It was hard enough for Licia Paulus to figure out how to pay for her son’s college education four years ago. With her twins now starting the application process, she’s discovering the path has gotten even more challenging.
With affordability top-of-mind, she’s found herself navigating a web of calculators, merit aid and scholarships as a way to whittle down sticker prices that are approaching $100,000 for the most selective universities. It’s a strange quirk of today’s higher education landscape: Schools have adopted a “high-cost, high-aid” model in an attempt to counter the sharp tuition increases of the past two decades that have made college punitively expensive for even well-to-do families.