Welcome!
I call this the alphabet soup of the college application process.
Some of these acronyms, you’re already familiar with. This is the sexy side of the process. This is where most parents and students start with these lofty ideas of highly selective schools. And that’s great, we can start here because this is what gets everybody excited; this is what draws everybody in.
College is one of the largest investments that most people will make in their lifetime (along with purchasing a home, raising children, and saving for retirement,) but we don’t shop for colleges the way we shop for other things.
Think about it: When we buy a car, do we go straight to the Maserati dealership and look for something to put our tools in the trunk if we’re general contractors? Not really. And most parents don't take their 16-year-old learning how to drive to the Maserati dealership and say, “Hey, which one would be really exciting for you?”
(I’m sure those parents are out there, but I haven’t met any of them.)
We don’t do it when we shop for a car, and we certainly don’t do it when we shop for a house. In fact, our realtors won’t even take us to see the $4.5M if our pre-approval letter goes up to $900,000.
When we invest our money to save for retirement, our first concern is “diversification.” Yet this word never gets thrown out by parents in initial college search conversations.
I’d like for parents (and students) to consider the things in these presentations as part of figuring out what would be a good fit college instead of just listing sexy, highly-selective schools on a student’s list.
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