Building a Reasonable and Debt-Minimizing College List

Rainbow over Lake Wakatipu in Queenstown, New Zealand

Rainbow over Lake Wakatipu in Queenstown, New Zealand

Building a college list that’s manageable and realistic is critical to decreasing the stress of submitting your college applications. Taking on loans is one of the most consequential decisions you will ever make, which is especially difficult since you will be only 17 or 18 years old.

If you are a Texas resident applying exclusively to a handful of Texas public and private universities and would be okay attending and can afford some or all on your list, then this post may not apply to you. This post is for applicants applying to many reaches nationwide or to more than ten universities.

It’s almost universally true that students and parents underestimate the time required to complete their essays and fulfill the other requirements. UT-Austin and Apply Texas will take a minimum of four weeks to complete if you take the drafting and editing process seriously, and for Texas residents applying to a selection of nationwide universities, you can expect to spend six weeks or more even with working every day to complete everything.

Clients working with me every day finish occasionally finish Apply Texas within three weeks. If you’re applying nationwide, you can expect to spend upwards of at least 100 hours on your applications. My approach to professional services focuses on the time and stress that I save clients.

In the past, I’ve been agnostic about the college list with few strong opinions or recommendations.

My philosophy had always been: if you want to apply, go for it. Better to apply in the fall and sort out your decisions in the spring rather than regretting not trying at all. It is the case that you truly can’t know whether you can afford a university until you receive your financial/scholarship package, but most universities also publish the average net costs students pay relative to the sticker price.

Going into my tenth cycle serving students and families through Tex Admissions, I want to share a few missteps I see applicants make and offer a few rules of thumb for building a reasonable college list. Occasionally, I make Reddit posts soliciting best application practices, and I’ve shared some of their recent contributions in this post.

I also share my thoughts on how and whether UT-Austin and other universities going test-optional will affect your admissions chances or how you should approach your college list in another post.

I provide an overview of sub-optimal and best college-list-building biases. I question whether you should visit universities before applying. I offer advice for Texas residents before concluding with my approach to affordability and student debt. My post applies mostly to Texas residents, so non-Texans can modify my recommendations to account for their local public options.

My post doesn’t even consider honors options or possible scholarships at Texas public universities because I argue that regular admission is still likely a better return on investment than more expensive OOS or private alternatives. Honors and scholarships can make a good education value even more favorable.

College List Summary: for almost all Texas residents, you will probably end up enrolling at a Texas university, so it may not be worth the time to apply for universities nationwide where you’re unlikely to gain admission or afford. Keep your list realistic and consider carefully before adding many schools.

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An overview of common college list missteps

  • Submitting many applications to selective private or out-of-state public universities that offer little to no merit scholarships or are far out of reach, the “just to see if you get in” fallacy

  • Desiring both a prestigious university and one that offers generous merit scholarships. Those universities are very rare.

  • Omitting to apply to any university or program where they are 100% guaranteed admission based on their rank/grades and ACT/SAT schools

  • Applying to only one or two “dream schools” where you’re not guaranteed, potentially leaving you with few options spring senior year

  • Applying to schools Regular Decision that offer binding Early Decision or Restrictive Early Action options, especially if you’re a STEM applicant. Gaining RD admission to STEM majors at top 50 universities is the most difficult pathway possible. ED admissions rates are often 2-3 times higher than for RD. So, you should limit the amount of RD schools on your list if they offer ED.

  • Applying to too many schools that require unique applications and supplements

  • A safety isn’t a safety school unless you’d be content enrolling. Reddit user seaelixir shares, “One of the safeties I applied to was a school I wouldn't even consider attending, yet applied for the sake of having an "acceptance," which was not the right mindset and I wish I hadn't applied to it.“

  • Only applying to out-of-state or private universities if cost is in any way a factor to affording your studies. Barring exceptional circumstances, leaving your state just for the sake of it is usually not a good reason, the “I can’t stand it here!” fallacy. Texas is a massive place.

