Opinion: Prestigious colleges aren't just for the rich

It was one of those campus visitations where parents and prospective students are clustered into tour groups and shuttled through a miniversion of what happens at a school that costs $50,000 a year to attend. I particularly liked the spacious balconies that came with each airy dorm room, a feature that turns kids with little or no cooking skill into great outdoor barbecue chefs.

Karl Rove was in my group. His son, like my kid, was thinking about attending the school. I don’t mind telling you, I was impressed that the same people who were trying to recruit Rove’s kid were also offering a boatload of scholarships to my daughter. I imagined seeing Rove’s son and my daughter on the back lawn of the White House, flipping burgers together, until I remembered my daughter’s political bent – somewhere left of Ellen DeGeneris.

Here’s the belated point of my article. No matter how deprived you are, you CAN send your kid to a prestigious and expensive university. Fact is, most people think they can’t, so they don’t try. This fall, thanks to a close friend (I’ll call her Anne Robertson), my daughter will attend the college of her dreams.

Robertson, a limited-income single parent, witnessed her son graduate from Colby, a top New England liberal arts school. And now, her daughter attends Millsaps, a fine deep South institution. Total cost of her children’s education, once completed, will exceed $400,000, assuming they don’t abuse their cell phone calling plans.

She was kind enough to share what I call Five Steps to Get Great Colleges Bidding for Your Kid.

Step 1: Get “Peterson’s Guide to Colleges & Universities.” If your kid is above sophomore level in high school, it’s time to review this publication. Let your student use it to pick five or six colleges they would like to attend. (Listen carefully, parents: Never assume a school is too expensive). If you’ll follow the next four steps, your kid will likely end up at one of the schools they picked.

Here’s why: The guide will clearly indicate which schools will accept your kid based on their ACT and/or SAT scores. Naturally, the most marketable students – the ones who get the best scholarship offers – are the kids with the highest scores. Even if your child didn’t deliver the valedictorian speech at graduation, there’s a demand for him at some very fine educational institutions. Best of all, you might get those elite colleges to start recruiting your child, which is the real secret to saving a pile of dough.

Step 2: Find your money. Figure out, realistically, what you can pay. Remember, paying for college is not just about satisfying tuition, books, and room and board with the business office but also transportation to and from home for holidays, cell phones, fraternity dues, emergencies, etc. Once you’ve arrived at an annual figure you’re able to contribute, subtract it from the annual comprehensive total to determine the shortfall. Here’s the good news: Your shortfall is generally absorbed by the resources in Step 4.

Step 3: Build a résumé of your student. I hate to be the one to tell you this, but your son or daughter leads a secret life and does a lot of things you don’t know about. Some of it is good, though, and should be documented. Stuff like honors, performing arts, travel experiences, extracurricular activities, church, community & civic involvement, leadership roles, volunteer membership, athletic achievements, etc. needs to be reduced to writing. A résumé that showcases all four years of your child’s high school is the one scrapbook guaranteed to make, or at the very least save, you money. I know because as soon as we sent out my daughter’s résumé to the schools she liked, all five liked her back and all of them started trying to recruit her. It’s like we put her on auction. By the decision deadline, she’d amassed a grand total of more than $600,000 in scholarship offers from five different outstanding schools.

Here’s why: Great institutions of higher learning not only want students engaged in academics, they seek interesting, creative, energetic students who are engaged in life. My daughter’s good grades and high test scores got their attention, but her involvement in other things drove up her value.

Step 4: Find others’ money. Call the admissions office or visit the Web site at your kid’s choice of schools and ask to be put on the mailing list. Instruct them to send you information about scholarships, grants, loans, etc. Then warn your postman to wear one of those back braces, the kind they need when they carry weighty objects.

Some of the financial tools you’ll learn about include federal grants and scholarships, federal Perkins loans and institutional grants. Scholarships and loans from the college itself are given on both a merit and a need basis. Private scholarships need exploring and, of course, there are the timeworn, low-interest student loans.

When time comes, apply at each school. Upon accepting your student, they’ll assign a financial aid person with whom you’ll negotiate the financial package. Here’s the one question you’ll repeat each and every time you speak with your financial aid person: “Can we do a little better than that?”

Step 5: Go visit the campus. For you to understand the culture of the school and see and meet faculty and staff, schedule a family outing and let everyone get the lay of the land. Besides, when you go you’ll probably run around with someone important, such as Karl Rove or my amazing daughter, Brookes.

By the way, my daughter will attend American University in Washington, D.C., this fall as a broadcast journalism major. More than 90 percent of her college expenses are being covered by scholarships, grants and loans.

To me, though, Rove’s not nearly as important as Anne Robertson, who nurtured my daughter and showed us the great power of possibility thinking. Thanks, Anne! This article is dedicated to you.

Bob May is former managing partner of five local radio properties and is now engaged in the publishing of large-print phone directories in about 50 small towns in southwest Missouri.