These days, though, what with the job market the way it is and the relatively high population of people with Bachelor's degrees, graduating from a four-year program with $50,000 in student loans seems, well, a bit silly. Luckily, there are several steps you can take to make paying for your higher education as painless as possible.
U.S. News and World Report publishes an excellent yearly guide to American colleges with all the graphs and pie charts and other trappings of legitimacy that you need to figure out what schools you want to apply to and about how much each one is going to cost. When you apply for admission to each school you will also have the opportunity to fill out an application for financial aid with that school.
If a school's admissions board likes your application, they will send you a letter of acceptance that will also list how much money they are willing to give you to help pay for tuition and other related expenses. Your final decision on what school to attend will probably be heavily influenced by the amount of financial aid each school is willing to give you. At this point you should also fill out the Free Application for Student Aid (or "FAFSA"), which may give you access to government grants or federal student loans.
Paying for college is all about tapping as many different sources of financial aid as possible. So, in addition to money from the federal government and money from the school itself, you also should look for money from the state and money from private sources. College usually offer large discounts to state residents, so it is often well worth it to attend a school in your home state.
If you have your heart set on an out-of-state school, you might also consider moving to the city that school is in and working for a year to save up some money and establish residency before applying. Another benefit to this strategy is that most states offer some kind of financial aid for students attending public state schools. Many of these programs have strict high school GPA requirements and often also have a community service component, so plan accordingly.
Many private organizations also offer scholarship money. There are lots of sites that catalog private scholarship opportunities; however, competition for these is more fierce, and the rewards are not always proportional to the amount of effort involved in applying for them. Generally speaking, the more obscure the scholarship, the better off you will be. A quick Google search should turn up dozens of opportunities on the national and local levels that no one else has ever heard of. It sometimes seems as though every law firm, book club, charitable organization, and grocery store chain in the country is willing to write someone a check for a couple hundred bucks just for writing a short essay on some asinine topic like "What Freedom Means to Me" or "The Importance of Diversity." If you apply to enough of them, chances are good that you'll be awarded at least a few just by default.
