If you have never gone through the process to apply for financial aid, it holds a few surprises. The one thing that amazed us as parents was the way aid is distributed. The aid application is used to determine how much you can afford to pay for ANY university. The amount of the tuition for the university does not greatly affect this number. The most desirable universities are the most expensive, but they also have multi-billion dollar endowment funds that are used to make up the difference between what you can pay and the cost of tuition.

To parents of the boomer generation, this is amazing, as we generally had to finance college on our own. What it means to our students is: get the best grades and do those activities that add to your application profile. Don’t worry about the money, you can go to the best school for which you can qualify for acceptance.

The financial aid application process is complex, filled with seemingly irrational and whimsical requirements. All in all, it is very similar to the complexities of the tax code.

The goal of using the information on the Tuition Coach site is to get the best financial aid offer possible, in a way very similar to tax planning. Now what is true is that you can probably root out from the Internet most the information on the Tuition Coach site. But time is money, and the subscription fee is quite reasonable for parents and students frantically getting all the paperwork done by the deadlines.

-JLB

Pricing: Our online services ($59) are based on the same offline services ($600-$1,200) provided by college funding advisors. Our interactive calculators are based on algorithms that provide strategies most relevant to you. You can’t get this for free anywhere.

Credibility: Our tools are based on two decades of college funding advisory to 4000 clients by co-founder Paul Wrubel, a former high school principal who is frequently invited by schools and colleges to provide college funding workshops.

Accuracy: The reason we don’t ask, “Which type of college are you applying to” is because your Expected Family Contribution (your cost of college as determined by a federally mandated formula) is roughly the same for all colleges, whether you’re applying to an Ivy or to a community college. Financial aid makes up the difference between your Expected Family Contribution and the actual cost of attending a particular college.

There are many myths about how college funding works and about which colleges are within financial reach. We created TuitionCoach to dispel many of those misperceptions. We hope to help families remove cost as a barrier to college so that they can focus on what’s important: finding a good college fit.

welcome.

Good idea, but I am very skeptical as to the website’s accuracy.

- the age of my children
- any notion of the type of college (ie in state at University of Texas, or out of state at Harvard)

The number spit (and I do mean spit) out is completely meaningless, but never fear, just “Sign up for a TuitionCoach subscription and we’ll work with you to” spit even more meaningless junk at you.

Actually, I have no idea of this service is any good or not, but the completely meaningless number thrown out by QuickCalc does not endear me to try any further.

cya

TuitionCoach.com attempts to give parents a clear idea of just how much their kids’ college will cost them. When I got a demo that estimated what it could cost to pay for one offspring’s education out-of-pocket, I rethought my desire to ever have k…