Pursuing a College? Let the College Pursue You
Part 1 of a series on reforming college admissions and strategies for a successful college search
It’s October, the school year has just begun, but the eyes of many parents are really trained on next fall, and where their children will be attending college. I know — I have been through this twice in the last four years, most recently last fall when we were just beginning the college applications process with my son.
Here’s something you may not hear from a lot of people chasing college admissions: you need to be looking not just for the right college, you need to be looking for the right college at the right price. I want my children to go to the best college they can get into, but it also has to be a college they and I can afford. The two go hand in hand. You have to be willing to walk away from a college if the price isn’t right. I simply don’t believe it is “worth it” to spend an extra $200,000, or more, to get an undergraduate degree.
I have been working in and around higher education for 25 years. During that time, tuition prices have skyrocketed. Published cost of attendance at the most expensive colleges tops $80,000 a year. Many people are increasingly certain they cannot afford college, or, more corrosively, that college isn’t worth it. I want you to know that you can get a great college education at a lot lower than cost than the sticker prices for elite colleges that strike fear in many hearts. There are good matches, both academically and financially, for anyone.
The price people pay for college is actually falling
College enrollment has been falling in this country, and colleges are willing to shell out big bucks to lure students to attend. More than 90 percent of first-year undergraduates get a discount off tuition every year. On average, the price these students are paying is about 56 percent less than the published sticker price.
Who doesn’t like a good bargain? Neighbor: colleges are full of them. Discounts on college tuition have been growing so quickly that the net price students actually pay for college has been dropping for some years. For example, the average net cost of attendance at four-year private colleges in this country in 2022–23 was $32,800, down 12 percent after adjusting for inflation, since 2016–17, when cost of attendance reached its peak. The average cost of attendance at public four-year colleges is down even more during that same period, 14 percent; the inflation-adjusted average net annual cost is now $19,250. This is indeed still a lot of money, but a lot less than $80,000 a year.
Many of the most competitive students and parents are transfixed with the idea of getting into one of about 100 colleges — and will pay almost any price to gain entry. To me, that is foolish. You may have to cast your eyes a little further than just the top brand-name colleges, but if you are realistic about your chances and cast a fairly wide net, you will find good colleges that want your child, and they will give significant discounts.
Anatomy of a successful college search
As I looked at colleges with my son, I viewed the process as a parent, as a critic, and as a student of the business of higher education. I can’t tell you how to get into an Ivy League college (neither of my sons even applied), and I don’t believe in Early Decision. College is expensive enough without parents throwing away all their financial flexibility. But I think my son, Reid, did pretty well: he was accepted at all 11 colleges he applied to (all but one of them of them is in the top two tiers of selectivity, according to Barron’s), and is now attending a top liberal-arts college with a fantastic financial-aid package.
This series of blog posts is mainly about Reid’s search (although I write a little bit below about the college search of my older son, too), and how he succeeded. It is not just for parents, but also for colleges. I saw a lot of college recruitment pitches, good ones and missteps, and have a number of suggestions about how colleges could approach and recruit students such as Reid. In the last post, I will detail Reid’s search, and what led him to the college he chose, including details on how the packages stacked up financially.
When creating college lists, we often hear of the importance of grouping reach, match, and safety schools. There are more than 2,600 four-year colleges in the United States. As you evaluate colleges, it is important to know that colleges also are evaluating you. Certain students are easy admits, certain applicants will be rejected within seconds, and then there are the in-betweens.
How to tell if a college really wants you
How much does this college want me? How can I tell? Mostly it comes down to attention and money. Let me use my oldest son, August, as an example. He applied to colleges to study film. He had better than a 4.0 weighted high school GPA, and he had a 1310 on the SAT. It was a great score for him, but a middling score for many top colleges. (He applied in fall 2019, when standardized test scores were still required by most colleges.) He reached high, applying to USC, UCLA, and NYU. He was summarily rejected by all of them. He was wait-listed at Chapman University, but quickly squeezed off the waitlist.
The fact of the matter is that his scores weren’t good enough for those competitive programs. But for other colleges, he was a prize recruit — and those colleges came after him hard. For example, August didn’t apply to Hofstra University, but Hofstra emailed him, letting him know he would be considered an applicant if he simply checked a few boxes. It was easy and free, so he did it. Hofstra followed up with the largest financial aid offer of any college he applied to. And my son started reading about the Hofstra film program, which boasts director Francis Ford Coppola as a graduate. It had never been on his college list, but it quickly became clear that Hofstra would be the least expensive option for his education.
Meanwhile, his top remaining choice, Emerson College, gave him the “take it or leave it” approach. While other colleges were offering at least $20,000 in financial aid (Hofstra was well north of $30,000), Emerson offered $5,000. My son penned an appeal, and Emerson doubled its offer, to $10,000. It was still unaffordable for us.
The lesson: at Emerson, August was a borderline admit, with scores and qualifications near the bottom of other students in the incoming class. He was welcome to come but the college wasn’t going to fight for him. At Hofstra, he was a highly-prized recruit, with qualifications above the average incoming student. Hofstra wants to increase the quality of its student body, and was willing to pay to show how much it wanted August.
There were probably other reasons, though I will never know. Maybe Hofstra didn’t have enough men entering that program, maybe it was using financial aid to strategically attract more students from the Washington, D.C. metro area, maybe enrollment was looking grim for the upcoming year and admissions staff had been directed to lure more applicants.
Finding a fit that we could afford
We visited Hofstra’s campus on Long Island, and August thought hard about it, but he just couldn’t picture himself there. He felt the same about Drexel University, which also strongly recruited him. A film professor at Drexel called one night and talked to him for almost an hour about the program. But when we visited Philadelphia, he decided the setting and the campus weren’t what he had in mind.
Months before, he had visited Ithaca College, in upstate New York, which has a good film program and has been a wonderful fit. Ithaca offered a substantial financial aid package, and it is a fairly affordable college to begin with: the sticker price is as much as $15,000 less than some of its competitors. Most importantly, we could afford it. August has never looked back.
We, as students and parents, place so much emotion and hope into the pursuit of getting into certain schools. But if you want to know where your children might be happiest — and most welcome — watch how much the colleges you are applying to want you. We did not choose the college at the top of August’s list, or the least expensive college. In the end, it came down to a number of factors, but fit and price were the most important.
In my next post, I will write about why Early Decision is a trap you shouldn’t fall for. Then, in later posts, I will suggest some ideas for colleges to market themselves more effectively, and explore what mistakes colleges make in saying too many of the exact same things to potential students. Finally, I will break down the college selection process that my younger son, Reid, went through and how he made his decision.
