If you’re the parent of a teenager, it’s time to start saving. No, not for college -- to apply to college.
Most colleges haven’t expanded to accommodate the record numbers of students now reaching college age. So intense competition for seats is prompting teens to sign up for sometimes costly services, from test preparation to essay advice to interviewing skills. Then, to cover their bets, they apply to a half-dozen colleges or more.
Here’s a rundown of the costs you might run into.
Getting Tested
The SAT and its competitor, the ACT college-admissions test, are the first big hurdles in the application process.
Fees are up for both tests, largely because of the hand-scored writing portions that were added last year. ACT Inc. charges $43 and the College Board charges $41.50 for their tests.
Of course, few ambitious students go into their admissions tests without some preparation. The cheapest prep courses are online. Kaplan Inc., a test-prep and tutoring unit of Washington Post Co., charges $399 for 30 computer-based lessons. Princeton Review, a New York-based tutoring and admissions-services company, charges $999 for its 10-session SAT prep course. Both companies also offer private SAT tutoring: At Princeton Review, that runs $5,400 for 18 hours.
Flurry of Fees
Some colleges, eager to get away from paper-based applications and the potential for misplaced submissions, waive the application fee when students apply online. But many schools still typically charge $40 to $70 for an application – online or paper-based – which means that applying to multiple schools will set you back for multiple application fees.
Then there’s the essay. Colleges insist that the essay part of an application plays only a small role in their admission decisions. Yet even that looms large for some teenagers and has spawned a new industry in essay preparation.
Essay services, like test preparation, vary widely by price and what they provide. For $299.95, an editor at EssayEdge, a unit of information giant Thomson Corp., brainstorms essay ideas with a student by phone, then provides critiques of the paper in progress.
College Coaches
College-counseling services also are flourishing as competition heats up for admission to elite schools – and as parents find themselves overwhelmed by the process.
College Coach LLC, with offices in 12 geographies nationwide, offers advice on everything from choosing a school to highlighting your personality on the application, it advertises.
Summer college-prep "boot camps" also abound, offering test prep, essay polishing, college counseling and college tours. For $3,975, Kaplan offered an 18-day program at the University of California at Berkeley this summer. Kaplan promised that, among other things, students would take five SAT practice tests, which is about 20 hours of testing.
Hitting the Road
Visiting a half-dozen or more colleges may be the most expensive part of the application process.
For a visit to Middlebury, Williams, Bates and Bowdoin colleges, for example, two parents and one student should expect to pay $1,400 in airfare from Washington, D.C., to Burlington, Vt., and then from Portland, Maine, back home. Adding a rental car, airport parking, hotels, meals and college T-shirt or two along the way will bring the cost of a three-day trip to about $2,500.
There’s some consolation, though. College tours are perhaps the last, best quality time you’ll spend with your teen. And at most admissions offices, the coffee is free.
Ms. Kronholz is a staff reporter in The Wall Street Journal’s Washington bureau. She can be reached at june.kronholz@wsj.com.
