Last month I ran a webinar on the 12 deadliest college planning mistakes. About a hundred families showed up.

I opened with a poll. What's your biggest challenge right now? Getting into a decent school, paying for college, or you don't know where to start.

"All of the above" won. "Paying for college" came in a close second.

Nobody picked the thing I had listed as mistake number one.

That mistake is putting all your emphasis on the four years instead of the 40.

Everything in this process points at one moment. The decision letter. Families organize two years of their lives around it. And frankly the ads from people like me don't help. You've seen them. "93% of our students got into one of their top three choices."

You know how easy that is to pull off? Tell a Long Island kid to apply to Princeton, Stanford, and Nassau Community College. One out of three. Every single time.

So your kid gets in somewhere. Then what?

Getting in is not the finish line. It's the starting line. And where your ...