The new year is here, and college acceptance letters will be arriving in a few short weeks. Once those letters arrive, you and your teen will experience a wave of emotions. That’s why January and February are the perfect months to make sure you and your teen have covered all the questions to ask before making the final decision on which college is the best fit.

These conversations are extremely important, as they can have huge financial implications for your teen, and your family, for years and even decades to come.

To start with, here are three questions that MUST be asked before anyone’s heart gets set on a specific college.

 How much will the entire four years of college cost? You should be able to get this information from the colleges to which your teen has applied. There are also online calculators; collegecalc.org is a website that includes information on tuition, room and board and more.

1. Calculate or look up this information for each college your teen applied to attend. I’d even go as far to put them in a spreadsheet with other information that might be helpful for selecting a college.And here’s an important note: According to the College Board, average published tuition and fees at public and private colleges increased between 2.3% and 3.4% from 2018-2019 to 2019-2020. If you choose a college at the top of your budget, you may struggle to keep up if tuition costs and fees increase over time.
2. Are there areas in which you and your teen can cut costs? College living has changed greatly in the last 10 years. Sure, two-to-a-room dorms still exist, but today’s college students have many more options, from suites to luxury off-campus apartments with concierge services. If budgets are really tight, living at home might even be a realistic and necessary option.Other ways to reduce costs can include choosing lower-tier meal plans; opting out of college-affiliated health coverage if your teen is covered by another plan; forgoing participation in a fraternity or sorority (which will have initiation and membership fees); traveling light to college to avoid paying for a storage unit near campus over the summer; and taking a bicycle instead of a car to campus to avoid parking fees.Finally, here’s an easy one: Make sure your teen knows how to do laundry. Wash-dry-fold services can get expensive, especially at $30 or more a week. Doing laundry in a dorm is much cheaper and provides the perfect opportunity to study.
3. What merit and need-based scholarships are available? We have a great course on this very topic. There are so many scholarships available if teens know where to look. Colleges offer both merit and need-based scholarships, as do many civic organizations, religious groups and employers.Many colleges provide online databases through their financial aid offices that list the scholarships available to students who enroll. The College Board also has a scholarship search Also, don’t forget to check with your high-school guidance counselor for any school district or high-school specific scholarships. If you belong to a church, synagogue or mosque, make a quick call to see if it has any scholarships available to its members.

Once you get through the big three, the conversation can turn to topics that are important to ensuring that your teen’s college experience is a good one. In my opinion, the questions below should be asked before a teen applies to college, but it’s worth going over them again as you wait to hear back from admissions offices.

Here is an example of some questions to cover:

1. Urban campus or suburban campus?
2. How far from home?
3. Go with friends or go it alone?
4. Top-tier name versus affordability?

You can find a longer checklist of questions to ask here.

If the college application process is still a few years away for your teen, consider enrolling them in our two-hour Colleges & Scholarships class. It will cover all the basics and get them thinking about possibilities beyond what their friends may be talking about.