Getting Ready to Pay for College: What Students and Their Parents Know About the Cost of College Tuition and What They Are Doing to Find Out

This report uses data from the Parent and Youth Surveys of the 1999 National Household Education Surveys Program (NHES: 1999) to investigate how much college bound 6th- through 12th-grade students know about the cost of attending college, and the relationships between their knowledge of college costs and how they go about preparing for college. Apart from looking at estimates provided by these students for how much they think college will cost, the report also provides information about discussions students had with parents or teachers/counselors to learn about college costs and financial aid availability, and academic requirements of attending college. In addition, the report examines what parents of these students know about college costs, whether they had started to save for their children's education, what they had done to gather information on financial aid, and whether they knew about various tax credits to help offset costs.

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