When it comes to lowering the price tag for college, some enterprising financial-aid consultants are finding that parents are willing to spend nearly any amount to try to save money. Total college costs have risen to close to $90,000 a year at top private universities, and competition is pushing acceptance rates down to the single digits. This year has been particularly daunting because the opening of the Free Application for Federal Student Aid has been delayed until the end of December and colleges can’t finalize financial-aid packages without it, even for students with early admission.
Cue the parental angst. And the checkbooks. “The big question when I started in this business was how will my child get in, and the question now is how will I pay for it,” says Jeff Levy, co-founder of Big J Educational Consulting. There are all sorts of options available, depending on parents’ price point and level of desperation: concierge-like packages that can cost tens of thousands of dollars, hourly rate consultations, web courses and access to do-it-yourself software. Of course, there’s free help and information available, too. All the consultants are working with the same basic set of known facts about the financial-aid process, but those facts can be pretty opaque when you get down to the school level and how they deal with each applicant. But some tout experience as financial-aid counselors at universities, some have built data-crunching software and some have the kind of bedside manner that anxious parents need. On the purely financial side, …
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Cue the parental angst. And the checkbooks. “The big question when I started in this business was how will my child get in, and the question now is how will I pay for it,” says Jeff Levy, co-founder of Big J Educational Consulting. There are all sorts of options available, depending on parents’ price point and level of desperation: concierge-like packages that can cost tens of thousands of dollars, hourly rate consultations, web courses and access to do-it-yourself software. Of course, there’s free help and information available, too. All the consultants are working with the same basic set of known facts about the financial-aid process, but those facts can be pretty opaque when you get down to the school level and how they deal with each applicant. But some tout experience as financial-aid counselors at universities, some have built data-crunching software and some have the kind of bedside manner that anxious parents need. On the purely financial side, …nnDiscussion:nn” ai_name=”RocketNews AI: ” start_sentence=”Can I tell you more about this article?” text_input_placeholder=”Type ‘Yes'”]