Collegewise

A great tool for researching financial aid at your chosen colleges

The National Center for Education Statistics offers a “College Navigator” tool that will let you look up colleges to get general information, admissions statistics, and most interestingly, detailed financial aid information.

Here’s an example from the entry for Colgate University:

First you get detailed information of the full cost of attendance (not just the tuition). 

Then you get detailed information about the distribution of aid.  How much of it was in the form of scholarships?  How much consisted of loans that need to be paid back?  Many colleges claim that they meet 100% of demonstrated financial need.  But not all financial aid is created equal, and it's helpful to know just how much of each kind is typically being given out.

Here's the information on financial aid for all students, not just freshmen.  Why is that important?  If the aid for all students is significantly lower than that for freshmen, it could mean that the college gives more generous aid to encourage students to attend only to decrease that aid once they've spent a year or two at the school and are less likely to want to leave.

And finally, the last table shows what the average family, arranged by income, actually paid for the first year at Colgate.  Note to families who say, "We're not applying for aid because we know we won't qualify": Families who made more than $110,000 paid an average of $27,892 of the $55,570 cost of attendance.  When in doubt, fill out your FAFSA and apply for financial aid.

Finally, a link to the Net Price Calculator--a tool to let you input your financial aid information and get an estimate of how much aid you could receive under each school's formula--is included at the bottom.

A Harvard interviewer's advice to eighth graders

Andy Doctoroff interviews applicants for Harvard, and he's got a good piece in the Huffington Post today, "Dear Eighth Grader: So You Want to Apply to Harvard? Some Words of Advice..."

The central message is that good grades, high test scores, and impressive activities alone aren’t what impress him during an interview.  “Intellectual ambition, drive and zest for discovery” are, especially when they’re genuine, not just being forcefully presented in an effort to get into Harvard. 

And make sure you don’t miss this part near the end (and remember, this is a guy who went to Harvard).

Frankly, it's not really that important whether you go to Harvard. There are a lot of Harvard graduates who do not lead productive lives. And, of course, Harvard and other comparable schools have not cornered the market on success."

Where new counselors can go to learn about college admissions

We’ve heard from many of our high school counseling friends that their graduate degree programs didn’t cover any material about college admissions.  Once they started working in a high school setting, they got their college advising knowledge by teaching themselves, asking colleagues, and learning as they went, all of which can make for a long and challenging learning curve.

If you’re a new high school counselor (or about to become one), or if you’d just like some additional training, the National Association for College Admissions Counseling (NACAC) has two upcoming programs you might be interested in. 

Critical Components: Mastering the College Admission Process
May 29-June 1 2012
Nashville, TN

The price is $300, but for grad students, it’s just $150.  All the information is here. 

College Counseling Boot Camp
Tuesday, May 29, 2012
8:30 a.m. – 2:00 p.m.
Nashville, TN

This one-day program is free.   All the information is here.

I’m not involved with either of these programs and neither is Collegewise (in fact, we’ve been thinking about doing something like this ourselves).  But NACAC is a good organization and these workshops could really help the right counselors do an even better job for their kids.

How your online presence could help you get into college

After yesterday’s post about creating an online presence you can be proud of, I got to thinking about just what a big opportunity this could be for high school applicants. 

Unless a college specifically invites you to send them extra materials (some do), admissions officers don’t want to receive your short stories, recordings, paintings, poems, videos, newspaper clippings, or freshly-baked cookies.  Anything unsolicited is generally seen as more presumptuous than impressive and is quickly tossed aside (or eaten, as might be the case with the cookies).

But imagine if you were able to write on your application:

“I write a blog about my experiences working as editor of our school paper.  It gets over 50,000 page views a month and has 700 subscribers.” 

“Over 5,000 people have downloaded my cookie recipes from my website.”

“My YouTube videos explaining how to throw various types of softball pitches have been viewed more than 100,000 times.” 

If your stats are compelling enough, you’ll pique admissions officers’ curiosities to the point they just might go to a computer to check out your blog or recipes or videos.  And even if they don’t, you’ll still be presenting some convincing arguments that you’re the type of person who can make an impact.

Give Google what you’d want people to find

When someone Googles your name, do you like what they find? 

Whether you're applying to college, trying to get a job, or just wooing someone you hope to date more than once or twice, they’re often going to do their Internet due diligence and learn what they can.  It seems to me, we’ve all got three choices of how we influence the results.

1. You can work to keep things from Google. 

You can try to maintain your online anonymity—no Facebook profile, no uploaded photos, no blog or Twitter account, etc.  The two problems with this are 1) You’ll never be able to control everything, and 2) when you don’t show up online at all, people will wonder what the heck you’ve been doing with your time.  No online presence is almost as weird as a questionable one. 

2. You can let Google have everything, from anyone. 

Tweet your every thought.  Let anyone post embarrassing photos of you on Facebook.  Make all your profiles public.  Once you make that (probably bad) choice, you’d better hope you don’t change your mind.  That privacy will be hard to get back.

3. You can give Google what you want people to find.

The best option is to work to build an online presence you’re proud of and actually want people of consequence to see.

• Write a blog about your soccer season and post all the photos of your club team’s trip to Europe.

• Start a personal website where you share your photography, or sell your self-published guide to fixing computers, or show all the before and after photos of the Ford Bronco you restored with your dad.

• Launch a YouTube channel with videos of you playing piano in the jazz band (and maybe keyboard in your legit 80s cover band, too?).

• Read 10 books about the Civil War or Italian cooking or how to pitch a softball.  Then write thoughtful, provoking reviews and post them on Amazon. 

It’s not up to you whether or not people decide to Google you.  But you get to make some choices about what they find.

