what you believe you can afford. The FAFSA is not frequently updated and consequently underestimates today's cost of living, especially for those who reside in expensive regions of the country. Furthermore, most colleges won’t fully plug the gap between the Cost of Attendance and what you are expected to pay. Like many of us managing our personal finances, colleges struggle to judiciously allocate a finite pool of resources.  So embark on this process with tempered hope and expectations. 

Need-Blind, Need-Aware and College Admissions

Does financial need factor into the college admission decision and if so, how does it affect applicants and to what extent?  Adding to the anxiety about college admissions is the question about how to handle and interpret application questions on financial aid.  Parents, especially those who are not sure whether they will qualify for assistance, often ask whether checking “yes” to the need-based aid question might negatively impact a student’s chance for acceptance. 

Like many questions related to college admission, the answer is rarely so straightforward. Students, of course, want to maximize the probability of admission without jeopardizing their opportunity to receive financial aid for college.  Some schools profess to be need-blind, meaning that they do not consider ability to pay in the admission decision.  That may sound like good news; however, it does not necessarily mean that the college will provide adequate financial aid to enable the student to attend once admitted.  New York University, a need-blind university, does not claim to meet demonstrated need and generally comes up short by more than 30% of the cost.  Admitted students are counseled by admissions, only after acceptance, that attending the university might not be a sound decision if it requires excessive borrowing.  

Certain need-sensitive colleges take a different approach to college admission, choosing to give more aid to fewer students rather than put affordability out of reach for many. Several of the more selective need-sensitive colleges, in fact, admit most though not all students without regard to their ability to pay.  When it comes down to the final 2-20% of the admission decisions (depending on the college), ability to pay becomes the deciding factor.   Is this more palatable than offering a spot in the class without providing the means to pay for it? Wesleyan University believes so, yet met with protests from students, parents and alumni when it switched from a need-blind to need-aware or need-sensitive policy this past May, stating that it would now consider ability to pay when filling the last 10% or so of the class.  The college chose to alter its admission approach so that it would still be able to meet the demonstrated need of every admitted student. A list of the small group of Colleges-that-claim-to-meet-full-financial-need was published by U.S. News & World Report earlier this year.

Whether a college is need-blind or need-aware, families should have an understanding about what they can afford to pay and what amount of borrowing is manageable, even before the applications are submitted. The unfortunate truth is that need is an unavoidable topic in most college admission offices. Colleges do not have unlimited financial aid budgets and most have to factor this into the equation. You can decide to try to game the system and avoid checking the will you apply for need-based financial aid? box, but if you honestly do not have the ability to pay, you are not doing yourself or your child a favor.  That being said, it is a good idea to understand the likelihood of your receiving aid as you work through the process.

Here are some guidelines on how to think about the application financial aid question to help you evaluate its potential impact on the admission decision for your child:

-          Is the school in question a reach, mid-range or likely for your child? If he or she is not at the high end or at least in the upper half of the admitted student range in terms of academic performance or some other compelling factor, having a financial need probably works against him/her in the admission process.  A student with money and the same academic qualifications has a better chance of being admitted. 

-          The most selective colleges reserve their financial aid for qualified students with demonstrated need rather than those with the best academic record.  At places where admission is less selective, merit tends to rule.  Many colleges use financial aid as the carrot to lure the most desirable students, whether they need financial assistance or not. In search of ever-improving rankings, colleges essentially pay to attract the high performers. 

-          More schools “gap” than do not; they expect that you will fill the balance of your need with student or parent loans.  So even if your Expected Family Contribution or EFC is less than the cost of attendance, don’t just assume that the college will make up the difference with a grant.  One major caveat: some colleges disingenuously qualify loans as financial aid; since loans must be paid back, be advised to distinguish them from grant money which is a gift.  If it is not clear whether a financial aid “award” includes borrowed money, ask.    

The best way to find out how need factors into the admission decision at a particular college, if in doubt, is to pick up the phone and call the school.  Keep in mind, however, that a need-blind policy will not necessarily work in your favor if tuition is high and the financial aid policy is to gap.  Net price calculators which can be found on every college’s website are another tool at your disposal to estimate your actual out-of-pocket cost per year.  You can also use College Navigator, a Department of Education site, to get a sense for what families in your income range typically pay at a given college.   With these tools, you will be better informed before checking the financial need box. 

Does That Price for This College Make Sense?

