The New York Times reported in late April that in the current economy, more families are filing financial aid appeals with schools that have already admitted their child and offered an aid package.

Financial aid appeals are typically handled by the school’s director of financial aid. In one example, the Times profiled a financial aid director who was spending the week going through a stack of 100 appeals from high school seniors who were accepted for the next freshman class but who claimed they cannot afford to attend. “Each packet contains a heartfelt plea for more aid than the college offered initially, to offset the impact of recent job losses, plunges in home values or other financial setbacks,” the Times wrote.

The financial aid director’s desk was cluttered with medical bills, layoff notices as well as tax forms sent as supporting evidence for the appeals. This painstaking and emotional task, the Times explained, is playing out on hundreds of campuses, in advance of the May 1 deadline for tuition deposits from many incoming freshmen.

Financial aid appeals increased anywhere from 15 to 40 percent over two years ago at schools sampled by the newspaper. Some well-endowed schools coped with the rise in appeals by raising their financial aid budgets. But many colleges are under enormous financial constraints, as costs rise and their endowments ebb. Some schools are able to avoid the layoffs and furloughs that other public and private universities have done, but only by substantially raising tuition, board and fees.

The Times notes that schools typically use a combination of federal formulas and policies uniquely their own to arrive at an award offer. Financial aid directors often have the discretion to increase an offer by several thousand dollars a year if they deem a family’s financial circumstances severe enough.

On appeal, when warranted, students can sometimes get another $1,000 to $2,000 in grant or school scholarship, instead of loans. Moreover, a precipitous drop in income may qualify the student for a federal Pell grant, as much as $5,550. However, additional loans, such as an unsubsidized Stafford Loan, could also be part of a post-appeal package.

For those parents who have lost a job, especially after filing 2009 taxes and the student’s 2010-2011 FAFSA, financial aid offices will request thorough documentation, including a letter from the former employer that the parent is no longer an employee and including the termination date, evidence of unemployment insurance income (if a claim was filed), as well as evidence of how the family is supporting itself under present circumstances. The burden of proof is upon the student’s family to document that the level of family income and resources in 2009 are no longer the case in 2010.

In addition to marshalling all available evidence, I recommend parents and students maintain a courteous and respectful manner in all their communications with their school’s financial aid officers who are interacting with numerous equally worried families.

When my son was applying to college there was a school our guidebook referred to as “the caring college.” I have to admit that I loved the sound of that – it conjured up comfy images of school personnel following my son around with chocolate milk and warm cookies, encouraging him to get enough rest and talk about his feelings. My son ended up attending that college and he was very happy there – he got a wonderful education, had lots of fun and made lifelong friends. But did he find the school to be unusually caring? Not so much. And yet seven years later, as my daughter is getting ready to apply to schools, the updated version of that same guidebook is still referring to it as “the caring college.”

Which raises the question of reputations – the “buzz” that some schools generate.  What are they based on and how much of it should you believe?

Some of the buzz does originate in guidebooks – those massive  manuals that many college-bound families still pour through often contain lists that rank schools on criteria such as whether they’re “party” schools,  as well as drug use, academic pressure, liberal attitudes, and the quality of food.

But much of the buzz that surrounds some schools never appears in print – it seems to materialize from thin air and sink into the collective consciousness of prospective students. The high school students I work with often claim to somehow “know” that a particular school is monopolized by drunken frat boys, or stoned hippies – despite never setting foot on the campus. I have heard schools described – and dismissed – as too conservative, too artsy, too lame, too granola, too preppy or too alternative.  It troubles me that kids are willing to buy into these generalizations based on nothing but buzz – and the perceptions can be hard to dispel.

My daughter’s guidance counselor recently recommended we look at a school that seemed to meet every one of her college criteria. It is an excellent mid-size university that would be a perfect target school for her. It’s the right distance from home, in a populated area, it has a well regarded theater program and exactly the right amount of Greek life.  And yet my daughter has consistently resisted visiting this school because she believes it to be populated exclusively by “hipsters.”

I have no idea if this is true or not and it would be hard for me to verify since I’m not precisely sure what a hipster is. When we finally visited the school, the students we saw on campus looked perfectly fine to me. In dress and demeanor, the kids we saw in the library and on the quad seemed like regular kids – no different from the students we’d seen at another college the day before. But the minute we drove off campus my daughter turned to me and said “I told you so….hipsters.”

