Don't pay sticker price for college

Check out other time zones. Plenty of colleges are eager to embrace students who live far away because it helps boost their cultural and geographic diversity. A teenager from the Pacific Northwest, for instance, would likely grab the attention of an admission officer in the Midwest or the South. "California kids," observes Darvis, of the National Institute of Certified College Planners, "are in hot demand everywhere in the U.S. except the West."

Rethink reach schools. If you dread paying full price, resist falling in love with a reach school -- one where your chances of admission aren't good. If you barely make it into a college, the likelihood of an academic scholarship is just about nil. What's more, you might be stunned at how little financial aid you get. Plenty of schools offer the best aid packages to kids they covet. Students who are academically at the bottom of the entering class often get the crumbs.

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Play the gender card. Admission officers routinely struggle with this reality: Women far outnumber guys on college campuses. Teenage boys can take advantage of this by applying to schools where the boy-to-girl ratio is clearly out of whack. In an op-ed piece in The New York Times, Jennifer Delahunty Britz, the dean of admissions at Kenyon College, lamented that the school had to turn away qualified girls to make room for less-qualified boys: "We have told today's young women that the world is their oyster; the problem is, so many of them believed us that the standards for admission to today's most selective colleges are stiffer for women than men."

The gender gap, however, doesn't always punish girls. Engineering schools still remain bastions of testosterone. "Well qualified women who are interested in engineering and science, who apply to the more specialized technical schools do tend to get some hefty merit money," Lawrence says.

Avoid lending gimmicks. Even with financial aid and scholarships, most families will borrow money. Many parents consider only lenders on a school's preferred lender list, but that's a mistake. The continuing college lending scandal has revealed that colleges don't always promote lenders for the right reasons.

When shopping for loans, beware of lenders who promise price breaks years from now. Lots of lenders generate business by offering to slash interest rates on federally subsidized loans by 2 percentage points if there are no late payments for 36 to 48 months. This might sound like a great deal, but Mark Kantrowitz, the publisher of FinAid, which is a comprehensive financial aid source, estimates that only 3% of borrowers ever earn that rate reduction. And here's more bad news: By the time one of these elusive discounts does kick in, it's only worth 0.63% because of the passage of time. "It's all extremely complicated and difficult for families to interpret, and I think that's part of the idea," Kantrowitz says. To compare these loans, try out FinAid's loan discount analyzer.

Borrow from the no-names. You'll find many of the best loans at obscure lenders that are run by nonprofits or government-based agencies. The rates are often significantly lower than the private institutions. You don't hear about these deals because these lenders don't enjoy the marketing might of a Sallie Mae or Citibank. These nontraditional lenders include All Student Loan in California, the Missouri Higher Education Loan Authority and Brazos Higher Education Service in Texas. Some students can walk away with even better rates if they major in a field that a state wants to encourage.

You can find a list of nonprofit and government-based lenders on the Web site of the Education Finance Council, which is a trade organization. While lenders usually reserve their very best rates for their own residents and kids attending schools within their state borders, students from elsewhere in the country are welcome too.

Play sports at small schools. Sure, it would be wonderful if a college coach offered your child a full-ride athletic scholarship. Less than 1% of kids, however, win an athletic scholarship. That doesn't mean, however, that you can't get money for being an athlete. Consider looking at Division III schools. Families often overlook this division, which contains hundreds of smaller schools, because they don't offer official athletic scholarships. But these colleges do provide athletes with other types of financial assistance, including so-called "talent scholarships," says Scott Brayton, founder of the Varsity Student Institute in Bellevue, Wash., which assists athletes who want to play collegiate sports. "Colleges," he says, "can pull all sorts of things out of a hat if they want kids."

Lastly, negotiate your award. What happens if your child received money from college, but it's not enough? By all means appeal, but don't use the word "negotiate," because colleges hate that term. Remain dispassionate when you request more cash because aid officers are also turned off by emotional parents. Be specific in what you want; don't just say it's not enough. Share with the aid officer how much you need and how much you can realistically afford to borrow. If you can provide financial documentation, all the better. You'll also want to approach the school if your financial circumstances have changed -- a parent has become disabled, lost a job or is caring for an elderly relative.

Updated May 5, 2009

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