Bloomberg — It's nice to be wanted, especially when applying for college aid.

As a National Merit finalist, Joelle Kaplan from East Cobb, Georgia, was heavily recruited as soon as her high test scores were received by colleges.

When it was time to make a decision on where to attend, the 18-year-old had a shopping bag full of letters and scholarship offers. Some schools even offered her full tuition coverage coupled with a twice-weekly cleaning service for her dorm room.

Like many prized students, she was targeted by schools wanting to improve their rankings. Guided by a recruitment regimen called strategic enrollment management, colleges floated extensive scholarships to land her as if she were an up-and- coming executive.

"At first, it was a little surprising to be contacted by so many schools," Kaplan recalls, "especially when I never heard of most of them. Then I realized these colleges really are a lot like any kind of business; they're trying to promote themselves to the best of their ability to get ahead."

Enrollment management employs student aid as a recruitment tool much the way stock-option and perk packages lure sought- after executives. Students with superior test scores and class rank raise the profile of a college, which in turn can boost its marketability.

Treating students like a hot free agent has many downsides. Enrollment management can turn admissions offices into profit centres at the expense of the larger educational mission.

Employing a high-tech search using test-score application information, colleges target zip codes, neighbourhood demographics and socioeconomic data in a quest for families who are likely to pay full tuition and later contribute to the college.

According to John Pearson, a certified college planning specialist and certified public accountant based in Norwalk, Connecticut, universities then hire enrollment consultants to create marketing campaigns. They "target students of academic quality that live in zip codes that will most likely yield the targeted expected family contribution needed to meet the college's financial goals."

Although I have never seen a study detailing how many colleges use this method, it's possible that students from low- or middle-income families may not be offered the same kind of aid packages.

"Education is worse off because of enrollment management," says Lloyd Thacker, founder of the non-profit Education Conservancy in Portland, Oregon. "There are more applications and drop-outs than ever before. It turns kids into customers and education into product."

Distasteful though it may be, understanding the strategic enrollment game is essential if you are to garner a reasonable aid package.

It's difficult to get out of college these days without incurring debt, so jump at any chance to obtain grants that don't need to be repaid. It takes some diligence because it's not easy to snag them, as they only comprise 20 percent of total financial aid dollars, according to the College Board's recent "Trends in College Pricing and Student Aid" report. Some 40 percent of students take out federally guaranteed loans.

What is most troubling about the College Board report is that private lending — one of the most expensive forms of borrowing — represented almost a quarter of all loans in the 2006-07 period. That's up fourfold from a decade ago.

Average total expenses were almost $14,000 per year for public colleges and more than $32,000 for private ones. The cost of private universities alone posted the biggest inflation- adjusted increase in six years. College costs have outpaced the average cost of living for the past 30 years.

Getting the best aid offer means preparing ahead of application time. The first step is to classify college choices.

The top tier represents the two most-desirable colleges. On the second level are schools that are similar in quality, but in a different geographic region. Some colleges actually select out-of-state students to fill a certain number of "geographic diversity" seats, Pearson has found.

Hopefully, this tandem strategy will yield concrete aid offers from both tiers. You take the more-generous lower-level schools' letters to the most-desired colleges and present them in person.

"Then tell them that your child really, really wants to go there — to the most-desired school — but that you just can't ignore that it's going to cost significantly less at one of these other choices," Pearson adds.

Your homework should start when your child is a junior in high school — or earlier, if possible. Here are some questions to ask:

¦ Do the schools you are screening actively seek students with certain skills, program interests or athletic abilities?

¦ What's the aid profile of the school? How much assistance is given in grants versus loans?

¦ What kinds of merit aid based on the child's academic record are available at the schools you are considering?

Also, unless your child is dead-set on a school, early-decision programmes will neutralise their aid leveraging with other colleges. Once your child commits, you have little or no bargaining power.

Sometimes financial aid may even take a back seat to which college provides the best fit for the student's personality, abilities, interests and learning style.

Joelle Kaplan, for example, ended up turning down full or partial tuition deals from eight colleges, including the University of Southern California. Based on a positive "gut feeling," she chose the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, paying out-of-state tuition, aided by a small National Merit Scholarship.

Ultimately, it's an education in itself discovering which university is right in terms of campus life and academic environment. Like the learning curve for financing, it's steep, but worth the climb.

John F. Wasik, author of "The Merchant of Power," is a Bloomberg News columnist.