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" In three years, my older daughter will start college. I miss her already. But the &amp;quot;I can&amp;#039;t believe my baby is growing up&amp;quot; pangs are nothing compared to my anxiety about paying for school \u2014 first for her, then for her younger sister. Because, these days, sacrificing and saving just aren&amp;#039;t good enough. To build a college fund, my husband and I have been skimping for years \u2014 we bought a used car instead of a new one, put off painting the house, and are still lounging on furniture from the eighties. Yet we won&amp;#039;t even come close to saving enough for the private universities we&amp;#039;d love to see our children attend. The total cost of a degree from these schools \u2014 from tuition to transportation \u2014 has swelled to as much as $180,000. And like many middle-class families, we don&amp;#039;t qualify for government aid \u2014 which, by the way, has failed to keep up with rising costs. My husband and I knew there&amp;#039;d been price hikes, of course. But one day we realized that degrees for our two kids would cost more than our house had. That&amp;#039;s when I decided on a new game plan: Instead of scrambling to save more for college, I&amp;#039;d research how to buy a B.A. for less. Here are the two major strategies I discovered, plus other smart money moves.  Strategy #1 Go to a Big-Name School \u2014 for Two Years The trick is to start your child at a community college. Then, after two years of earning good grades, he or she can transfer to an elite public or private university. The beauty of this approach is that the degree will be from the four-year school. &amp;quot;There&amp;#039;s no asterisk on your diploma that says you started at a community college,&amp;quot; says Thomas Bailey, director of the Community College Research Center at Teachers College, Columbia University. And the dollar savings are huge. Here&amp;#039;s how the math breaks down: The average cost for a year at a private university, including tuition, fees, and room and board, is $30,000; at a state school, it&amp;#039;s $13,000. If your child goes to a community college and lives at home, the average price is just $2,000 a year. That leaves you with a savings of $22,000 if your child transfers to a public school after two years. If it&amp;#039;s a private school, your total discount is $56,000.  Still have reservations about community college? Here, parents&amp;#039; questions and concerns addressed: Can my child really get a good education at a two-year school?  You bet. The faculty at these colleges may not have degrees as advanced or r\u00E9sum\u00E9s as stellar as tenured professors at elite institutions, but don&amp;#039;t let that fool you. A committed faculty can do an excellent job, especially at teaching the 101 lecture courses that most students are required to take at the beginning of their four years.  And there are some real benefits to community colleges, such as smaller classes. &amp;quot;I&amp;#039;m one of 25 students in my courses,&amp;quot; says Casey Maliszewski, a student at Raritan Valley Community College in Somerville, NJ. Initially, she was worried that bigger-name schools would be reluctant to let her transfer from her community college, which she chose largely for financial reasons. &amp;quot;I couldn&amp;#039;t have been more wrong,&amp;quot; she says. After two years at Raritan Valley, she was recently accepted to Columbia University and offered scholarships to both Rutgers and the University of Maryland.  Next page: More answers to community college questions What are the top community colleges?  There are no national rankings or &amp;quot;best of&amp;quot; books, as there are for four-year schools. So to make a good choice, you have to do some homework.  First, go online to locate schools near your home. The American Association of Community Colleges has an interactive college directory (aacc.nche.edu). Sallie Mae&amp;#039;s College Answer site has a customized search tool that lets you target schools according to size, cost, majors, and typical SAT scores (collegeanswer.com). You should also check out Peterson&amp;#039;s Two-Year Colleges or visit petersons.com.  Once you&amp;#039;ve narrowed it down to a few possibilities, scroll through the Council for Higher Education Accreditation&amp;#039;s online directory (chea.org) to see if the colleges on your list are accredited. The Website will also tell you if a school&amp;#039;s specialized programs \u2014 for example, engineering, business, or nursing \u2014 are recognized by their professional organizations.  Then comes a crucial step: Call the community college&amp;#039;s admissions officer and ask if there are any &amp;quot;articulation agreements&amp;quot; with four-year universities. This means that if your child meets various requirements (such as maintaining a high GPA \u2014 the average they&amp;#039;re looking for varies from school to school \u2014 or agreeing to take certain introductory courses), he or she may qualify for guaranteed acceptance or &amp;quot;preferred&amp;quot; admission status. In many states, four-year institutions set aside spots for community college transfers.  