I’m a strong DIY’er. We don’t hire out our lawn mowing, or our house cleaning, our brush work, and we like to garden and hang clothes on the line. I like to put in elbow grease, understand something inside and out, and feel competent.

But there are times when I know getting help is the better plan. I outsource my statistical calculations to the computer, but I double check that everything going in and coming out makes sense (no GIGO here!), because the computer is powerful but not smart. I’ve outsourced the numerous removal of old trees (some of which were 80+ feet tall failing cottonwoods), and 30+ feet long woodpecker-hole-riddled over-extended tree branches over our roof, to someone with more skill, better tools, a stump grinder, and a wood chipper to clean up with afterwards. And rather than trying to piece together 10 year cost of car ownership from a variety of sources or buy a car without knowing such information up front, I’ll use my library’s database access for Consumer Reports reviews.

When it’s time to shop for college, which is in 9th grade or later, I think it’s worthwhile to get some help. Here’s what a good college shopping software package can help you with, for identifying potential schools of interest:

• Schools based on distance from home zip code, so you can choose to stay within what your family considers a reasonable drive.
• Restrictions to a state of choice
• Keeping your funding gap being under various thresholds
• Enrollment size, whether you want a large or a small school
• Schools that offer the major you’re interested in
• Show you the typical admittance profile, website, financial aid deadline, 1 and 5 and 10 year average and percentiles salaries for the selected major, and many other details about the schools

And then, once you’ve selected your potential list of schools, a good college shopping software package can:

• Tell you what to expect from a Federal method vs an Institutional method vs a Consensus method school
• Figuring out what your savings and cash flow can allow you to spend without loans, and which colleges that’s sufficient for
• List off all of the school-based scholarships that you might be eligible for, including the scholarship name, application criteria, award amount, whether it’s competitive or automatic, a description, and the application deadline.
• Provide a description/definition in writing of key financial terms.
• Per college, what percent of need is met with grants (instead of loans).
• Calculate your net cost for each of the four years of attendance, and your total net cost.
• Determine which schools have higher earnings within a major.
• Tell you how much in loans to expect, your funding gap.
• Break the loans down into an average monthly cost for 10 or 25 years, and compare that to a graduate from that college and that major’s expected monthly earnings as a year 1 salary, to see if your loan payment is feasible and a worthwhile trade off.
• Calculate the total you’d pay over 10 years or 25 years for your loans.
• Provide a how-to-pay table for each school, showing how much was planned to be pulled from 529 plans, parent pledged assets, parent pledged monthly cash flow, the American Opportunity Tax Credit (AOTC), student pledged assets, student pledged monthly cash flow, and grandparent/other help, along with the per-year funding gaps.
• Help you track your application deadlines and process, acceptance offers and financial aid offers, for each school.
• Search over 2000 private scholarships, filter by a number of criteria, sorted by application deadline, and allow you to favorite scholarships of interest.

And to boot, proper college shopping software will allow you to model various scenarios:

• What happens to your family’s estimated funding gap if you take 4 years of your extra pre-college cash flow and use it to pay down your house or invest in your retirement accounts, vs invest it in a 529 plan
• What happens to your estimated cost of attendance at your schools of choice if you the parent leave the high pay, high pressure job that’s burning you out to work in a lower paying field you love
• What happens to the expenses if college is bunched or delayed by your multiple children taking a gap year to enter college later, or accelerating through high school graduation and into college sooner.
• What happens for decreasing loans and increasing scholarships if your college-bound high school student studies hard and adds 5 points to their ACT score.

I think a good college shopping software experience is a worthwhile investment; with everything I listed, would you agree?