Winning the Financial Aid Lottery

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Skip the reach schools. If you're eager to capture a great financial aid package, reread the quote at the beginning. Muhlenberg College in Allentown, Pennsylvania, which is a school I greatly admire, posted on its Web site a remarkably candid portrayal about how schools award financial aid today. You can read the piece yourself by typing its title, "The Real Deal on Financial Aid," into Google's search engine.

One of the most important points that Muhlenberg's admissions office makes is that students who require financial aid need to focus on schools where they would be within the top one-third to the top one-quarter of the applicant pool. A child with a 3.2 GPA and a 1050 on the combined reading and math portion of the SAT shouldn't expect a financial aid windfall if the top 25% of students admitted into a particular school have an average GPA of 3.7 and a 1200 SAT. In fact, it's likely that this teenager's aid package would be stuffed with a work study opportunity and loans. In contrast, a teenager with a 3.8 GPA and a SAT of 1250 would be far more likely to receive a package that contains a large grant that doesn't have to be repaid.

If you're in the middle of the pack of kids accepted to a school, what you receive financially can depend on what else you'd bring to the institution. To break ties, schools will look at the extras. Are you a phenomenal volunteer in your community? Did you show leadership in your extracurricular activities? Are you from a state that's a 20-hour drive away? Are you a minority? Do you have special talents, such as music, art, or athletics?

A variety of online and printed sources provide individual schools' range of SAT scores and average GPA, which can help you compare your academic record with others. CollegeBoard.com and Petersons.com, for instance, provide both these statistics, as do various college guides that you can buy at a bookstore. You shouldn't assume, however, that any figures you see are the most current ones. Sometimes enrolled student scores are a couple years old and a school's standards might have risen since then.

Finding schools where you will be among the top bananas is a far cry from the approach that a lot of kids favor. Many students, as well as their parents, are eager to see how prestigious a school they can finagle their way into. Aiming for a reach school is fine if you don't mind when the financial aid office stiffs you. If you cringe at paying full price, include financial safety schools on your list.