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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I'm beginning to try to plan ahead for college. I have a 6th grader and see the stats about private college costs per year now being more than $60k. With a $225k HHI and a little bit of non-retirement investments, I'm guessing it's unlikely that we'd qualify for any financial aid except perhaps a few thousand bucks in student loans. So.. wow, how do people manage this? There must be ways to lower this price tag. My kid's not going to get an athletic scholarship - but it's hard to imagine people really paying $60k per year. [b]Do private schools offer any merit aid for academics, etc? Do families cobble together smaller scholarships ($500 here, $1k there) to knock down the price? [/b]
We have a 529 for DC but we'll be lucky if there's $100k in there by the time our 12 yr old goes to college. (We have younger kids, too). It's surprising to me how much college costs have risen. Even after accounting for inflation, the private college I attended is still almost $20k more expensive in real terms than when I went 20 years ago.[/quote]

The vast majority of schools do offer merit aid/scholarships to good students.  The ones that don't are ranked at the top of the US News & World Report list, and they don't need to award merit money because thanks to their rankings, they attract plenty of people able and willing to pay full price.  (Those who qualify for need-based aid can also attend these schools - but those of us in the "donut hole" where we neither qualify for FA nor can pay $65K+ cannot send our kids to these schools without hefty loans.)

Cobbling together smaller scholarships is not the approach you want to take.  You want to seek out schools that offer hefty scholarships to good students.  You can find these by googling "colleges and universities merit aid scholarships" or similar search terms.

[u]The College Solution[/u] is an excellent, very well-researched book about how to pay for college.  The author has a blog as well:

http://www.thecollegesolution.com/welcome

There is a thread about this on the College board here at DCUM:

http://www.dcurbanmom.com/jforum/posts/list/529245.page

You can also register at College Confidential and read about how to employ this strategy:

http://www.collegeconfidential.com
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