No doubt you’ve heard of the college admissions bribery scandal and the unsavory details of how affluent, status obsessed parents paid dearly for their children to attend name brand colleges they otherwise would not have been accepted to. In fact, college planning is one of the goals all of our clients with children share. I don’t have to tell you how incredibly expensive college is and what a very large sacrifice it is for most people. We often have to have a conversation with clients about the importance of NOT sacrificing their personal goals for those of their children. While you can get a loan for college, you can’t get one for retirement.

Which is why when we came across this article on The Right Way to Choose a College in the Wall Street Journal, we thought it a game changer for our clients and college planning.

Did you know that the college a child attends is NOT a predictor of their outcome?

In fact, a study of 30,000 students showed that there is no correlation between college selectivity (think Ivy League), and future job satisfaction or well-being!

This is a game changer for parents saving for college. If the goal is for college to provide the best launching pad for our children, brand name colleges are not the answer. Instead, the article suggests, being engaged at the school they attend makes all the difference.

It’s not where the students go, it’s what they do with it while they are there that leads to success.

This means that finding a school that is engaging is the best predictor, and in the US this is a field of over 4500 colleges. This opens up a tremendous amount of options and price ranges for parents. Do you have to plan to save enough for a four year Ivy League college? If that is an option you’d like your children to have because one of the colleges they find engaging is in that category, well, that is one thing. But if the plan is to provide financial support for a college experience that leads to a child with a job and quality of life they find fulfilling, there are significantly more options at a variety of price points, according to the research shared in this article.

You can read the article here: The Right Way to Choose College

If you’d like to learn more about how we help our clients with college planning, please contact us.