In - Your Guide to College Admissions from The Princeton Review

Survey Says: Stanford Is Hot, but Debt Is Not

What’s on the minds of college applicants and their parents?

As part of our annual "College Hopes & Worries Survey," we recently asked nearly 10,000 students and 4,000 parents what they thought of the college admissions scene. The results are available today on PrincetonReview.com; click here to check them out!

A couple of highlights . . .

• This year, Stanford was the school most named by students and parents as their “dream college”—i.e., the school they most wish they (or their child) could attend if cost and acceptance were not issues.
• Money is now the biggest driver of college-related worries. Students and parents identified student-loan debt as the most worrying part of the college landscape. (From 2010 to 2012, the most common concern was getting into one’s first-choice college but being unable to pay for it. Before that, the biggest worry—not getting into one’s first choice school—was unrelated to finances.)

What else did we learn? The application process continues to be stressful: 69 percent of respondents gauged their stress levels as "High" or "Very High.” And being able to land a better job is still seen as the main benefit of a college education.

To see additional results from this survey, including the top 10 “dream colleges” for applicants and parents, click here.

Receiving Your Decisions, and Planning Your Next Moves

Over the next couple of weeks, college applicants will receive the bulk of their admissions decisions.

A new series of posts from Montgomery Educational Consulting explains, in detail, how to navigate each type of decision, including . . .

• The acceptance letter. Awesome news, yes. However, each one after the first makes your final choice more complicated. You’ll have to navigate the attached financial aid offers as well as the requests for enrollment and housing deposits (if applicable).
• The waitlist. Do you want to stay on it? If so, you should to continue to show interest in the school and send along any new proof of your awesomeness. (It might be tiresome to stay in “applicant mode” while others around you conclude this process, but it’s the best way to maximize your chances of admission.)
• The denial. If you truly have your heart set on a school that denies you, you might consider going elsewhere for a couple of semesters and then submitting a transfer application. Otherwise, your main task is to move on.

For more information on how to handle each type of decision, click here, here and here.

Consider Your Future Salary When Borrowing for College

If a financial aid offer includes a sizable loan, you and your parents will have to decide whether the education promised by the school is worth taking on this debt.

There are two things you should be sure to consider when making such a decision.

First, what the loan will actually cost you after graduation. FinAid.org’s Loan Calculator is a great tool for this—it will estimate your monthly payments based on the terms of the loan.

Second, your expected earning potential after graduation. To help you to determine this, Montgomery Educational Consulting recently suggested the following free resources:

• Payscale.com, which has the average starting and mid-career salary for over 1,000 different schools and 130 different majors.
• NerdScholar, which has specific salary information on the different colleges within large universities.

Click here for more info.

Which College Is More Expensive?

This year’s admission and financial aid offers are starting to roll in, which means that many students and families will soon have important decisions to make.

Unfortunately, these decisions, tough to begin with, are often complicated by aid offers that are difficult to read—and compare.

Different colleges describe their various costs and awards differently. Some lump loans with scholarships, while others separate them. Some list their full cost of attendance, while others list only their tuition.

Fortunately, MyCollegeCalendar.org has created a financial aid comparison spreadsheet that will help you to organize all of the information you receive in different colleges’ aid awards. It will allow you to directly compare costs, scholarships, etc. Click here to check it out.

“Need Aware” Admissions: How It Works

Many colleges will consider whether an applicant can afford to pay full tuition when deciding whether to admit him or her.

This practice—called “need aware” admissions—is very much unfair to those applicants who need financial aid (and most do).

However, it’s also frequently misunderstood. A recent New York Times article explains that, even at “need aware” colleges, the most qualified applicants—regardless of financial circumstances—are on the same playing field. It is qualified applicants on the borderline of being accepted that will get a boost from their ability to pay the full “sticker price” without aid.

There’s an important takeaway here for those who want aid. Specifically, if you’re applying to “need aware” colleges, most of them should resemble “safety schools” for you—i.e., your credentials (GPA, test scores, etc.) should comfortably exceed the typical admitted student’s.  (Click here for more info on choosing safeties.)