The cost of college today has put affordability truly out of reach for most Americans, including many who are comfortably middle class.  I am not stating anything that anyone who is currently putting children through college hasn’t realized.  While higher education has always come at a cost, it has reached a price point that now exceeds the pain threshold for most Americans.  As President Obama, Congress and colleges wrangle over how to fix the problem of runaway tuition increases, I sadly am of the opinion that the situation has no satisfactory solution that doesn’t involve drastically changing the delivery of higher education in this country. But that is a subject for another day.  Right now I am consumed by the decisions families make with respect to cost and choosing a college.  

The question that has been weighing on my mind is how much is too much to pay for college, specifically for schools that heavily discount tuition.  Anyone who follows the news about rising college costs probably is familiar with the difference between the “sticker price” (what a college publishes as its total cost) and “net price” (what its students actually pay, on average).  In recent year, most colleges have made a practice of offering merit aid to students they wish to lure away from more selective schools.  Colleges do that by “discounting” the sticker price so that students feel like they are getting a real deal…but are they?  The discounting of tuition, in fact, is one of the main drivers of higher prices.  Colleges are able to offer select students sizable discounts by charging everybody else more.  So should you pay full price for a college that uses your tuition dollars to subsidize other students?  

The question has no simple answer.  What makes sense for one student and family may be impractical for another.  My goal here is to provide a framework for families wrestling with this question as they help their children make the all-important decision about where to attend college.  

Have the family discussion and a joint understanding about affordability before the applications go out and the acceptances come in.  It is okay to apply to the dream college, but be clear with your son or daughter about what kind of financial aid package, either need or merit-based, will make it feasible to attend.  Setting expectations early may mean avoiding future heartache.

Recognize that loans may make it possible to attend the college of choice today, but that excessive borrowing will feel like an albatross around the neck once graduation has passed and the loan payments come due. Borrowing a reasonable amount to pay for college makes sense, but knowing what is affordable requires planning and forward thinking.  How much will the student and/or parents probably have to borrow over four years?  What will be the approximate size of the future graduate's monthly payments and how long will it take to pay off the loans?  Given a student’s career plans, what will he or she likely earn, and will that be sufficient to comfortably meet debt payments while still covering other living expenses?  A good rule of thumb is to keep debt payments at or below 8% of gross income.  Calculators such as those available on the website http://www.mappingyourfuture.org/ enable one to project future debt payments, based on expected borrowing and interest rates. The calculators will also help you determine what a person should earn in order to comfortably pay back a given balance in student loans. If you are looking for a way to estimate average salaries in a specific field by region, you might want to check out the Bureau of Labor Statistics site: http://www.bls.gov/.

Think it through before you pay the sticker price at a college that heavily discounts tuition. It is important to find out what percentage of students receives some type of merit aid and the amount of the average award.  If a school discounts tuition for a significant number of students and you are not one of them, you are probably overpaying and subsidizing someone else’s child who has better grades and test scores.  When is it okay to do this?  1) If it’s the dream school and you can afford it without borrowing, 2) if the student wants to pursue a unique major or program for which the college is renowned, 3) when the college offers some merit aid, but most students pay full fare (e.g., the “subsidizing of other students is not significant) and 4) in cases where other less expensive options truly do not meet the academic needs of the student.

Have your child include schools on the college list that that will likely offer tuition discounts based on his or her test scores and GPA.  For the most part, you can figure out which colleges these are.  Are the test scores and GPA at the high end of the school’s range?  In all likelihood, the college will offer some discount as an incentive to entice your student to attend.

 

Weigh the emotional against the practical.  Does it make sense for the middle income family that receives no need-based aid to choose the Ivy League or highly selective university over the state school option?  Given the emotions wrapped up in these types of choices, I find it difficult to advise others on the right and logical decision.   Choosing the highly selective, name brand college may indeed change the student’s life, but at a high cost if excessive borrowing is involved.  This is especially true if a student has plans to go on to graduate school.  I know.  It’s hard to turn down Harvard or Yale, nor am I saying that you should.  However, graduating debt-free or with limited loans is anything but over-rated.  Do well as an undergraduate anywhere and you can spend the bigger bucks on graduate school.  

Deciding what a college education is worth is a complex analysis, yet unlike an integral calculus problem, there is no single right answer.  My hope is that having a framework to evaluate this decision and a list of questions to ponder will help each family come to the answer that is appropriate for them.

