Financial Planning For College
What you'll learn
- Learn how to lower costs of attendance and carry lower student loan debt.
Requirements
- None
Description
Going to college remains the best investment a student can make in his or her future. This is why nearly 20 million Americans pursue some kind of post-secondary education each year.
But college student families also face many challenges. Many colleges are too expensive. Merit scholarships are rare and difficult to get. It takes too long to graduate. The debt burden is too high. Attending a mismatched college or pursuing a field with limited growth opportunities compounds the problem.
This course helps families in making college become more affordable. It uses basic principles of finance to emphasize that lowering costs of attendance and improving returns on college investment are essential to successful college financial planning. It systematically shows families how to save money for college, get free money, borrow money and repay, all with these two important considerations in mind.
The instructor, Rajkamal Rao, is an expert on higher education and a professional college counselor. His online course, "School to College", an innovative ½ credit elective for high school students, is live in the state of Washington and other western states. He is an active public speaker conducting seminars on college education and student camps. He has written a book on college selection. His college blog has attracted nearly 60,000 hits from users worldwide.
All references in the course are sourced only from government agencies or reputed organizations.
Who this course is for:
- High school students in the 11th and 12th grades, parents, first-time college families, anyone who wants to attend college.
Course content
- Preview01:18
Instructor
![Rajkamal Rao](data:image/svg+xml,%3Csvg xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" viewBox="0 0 64 64"%3E%3C/svg%3E){kind=avatar}
- 4.5 Instructor Rating
- 20 Reviews
- 101 Students
- 2 Courses
Rajkamal Rao heads a firm to counsel students aspiring to study in the US maximize their return on investment. The firm has helped hundreds of student clients win admission to top universities in the US, including such reputed institutions as the University of Pennsylvania, Dartmouth, Cornell, Carnegie Mellon, Duke, University of Illinois-Urbana, Texas A & M, USC, North Carolina State University, and Virginia Tech.
He is an active public speaker conducting awareness seminars on higher education and student camps. He has written a book on college selection and his blog has attracted nearly 60,000 hits from users worldwide.
Rajkamal writes a weekly column, "World View", for the Hindu's online portal for MBA students, one of the largest such sites in the world. He is also a columnist for
the Hindu BusinessLine, India's second largest financial newspaper. In 2013, he won the consulting firm McKinsey's global essay competition: "How can “innovation capitalism” drive India’s technological and economic development?"
A former management consultant, Rajkamal has executive-level client management experience at the world’s largest organizations. He holds an MBA from Carnegie Mellon University, an MS in Engineering from Villanova University and a BS in Engineering from Bangalore University.