Susan Paterno is the Director of the Journalism Program at Chapman University. Susan is an award-winning writer, reporter, and columnist. Susan’s work has been featured in Forbes, NY Times, Washington Post, and she was a correspondent for the LA Times. She is out with a new book, “Game On: Why College Admission Is Rigged and How to Beat the System”, which details why parents struggle in this area and what to do about it. In this episode, Susan provides hope to parents and students looking to get an education as debt-free as possible.
Key Takeaways
- Is it possible to get a debt-free education?
- After talking with Susan’s immediate friend circle, she realized almost no one understood how to navigate the college admission process.
- When parents see there’s only a 3-4% college acceptance rate, this is not actually the ‘real’ number.
- Before you begin applying to colleges, first find a university that is a good financial fit.
- Elite colleges almost always offer the best tuition discounts. Susan explains further what this really means.
- Susan found out that it was cheaper to send her daughter to Harvard than it was to send her to UC Berkeley.
- What is the likeliness that your child could get an athletic scholarship? 0.1%!
- For many families, they believe an athletic scholarship is their ticket to a debt-free degree. This is a very rare ticket.
- Financial aid means loans. Parents often have a misconception on what this really means.
- Colleges encourage their students to take on private debt, but your family should not have to do that. Be very careful when navigating the world of private debt. Susan knows families who have been stuck with this loan for three generations.
- How do you get additional funding if it's not through private student loans?
- Interested in knowing more? Link to the resources in Susan’s book!
Quotes:
“The golden ticket is a debt-free degree. Few people can hope for that, but I wrote a book to help families position their search so that they can best get there.”
“Getting into college is not nearly as competitive as people would have you believe.”
“We did not know that elite colleges offered the best financial aid.”
