Yet Jason dreamed of going to Johns Hopkins University, a private Baltimore institution renowned for its medical school, its liberal arts programs and its tuition, which is among the highest in the country. Jason's mom told him not to worry about the money. Just apply and see what happens.

He did. Now the 21-year-old senior at Johns Hopkins is a poster child of sorts for a campaign dubbed "College Is Possible," aimed at low-income families like Jason's.

The message is that no matter how little you earn or how little you have saved, college is possible. Behind the campaign is a coalition of educators, trade groups and government leaders that plans to spend the next two years spreading the word that any student who can maintain passing grades and wants to go to college can.

"I don't believe there is any kid in the country that can't afford to go to college," says Patricia McGuire, president of Trinity College in Washington. "If the student wants to go, and the student and the family are willing to work with the college, we can make it happen."

Indeed, what Altman learned is that while the price of college can be high, there is help available at every stage of the process. Even college application fees, and the fees normally required to take scholastic aptitude tests, which are required to get into most colleges, can be waived for students who can't afford them. Altman says he was not required to pay any of these fees.

Each college that accepted him also provided financial aid programs, which offered to pay the vast majority of his bills. Altman says that thanks to a generous aid package, it was actually cheaper for him to attend Johns Hopkins, which charges nearly $22,000 annually, than a less expensive state college.

And the help didn't stop there.

"My mom passed away in my freshman year. I was like, 'I can't do this at all,' " he says. "I went to the financial aid office and told [my counselor] what was going on. I asked whether I was going to be able to stay in school. She told me: 'You are part of the community. You are staying.' She really helped me out."

The lesson Jason learned: "You really shouldn't be afraid to apply because you don't think you can afford it. People will work with you. It is possible."

In today's increasingly sophisticated career market, the need for a college education has never been greater. Employment often hinges on it, experts point out. Consider this: 78% of the unemployed never got a college degree, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Moreover, Census Bureau figures indicate that the average college graduate earns $1 million more during his or her lifetime than the average high school graduate.

Though most Americans understand the advantages to having a college education, they're also distressingly mistaken about what college costs and whether they can afford it, says Stanley O. Ikenberry, president of the American Council on Education in Washington.

Americans think college is far more expensive than it is, and worse, they're often unaware of the vast resources available to help pay the bills. While this information gap occurs in all socioeconomic groups, it's most widespread among those that educators consider "at risk'--low-income and minority families and families in which no one has ever attended college.

Overall, 71% of respondents said a college education is "not affordable for most families," according to a 1997 survey commissioned by the American Council on Education. But 79% of Latinos, 83% of African Americans and 75% of those with less than $30,000 in annual income said college was not affordable, the survey found. The study also found that these respondents had a vastly inflated idea of college costs.

While the average respondent believed that the annual tuition at a four-year university was nearly $10,000, in reality it was just $3,111 as of the 1997-98 school year, according to College Board, a New York-based company that tracks costs in the aggregate and on a college-by-college basis.

While survey respondents estimated tuition at two-year colleges at $4,206 per year, the actual cost was $1,501.

Moreover, seven in 10 college students are receiving financial aid in the form of scholarships, grants, loans or work-study arrangements, Ikenberry says.

"We have no way of knowing what the talent loss is--how many kids didn't go to college at all--as the result of this poor information. Nor do we know how many students made poor choices simply because they sold themselves short," he adds. "We are simply operating on the assumption that whatever that number was, it was too high."

What do you do if you want to go to college but don't think you can afford it? The first step is to talk to a high school guidance counselor or any college financial aid office, Trinity's McGuire suggests. In some cities there are also public help groups. At the Martin Luther King Library in Washington, for example, a host of local colleges staff a college information center, where students and parents can find out about options and even get help filling out financial aid forms.