This Mother's March Madness

  

Much like the NCAA basketball brackets for March Madness, the process of college selection will eventually whittle down to a "winning college of choice" .

In March HS seniors continue to receive college acceptances. But March is also the month that we begin receiving each college's offers of awards, scholarships and loans.

Jake has already been accepted to 4 of the 7 colleges he's applied to and we still wait for one other. His #1 pick (and ours) is the University of Maryland, next week he's visiting "Mizzou" (another with one of the top journalism schools in the country), and finally we will hear from Syracuse University.

So what's the madness about March?

From the minute Jake was born we began socking away the dollars. We put the money in the "appropriate" investments, kept an eye on the swings of the markets and prayed, like most parents, that we would be able to send him to the college of his choice.  Almost 18 years ago the price of a 4 year stint was predicted to be about $150 - $200,000. Would we be able to achieve this goal?

The truth is, for most of his 17 years, it was something we did NOT really angst about. But these past two years have made up for it. The recent financial down slide has taken its toll on all of our investments, and in indirect proportion, our level of anxiety.

Jake is aware of our concerns. He's been involved in the entire college app process, including our consultations with a fabulous team of  independent college counselors  to help us understand which schools were best to apply to all the way through how to negotiate with the individual schools for the best financial awards. I felt it was necessary for him to understand but worry whether this was really fair to him.

Here's our "March madness"  - first,  sending our first and only off to college, next, to the school of his choice, and lastly, one that we will be able to afford without having to work a third job ( in addition to running my own company I also privately do consulting).

 Unlike March Madness basketball brackets where there is only one winner, we're hopeful that we are all winners in the end - and, that Jake, after graduating college, will one day be the sports journalist that writes about or announces the winners of the real March Madness competition.