Making College Affordable - Time to Speak Up

I’ve been reading a lot about the cost of college lately. The talk these days is often about how to improve transparency. Thanks to a recent government mandate, families can now go to the website of any federally funded college and try out the school’s Net Price Calculator. This new online tool will ostensibly help families and students estimate their out-of-pocket costs for a college education. That’s the good news. Yet, net cost naturally leads to a conversation about how middle and lower income families will come up with this elusive figure which is still far beyond many family budgets. In fact, Education Secretary Arne Duncan asserts that three-quarters of all Americans believe college is too expensive for most people to afford. The fact that none of this has dampened the year-over-year rise in applications is indeed mind-boggling. Even Penn State’s applications are up this year, but that’s a topic for a different post.

College has become so far out of reach for so many families that last week Mr. Duncan implored higher education officials to make college costs an urgent priority and asked that they think creatively about ways to address this profound issue for our college-going population. Meanwhile, students and families still reach for the golden ring to attend expensive and elite four year colleges, often putting themselves in debt beyond their probable ability to repay. The most recent statistics on student debt show that seniors are graduating with average loan balances in excess of $25,000. Some of this is eligible for Obama’s income-based repayment plan for federal student loans, but more and more students are forced to borrow private loans to close the gap. Interest and principal on these loans will have students repaying their student obligations for much of their adult lives, perhaps forcing them to forego or postpone putting a down payment on a home or making contributions to retirement funds. Forget about funding their own children's education.

Today the Chronicle of Higher Education published a special report, What Private College Presidents Make, which shows compensation for the leaders of our nation’s colleges and universities, and also compares the president's salary to each institution’s pay scale for its faculty. At some, not all, the gap is staggering, not unlike the discrepancies we find on Wall Street. The report is quite timely given Mr. Duncan’s remarks last week. While cutting college chief executive pay won’t in and of itself make college affordable, focusing on leadership compensation seems like a great place to start. Suffice it to say that not nearly enough has been done to stop this runaway train so that we, as parents, are not further mortgaging our own futures and watching our children do the same.

We read about the steady rise in student loan balances and defaults each year, but nothing concrete has really been done to stem the rise of what will, without a doubt, be our next sub-prime crisis. I think about this everyday as I advise families on paying for college. For many it is not really a question of whether the funds are accessible; lenders are still eager to make student loans, and there is an even more tenuous link to affordability than there was in sub-prime mortgage lending where presumably some collateral existed. It is all too easy to hide our heads in the sand and hope that miraculously our children will be able to repay the loans when the time comes and still be able to live the American Dream.

I am not suggesting that everyone go to the nearest computer and sign the Occupy Student Debt Campaign online petition which calls for student debt forgiveness, free public education and greater transparency at private colleges. However, this product of the Occupy Wall Street movement has prompted me to think about my own responsibility to my children and to the families I advise. For the first time, I am encouraged to write to my representatives in Washington and ask that they make college affordability for all students a priority. I am hoping that I can persuade others to do the same. I look down the road and wonder what will happen when college is only accessible to the truly privileged in this country while the majority is saddled with student loans they will never be able to repay. The image is painfully clear and I'm not liking what I see.

Awarding Institutional Funds - The Black Box of Financial Aid

How colleges use their own institutional funds to provide assistance to students is often the black box of the financial aid process. Just consider the 500 or so private colleges and programs that make use of the CSS/Profile form to determine the allocation of institutional aid. If your son or daughter is applying to one of these schools or is currently attending one, then you may already be familiar with this comprehensive form that asks for multiple years of earnings and a full list of your family assets, including your home. But what you may not realize is that colleges pick and choose which pieces of this collection of data they wish to consider in the calculation of their applicants’ financial need. Colleges take advantage of a practice known as Professional Judgment. While the Expected Family Contribution (EFC) for federal aid purposes is standard regardless of the college, professional judgment allows schools some flexibility to set their own terms for distributing their institutional funds. This is one of the reasons that financial aid packages for the same student can vary significantly from college to college (that, and the fact that many colleges “gap” students, meaning that they do not fully cover demonstrated need).

Don’t waste your time trying to decipher the formula or determine which of your assets a college will consider. The process is far from transparent and few colleges actually disclose on their websites the factors that come into play in their decision making process. While admittedly I have not done an exhaustive search, Princeton is one of the few exceptions I have found. And for anyone interested, Princeton does not consider home equity in its calculation. As an aside, you might want to inquire with the financial aid offices on your child’s college list as to how they treat home equity in today’s economy, given that banks have made tapping that resource increasingly difficult.

