Customer Reviews

Sallie Mae How to Pay for College: A Practical Guide for Families

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As a certified financial planner I work with families who are struggling to save for college. I am always on the lookout for new resources and this book by Sallie Mae is at the top of my list. While there is too much to describe in a short review, let me just say that each chapter contains succinct, easy to understand, and top-notch advice. The book contains many examples and the explanations are written so even a non-expert can understand. The tips and anecdotes from the financial aid officers which appear on many of the pages are invaluable and give the reader a view of financial aid that we don't normally see. Sallie Mae should be commended for putting out a terrific book.

As the mother of three children high school aged children I knew that I needed help paying for college. What a relief it was to read this book! I'm no expert on financial aid but after reading Sallie Mae How to Pay for College I feel much more confident about getting through the process. In fact, as crazy as it sounds I am actually looking forward to applying for aid since I now know how much I should get!

Not only does this book explain the financial aid process better than anything else I have read but it also addresses important topics like scholarships and college savings. The scholarship chapter is a real standout in my opinion and I made it required reading for my children who will need to do their part to help pay for their educations.

Throughout the book are interviews with financial aid officers from different colleges. These really helped me to see how that college can actually help.

While we still have a lot of hard work ahead I am confident that we can meet the challenge. I highly recommend this book to every family who is struggling with the cost of college.

I've been a college counselor for 15 years and each year I'm responsible for helping 200 seniors find the right college. I have witnessed many changes in admission but by far the most difficult challenge today is helping families pay for the great colleges that their children get into. What good is it to get into a college if you can't afford to go? This is why I was particularly interested in this book when one of my colleagues gave me a copy to review.

Over the years I have read hundreds of books on college planning. Of those only a very small percentage make it into my permanent collection of useful references. This book not only made it into my collection but I consider it to be the "best of the best."

Why? Because it honestly lays out the challenges of paying for college faced by most families and then systematically presents realistic solutions. The authors do not present their solutions in a dogmatic fashion but give the reader all of the options to let the individual family choose the best solution for their situation. This is very important since many books give cookie-cutter solutions, which just do not work in the real world.

Is it ironic that one of the best books on paying for college comes from Sallie Mae - a provider of student loans? Maybe. But the fact remains that Sallie Mae has put together a terrific resource. You won't find "plugs" for loans. In fact, you get just the opposite. The book makes it clear that loans are your last option and it encourages you to find scholarships, apply for financial aid, and perhaps the most underappreciated way to pay for college - save money. The one chapter on student loans is very informative and like the rest of the book presents options rather than directs you into a preconceived direction.

"How to Pay for College" earned a permanent place on my bookshelf and I recommend it to the students and parents at my school.

I have a young baby and wanted to get started early on saving in the right way for college. The table of contents has several chapters on how to save, how to get tax-advantages, etc so I got it.

However, the book seems to be aimed at people who have a high school student and have not saved anything yet and don't really know how to save money period. It is not for people who know how to be frugal and save money and wanted to get started early putting that money in the right place.

We have a relatively high income, and I got this book to figure out if we could qualify for financial aid, how to maximize financial aid, and if we did not qualify, what other savings options we have. There is a chapter titled 'Even the millionaire next door can qualify for financial aid." It told me absolutely nothing. Only the assertion that everyone can qualify so don't count yourself out. That sort of unsupported statement is totally worthless to me for planning purposes.

It gives a rule of thumb of saving 40% of your income towards college. However, it does not specify why or for how long. If I were to start now saving 40% of my income, and then have a second child, should I then save 80% of my income? That is of course ridiculous, so I assume that the rule of thumb is based on the unspoken assumption that your child is 18.

There are call-out boxes from "real financial aid officers" throughout the book, but each of them seems to say only "You should save for college." Yes, yes, that's why I got the book - any actual information you can give me? It also spends a fair amount of time talking about how to budget and be frugal (maybe you should make coffee at home instead of buying a frapuccino at Starbucks). Again, I know how to save money in general, I wanted to know the best way to invest this money for college. This book is several hundred pages long but only has a few pages worth of information answering that question.

This book was very educational and hard to put down. Very useful

information. Highly recommend it to anyone with kids going to college in the next couple of years.

Collabortively co-authored by Gen Tanabe and Kelly Tanabe, How To Pay For College: A Practical Guide for Families is a no-nonsense guide sponsored by the "paying for college company" Sallie Mae, which is well known for the award-winning CollegeAnswer.com website dedicated to providing parents and students with answers to questions about the college process. Written in plain, no-nonsense terms, chapters instruct the reader about how the financial aid process works, how to choose the best financial aid package and what to do if it's not enough, where to find the best scholarships for one's income levels, the best way to save for college including choosing the right 529 savings plan, how to avoid financial aid scams that steal one's money (one red flag is that only scammers will "guarantee" a scholarship for a fee, as legitimate scholarships are based solely on merit and need), and much more. An in-depth resource filled with up-to-date advice, that walks the reader through the basics of filling out forms and exhorts how easy it is to learn about the newest scholarships on the world wide web. A "must-have" for every prospective college student who isn't independently wealthy.

It's good to get info on financing college. I haven't bought this book. Read the book but don't get a Sallie Mae loan. You need to read the online reviews of all the people trying to payoff their Sallie Mae loans. It is terrifying. I wish I knew before hand. I would have tried to get another type of loan or use my credit card to pay for it. Found out too late.

This book was a little helpful and we did learn a lot from it. For the price it is worth the money. So if you have a HS Senior, its worth the investment