As you are looking for aid, I’d also suggest that these schools be ones that offer generous merit aid to students with relatively strong credentials. (Click here to search for schools with large merit awards.)

When choosing colleges, be sure to ask them—politely—whether they are “need aware” (note: “need sensitive” means the same thing). The alternative is “need blind”—such schools admit all students without regard to their financial circumstances. Many of these schools, particularly the highly selective ones, meet the full financial need of all of their admitted students.

Click here to read more on the Times.

Sequestration Will Cut Funding for Financial Aid

Federal budget cuts expected to go into effect tomorrow through the “sequestration” process will reduce funding for work-study, an important component of many students' financial aid packages.

According to the White House, this reduction in funding will lead to the elimination of over 30,000 jobs for college students with financial need.

NPR says that, due to the impending cuts, “Some colleges are warning incoming freshman that their financial aid may shrink.”

To learn more about the affect sequestration will have on student aid, as well as the negative influence it will have on university research (a big deal if you plan to major in the sciences), check out this segment on NPR.

Free FAFSA Resources

The financial aid application process can be perplexing. However, it’s important not to let any confusion you might have lead to delays in submitting the necessary forms—for example, the FAFSA. If you miss a deadline, you can miss out on a substantial amount of aid.

To help you get your FAFSA done correctly and on time, StateUniversity.com recently posted four free resources. Click here to check them out. Each one can provide answers to wide range of questions.

Also be sure to check out this collection of advice from our Paying for College Without Going Broke guidebook—a.k.a. the only annual financial aid guide with line-by-line instructions for completing the FAFSA.

White House Scorecard Aims to Simplify “Value” for College Shoppers

How do you get "the most bang for your educational buck”?

In his State of the Union address earlier this week, President Obama announced that the White House has developed an online College Scorecard to help students and parents assess a given college’s affordability as well as its value.

The scorecard allows users to see the net price, graduation rate, median student loan, and loan default rate at a given college. It provides some context for each number, rating it as low, medium, or high or comparing it to the national average. In the future, it will also include employment data for recent grads. Click here to read more about it on Inside Higher Ed.

For years, we at The Princeton Review have been reporting on value in higher education through our “Best Value Colleges” lists and guidebook. We also partner with USA TODAY to produce an interactive database of our “Best Values.” Click here for more info.

The Best Values in Higher Education

As college costs have risen dramatically in recent decades, it’s understandable that current students—and their parents—want to get their money’s worth. Today’s college shoppers search for schools that can provide an excellent education and, at the same time, minimize costs.

To augment this search, The Princeton Review’s annual “Best Value Colleges” list, published in partnership with USA TODAY, identifies schools with a commitment to both academic quality and affordability.

For the 2013 list—released today—we analyzed more than 30 factors related to academics, cost, and financial aid. We found 150 “Best Values” in higher education and identified the top 10 public and top 10 private colleges among them. (Click here for more info on how we did it.) Our number one public college is the University of Virginia; our number one private college is Swarthmore College.

Note: schools on the list with a high “sticker price” offset costs with generous aid to students with financial need. How much aid? Freshmen at the 75 the public schools in the book received, on average, a grant of $8,900. Freshmen at the 75 private schools in the book received, on average, a grant of $32,500.

Visit PrincetonReview.com for info on each of the “Best Value Colleges” and USATODAY.com for an interactive database of the schools. Also be sure to check out the companion book, The Best Value Colleges: The 150 Best-Buy Schools and What It Takes to Get In. This 450-page guide has detailed profiles of the colleges and advice for applicants on how to get admitted to—financial aid from—the schools.

Tips for Scholarship Essays

Do you plan to apply for private scholarships? If so, strong essays can give your applications an edge.

Scholarship America recently posted four solid tips for scholarship essays. Click here to check them out.

Just remember: don't get carried away and spend so much time looking and applying for scholarships that you neglect your current commitments.