Steps you can take now to avoid college sticker shock

Long before you take your high schooler on college campus tours, consider this: Shopping for college shouldn’t be any different from shopping for a home. When you want to buy a home, you come up with a range of how much you can afford and get pre-qualified for a mortgage. Then you look in neighborhoods that offer homes that meet your family’s needs and fall within your price range.

Long before you take your high schooler on college campus tours, consider this: Shopping for college shouldn’t be any different than shopping for a home. When you want to buy a home, you come up with a range of how much you can afford and get pre-qualified for a mortgage. Then you look in neighborhoods that offer homes that meet your family’s needs and fall within your price range. “Adopt a mindset that we’re buying college like we’re buying a house,” said Beth Walker, author of “Buying College Better” and “Never Pay Retail for College.” As a financial adviser and certified college planning specialist, Walker tries to help families avoid a situation that many find themselves in at the 11th hour: Their child applies — and gets into — schools they cannot afford because the schools won’t give them enough aid. And then they just … try to make it work, no matter how much debt is involved for the parents or the student. Instead, she advises families to start as early as 9th or 10th grade in figuring out what is affordable for them as a family — so parents don’t sacrifice their own financial welfare and the future college student doesn’t drown in debt upon graduation. And second, she recommends assessing how a child’s talents and interests pare with majors and careers they might want to pursue. Doing both those things can help you target the right colleges to apply to. Mike McKinnon, executive director of the National Institute of Certified College Planners, defines the perfect college as one “where a student can go be happy, safe and successful, graduate in four years or less with a marketable degree and little or no debt.” In helping families align parents’ affordability constraints with their student’s academic and social needs, he cautions them not to automatically assume the Ivys or other high-prestige schools will be best simply because of their status. And he stresses what success in life looks like after college and notes that an Ivy League degree isn’t the only path to achieving it, especially if your child won’t get much aid to attend.