So why is any of this worthy of mention? Understanding how colleges use financial aid formulas and why aid may vary from school to school can partially demystify an often perplexing process. It also underscores the fact that if you are applying for financial aid, you won't know what college will really cost until you have the award letters in hand. The bottom line is that it may be as important to apply to financial safeties as it is to include colleges where the probability of admission is high.

If cost is a factor for you, then hedge your bets by having your child apply to both public and private colleges, recognizing that the private option may turn out to be the better deal. How do you identify the financial safeties? You should approach it the same way you find right fit colleges. First, know that this is an art, not a science; there are no magic formulas so you won’t know for sure until your child is accepted and receives an aid package. So start by understanding your student’s chance of being accepted. The more desirable he or she is as a candidate, the more likely the school will be generous with money. The most obvious way to get a preliminary idea for one’s chances is to compare grades and test scores to those of the average student admitted.

Recognize that schools which state they fully meet demonstrated need are less likely to gap. However, keep in mind that for colleges using either the CSS/Profile or a proprietary form, the specifics of their calculations will not likely be disclosed to you. You can, however, make use of resources such as College Navigator to get a sense (not an assurance) for how generous your child’s college choices are likely to be with need-based aid. You can search colleges by name and look at the net price for different income ranges. The major shortcoming, however, is that there are virtually no details for families making above $110,000 annually, but the website can still provide some insights into what students pay.

While the lack of transparency makes it tough to project your true out-of-pocket expenses when it comes to paying for college, there are ways to get a better handle on the probable cost. Approaching the financial aid process strategically will hopefully lead to more affordable choices and less disappointment in the final analysis.

The ABC's of Financial Aid

It’s mid-December, two weeks away from the New Year. Many of us live by milestones that remind us how quickly time flies...birthdays, holidays, change of seasons. One of mine, I shamelessly admit, is the start once again of the financial aid cycle. With college applications hopefully finished or in the final stages, it is time to look ahead to the next set of deadlines, those for submitting financial aid forms. Bemoaning and complaining about the financial aid process is a yearly ritual. Yet it need not be so cumbersome and daunting. Familiarization with concepts, knowing deadlines and being organized is the key to successfully navigating aid forms and triumphing over the process. Here is my annual college financing primer which highlights some of the critical terms you will need to know.
The Cost of Attendance, or COA, refers to the total annual cost of college, not just tuition and fees. Don’t forget to factor in room and board, books, transportation, and other personal expenses when trying to estimate what a year of college will cost. College financial aid officers look at the total COA when they package aid awards. Come October 2011, colleges will be required to post the COA on their website.
The Free Application for Federal Student Aid, better known as the FAFSA, is used by colleges and universities to determine eligibility for financial aid. All students must file a FAFSA in order to receive any federal student aid. This includes the non-need based unsubsidized federally guaranteed Stafford student loans, so if you anticipate borrowing for college, you will have to complete the FAFSA. It becomes available online January 1, 2011 for the 2011-2012 school year at http://www.fafsa.gov/. Prior to filling out the form, both the student and one parent must each obtain a pin number which is in essence your electronic signature. You can register for a pin at http://www.pin.ed.gov/. Be sure to record your pin in a place where you can easily retrieve it for future use.
The Expected Family Contribution or EFC which is calculated from the information you provide on the FAFSA is the amount determined to be what the family can and should contribute to the cost of the student’s education. The EFC is based on the family’s current assets and prior year's income, including both the student’s and parents’ financial data.
After completing and submitting your FAFSA, you will receive a Student Aid Report, or SAR, which will show your EFC.
Nearly 600 schools also require that families complete the CSS/Profile form for the allocation of their institutional funds. The CSS/Profile is administered by the College Board and can only be filed online. Families can currently access the Profile for the 2011-2012 academic year by going to the College Board’s website: http://www.collegeboard.com/.
Now that you are familiar with these terms, there are some additional things that you should know about financial aid awards.
- Your “demonstrated need” (the COA minus your EFC) won’t necessarily be the amount shown on your SAR if the college also uses the CSS/Profile or another financial aid form. These methodologies are not the same, and therefore will produce different results. Institutions allocating their resources will naturally rely on the methodology that sets a lower threshold for your financial needs, so don’t be surprised if the aid package is less than you expected, even from schools that claim to meet demonstrated need.
- Colleges tailor the CSS/Profile formula to their specific institutional requirements. In other words, your demonstrated need may vary from school to school. For example, some colleges consider the equity in your home; others do not.
- The college offering the most financial aid may not necessarily be providing the best package. One has to look at the composition of each award. A financial aid package that meets need with grants which do not have to be repaid is far more attractive than one comprised entirely of loans.
- If your financial situation changes materially after you’ve filed the forms, such as loss of employment, you should notify the colleges immediately.
Lastly, be sure to visit the tuition and financial aid page of each school’s website (often buried in the Admission section) to check on requirements, deadlines and merit aid, if awarded. Meeting these deadlines is crucial. Since financial aid is a limited resource, getting things in early can make a difference. The sooner you complete the FAFSA, CSS/Profile and any other required forms, the better your chances of receiving financial assistance.