  • Having unrealistic expectations for exceptionally selective schools that admit less than 8% of their applicants: Harvard, Princeton, Stanford, MIT, Cal Tech, Columbia, UPenn, Yale, and others. These are reaches and high reaches for everyone. The “It doesn’t hurt to try!” fallacy.

  • Listing many of the same kinds of universities that offer little substantive difference, especially with Computer Science and Business applicants submitting applications to most US News Top 20 universities without compelling reasons

  • Over-weighting pre-med or pre-law as a deciding factor of where to apply. Medical and law school plans are almost totally irrelevant for choosing a university.

  • Continuing to add schools rather than substituting or subtracting, especially if your senior year has already started. Your list should shrink, not grow, over time, unless you’ve finished all of your applications and feel motivated to continue submitting apps.

  • Placing too much emphasis on US News rankings at the expense of other college search resources

  • Falling in love with a dream school and tying your self-worth to that particular admissions outcome. Reddit user mungbeanmimi shares “I applied to fourteen schools, all the UCs, and a few cal states, but my dream school was UC San Diego. I dreamt of UCSD ever since I was little and I collected merch from that school. Rejection hit really hard and I was really depressed for days. I’m still bitter about it.”

  • Applying to more than twenty universities, “shotgunning.” Reddit user Qlzto suggests, “18 schools is too many schools. I didn't need that many target/safety schools. (Also, I applied to schools I knew I couldn't afford. Why did I do that?) I'd probably have been better off cutting out some of the target schools on my list to put more time/effort into the reach apps.”

  • Adding schools to your list because people pressure you and it isn’t somewhere you’d ever see yourself enrolling under any reasonable circumstances

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College list best practices

  • Having a healthy balance between high reaches, reaches, targets, safeties, and at least one school where you’re 100% guaranteed admission based on your grades or rank and ACT/SAT scores

  • Very rough classification boundaries: High reaches are those where you have a less than 5% chance of gaining admission; reaches are a less than 25% chance, targets are a wider range of a 25% to a 70% chance of success, safeties are 70-99% probability, and assured/security schools are those where you will 100% gain admission. There can be slight reaches and safer targets.

  • Keeping the list to less than 12 schools and no more than 15 total. Reddit user spoon_potato provides a nice summary, “I applied to 9 schools total. 1 safety (state school), 2 targets, and 6 reaches. Honestly, I’m satisfied with what I applied to. My parents had little say where I applied. I only considered schools I could afford and I only applied to 9 because application fees are high.”

  • Your academics are within or higher than the middle 50% of applicants on GPA/Rank and test scores range for most or all of your universities. If you scored a 28 on the ACT and make a mix of A’s and B’s with a moderately challenging courseload, Top 20 universities may not be realistic.

  • I recommend keeping your high reaches - schools where you fall below the middle 50% academic ranges and/or schools that admit less than 10% of their applicants - to a maximum of three. These are hail mary universities like the Ivies and their equivalents where you might decide it worth paying in full to attend. Lists that include six or more reaches need to be trimmed significantly.

  • By definition, applying RD to schools that offer ED or REA are high reaches for virtually every applicant. Consider Rice has an ED admit rate around 15% and an overall admissions rate of 8%. The RD admit rate is much less than 8% when you account for scholarship athletes or other special recruits, probably around 5% for Rice’s True RD rate.

  • Substitute reach schools for target or safety schools where you have a greater than 90% chance of admission and a decent shot at scholarships, honors programs, or viable out-of-state tuition waivers

  • A maximum of three out-of-state public flagship universities like Michigan, Georgia, UCLA/B, etc.