You should also ask the admissions officer what percentage of the students move on to four-year universities. (The national average is about 25 percent.) Two-year schools with impressive transfer rates will probably brag about them. If they don&amp;#039;t, and you know which four-year university your child wants to attend, call that school&amp;#039;s admissions or public information office and ask which community college in your area has the best transfer acceptance rate.  &amp;quot;The transfer record had a huge impact on where I decided to enroll,&amp;quot; says Mandy Stuart, a student at Mitchell Community College in Statesville, NC. She&amp;#039;s on track to transfer to the University of North Carolina Wilmington next year, a college that was out of reach when she graduated from high school. &amp;quot;I slacked off during my senior year, which hurt my GPA,&amp;quot; she explains. &amp;quot;Attending Mitchell gave me the opportunity to improve my grades before applying to UNC.&amp;quot;  The quality of the faculty is key. How can I evaluate that?  Most community colleges require professors to hold master&amp;#039;s degrees in the subjects they teach, as opposed to degrees in more general fields like education. Check to see if the two-year school your child is considering has the same standard. It&amp;#039;s also a good idea to call the school&amp;#039;s admissions office to set up a time for your child to meet with faculty members, especially those who teach basics like English literature, math, and science.  My child is really bright. Will she be challenged at a community college?  Thanks to the growing ranks of smart kids who can&amp;#039;t afford four-year universities, community colleges now offer plenty of demanding classes. A third of the schools even have honors programs, some of which require interested students to have GPAs and SAT scores nearly as high as they would need to enter selective universities.  &amp;quot;The quality of the community college classes I took was just superb,&amp;quot; says Steve Traylor of Troy, VA, who saved $14,000 by attending Piedmont Virginia Community College while living at home. Last year, the chemical engineering major transferred to the top-ranked University of Virginia, where he has maintained a GPA of 3.8.  Are there any scholarships for community college students?  Yes. Two of the major national funders are the Coca-Cola Scholars Foundation and the Jack Kent Cooke Foundation. The Website for Phi Theta Kappa, the two-year college honors society, has info on those scholarships as well as other financial aid sources (scholarships.ptk.org).  Next page: Strategy 2: Public school Strategy #2 Get Private School Quality at a Public School Price &amp;quot;Most of my friends who went to private colleges graduated with a huge debt,&amp;quot; says Liz DeJong, who in May received her degree from a public school \u2014 San Francisco State University \u2014 and is totally loan free.  On average, private colleges cost $17,000 more per year than state schools. And some private universities now clock in at $44,000 annually \u2014 well above the $30,000 average.  Is it the quality of the teaching that makes private schools so much more expensive than public ones? Not necessarily. &amp;quot;There are good professors just about every\u00ADwhere,&amp;quot; says Cliff Adelman, a senior associate at the Institute for Higher Education Policy in Washington, D.C., who has taught both at Yale University and City College of New York.  There are several public schools in my state. How do I pick the right one?  If your child knows what she wants to major in, ask an admissions officer how long it takes, on average, for students in that department to graduate. Four years is the norm, so if the answer is four and a half or more, it may mean that the required classes aren&amp;#039;t offered every term or may fill up quickly, necessitating an extra semester or year to graduate. And that additional time translates into big bucks. If your child hasn&amp;#039;t picked a major yet, that&amp;#039;s fine. Just be sure to choose a university with a lenient deadline for declaring a major (the end of sophomore year versus the middle of freshman year) and strong career counseling services (ask how many students use the department&amp;#039;s resources \u2014 the higher the number, the better).  I&amp;#039;m worried my child will feel overwhelmed by the lack of individual attention at big state schools.  Then you may want to consider a university with an honors college or one that has small colleges within the greater institution. These selective programs mimic the ambience and academic excellence of liberal arts schools. For example, the mammoth University of Central Florida funnels its top 1,700 students into the Burnett Honors College, a mini campus where they take special sections of standard university courses, enroll in honors-only seminars, and have their own computer lab and even access to a meditation garden.  This approach worked for Rajni Singh, who attended an honors program at the School of Environmental and Biological Sciences at Rutgers University in New Jersey. &amp;quot;I was doing my own lab research by the time I was a sophomore,&amp;quot; she says, praising the program&amp;#039;s resources. Singh just started grad school in molecular biology at Cornell.  Even in-state tuition is a stretch for us. What about government financial aid?  