One benefit of attending a large public university

It’s not hard to make an argument for the benefits of small, private colleges—small classes, more personal attention, professors hired to teach rather than to do research, etc.  But in his excellent book, Debt-Free U: How I Paid for an Outstanding College Education Without Loans, Scholarships, or Mooching off My Parents, Zac Bissonnette makes some pretty good arguments for choosing a large, far cheaper public university.  And here’s one I’d never considered before:

At large universities, students learn to navigate the bureaucracy, make valuable connections with people who might not seem readily accessible, and research and investigate to find the resources that will help them pursue their career goals.  In elementary school, having friendly people guiding you by the hand is important, but in college it can be a detriment because it’s so out of line with the way the real postcollege world works.  If college is about developing skills that will serve students well later in life, I would argue that large universities offer a better chance to do that."

Ibid, page 191

Meet the editor of our next book

This week, I officially inked a partnership with Adam Kleiner to be the editor of my next book, tentatively titled “The Collegewise Way.”  Not surprisingly, he’s an old college buddy.   

After I finished the first draft in December, I wanted to find an editor who could help produce a finished product that people would really enjoy reading.  Not just somebody to fix the typos, but who could also be honest with me about my writing even it meant I’d have to delete entire chapters or completely change what I’d already written.  We have several editors right here at Collegewise who I know would have been up to the job.  But like me, they’re too close to the subject matter.  Adam and I have enough history together that he’s a Collegewise fan who appreciates what I’m trying to do with this book.  But he’s also far enough outside of the Collegewise fold that he won’t agree that something is good just because that’s the way we’ve always done it.

The arc of the Kevin and Adam story seems appropriate for this book.  We’ve been friends since our college days at UC Irvine, where we were both English majors who loved to write almost as much as we loved our intramural soccer and post game beer.  According to his production schedule, we’ll be toasting our book’s release early this summer.  If you’d like to know when it’s available, you can sign up to be notified here.    

Three benefits of work study awards

If you qualify for need-based financial aid, part of your aid award may include work study—a paid job, usually on campus, to help you pay for college.  Here are three reasons you should probably accept that portion of the award offer.

1. Work study is guaranteed work.  You won’t have to look for a job once you get to campus.

2. The money you earn through work study will not count against you when you apply for financial aid the following year.  For jobs outside of work study, the financial aid formula assesses student income at a whopping 50% once you earn more than $3,000.  That can make a huge difference for a student hoping to work to help pay for college. 

3. The right work study job can be great work experience.  Some work study assignments are pretty menial, like scanning ID’s at the cafeteria.  But you might also end up working in the athletic department, or helping a professor on a research project, or even working in the admissions office like one of our counselors did with her work study job in college.  Don’t just cross your fingers and hope for a good assignment.  Call the college’s office that handles work study and ask for information on the types of jobs that are available.  Look into options that seem interesting and ask if you can be assigned to one of them.  Don’t be pushy—just show a little gumption and it might pay off in more ways than one. 

Where did students at Harvard Law School go to college?

Anybody who claims that attending a less prestigious college hurts your chances of getting into a prestigious graduate school should check out this list of the 261 undergraduate institutions represented by all students enrolled at Harvard Law School for the 2010-2011 school year. 

Yes, all the Ivy League schools are listed, along with Duke, Stanford, Northwestern, Rice, UC Berkeley, West Point, the Naval Academy and other schools that reject almost everyone who applies.  I don’t dispute that a lot of graduates from highly selective colleges go on to do great things.  It’s not surprising considering that you’ve got to be an exceptionally smart, motivated, hard-working kid to get into one of those schools in the first place. 

But the list also shows that exceptionally smart, motivated, hard-working kids can go to places like Adelphi, Arizona State, Beloit, Cal State Northridge, Dickenson, Eastern Kentucky, Florida State, Gonzaga, Hampton, Indiana, Knox, Louisiana State, Mary Washington, Northern Arizona, Oregon State, Pacific Lutheran, Queens College, Rutgers, San Jose State, TCU, University of Delaware, Western Washington University, and dozens of other not-so-name brand schools and still go on to Harvard Law School.   

It’s not where you go.  It’s what you do while you’re there. 

A networking idea for private counselors

It’s nice to have coworkers in our Collegewise offices.  There’s always someone there to high-five when a student gets into his first choice, or to ask an opinion when we need some college suggestions.  Even Katie, who runs her own Collegewise shop near Seattle, still has regular meetings with us via Skype.  And she loves to regularly talk smack to us about just how many interesting, cool and quirky colleges her kids are willing to consider.

That kind of professional camaraderie isn’t just good for morale; it makes us better counselors, too.  We can learn from each other's challenges and successes.  And if one of us faces a situation with a student we haven’t seen before, someone in our office probably has and can tell us how to handle it. 

If you’re a private counselor who runs your own solo shop, here’s an idea.  Start a monthly pancake breakfast, or an evening round of drinks, or something in between when you and your competitors get together and talk shop.  How are things going?  Where are your kids getting in?  How do you handle a parent who keeps rewriting her kid's essays?  What surprised you about your admissions results this season?  Compare notes and bond over your pancakes or beers. 

A lot of small business owners are reluctant to associate with their competitors like this.  I’ve never understood why.  Your competitors are there whether or not you reach out.  So why not make nice?  You’ll find that you share a lot of the same joys, challenges and frustrations.  You’ll learn from each other.  You’ll be able to refer each other business when you meet a family who’s not right for you, but might be right for a competitor.  And I’ll bet you like each other, too. 

Just send an email out to three or five or ten local competitors and invite them to break some bread together.  You’ll probably enjoy your jobs even more and be better counselors for it.