Most families don't overpay for college because they made a bad decision. They overpay because they didn't have the information they needed to make a good one.
A 2025 insight brief from EAB, Student and Family Perceptions of College Cost and Value, drawing on surveys of more than 30,000 students and families, puts hard numbers on something many families experience but can rarely articulate: the college cost system is confusing, and that confusion is expensive.
7 in 10 Students Cut Schools Before Seeing Aid
EAB's 2025 First-Year Experience Survey — which collected responses from 11,500 prospective first-year students — found that 7 in 10 students removed at least one school from their consideration list because it seemed too expensive. Not because it was too expensive. Because it seemed that way.
Sticker price and actual cost are often very different numbers. A school charging $58,000 per year that awards $28,000 in merit scholarships to a strong applicant costs $30,000, potentially less than a state school with a lower sticker price and minimal aid. But if a family looks at $58,000 and crosses that school off the list, they never find out.
The families who understand this dynamic consistently end up with more options and better leverage. The families who don't often narrow their choices based on assumptions that turn out to be wrong.
More Than Half Did Not Attend Their First-Choice School
According to EAB's research, more than half of students did not enroll at their first-choice school. The top reason was cost.
But look closer at the data and a more nuanced picture emerges. About a quarter of students who didn't attend their first-choice school made that decision because they received a better need-based aid package elsewhere. Another 23% left for a better merit scholarship. Combined, that means nearly half of students who skipped their first-choice school did so because a competing offer was simply more competitive — not because their dream school was out of reach.
A significant portion of students who ended up somewhere other than their first choice didn't leave because their dream school was genuinely unaffordable. They left because another school made a more competitive financial offer, and they recognized it.
That recognition requires comparison. It requires knowing not just what one school offered, but how that offer stacks up against others. Families who can make that comparison clearly are the ones who end up with the most options, including the option to go back to their first-choice school and negotiate — here's how to do it.
60% of Students Think Affordable Means No Debt
EAB's research surfaced a striking finding about how families define affordability. Among students who said affordable costs were most important to them, 60% defined an affordable education as one that required taking on no debt at all. EAB noted the same pattern held among parents surveyed separately in 2024 — suggesting this isn't a generational quirk but a broadly shared assumption that shapes how families evaluate offers from the start.
For most families, that's not a realistic expectation. But it shapes how they evaluate offers, and it means many families are measuring schools against a standard that almost no school can meet, while missing the more useful question: what will this actually cost us, and is that manageable?
The shift from "is this affordable" to "what is my true net cost" is a small one conceptually but a significant one practically. It moves the conversation away from sticker price and toward the number that actually matters: what a family pays after grants and scholarships are applied. Here's how to evaluate whether your offer is actually competitive.
Aid Letters Are Not Standardized
One of the clearest findings in EAB's research is that families struggle to find and understand cost information. According to EAB's 2025 Student Communication Preferences Survey — which covered 19,299 current high school students — first-generation college students and those from lower-income households are significantly more likely to search for financial aid and cost information during their college search, and significantly more likely to encounter confusion when they do.
Part of that confusion is structural. Financial aid award letters in the United States are not standardized. Every college presents its offer differently. Some lead with a total aid figure that bundles grants, scholarships, loans, and work-study into a single number. Others break everything out. Most use their own terminology.
The result is that comparing offers from multiple schools is genuinely difficult, not because families aren't trying, but because the system wasn't designed to make comparison easy. This guide walks through how to read an award letter step by step.
The Families Who Come Out Ahead
EAB's data makes clear that financial outcomes in college search are not random. Families who understand their true net cost, who compare offers accurately, and who recognize when an offer is below average are consistently better positioned to make smarter enrollment decisions, negotiate for more aid, and avoid overpaying for four years.
The gap between those families and everyone else isn't intelligence or effort. It's information and the tools to act on it.
Sources
EAB. Student and Family Perceptions of College Cost and Value in 2025. EAB Insight Brief, 2025.
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