Our main reason for helping families with the College Planning and Financial process is to identify areas that might be inefficient and to educate parents and students on how to correct that.
One of the BIG areas where families end up spending $1000’s of dollars more on college is with the choices that are made with potential schools and career and major choices.
It is estimated that more than 70% of students currently in college will spend more than 4 years in college, with many going into 6 years. Many school counselors are being advised to let parents know that in the UC system they should be planning for at least 5 years.
The 2nd most expensive thing about college is Switching Majors – Switching Schools. Everyone thinks it won’t happen to them!
There are a number of reasons for this, among these reasons are:
1. Higher credit requirements that are not essential to the degree.
2. Impacted classes where students cannot get all the classes they need when they need them.
3. Advice that the students are given to “Just do your General Ed in the first 2 years and you can figure out your major later”
4. The annual expense of trying to pay for all the classes in a shorter period of time.
5. Internships that take up time that might have been used to complete classes
6. Improper consultation with their college advisors as to the requirements needed for 4 year completion
7. Not going through a process of Assessments in their high school years to determine what the innate strengths, abilities, passion and giftedness of the students.
One of the first things that we recommend and help our students with is to help them with Assessments in order to assist the families in reducing the number of years that they might have to spend in college, with the resulting loss of finances, and also the loss of productive years that the student could be earning in the marketplace.
If your student spends an extra year in college, it could cost the family $20,000 – $45,000 more, and then add in the $35,000 – $70,000 that the student could have been earning in that year.
One of the big issues that we see in the traditional approach to proper planning is that we get asked by many high school counselors to assist with this Assessment process. While many schools have amazingly dedicated counselors who work their brains out to help the families, many recognize that the system does not give them the time or ability to go through multiple meetings to do the proper assessments, sit down with the student AND the parents, and have discussions with them on what their natural strengths and passions and giftedness might be and how that could impact their futures.
Our job is not to tell you what career you should pursue – that is something that you as a family get to decide while sitting around the dining room table. What we hope to do is to have a conversation about the findings of the assessments, so that the student and the parents are made aware of what might or might not be a good fit for the individual student. We hope to make the student aware of their own innate gifting and “What is my Money Strength?”
What will a business owner pay you for that is unique about you and that would be a great fit for you to do so that you would be happy in your career, and not just doing it because I got an A in math or science!
This assessment process alone could save $20,000 – $40,000 in the college process.
That’s why we do what we do at College Planning America.
Apply for a College Planning America Scholarship