  • Ask yourself: would you ever full-pay for a Berkeley degree relative to UT-Austin, or Indiana/Purdue relative to Texas A&M? Current college student and Reddit user justheretohelpyou_ advises:

    “Focus on target schools. Focus on target schools. Focus on target schools. So many kids on Reddit shotgun/apply to more than 20 schools and either get denied by all of the reaches or they get in a T20 and are stuck with a $75k/year bill. Meanwhile, other kids are weighing a full ride to a target school against the $75k bill. You'd much rather be the second kid in that example.…$40K-$50K in debt total wouldn't be terrible. More than that can snowball quickly.”

  • If you’re going to apply to UC-Berkeley and/or Los Angeles, you may as well apply to four or five UC campuses since they’re all on the same application. If you don’t want or can’t afford to pay the additional application fees, you probably shouldn’t be applying to the UCs anyways. The UC application is time-consuming, so my rule of thumb is to apply to none or to four or five. Justheretohelpyou_ agrees, “The UC system should be treated like a T20 school without the aid for an OOS student. They are insanely expensive.”

  • Limiting the number of applications to universities that offer few merit scholarships or out-of-state tuition waivers if enrollment would strain family finances or place you in significant debt

  • Paying careful attention to universities that require little to no time to apply, limiting the number of “unique” applications or supplements. Applying to UC-Berkeley is not the same as applying to Illinois because the former requires substantially more work than the latter. Applications to Stanford, Columbia, MIT, and Princeton and others require substantially more time and effort to apply than Harvard, Dartmouth, Penn, Johns Hopkins, and those with fewer supplemental essays.

  • Keeping an open mind about possibly attending a handful of universities rather than fixating primarily on one “dream school.” This is especially true for Texas Longhorn die-hards.

  • If you have multiple interests, selecting different majors or unique programs at your universities rather than putting all of your eggs in the same academics basket

  • Consulting a variety of rankings lists beyond US News like the Times Higher Education World University Rankings, Super Money Best Return on Investment, Forbes Best Value Colleges, Colleges That Change Lives, and Niche’s various rankings lists.

  • Savvy applicants also pay careful attention to how their prospective majors/program rank against similar programs. Major rankings and overall university standings often differ, particularly for STEM.

    Even though U Penn, for example, ranks number 11 in the world overall by Times Higher Education, they rank number 37 for Engineering, two spots lower than less selective or expensive Purdue. Similarly, Illinois ranks 23 for Engineering despite being just within the top 50 globally. Oklahoma State has an especially strong Aerospace Engineering program comparable to Michigan, Notre Dame, Virginia, and Cal State Poly despite being less rigorous for other engineering majors or overall. Wichita State ranks number 5, higher than UT-Austin. Be wary of prestige and name brands.

  • Creating at least one realistic scenario for enrolling at every college on your list

  • Utilizing Net Price/Cost calculators if available like this one for Baylor that estimates potential merit/need aid

  • Building a spreadsheet with some or all of the following fields: ranking based on interest; high reach/reach/target/safety/security; major; whether unique supplements are required; honors program options; expected cost of attendance; EA/ED/Priority deadlines; which application to use; acceptance rate to your major if available; application fee; allow for superscoring; assigned admissions counselor e-mail; whether they require or recommend reference/counselor letters, SAT subject tests, a paper resume, interview

  • Researching particular resources, courses, research labs, study abroads, student organizations, professors, and other opportunities unique to each university on your list. This also helps to answer “why this university?” prompt because you should already have particular reasons for applying.

  • Being mindful of climate, location, school culture, Greek life, religion, size, political orientation, diversity, etc. Don’t want to attend a smaller university in a cold climate? Dartmouth may not be your best fit regardless of anything else, for example.

    Reddit user thinker111111 agrees:

    “I wish I had thought more about what I actually wanted out of my college experience early in the process. It's so easy to get caught up in rankings/prestige, size, study abroad programs, research opportunities, weather, food, dorms, or whatever quirky clubs they're advertising on the college tour without truly considering what you want your college experience as a whole to look like. You can probably do without the fancy dorms or Squirrel Watchers Club. What do you want four years from now, other than a piece of paper with your name on it? How do you want to grow as an individual during this time and what environments would best support that growth? I came to this realization on January 1st, when writing my CMU supplement on "What do you want out of your college experience?" I really wish I had written that one first, rather than last since it would have helped me to frame my college search so much better.”

