Forbes Magazine Insider Tips

This writer looks at scholarships from an investment strategy perspective . . .

12 Insider Tricks To Pay For College

This story appears in the January 21, 2013 issue of Forbes.

Is this system nuts, or what? College has gotten insanely expensive, and the tuition aid formulas have gotten insanely complicated. But if you don’t figure them out you will be crushed.

Poor, brilliant students get a free ride at Harvard or Princeton. Rich families don’t care about costs. Everyone else–and that would be about 90% of America–has a problem.

The fanciest colleges cost $55,000 a year. Suppose you have three youngsters who will be attending a decade from now. If prices climb as they have over the past decade, you’ll spend $990,000. This has to come out of your take-home pay. So go ask your boss for a $1.5 million bonus.

If that isn’t feasible, learn how to work the system. Below, we outline a dozen techniques that families use to make bachelor’s degrees and graduate degrees more affordable.

Some families find a way to get a price break that isn’t contingent on income. Some outsmart the aid formulas, which, like the tax code, are full of traps for the unwary and rich in opportunities for the well-informed. Did you know that if your child is applying to certain elite schools, including Dartmouth and Duke, you should use extra cash to pay down your mortgage?

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