Net price calculators make the pricing somewhat less opaque in terms of need-based financial aid, although non-automatic merit scholarships still remain very opaque at many schools. However, the general rise in list prices means that pricing, financial aid, and scholarships have become a more significant factor in many students’ college choices, which likely drives the increased number of applications trying to find the best scholarship offers.
@Postmodern No offense taken.
At some point one needs to pick one. So the question is the journey you take to that one selection. I am all for visiting as many colleges as he likes. But after all the visits are in I feel he should be able to pick his top five that he would like to attend. It is very hard to do, but at the end of the process he will have to pick a single one to attend and that might not be easy either. I guess it has more to do with just forcing the person to chop the list down. Nothing deeply ideological. More of a practical approach for me.
Sorry if I did not explain this right but this process is very hard to put into words. It is like picking a significant other, how the heck do you explain that? Hahaha.
A shout out here for the UK system, $33 to apply to 5 schools with 1, 400 word personal statement, it works perfectly well in the UK. Best for the student and parents as it focuses the mind as to what the child/parent really wants in a college, while colleges only receive applications from students with the serious intention of attending. Far fewer applications means far less administrative overhead… It will never happen of course because US children/parents want the shotgun approach to landing the golden ticket, while there are entire industries revolving around college admission not least in the colleges themselves as stated above.
The UK also has a much smaller population of students and number of universities. High school grading is also more standardized in the UK.
MassDad- your kid doesn’t need to narrow the search down to the top five he’d like to attend- your kid needs to select a range of schools which he can get into (not always obvious), you can afford (obvious if you’ve done your homework and communicated with your kid- not so easy otherwise, or if you have complicated finances/divorced, etc.) AND which he’d happily attend.
If the list of five covers these bases- fantastic. If not- well, every April parents post here- their kids are on three wait lists but haven’t been admitted anywhere- or kid has one admission which they can’t afford, and everything else was a rejection.
Don’t do that to your kid…