College Costs - Achieving Greater Transparency

Even in a down economy with inflation almost non-existent, the cost of a college education continues to rise at a shocking 5% a year for private colleges. It’s not surprising that more families are asking the question: can we afford this? Improved disclosure requirements under the federal Higher Education and Opportunity Act (HEOA) may not help you pay the bill, but they will take some of the guess work out of the process.

Until recently it had not been so easy to determine a school's true Cost of Attendance or COA, which includes all the expenses associated with going to college, beyond just tuition and fees. Fortunately for the college consumer, schools are now required to provide reasonable estimates for all costs, including books, travel and other personal expenses. HEOA also stipulates that colleges have until October 2011 to display net-price calculators on their websites. These calculators will enable families to obtain a ballpark estimate of the net cost to them, after factoring in the financial aid package they might reasonably expect to receive from the school.

For those who do not wish to wait until a year from now, there are ways to get closer to estimating the actual amount they will pay. One of the best sources is the US Department of Education’s College Navigator website: http://nces.ed.gov/collegenavigator/. This site provides a treasure trove of data pertaining to individual college costs and average financial aid awards based upon income ranges. Type in the name of a school and you will have access to the most current data reported to the U.S. government by the college. My only caveat is that you use these ranges as a guide; they are not a reliable determinant of what you will ultimately pay. Financial aid results are driven by a rather in-depth review of your personal data. Simply comparing your income to the school's posted ranges might be misleading, as income alone does not capture your full financial picture. You won’t know your actual out-of-pocket cost and the composition of the financial aid package until you file your aid applications and have the final award letters in hand.

The soon-to-be required net-price calculators will be an even more powerful tool for gaining an understanding of college costs. Colleges have the option to either build their own or use a template created by the federal government. At a minimum, the calculator must contain eight data elements designed to determine dependency status, estimate the Expected Family Contribution and approximate the COA. A handful of colleges, including Princeton, MIT and Purdue University, have gotten a jump on the task, and have already posted calculators on their websites. Even if your child is not applying to one of these colleges, you might want to play around with their calculators to get a sense for how varied your financial aid results could be from school to school.

Familiarizing oneself with the cost of college before a student actually applies will help families realistically adjust their expectations and target schools that are good fits both academically and in terms of affordability. The schools with the highest sticker prices might not be the most expensive after financial aid. Net price calculators which will be school specific should be reasonably effective in providing a ball park estimate. But as with many things, the devil will be in the details. You should use these tools to ensure that both financial and academic safeties find their way to the college list. Creating a list with affordable options will help everyone sleep better at night.

A Commitment to Match Financial Aid - The New Ivy League Approach

Paying for college is one of the most pressing concerns for families today, which is why I feel compelled to share ideas that may help families manage the cost. Followers of my blog have read my postings on the merit aid “arms race,” or how colleges use tuition discounting to attract the students that they especially want to enhance their class profile. However, a battle for exceptional students has now taken hold at the top tier of selective colleges: the Ivy League.

As many of you know, the eight Ivy League colleges, along with a handful of other highly selective schools, do not offer merit aid to students. Even those with mega-endowments use their financial aid resources exclusively for students who demonstrate financial need. This naturally figures; such colleges and universities have no trouble drawing top students, so there is no incentive to offer grants just to lure students away from other schools. Besides, merit aid awards run counter to the more important mission of access regardless of cost. Yet that does not mean that these toughest admit schools aren’t thinking about ways to compete with their peer institutions for students. With little fanfare, two universities, Cornell and Dartmouth, decided to go head to head with other Ivies, using financial aid for precisely that purpose. Both universities will soon match the aid packages that students are awarded by other Ivies and a few highly competitive schools too.

