There are lots of ways to assess a college fit. But today, growing uncertainty about whether a college degree will pay off has students and parents focused on good ole “bang for your buck.” Borrowing an old phrase from the world of finance, college search experts like to call it, “return on investment” (ROI, for…
Continue Reading What is “TuitionFit”?
“Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth.” -Mike Tyson That’s what getting that lack-luster financial aid offer from a kid’s dream college can feel like anymore – a punch in the mouth. In the past few decades, college tuition has jumped 1200%. Student debt now exceeds…
Continue Reading Financial Advisors: Stop Guessing & Start Guiding
by Tucker Glotzbach and Mark Salisbury Like searching for a college, dealing with a financial aid office and working through financial aid problems takes agency and determination. Every financial aid office is different – colleges have different technology systems, different methods for dealing with students, and different people working in the office. As a result,…
Continue Reading How to Judge a College’s Financial Aid Office
Personalize Your Paying for College Plan for All Four Years College is one of biggest investments of your life, so why are you just considering one-fourth of it’s costs? Can you imagine if your real estate agent only outlined 25% of the cost of house and asked you to make a decision about whether or…
Continue Reading TuitionFit + Quatromoney = Paying the Right Price for Your College Degree
Google the phrase “assembly line education” and you’ll see that, for decades, folks have likened our education system to an assembly line in a factory. In some ways, this is a very useful metaphor. It highlights the regimented way that we expect students to develop, setting up a fair critique of our education system as…
Continue Reading The Self-Defeating Metaphor that Corrupts the College Search
Unless you’ve had to fumble your own way through the college search process recently (as a student or as a parent), you might be tempted to discount stories of students graduating with crazy-high student debt as silly financial decisions made by naive folks. After all (you might ask), how could someone come out of college…
Continue Reading How the College Admissions Process Can Stick You with a Higher Price
Have you seen the new series of ads for eBay called When You’re Over Overpaying? Try to get through the whole ad without smiling! It’s a simple mashup of friends looking at price tags of items in different stores and cracking up after they see the price of that same item on eBay. There isn’t…
Continue Reading Stop Overpaying for College
By now, I think we’ve described what TuitionFit does at least a thousand times (if for some reason you’ve been hiding under a rock, check out my TED talk here). But no matter how excited I get with my big hand gestures and wide-eyed expressions, none of it compares to just seeing an example of…
Continue Reading A TuitionFit Success Story – Simple yet Profound
Someone on Quora posted the question, “What don’t they tell you about college admissions?” At the risk of poking the beast, here you go. If you want to see the original post and the other responses that were posted, click here. I’m certainly not the only person with something to say about the subject. Some…
Continue Reading Want to win your college search? Here are 10 things you have to know.
The free college thing seems like exactly the kind of red meat that a left-sided politicians would toss out during an election campaign. But to be frank, free college also seems like exactly the kind of systemic change that our society needs right now. After all, the last few decades have produced an ugly combination…
Continue Reading Most Free College Proposals are an Opportunity Squandered
It’s a little weird to think that anyone out in the real world would perceive a call for transparency in college pricing as an idea that’s time has finally come. But such was the headline of an article from Washington DC last week. Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania released a study of Net Price…
Continue Reading It’s not the Price, It’s the Process
The Maddening Mirage of College Pricing College pricing is like a mirage adrift in a hall of mirrors. Most of the time, a school’s announced price is totally meaningless, tens of thousands of dollars more than what they ask you to pay. But “most of the time” doesn’t mean all of the time, and the…
Continue Reading Do You Want to See Colleges’ Real Prices? Share Yours.
Whether you’re a hip gen Z’er browsing college apps on a smartwatch or a crusty cowboy mailing college applications by pony express, the way to get yourself into college still boils down to four steps: Make a short list of schools Apply to some of them Get accepted at least once Enroll at the best…
Continue Reading The Biggest Reason Why the College Search Process is Broken
Almost every bit of a college marketing sales pitch boils down to this: “There is only one college or university that is perfectly suited for you, and we are it!” Not to be outdone, the rankings pumped out by higher ed “experts” just add to the spin, perpetuating the notion that each school occupies a distinct…
Continue Reading The #1 Reason Why Where You Go To College Doesn’t Really Matter
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