The 9 Biggest Myths About Paying for College

How do you plan on paying for college?

If you're like most people, you will apply to five to 10 schools that you like, fill out your FAFSA, then cross your fingers and see who gives you the best offer. Then you will beg and plead with your parents, take out loans, and head off for college in the fall after your senior year. You may already have some idea of your family's finances; you're certainly going to apply for financial aid, if you've already picked up this book. Maybe you're planning on taking out some loans; but you'll figure all of it out after you have applied.

Perhaps you've already applied, and the FAFSA deadline is coming up — and you just want to know how to get the most money out of the government. Hand over the tricks, ladies! Give me some charts and instructions and let's be done with it!

Well, kid, we're sorry, but we can't do that. Like anything worth learning in college, you've got to listen to some old person drone on for a while. In your case, that "old person" is the two of us, Carol and Ruth.

If you've already applied to colleges, and you're just trying to use this book to figure out your FAFSA or apply for private scholarships, we have something terrible to tell you: You might not get a significant amount of aid.

The biggest scholarships and financial aid you can get — the kind that really matter — come from colleges themselves, and in order to get them, you've got to apply to the right kind of place. If it's already too late, and you're looking at taking on huge student loans, please turn immediately to Chapter 11. How much is too much to take out in student loans? Well, we consider anything more than $32,000 total, or $8,000 per year, to be unacceptable. (See Chapter 3 for more information about student loans.)

You might be thinking, Why does it matter how much I pay for college? College is an investment; I'll be able to pay it back if I get a good job. And the better the college I go to, the better the job I'll be able to get.

Unfortunately, that's not always true. But it's incredibly difficult to understand why that's not true; you are never given the opportunity to question it. Socrates is a man; all men are mortal; therefore Socrates is mortal. The more you pay for something, the more valuable it is; the more expensive the college, the better the education and the better the opportunities that follow. You've never been asked to question that kind of logic; it seems as natural as Socrates's conclusion that he is mortal. And you are an American teenager — going to college will happen no matter what. It's the new high school diploma. It is a foregone conclusion, an absolute must, a compulsory, mandatory event in your life. Here is your circumstance: You will turn 18, graduate from high school, and head off to college. Going to college does not feel like a choice. But going to college, and where you go to college, is a choice. The reason that it is a choice — and not mandatory — is because college is not free. It must be paid for. And because it must be paid for, you are a consumer, the same as someone selecting a new pair of jeans at the local mall.

When you think about colleges, there is a hierarchy in your brain of what is okay, what is pretty good, what is better, and what is best. There are a couple of assumptions you're going to make about college:

1. The more selective a college is, the better the college.

2. The more expensive the college is, the better the college.

These two things aren't necessarily true. You've got to question both of these assumptions.

We're going to spend the rest of this book explaining to you that much of what you think you know about colleges and universities is, in many ways, untrue. The most basic thing that we need you to understand is: Colleges are a business, and you are their target market.

This doesn't make you helpless. You're a consumer of education; you have the right to choose how you spend your money. The marketing of education, while intoxicating, is nowhere near as potent as tobacco marketing, for example. How many people have you met who are "addicted to learning" (other than scarily enthusiastic, middle-aged teachers with embroidered cat sweaters and "History is Fun!" pins)? Education marketing isn't nearly as potent, but nonetheless, the effect is the same: You and your peers are under the impression that the "better" the college you attend, the "better" the job you get will be.

This is reinforced by successful people with degrees from elite colleges — maybe you know them, or you read about them in the newspaper or in books or whatever. You might think that they're successful because of where they went to school, and that may be partially true. Going to school — any school — is important. A great education is extremely helpful in life, not in the least because it opens up your mind to all the possibilities of the world. But successful people are generally successful for two main reasons: First, they don't give up. Even when they fail, they pick themselves up and try something new. They are dogged and determined and have thick skins. And second, they're good at getting other people to trust them. Whether they are money managers, editors-in-chief, CEOs, or famous authors, they are trustworthy in some way or another.

Those are not qualities that one can purchase; those are personal traits that one earns, you might say, through a lifetime of hurling yourself into experiences and thinking, life is an adventure in the great unknown. No college can teach you that, although many, many colleges — easily 1,000 out of the 4,400 schools in the United States — will give you opportunities and experiences to figure that out on your own.

But again, college isn't free; colleges are businesses that need to charge you for their services. And their services are kind of strange. They're going to sell you a product (a diploma) that also comes with an experience (four years of reading and talking and studying). The idea is that the product (the diploma) will help you get a good, well-paying job, and that the experience (the four years of reading and talking and...