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[quote=Anonymous]I went to a low-income public high school, and learned next to nothing about colleges from my guidance counselor, who encouraged me to go to our local state school, not even the best one in the state, because it was cheap.

Luckily, a friend helped me learn about financial aid at private colleges.  If your income is low enough, and your child's grades and test scores are high enough, you can end up paying less in tuition for a private college or university than you would at the public university in your state.

I ended up at a very competitive, prestigious college in spite of my terrible college guidance counselor. I was guided by a friend who'd gone to Middlebury, and she encouraged me to apply to several SLACS and a couple Ivies, as well as our state colleges.

I chose the school that gave me the most Financial Aid, and it turned out to be a great choice.

Get the Fiske Guide to the Colleges (at the library if you can't afford it). It's about $40, I think. Look at the SAT scores, GPAs at the various schools. Look at location, the size of the school, the programs offered. Does your DC want a liberal arts college? Is she interested in a certain field? Is she a good student?

Go to your public library and ask a reference librarian to show you some books on colleges. There's a book called Colleges that Change Lives that lists colleges that are likely to offer a lot of financial aid to low income kids, where the kids will get a great education.

Once you've picked out some colleges, go visit some of them. Take the tour, go the the q&a sessions, look on the collge websites, get teh financial aid applications and look through them. Visit collges in your area first with your DC to get an idea of what type of collge your child wants to attend -- urban, suburban, rural, large, small, big university, liberal arts college?

You can get a pretty good idea of how your DC will do on the SAT by taking the PSAT. Or even get a practice test and take that.

Best of luck to you, OP! Do as much research as you can. Collge Confidencial is all over the place, so I'd start with the Fiske book, and the library.

NPR had a story on low income kids and the terrible guidance they get -- google it. Many of these kids are not directed to schools that would be good matches for them because the guidance counselors are not very well educated, and most of them didnt go to competitive schools. There's a sort of discrimination against low-income kids too -- guidance counselors think they aren't smart enough to get into the most competitive schools! Sad for these bright kids!

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