Clearly, I don’t understand the prevalence and staying power of these perceptions– but if your child is applying to colleges you should know that he or she will be hearing and absorbing and believing in the rumors and myths that surround these schools.  It’s unfortunate that what might be an excellent school choice may not be considered because of hearsay and misconceptions. The best you can do is visit the schools – maybe even more than once. Attend tours and information sessions and spend as much time as you can on campus, speaking to a variety of students. An overnight visit may dispel (or confirm) what your child already thinks of a school. Take everything you hear with a grain of salt – and good luck fighting the buzz.

The Washington Post, in its column, The Answer Sheet: A School Survival Guide for Parents, reports[http://voices.washingtonpost.com/answer-sheet/college-admissions/more-colleges-join-50k-plus-a.html] that more colleges than ever now cost $50,000 or more per year. For example, Harvard students who don’t qualify for financial aid will pay $50,724 for tuition, room and board, and fees, the first time the university has climbed into the ranks of schools which charge more than $50,000 a year.

Although many students qualify for financial aid, the Post notes that “$50,000 is a symbolic marker, one that is expected to frighten many parents away from these schools before learning that they could get significant aid.”

More private schools are crossing the threshold for the 2010-11 school year. Citing a Boston Globe survey, the Post says in the Boston area alone, schools already in the $50K club are Smith College, Boston College, Tufts University, and Boston University. Among those joining next year, besides Harvard, are Dartmouth College, Wellesley College, Brown University, and Brandeis University.

Last November, the Chronicle of Higher Education did an analysis indicating that nationally 58 private colleges charged at least $50,000 for tuition, room and board, and fees. Outside of the greater Boston region, schools that broke that barrier this year include Johns Hopkins University, Washington University in St. Louis, Bryn Mawr College, and Skidmore College. For the 2008-2009 school year, only five schools charged that much.

A report on college pricing [http://www.trends-collegeboard.com/college_pricing/] by the College Board, issued in October, showed that the average cost of attending private colleges for the current school year rose 4.3 percent from the year before, to $35,636.

Years ago, I asked a friend why her daughter selected a certain urban university as her final college choice. “It was easy,” her mother informed me. “She weighed all the academic, social and financial considerations, and then picked the only school that guaranteed her a private bathroom.”

If this seems like an odd way to select a school, then you probably haven’t visited a college dorm early on a Sunday morning, when the common bathroom shared by a dozen students can be dirtier and more unpleasant than a rest stop on the state Turnpike. Picking a college solely on the basis of bathrooms may be extreme, but the fact is, some students care much more than others about the privacy, cleanliness and the overall comfort of their living arrangements.

Ideally, college is a time when you learn to adapt to different people and situations, even if they’re less than perfect – but some aspects of campus life can be unacceptable for certain students . During my son’s sophomore year he lived in a dorm room that was tiny, dark and slightly less cozy than a jail cell in an underdeveloped nation.  He was not particularly bothered by this, although I’m pretty sure that same room would have been a deal-breaker for my daughter.

When you’re deciding where you (or your child) will go to school, it’s important to remember that college isn’t just where you’ll learn, it’s also where you’ll live. Here are some factors you should keep in mind:

Availability of on-campus housing : Some colleges have plentiful on-campus housing and guarantee a room in a dorm for all four years of school. In fact, some schools forbid moving off campus without permission from the college. Other schools have limited housing and guarantee a room on campus only through freshman or sophomore year. In many schools it’s common – even expected – for upperclassman to find off-campus housing. This is an important factor for many students: some can’t wait to live in a “real” apartment or house and some hate the thought of having to commute to campus and make their own meals.

Sharing a room: Mindful of the fact that many young people going to college have never shared a room (and don’t want to start now!) many colleges are building new dorms that feature singles. But a private room is rarely guaranteed on most campuses – certainly not for underclassmen. If living with another person would be a problem for you, this is something you’ll have to consider.

Mandatory meal plan: The quality of food, number of dining halls, and availability of alternate meal choices varies greatly from school to school. Some colleges require all on-campus students to be on the meal plan, while others allow students to cook in their dorms.

General condition of the dorms: Is the university housing old or new? Clean or grungy? Are rooms spacious or are three people crammed into a room that’s supposed to be a double? Are dorm rooms air-conditioned?  Are there suites or on-campus apartments available or just traditional double rooms on a hall?