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Should you visit universities before gaining admission? Probably not

You can find hundreds of articles and blog posts offering tips for making the most of your college visits, but few ask the fundamental question: should you visit at all? College Board suggests, “It’s best to visit colleges before your applications are due. That way, you can be confident you'd be happy at any of the colleges you’re applying to.”

I hold the contrarian view that college visits before gaining admission almost always provide more stress and less clarity than if families didn’t visit at all. Post-acceptance visits are always more productive. Applying somewhere allows for a much lower threshold than enrolling. Consequently, the best practice remains to apply broadly to schools where you have a reasonable expectation of potentially enrolling.

The “summer after junior year” family college visit circuit has become the zeitgeist for America’s top 1%. Families spend thousands or sometimes tens of thousands of dollars for a whirlwind trip of northeast small liberal arts colleges, west coast STEM schools, and tours of the SEC. I argue these rites of passage are almost always a waste of time and resources. I hold the cynical suspicion that many wealthy families take summer college tours to Keep Up with the Joneses rather than fearing missing out and risking alienation within their elite family friend networks.

I found a single New York Times article, “Skipping the College Tour,” by Erica Reischer from 2017, calling into question the effectiveness of pre-admission visits. Searching “college tours” on the NYT database yields dozens of conventional articles about best practices, so it seems Reischer is alone in her views.

She summarizes findings from behavioral economics about how humans of all ages and education levels struggle to forecast what our future selves want. She argues that our imagination about the future skews too far in either optimistic or pessimistic directions, so a cloudy day and an uncharismatic tour guide might knock a school off the list that otherwise would be a good financial and academic fit.

A more significant hazard that Reischer doesn’t address is the more common occurrence of a student falling in love with an unattainable or unaffordable school for oft-arbitrary reasons. Perhaps a tasty vegan poke bowl in the student cafeteria elevates a school to your top choice. She also doesn’t address how mom, dad, and son might all have incompatible perspectives of a college following a visit that creates tangible tension around the dinner table.

A typical exchange with dozens of families goes like this: they visited eleven schools in two weeks, and their daughter falls in love with Yale, Princeton, Tufts, or whatever, yet they have a 3.5 GPA and a 1350 SAT. There are zero universes where that student has a greater than 1% chance of gaining admission. Or they make a college list, visit many colleges, and the list doesn’t change, calling into question visits’ utility. Premature visits also force families to discuss finances when the total cost of attendance might be unknown, which isn’t necessarily bad since financial transparency within families remains a best practice.

Visiting schools too early inflates expectations, complicates family conversations around finance and affordability, and leads to the irrational behavior outlined in Reischer’s piece. A former client visited Carnegie Mellon, fell in love with it, gained admission to UT Austin engineering, and made the difficult, if sound, decision to enroll at UT when they couldn't justify spending $300,000+ for a bachelor’s degree.

Many articles endorsing college tours suggest it provides a “family bonding experience.” So do vacations at all-inclusive beach resorts, ski trips, Carnival cruises, or other holidays where fun and bonding provide the central motivation rather than an indirect consequence of sitting through rock climbing wall showcases, hard-sales PowerPoints, and student tour guides walking backward. Whatever happened to fun for its own sake? With college applications talk encroaching earlier and deeper into family dynamics, having a no-admissions talk holiday may improve family well-being and decrease stress.

Some articles liken college visits to test driving a car, but the analogy fails. Test driving a car permits you to buy it that day if you wish, whereas a college visit provides an equally hard sell yet the real prospect of rejection months down the road. Universities are incentivized to maximize their application numbers to decrease their overall admissions rate and thus increase their rankings. However, unlike a car salesman who wants to sell as many vehicles as possible, universities restrict their offers through artificial scarcity.