To get a rough idea of whether you qualify for need-based aid from Uncle Sam, plug your family fi\u00ADnances into one of the calculators at FinAid.org. Or fill out the forms in the back of Paying for College Without Going Broke, a Princeton Review publication.  Schools also offer need-based aid, but it&amp;#039;s hard to guesstimate how much you&amp;#039;ll receive because details of individual scholarship grants aren&amp;#039;t determined until after a student has been accepted. Monetary awards are generally based on the overall quality of the applicant pool and the amount of money available in the school&amp;#039;s endowment that year.  Keep in mind that the college&amp;#039;s financial aid director has a lot of say. &amp;quot;Parents don&amp;#039;t realize how much discretion that person may have in making awards,&amp;quot; says Carl Buck, former financial aid director at Rice, Rutgers, and the University of Utah. So make sure you get to know who&amp;#039;s in charge of funding at your dream school.  Next Page: More answers to public vs. private school questions There&amp;#039;s no way we&amp;#039;ll qualify for need-based aid. Are there any other options?  If your child has good grades, excels as an artist or athlete, or has a lot of community service under her belt, she may qualify for merit-based dollars. To size up your kid&amp;#039;s chances of receiving a grant, seek out the answers to these questions:    What percentage of students at the school receive scholarships based on criteria other than need (such as merit)?  What is the dollar amount of the average award?  How do your child&amp;#039;s SAT scores, GPA, and class rank compare with those of the average student at that institution?  You can find this information on College\u00ADBoard.com. If your child&amp;#039;s numbers are higher, she may be in line to receive an academic scholarship. Sally Rubenstone, a senior counselor at CollegeConfidential.com (a good site to check out), advises parents to target schools where a child will be at the top of the merit-aid list. How to figure that out? Use CollegeBoard.com&amp;#039;s MatchMaker tool. It was created to help students find colleges that fit their criteria, but you can also use it as a sneaky way to estimate your chances of getting merit aid, explains Rubenstone. Let&amp;#039;s say your daughter Mary has a GPA of 3.5 and SAT scores of 640 each in reading and math. On the site, you can click on marks that are significantly below Mary&amp;#039;s \u2014 maybe 550 and 2.0 to 3.0. Then find the search option for academic awards. &amp;quot;The computer will generate a list of colleges where Mary should be among the stronger applicants and thus might qualify for merit money,&amp;quot; says Rubenstone. Warning: Some schools require that you file a merit-aid application earlier than the admission application, so be sure to check deadlines. My child would love to go to a public school \u2014 in another state!  That could cost you, since out-of-state public colleges can be as pricey as private universities. But there are exceptions. For example, some schools may waive out-of-state fees for children of alumni. And certain pairs of schools, like the universities of Wisconsin and Minnesota, have established reciprocal agreements, so you pay in-state prices. Another trick is to find a college that&amp;#039;s trying to raise its academic standards: For desirable applicants, they&amp;#039;ll often forgo out-of-state charges. For instance, at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette (which is included on Princeton Review&amp;#039;s 2006 list of the 81 Best Value Colleges), &amp;quot;anyone from another state who meets certain requirements, like a 2.5 GPA, is likely to be granted a waiver,&amp;quot; says Dan Rosenfield, dean of enrollment management. If my child establishes residency, will out-of-state fees be dropped?  In rare instances, yes. But meeting residency requirements isn&amp;#039;t easy. For example, just having an aunt or grandparent who lives in the state won&amp;#039;t cut it. FinAid.org has detailed guides on state requirements. But even if the state sets the standards, it&amp;#039;s the college that ultimately determines if you have to pay out-of-state prices. So check with the admissions office or consult the college&amp;#039;s Website for its specific take on what constitutes residency. What if my child has her heart set on a private school?  Don&amp;#039;t eliminate all the pricey places from consideration until after you see their financial aid packages. As more students opt for cheaper state schools, private institutions have been forced to offer more aid. Small, relatively unknown private colleges, which sometimes struggle to compete, are known for being particularly generous.  Your chances for financial aid can also improve when you apply outside of your geographical area, or if, for example, you&amp;#039;re a male student applying to a historically female college. &amp;quot;You&amp;#039;re a minority at these schools,&amp;quot; says Mary Lee Hoganson, president of the National Association for College Admission Counseling. And that can spell dollars from schools looking to diversify their student profile. See our College Crisis Savings Plan for parents of teens who are two years or less away from school. Also, check out our list of 5 Overlooked Scholarship Sources to see other funding options. 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