Special dorms: Many colleges are trying to enhance the on-campus experience by providing dorms that are geared to students’ needs or interests. Many schools now offer a drug and alcohol-free dorm for students who want to stay away from the party scene, a quiet dorm with strict noise restrictions for the studious, or theme dorms for students with a shared culture or interest in a particular topic.

Ideally, these considerations should just be part of the college selection process – and maybe not a huge part. But that isn’t always the case. As a teenage friend told me recently, “I don’t think of myself as particularly spoiled, but I just don’t want to spend four years living in some depressing, dirty, little hell-hole.”

Wait till she sees the bathrooms.

Another excellent Article in NYtimes for students on the waitlist

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/14/education/14waitlist.html?pagewanted=print

There is a beautiful and highly selective school in New England that accepts only 17 % of its applicants. It is considered to have some of the best facilities and professors in the country and is known for offering students a wonderful education, along with an unusually active, stimulating and rewarding campus life.

And yet, my daughter invariably refers to this college as “the gray school” because on the day we visited the weather was rainy, overcast and cold. And despite the fact that I begged her not to let the weather influence her, the comments she makes about this particular school will generally include the words “depressing, dismal, and dark.”

I don’t care how smart your kid is, he or she will probably prefer a school seen on a bright and sunny day to the schools they see in rain or snow. On a recent tour of colleges we saw the gray school first; right after that the weather cleared up and every college we saw after that seemed infinitely more desirable. There were wall-to-wall kids playing Frisbee and laying on blankets spread out in the quad. People were in groups, walking and laughing and eating outside. The dorm rooms we saw were light-filled and pleasant. Everything looked prettier, and everyone seemed happier.

This is why many families never visit schools during the winter, when dirty snow, frigid tours and barren trees give prospective students a less-than-welcoming sense of the place. But even spring visits can be unpredictable. One family I know had a school visit planned during the recent spring break, but when the weather was bad they blew it off and went to the movies. At the time I thought that was an extreme reaction, but if I had done the same, my daughter might not shudder now at the mention of a certain New England school. We are planning another visit to this particular college and before that trip I plan to check my tires, my car’s navigation system…and the weather report.

I have just returned from a trip to visit several East Coast college campuses and it turns out that what made the biggest impression on me was not the snow-covered quads of academia, the libraries bursting with volumes, or the tour guides with their perky combination of factual knowledge and unlimited good cheer.  What I will remember most is the look of dread on the faces of high school juniors as their parents humiliated them in front of tour guides, admissions officers and prospective classmates.

In one short weekend I witnessed countless examples of clueless behavior on the part of parents who seemed to have no idea that their college visit was not a personal experience geared solely to them.  On tours with dozens of people and information sessions in auditoriums with hundreds of others, parents insisted on taking up the group’s time with questions that pertained to their child alone.

During one info session a father asked a long-winded and excruciatingly complicated question about financial aid for temporary, non-resident international students.  Not satisfied with the answer he received (and failing to pick up on the admissions counselor’s obvious annoyance) he pursued his point with an even more specific follow-up question that was unlikely to have applied to anyone else in the room. Was it a valid question?  Absolutely. Was a group information session the wrong forum for asking it? Absolutely.  A question like that should be asked of a financial aid officer during a one-on one meeting or phone call.

On a tour later that day, a concerned mother asked a seemingly endless series of questions intended to find out if the dorm bathrooms would be cleaned to her son’s exacting standards – the other parents were clearly annoyed and her son looked acutely miserable.  Another mom held the entire tour hostage while she waited for the tour guide to explain how Food Services would accommodate her son’s serious food allergies. Our tour guide was a charming sophomore from Texas, but I’m not sure he was the person to whom life and death questions should have been directed.

It is clear that these parents –  while misguided – are acting out of love and concern for their children, but annoying the on-campus personnel is rarely a ticket to college admission.

Some parents seem to have confused a college tour with a TV game show, and think that stumping the guide or admissions counselor with an impossible-to-answer query will somehow win them bonus points – I can assure you it does not.  At the other end of the spectrum are parents who ask common knowledge questions – one dad this weekend  wasted the time of over 300 people by asking what the undergraduate enrollment of a certain school was (a fact he could have tracked down instantly by looking at a guide book or the school’s own website.)