Other justifications include “demonstrating interest,” but most universities have moved away from this factor as a consideration on equity grounds since it privileges families with the resources to visit campuses. You can attend virtual information sessions for schools that still consider demonstrated interest.

Pre-admission college visits might be fruitful if you intend to visit extended family in another part of the country and visiting nearby universities isn’t a burden, or hanging out with a sibling college student. Formal summer internships or research programs are a great way to explore campus resources and get more of a feel for the campus and city than an afternoon sales pitch. Pre-admission visits might also help if you’re determining whether to apply binding Early Decision (ED), especially if it’s a school you’re unfamiliar with. I caution against applying ED to a school you’ve never visited or lightly researched.

Some demographics benefit from pre-admission college visits, including rural or urban students who may not come from college-going communities. Developing college literacy and exploring opportunities may encourage some students to apply to or enroll at four-year universities who wouldn’t otherwise. That’s one reason almost every university has all-expenses-paid fly- or bus-in experiences to outreach with marginalized communities.

First-generation college students, recent immigrants, or families who did not receive undergraduate degrees in the United States may also benefit from getting a general feel for American college life. I was a first-generation college student who only applied to UT, hadn’t visited Austin, and would have significantly benefitted from visiting campus or Liberal Arts Honors for a formal tour. I applied to UT almost solely because my dad is a Longhorn football fan.

Nevertheless, pre-admission college visits provide a binary choice: either you apply or you don’t. They aren’t as informative for creating a hierarchy of preferences for the systemic errors in reasoning that Reischer outlines. If you’ve already resolved to apply to UT-Austin, and since UT doesn’t consider demonstrated interest, reconsider a formal visit and instead attend a football or basketball game or a concert in Austin or something fun.

Some instances where visiting helps is if you’re considering a niche program like Plan II Honors or Ole Miss’s Lott Scholars that provide personalized concierge and actual classroom visits beyond the standard student-guided tour or canned PowerPoint presentation. Or, if you’re truly torn between Moody Communications or McCombs Business, attending major-specific information sessions can help resolve the dilemma.

Still, I recommend saving money on pre-admission tours by going on vacation or putting those resources toward application fees or eventual tuition. Apply to a reasonable list of schools, receive your admissions offers, assess the costs, and then determine your top three or four choices if there isn’t a clear frontrunner (like UT). Even for a university that’s your clear frontrunner, visiting can help address logistical questions or even make new friends or a future roommate.

Notice that I caveat “tours” with “pre-admission.” Post-acceptance visits can be incredibly fruitful because hypothetical variables around your major/honors or cost become concrete. There are zero instances where a pre-admission visit could be more productive than a post-admission visit, except that it may require visiting over spring break during senior year or missing a few school days.

Post-acceptance visits permit an academic advisor to explore potential first-year courses; check out your future residence hall; figure out parking or public transport; consult with the Financial Aid office; discuss major changes or other on-campus programs; attend future classes; ask about sports tickets; nail down summer orientation; and other “soon-to-enroll” student questions. Visiting when there are fewer unknowns will help make a more informed decision about where to enroll.

Recommendations for Texas Residents

Before suggesting how to build your list, let me preface my thoughts on Texas public university options.

We’re fortunate to have an excellent public university system with many more affordable options than other states. Many students dream of enrolling at UT-Austin or Texas A&M and can’t imagine their lives without being a student. Still, we’ve got many high-quality opportunities as a state relative to others.

Throwing some shade at Oklahoma University. Consider that it’s their state’s best public university overall. Yet, it consistently ranks much lower than UT-Austin, Texas A&M, UT-Dallas, and even Texas Tech and the University of Houston, depending on the metrics.

