In this post, we’ll explore ways to help cover the cost of a college that is slightly above your current budget.

How do we define “slightly above”. Here, I am going to define “slightly above” as $2,000. Once you have read the rest of the article, you can decide if you are more comfortable with another value.

However, don’t fall into the trap of stretching the value further and further just to convince yourself that you can afford a college that is out of your reach.

Previous article

In the previous article: How to determine if a college is affordable, we started by looking at the sources of money that will be available to you to pay for college. 

The article then discussed the expenses you are likely to face and ended with the advice that if you can cover the expenses for a given college, then that is a college you can consider attending. If the expenses are a lot more than your income, then that is a college you cannot afford to attend. But what if the expenses are only slightly more than your income? What should you do then?

In this article I am going to focus on things you can do to increase your income and make that more expensive college fit your budget.

So, how can you find an extra $2,000 a year to attend that college? 

Let’s start by looking at some changes you can make regarding your job.

Work more hours per week during term – How many hours a week did you factor in for your part-time job each semester? Assuming a semester is 15 weeks long, that means there are 30 weeks when you are at college working part time. At an hourly rate of $12 per hour, you would need to work an additional 5.5 hours per week during term to earn $2,000 dollars. ($2000 / 30 weeks / $12 per hour).

Let’s say you planned on working 15 hours per week, you will need to bump it up to 21 hours per week. Perhaps you are sitting there thinking 21 hours per week is too many. If you feel that way perhaps your dream college isn’t worth a bit of extra effort. If that is the case, eliminate it from your list. 

Work more hours during the holidays – Maybe you were already planning on working 20+ hours during the semester and your college workload won’t allow you to increase those hours. If that is the case, how many hours of work did you calculate for each week between semesters? 

We said above that you are going to spend about 30 weeks in school working part-time. You therefore have 22 working weeks between semesters for full-time work. Let’s subtract 2 weeks so you can have some time off. This leaves you with 20 weeks. In order to earn $2,000 in 20 weeks, you need to earn an extra $100 per week. At $12 per hour, you will need to work an additional 8.5 hours each week. So if you were only planning on working 20 hours per week during the holidays, you need to bump that up to at least 28.5. Not willing to do that? Well, once again, if the college isn’t worth the extra effort, it should be eliminated it from consideration.

Work more weeks during the holidays – Were you only planning on working for 15 of the 20 weeks so you could have time to hang out with your friends?

You might have to rethink that. In order to earn $2,000 @ $12 per hour, you will need to work a total of 167 extra hours. That is slightly over 4 weeks if you are working 40 hours per week. If you aren’t willing to change your plans from working for 15 weeks to working for 19 weeks, then you need to attend one of the less expensive colleges.

Increase your salary – Let’s assume for a minute that you plan on working 1,200 hours during the year. Let’s also assume that the college you want to attend is still $2,000 more than you will earn from your job. If you cannot work more hours, there is still something else that you can change to earn that additional $2,000 – your hourly rate. 

In order to earn an additional $2,000 while working 1,200 hours, you are going to need to increase your hourly rate by $1.66 after taxes ($2,000 / 1200 hrs). Everybody’s tax situation will be a little different, so let’s just say you need an additional $2 per hour. 

Maybe you already have a job and can start by asking for a pay increase. Have you been there for a while? Have you always been punctual and shown up for all of your shifts? Have you jumped in to help when people have phoned in sick or suddenly quit? All these things help to make you a more valuable employee and are reasons for going to your current employer and asking for a raise. If they say no, you are no worse off. If you can’t get a raise at your current job, then it may be time to look for a higher paying job somewhere else.

Let’s say you have been working as a server in a local restaurant and have been averaging $12 per hour with tips. Well, now might be the time to go to work at a higher end restaurant where the per table bills are higher and therefore the tips are higher. Anything above $14 per hour on average is going to get you to your goal.

You may also find that there are more jobs available to you just because you are no longer in high school. Some employers won’t hire high school students, but they will hire college students even though the age difference could be just a few months.

Remember, if you can increase your hourly rate, you may not need to increase the number of hours you work per year to make up that $2,000 difference.

Get more scholarships – Increasing the number of hours you work and finding a higher paid job are both items that you can directly influence. It is your choice whether or not you work more hours. It is also your choice whether or not you look for a better-paying job. Scholarships, on the other hand, are only partially in your hands. 

The piece that you control is the time you spend looking for and applying for scholarships. If you are not putting in any effort to find scholarships, or are relying on a weekly email update to bring scholarships to your attention, then you are not giving this task the attention it needs. 

I won’t try to cover the entire topic of applying for scholarships here, as that is a topic for future posts. 

However, I want to point out that scholarships (especially those that are awarded for 4 years) can make a big difference to the affordability of college. Applying for scholarships is a very cost effective way to spend your time. You might think that spending 20 hours applying for scholarships is a waste of your time, but if those 20 hrs lead to a $500 scholarship, then that means you earned the equivalent of $25 / hr. If it gets you a $1,000 scholarship, then you will have “earned” $50 / hr.

You can see how focusing on this topic and having a little success can increase your options regarding which schools you can afford. Just 4 x $500 scholarships or 2 x $1,000 scholarships can close that $2,000 gap we used as our example.

Keep in mind, however, that you may not hear about whether you have won a scholarship until after the deadline to accept a college place. I would advise against accepting a place at a college you can’t afford just because you think you might win a scholarship. I would suggest you make your decision based on confirmed scholarships only.

Conclusion

A final thought. All the discussions above revolve around looking for ways to increase your income so you can apply to a larger selection of colleges. However, there is nothing preventing you from using these ideas to increase your income even if you are attending a college you can already afford.

Your thoughts

Leave a comment below on your thoughts on ways students can improve their income to help pay for college.