Back in 2007-2008, partly due to government pressure to spend their endowments on students rather than lose tax-exempt benefits, some 40 top tier schools dispensed with loans for the neediest students. Two universities with the largest endowments, Harvard and Yale, set an even higher bar in order to also benefit middle income families: At Harvard students with family incomes of less than $60,000 pay nothing, while those who make less than $180,000 have their costs capped at10% of their income. For Yale students, the income ceiling which allows students to take advantage of the 10% maximum out-of-pocket is a whopping $200,000. Cornell, having a far larger student body and much smaller endowment, is in no financial position to compete with such hefty aid packages for all of its students.

Yet not wanting to lose out on some of these gifted students, Cornell has found a way to compete without offering such generous awards across the board. Starting with the class enrolling for the fall of 2011, Cornell will match the offer of other Ivies to which the student has been accepted. Cornell has issued the same match policy for students accepted to Duke and Stanford. However, if your child happens be one of the students in this high class problem category, don’t expect Cornell to come to you. It is up to the student to approach Cornell to request the additional aid based upon the competing package.

Sure, this will affect a very limited group of students: those who are smart and lucky enough to be accepted to at least two Ivy League schools while also qualifying for financial aid. Yet the concept of competing aid policies does expand the notion of affordability of an Ivy League education to a broader universe of middle income families. The student who would choose Cornell or Dartmouth over Harvard will no longer have to factor cost or potential outstanding debt into the equation. This is a positive step forward for college affordability. But just so you don’t think I’ve completely taken leave of my senses, let me assure you that I am fully aware of the most difficult hurdle which remains: Getting in!

The Three Year Degree - Ingenious or Falling Short?

The cost of a college degree continues to rise. One might think this is incentive enough to get through as quickly as possible. On the contrary, the national average for students graduating college within six years is only 53%. While this graduation rate is disturbing, it does not tell the whole story. Some extend their stay to balance work and school, the former a necessity in order to be able to afford the tuition costs. Others have fallen victim to budget cuts and class schedule reductions, making it more difficult to register for and complete required courses on time.

Despite the trend towards extending one’s colleges years, programs are becoming more prevalent at universities around the country which offer the opportunity to earn a degree in three years. These programs are not for everyone yet their proponents claim that the benefits are multiple: students save on tuition, room and board, colleges achieve better utilization of their resources by offering classes year round and graduation rates improve.

With cost pressures driving many decisions today, several colleges, including University of North Carolina at Greensboro, Hartwick College in Oneonta, NY and the University of Illinois now offer a three year degree. To ensure timely graduation, these programs generally include priority registration and special advising to the students which enable them to adhere to a tight timetable and to stay focused. Bate College in Lewiston, Maine has offered the three year degree since 1965, yet to date few students have actually taken advantage of it.

Proponents cite the cost advantages for students and more rapid turnover for universities as students earn degrees in a shorter period of time. Those in support of these programs also believe they will force positive changes in curriculum as colleges seeks ways to cover a multitude of subjects in a more condensed time frame. This, they profess, will lead to a greater emphasis on inter-disciplinary learning.

The three year degree is clearly not for everyone. Students who benefit must be prepared to step onto the fast track. Often workloads are heavy and schedules require year round attendance to finish within three years. Are you prepared to declare a major after your first year? Forget the three year degree if you want to explore a variety of subjects before making that decision. It is also not a practical route for those who must work to support themselves through college.

Critics question the practicality of three year programs when students already have a tough time finishing in four. Three year programs also challenge the very essence of the college experience which goes beyond academics alone. Students who finish in three will have limited time, if any, to participate in extra-curricular activities and take part in many of the social aspects which some might argue are a primary component of college life. Students would also be forced to forgo pursuing courses out of sheer interest, since the truncated time schedule will restrict the ability to explore. Last but not least, some question whether the three year degree serves the needs of the market, where employers are placing new demands on college graduates. Having a specific skill is often not what those hiring really want to see. Today’s business leaders are redefining the necessary core skills for success, e.g., global and inter-cultural awareness, teamwork and problem solving skills, ethical reasoning, critical thinking and decision making capabilities. Will a rush to get through in three years short change students in these areas? There is no doubt that some serious curriculum re-design must be part of any trend to finish college in record time.