Born in more rural states like South Dakota, Wyoming, and Idaho, or even more populated ones like Arizona, New Mexico, Oregon, Massachusettes, and Connecticut? Your options are significantly more limited than if you’re a resident of Texas, California, New York, Illinois, Colorado, North Carolina, and others that have more extensive and affordable public options.

Texas has a solid distribution of research and teaching universities throughout the state that produce a more accessible environment than neighboring states like Louisiana or Arkansas, which have fewer options generally but especially for students in rural environments. We have multiple university systems with various campuses in the University of Texas, Texas A&M, Texas State, and the University of Houston networks, among others.

Every year, I have high-achieving Texas resident clients who apply to and gain admission at universities nationwide, especially for Business and Computer Science. They gain admission to prestigious universities and programs, which I cover in my client’s results post: the UCs, Michigan, Illinois, Georgia Tech, North Carolina, Rice, USC, and so on.

Overwhelmingly, almost all of them enroll at UT-Austin, and those who don’t get into UT, choose Texas A&M, scholarships at UT-Dallas, or generous aid packages from private universities like SMU, TCU, or Baylor. Occasionally, my clients enroll at universities like Arkansas, Indiana, Alabama, Arizona, and a few other middle-tier public flagship universities that offer generous merit scholarships and/or resident tuition waivers.

I understand the tendency to apply and “see where you will get in” and that you “only get one shot at your college applications,” but it ends up being a ton of work, often causing more stress and anxiety than necessary, and for what? To end up enrolling at UT or A&M, where you were almost certain to anyways? Of my approximately 25 Texas resident clients for Fall 2020 who gained admission to UT, only one chose to enroll elsewhere, Vanderbilt.

A reasonable college list for Texas residents should likely include UT-Austin, Texas A&M, UT-Dallas, and perhaps two or three other universities, including one where you’re “assured admission” based on your grades and ACT/SAT with likely merit scholarships or honors programs. There is no need to apply to private universities unless there are realistic scenarios where you might enroll. There is definitely no need to apply out of state if you’re okay enrolling at a Texas public university, and you’re also likely or assured admission.

I interviewed a former client and incoming UT CS freshman who crunched the numbers after gaining admission to several prestigious CS programs and determined that UT-Austin is a better value. He even crunched the numbers for places like MIT and Stanford and determined that, had he gotten in, he would have still ended up at UT-Austin. He reported after our interview concluded that a friend of his enrolled at UTD on a full-ride rather than pay full price at MIT and subsequently graduated with debt in the middle six figures. A Redditor in April 2024 also did the math. They came to a similar conclusion that, taking the extreme edge case, full paying for even a Penn Wharton degree for an investment banking career isn’t worth it given the opportunity cost. The same applies for CS degrees at top schools.

This is a controversial perspective, but consider your options extremely carefully if you’re considering a debt load more than the five-year average of your expected starting salary, even for the Ivies and their equivalent. Visit the Student Loan’s subreddit to see what your future may hold.

Let’s talk about debt and student loans. Saving money and graduating with minimal debt is critically important

Student borrowers hold over $1.6 trillion with an average load of around $35,000. Around 15% of American adults carry student loans with two in ten borrowers late on payments. Over 50% of current college students take out loans to afford their education. Approximately 14% of all borrowers hold more than $60,000 and account for 52% of the total debt held. While undergraduate students estimate it will take six years to pay off their loans, “the Department of Education reports that the typical repayment period for borrowers with between $20,000 and $40,000 in federal student loans is 20 years” (CNBC).

Nobody ever anticipates failing to finish their Bachelor’s, but only about half of all Texas college students finish their degree in six years, and students who take out college loans but don’t graduate are three times more likely to default than borrowers who complete. Not all loans are created equally with private student loans offering particularly high interest rates or fewer repayment/consolidation options. Most borrowers will need to take out at least some private loans to cover costs.

Given the high degrees of economic uncertainty due to Covid-19, it’s tougher to forecast employment prospects and macroeconomic strength five years into the future, i.e. you may not have a job in your field when you graduate or your skills may be less applicable or irrelevant.

