What Others Say About Us

We are more than pleased at how Sam Mikhail has helped us in the financing of our daughter’s college education. Our only regret is that we have not found him earlier when our daughter was a high school junior or when she began applying to colleges or even when the college acceptance letters started arriving. We came to Sam for help just as our daughter was graduating from high school and 3½ months before she was due to start school at the college of her choice. Though the probability appeared less than remote, Sam helped us with an appeal that resulted in us saving more than $10,000 for her freshman year. Sam said that we should be getting more than that in her sophomore year and we believe he can make it happen.

We have found Sam to be very professional; he provides suggestions and allows us to make the final decision. He is very responsive to our inquiries and reliable in appointment keeping. We recommend him and all parents should seek him out once their child starts high school so that he can help them with college planning, particularly the financial aspect, from the get go.

Buck, CPA & Jaclyn, CPA

I had never heard of all the college planning stuff before. I thought we find a way just to pay whatever the school costs were until we attended Sam's workshop in Northridge. The information caught our interest, so we went ahead and met with him at his office.

Even though Sam seemed to know what he was talking about, I was skeptical at first due to the cost. It was not that he was too expensive, but more like money I didn’t want to gamble with (in case he wasn’t legit or they couldn’t really help). We had questions going through our minds like "Can he really deliver?" and "Will we really be eligible for aid and reduce our costs for college?" We were glad to see that they had a guarantee, so we joined.

They were great! Sam and his team walked up through the whole process, answered all our questions and completed all the financial and school forms for us. College Planning Advisors ended up reducing our EFC number from $37,500 down to $19,833! They also recommended a couple things we can do to lower the amount we pay in taxes every year and saved us an additional $3,000 each year. Three great schools accepted our son. Two of the schools were in our top three and awarded us over 85% of the difference between our EFC and the cost of attendance. We figure that in just this first year of school we were able to save over $25,000.

Ron and Mia S.

Both my wife and I work and make a comfortable living. We opened college savings plans for our children when they were young. I didn’t figure we had a chance to get any help for college since EFC calculators that I found on the internet calculated our EFC to be between $60-65k. We own a house, a business and some rental properties. College Planning Advisors helped structure our assets to save us a ton of money. Our EFC dropped down just below $30k. We were also able to save money that would have gone to the schools. That money is now for our kids to start their lives.

 Tim and Lisa R.

As many parents with children getting closer to going to college, we were setting away some money for their education, but as we found out, not nearly enough for the astronomical prices that we have now been exposed to. Faced with the fact that our Family Contribution could be as high as $25k per year for 8 years for our two children, we needed to find effective ways to do this without sending us into debt that we couldn't get out of. We also do not want to strap our children to what could amount to be a lifetime of debt.

We listened to the Workshop but found myself saying "this sounds too good to be true. What's the catch?" There was no "catch", just a detailed total plan of lowering our Expected Family Contribution, providing us some tax advantages and staying within the agreed upon budget that we had established. The additional 'perks' of filling out financial aid forms, working with our children on narrowing down the selection of colleges and essay writing was just icing on the cake!

Bob and Gina A.

We have just begun working with College Planning Advisors. Already we have received help that we would not have known about. We received information on how to reduce our estimated family contribution. We also have access to the DISCOVER program, which is a great resource for our daughter in researching colleges and writing a resume. They suggested different options for studying for the SAT and ACT. Most of all, they reduced the amount of stress associated with the entire college process.

Jim & Michelle K.