My advice for college visit etiquette is simple and blunt: look around and realize that this is a shared experience. Do not ask questions just to hear the sound of your voice or to try and look smart. Do not try to dazzle the admissions people by asking a ridiculously complicated or obscure question. And try not to enrage other parents with a tunnel-vision focus on your own child’s particular concerns and requirements.  Following these suggestions may not guarantee your child admission to a certain school, but they will certainly make the ride home a lot more pleasant.

A place on the wait list is usually offered to students who have applied for regular admission and it does not, as a rule, mean that the school needs more information about you – it merely means that the school doesn’t have the space to accept you immediately. Basically, the college is waiting to see what its first-choice accepted applicants are going to do – if the school needs to fill slots they will offer you a spot in the freshman class.
Colleges usually rank their wait lists, so you should get in touch with the admissions office and find out about your ranking (the higher you are on the list, the better your chances of being accepted). Ask about the school’s wait list history: how many students have been waitlisted in the past and how many were offered admission. You should also ask what kind of housing and financial aid is available to late-accepted students.
Meanwhile, don’t passively wait out the decision-making process – ask for an interview (whether it would be your first or second) and keep the admissions office updated about academic or extracurricular honors and achievements. It may also be helpful to write to the school and let them know that you will definitely enroll if you’re accepted (but don’t make this claim unless it’s absolutely true). Your high school guidance counselor can also give you advice and support during this process.
If you’ve been waitlisted you will not be notified about admittance until after the May 1 decision deadline has passed, so to be guaranteed of a place in college, you’ll need to accept a spot in a school that has already accepted you. Fill out the paperwork and send in a deposit – if you’re accepted off the waiting list and decide to attend that school, you will forfeit the deposit you’ve already paid. You may not hear from the wait list school until August 1, so attending that school may be a last minute decision. Ultimately, waiting out the wait list can be a stressful and expensive option, so you need to carefully consider how badly you want to attend that particular school. If you’ll be just as happy attending a school that has already accepted you, it may be wise to commit to that school wholeheartedly and get on with the process of preparing for college.

President Obama signed legislation, part of the health care reform package, that authorizes the federal government to originate all federally-guaranteed student loans, such as Perkins and Stafford loans, effective July 1, 2010. The U.S. Department of Education will end the Federal Family Education Loan (FFEL) program, whereby it granted subsidies to banks and companies like Sallie Mae and Nelnet that lend funds to student borrowers and collected repayments from them.

Although all federal loan funds come from the government, it has been obligated to cover as much as 97% of any defaulted loan, effectively eliminating risk for private lenders. In 1993, Congress created the Direct Loan program, in which funds go from the Education Department to students — assuming that money could be saved by cutting out middlemen. The FFEL and Direct Loan programs had been in competition with one another since then. This July 1, all new student loans will come through the Direct Loan program. The savings, estimated at $61 billion over 10 years, would be used to increase the need-based Pell Grant program by $36 billion and invest in community colleges.

How will these changes affect students and their parents? Under the new legislation, students will take out their loans through their college’s financial aid office, instead of using a private bank. Because this does not take effect until mid-year, check with your school’s financial aid office to see how this will affect loans you may be awarded for the 2010-2011 academic year.

Customer service is said to be somewhat better during the loan origination process in the Direct Loan program, and a bit worse during repayment. But the biggest difference may be that students in repayment will no longer have to put up with the unnerving practice of their FFEL loans frequently being sold from lender to lender, which has added to students’ confusion as to who holds their loan at a given time. Under the Direct Loan program, the U.S. Department of Education holds your loan, no one else.

The new student loan legislation will make it easier to pay back student loans, by reducing the share of income a college graduate must devote to loan payments and accelerating loan forgiveness — but not immediately. Those who take out new loans after July 1, 2014 will have to devote only 10 percent of their income to payments, down from the present 15 percent. Those who maintain their payments will have their loans forgiven after 20 years, reduced from the current 25.

The bill also includes automatic increases, tied to inflation, in the maximum Pell Grant. But the grant increase — to $5,900 in 2019-2020 from $5,550 for the 2010-2011 school year — is tiny compared with the constant rise in tuition for public and private colleges. Because college costs are rising so quickly, the maximum Pell Grant today covers only about a third of the average cost of attending a public university, compared with three-quarters in the 1970s. Each year, more students graduate owing over $20,000.

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