Financial Aid: Grades, Merit and Talking to Kids About Paying for College - The New York Times

Now, most colleges and universities adopt the "contribution" aid strategy to recruit young people. Your eighth graders probably should know how it works.

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This article is adapted from "

", author Ron Lieber

Harper is the brand of HarperCollins Publishers and will be published on January 26.

About your income and what you own. This is also about your child and what he does-it means that good grades can make a lot of money.

In the past 25 years, more and more public and private schools have begun to use aid as a weapon in an attempt to improve their institutional reputation. In many cases, this is a bait for students who can improve the school’s image in the eyes of ranking dominances in places like US News & World Report. In other cases, it has become so rampant that in order to keep a clear head and pay light bills, discounts are necessary.

Its name is "Merritability Grant", which is different from the more limited academic scholarships of the previous generation. Now, admissions officers often use the word "admissions management" on their titles to report to their bosses, and they can spread the funds to a wider range of places.

"Aid" is a bit misnomer, although we seem to insist on doing so. In many cases, this is not a scholarship, but a coupon, the value of which may depend on the characteristics of the applicant, ranging from their postal code (which may indicate wealth) to how quickly they open the email invitation.

However, the parts worth mentioning-actual academic and leadership skills-are also important. This means that grades are not only a factor in entering the preferred school, but also the cost of residential undergraduate education you can pay.

The result is a well-designed parallel financial aid system that can completely subvert the psychology of choosing a university.

Moreover, since almost all schools now use at least a little merit, except for the most selective schools, catalog prices are becoming less and less important for most families. Classrooms of public institutions (such as American universities)

Either

And private like

In Los Angeles or

Airplanes in New York State have become more like cabins, where people often pay many different amounts through a variety of possible price menus.

In the past few years, we have discussed with dozens of university presidents, faculty and staff, deans and families about the fees that all of us are willing to pay for the university. I have learned how many people have become the merit-based admission system. .

Just like drugs, you should talk to your child before anyone else.

Any eighth grader using a web browser can sniff the bet.

Georgia's high school students may target

, If the grade point average is not less than 3.0, it can cause the University of Georgia and other schools to reduce tuition by thousands of dollars every year. At the University of Oregon, there are a series of

, And the school lists the results of different levels as the "basis" of awards.

Some private universities dare to broadcast various possibilities on their websites.

Crawfordsville, Indiana is one of them. The average score there is 3.0 to 3.24, plus the ACT score is 20 to 22, the annual tuition, room and board is about 60,000 US dollars, so you can enjoy an annual discount of 17,000 US dollars. However, students who are 3.9 years old or older with a score of 29 or above can receive $32,000 per year. This is $128,000 in four years.

But how (and when) should you tell your children that their high school graduation grades can reach six figures?

If you haven't been talking about money, the first thing to do is to have a basic conversation so that the teenager is ready to invest it all. Roughly, how much money (if any) you have saved for the university, and

? In any case, you need to put it on the financial assistance form.

Then, what is this?

Where to pay for college fees? a. This is as complex as the pricing system itself. Be prepared to explain why you intend to limit it to a certain amount of money (if any) or a specific type of school (ibid.).

Now, about the timing. It seems fair that teenagers should understand the rules of participation at the beginning of the game. After all, if you do not provide this information, many teenagers will feel angry because you think they cannot handle the facts.

Therefore, one possibility is: in the two months after the eighth grade, have a brief but deliberate interview on merit assistance.

If the child seems to be motivated enough, there is no need to have a long chat. You might simply explain that grades over the years are not just about enrollment, but good grades can make many expensive schools more affordable. In this way, high school freshmen can begin to think about what grades they need to achieve and other extracurricular goals they might want to set.

The waiting time is longer than the time at the beginning of high school, and if their goal is to provide better-selected assistance to more selective colleges, then the vicious math average may prevent them from keeping up. Unlike zip codes or other demographic information, grades and course selection are mostly within the control of adolescents.

Any conversation with your child about what is actually paying for performance is obviously a good thing.

If you want your child to bear a six-figure discount, this is a huge sum of money and emotional stew, everything that any hormonal anxious child might encounter. The university application process is unpleasant; why bear more pressure?

At least one of the reasons why you should release the news gently: Whether you like it or not, the university is determined to put this information in front of your children. Have you been to your teenager's inbox recently? You should really peek.

Pennsylvania issued: "Muhlenberg: A college that can repay you." There can be savings

, It depends on your ability as a high school student and leader. Clark University-Provided

Including all attendance expenses, toasted breadcrumbs and extra-long single beds-an email was sent in 2019 with the subject "Show me the money".

It is tempting to hide the money, thinking that your child cannot understand all these heavy breaths. However, many parents are already in conversations with junior high school students about excellence and its economic benefits-precisely about sports rather than academics.

Associate Professor of Nursing at the George Washington University School of Nursing has reviewed many high school applications over the years. She also won a partial scholarship and participated in my district football match in Georgetown.

In the field of youth sports and the surrounding travel team culture, parents and children have a good understanding of how universities use large sums of money to reward young people for their achievements.

"In seventh grade, you knew which team you had to form," said Dr. Darcy Marney. "You just know."

Her and husband

, A financial planner told me that one day they might honestly talk about the financial issues of competing with their children without hesitation. She said: "Most young people want to be treated like adults." "Treat them in this way and provide them with information about adulthood and adult decisions, which is what they want."