Consider that in-state tuition for California residents at the Univesity of California Berkeley averages $14,200 per year compared with $11,700 annually for Texas residents at UT-Austin and $11,900 per year at Texas Tech. California residents may spend upwards of $20,000 more to receive their degrees of the U California system relative to Texas public options, not even including the higher costs of living in Califronia metros and their state income tax.

Still, most residential Bachelor’s degrees will set students and families back at least $100,000 before any aid or scholarship considerations at Texas public options. Attending an out-of-state or private university can exceed $250,000 for a four-year degree. A recent study suggests that “young adult from middle-income families have a higher risk for debt than do those from low- and high-income families.”

Unlike credit cards, student loan debt CANNOT be discharged except in very rare circumstances. Your opportunities will be significantly limited following graduation and years to come if you choose a university where you know you’ll be saddled with debt exceeding your expected starting salary. Especially in the Covid-19 climate, frugality should play a heavier weight in building your college list.

One issue with the Financial Aid packages themselves is they almost always obscure what your actual package entails. Bundling together subsidized and unsubsidized loans alongside Work Study or renewable scholarships with strings attached makes it difficult for even the most financially savvy families to assess what a repayment plan might look like following graduation.

Moreover, universities have incentives to inflate or tweak their Median Salaries without regard for salaries ranges or distributions of who makes what. One family crunched the numbers and found that if you have a slightly below average salary for your first five years, and take on slightly more debt than initially intended, it could take many years longer to repay the balance and the interest. That money could go to down payments on houses or future studies, but unexpected changes in 5 and 10 year plans starting from high school add high degrees of uncertainty.

Debt accumulation is expensive - it’s expensive to be poor.

Potential opportunity costs of taking on significant student debt:

The above realities increasingly call into question the value of a college degree at all, let alone paying for most or all of the costs of an out-of-state or private university. Now more than ever are discussions necessary about possibly delaying college enrollment by taking a gap year and working, or beginning students at inexpensive community colleges that guarantee credit transfer.

One reason the Texas Legislature put the “automatic transfer admission” clause into the top 10% automatic admission bill is to allow students pathways to enrolling at Texas public universities if they prefer to save money by enrolling at community college first.

Applying to universities where you’re either highly unlikely to gain admission or have few opportunities to afford it, there may be a tendency to apply “just to see if you get in.”

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Committing this fallacy costs application time and money. If you’re stressing over application fees, you probably shouldn’t apply to selecive out of state universities. By even applying, either consciously or subtly, you create unrealistic sets of expectations. Either you don’t get in and feel disappointed, or you gain admission and receive an expectedly thin financial aid package that makes the university unaffordable.

Rice is the most common example that comes to mind because, unless your family makes less than $130,000 a year, you should expect to pay the full cost of attendance. Even though Rice provides an excellent education and one of the best in the world, unless your family net worth is in the multiple millions of dollars, there are few universes where paying upwards of $280,000 for a four-year Bachelors, including Rice, provides a sound return on investment. Do not apply to Rice for Early Decision if you cannot afford it.

Affording universities also requires a family to project their income stability years into the future. Working in volatile markets that depend on commodities like oil and gas or real estate prices? Maybe reconsider enrolling at a costly university. Likewise for full or almost full-pay at less prestigious private universities like SMU, TCU, Baylor, and others, it’s rare that they will provide a return on investment to offset the costs of attending almost any Texas public university.

The counter-argument to filtering your college list by cost is to simply apply to your universities regardless of the sticker price because you may receive unexpected merit scholarships that bring the expected cost of attendance closer to or even lower than comparable public options. It’s sometimes preferable to apply, see what your options look like during senior year spring, and then say no rather than regret not trying at all. Still, you should have maybe two or maximum three reach schools based on selectivity or ability to pay.

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Kevin MartinProcess