Okay, but why does this happen to me?

This is the most natural and naive of all problems, and even the curious teenagers should be fully explained.

It started naively. A few decades ago, private universities sought more prestige. They hope to provide extra money for high-achieving students to attract other students who don’t need incentives.

Instead, a full-scale arms race erupted slowly, and then seemed to erupt all at once. If a school starts offering discounts, then similar universities competing for the same children must do the same.

Some savvy families are beginning to realize that they can

-And rejected other schools' proposals. And so on, until the food chain, until like

with

You must also keep your nose and enter the game.

Students with an A grade average are surprised to find that they occasionally encounter direct bidding battles. A major achievement award may promote a high school student to New Orleans and

Instead of going to Ann Arbor and the University of Michigan. Full tuition

May keep others away from Cornell and Williams.

Then, public universities began to act. of

Having invested so much money in so many students across the country, the Illinois legislature had to create

Prevent young people from flowing to places like Tuscaloosa.

For a long time, the humming mechanical equipment in the background hummed a little, and most of them were invisible. Consulting companies brought their algorithms, and the software meticulously tracks teenagers’ interest in school by measuring things like the speed of responding to text messages.

Nowadays, there are applications where companies enter all data and large amounts of historical information about how regional students reacted to discounts in earlier years into a proprietary database. At the end of the process, these algorithms will suggest a "scholarship" amount.

When these companies sell their skills to universities, they call the process

-Imply ways to spread discounts so that people get what they need. But in the end, they use other words, such as

-Like brute force cracking, use a crowbar made of green cash.

The result is that the same type of low-level psychological warfare exists in any standard marketing plan. The only products offered are not certain Amazon accessories, or even holiday "promotions" discounted SUVs. Rather, this may be the largest and most important purchase your family has ever made.

In many cases, universities do not require applicants to apply for merit-based funding alone. In this way, when a bucket of money arrives with the acceptance notice, it feels like a free gift.

So tempting, many schools have provided merit assistance to everyone. Some people, such as Guildford College in North Carolina, even remind university counselors in emails: "100% of the 2017 fall courses received outstanding scholarships!" Read the 2018 testimonials.

It may feel hopeless when everyone gets the trophy, and this pandemic further hurts financially troubled schools. But many parents don't look at it that way.

On the contrary, these discounts can be intoxicating. No one loves your children like you, so it's hard not to favor the suitor with the biggest dowry. But these feelings can cause temporary errors in mathematical judgments.

With the introduction of admission letters, attractive parents often provide counselors with a list of quotes provided by the school. On a piece of paper, they ordered the assistance package with the highest rewards based on merit, rather than ranking them based on the family’s bottom-line cost.

You may recognize this dynamic from any type of shopping. Discounts always make it better to choose more expensive items. It applies to clothes and cars, so why not go to college?

When unguarded, experts occasionally make the whole thing clear.

A former staff member of the Obama White House and the post of Secretary of Higher Education in New Jersey, he regrets the state of the whole state.

Bad with money and Gaby Dunn.

She said: "The entire university's strategy is this: "Even if we don't want people to pay, we will artificially increase prices. "Then what they did was give people false scholarships to make them think they had discounts on prices. "

Many parents who understand inflation often try to beat the system because they cannot burn it well by themselves. As always, those who have the time and knowledge also have an advantage.

Lara Mordenti Perrault and her daughter visited more than 30 schools. Her daughter wrote about 90 papers in order to obtain a full tuition scholarship, and eventually she won a scholarship from Tulane University.

Ms. Mordenti Perrault, who lives in Bel Air, Maryland, told me that her research skills and relative wealth are an important part of helping her family, which did not make her feel ironic. She said: "If you have money, you can make money."

If you are proud now, the administrator will serve you. They don't like

Even wealthy families that receive a $20,000 discount are likely to help many schools provide cross-subsidies to low-income families.

However, these admissions managers also want to know why you are so shocked that they use performance assistance in the first place. After all, it is very difficult to fundamentally change the characteristics of a university-its location, tenure faculty, the type of students year after year, what the brand represents in the entry-level job market, and the 22-year-old law school s student.

But what about the price? The administrator can change this in a corner.

Brian Rosenberg, former principal of Macalester College in St. Paul, Minnesota, said: "I am impatient with those who think this is a simple decision, or those who provide more merit than we do. The aided school is morally corrupted to some extent. Efforts are being made to keep the school open."

Indeed, this is just business, or something similar.

"The better the student-this includes course selection and grades-changing the student's admission options will cost more money," he said.

Former long-term admissions, financial assistance and communications administrator at Drew University in New Jersey

.

But when I pointed out to Mr. Massa that it made sense, then students should know how it works-so they can choose harder courses and strive for better grades-he cringed. He said: "Because you are willing, you have to bear a heavy curriculum burden." "It's not because you think I want you."

If all this sounds annoying, you should know that experts in the field have not figured out what they are saying to their children.

He is the former executive director of financial aid for universities in Western countries and now holds a similar position at Santa Barbara City College. When I asked her when she planned to tell her daughter what, she seemed depressed and angry.

Can she get a six-figure discount for her high school performance? Is it fair to make this suggestion in many schools (especially private universities)?

What achievements do young people need to obtain merit assistance?

She said: "I am scared." "These are the same questions I have been asking for 20 years, and in my talent, I think we should solve some problems now."

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