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  • collegepete 10:16 am on July 1, 2011 Permalink | Reply
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    Stanford’s Top 20 

    Summer is a great time to get working on that college essay.  Students often have more difficulty with the essay than any other part of the college application process, including the SAT.  Sure, most student’s hate taking the SAT almost as much as the rest of America hates the Miami Heat, but after 3 hours and 45 minutes the SAT is over, done with, and probably behind you.  The essay, on the other hand, has no time limit.  It’s never really finished, and even when you think it’s finished, there is always another tweak you can make here or there to marginally improve it.  And while the SAT (or its fraternal twin the ACT) is one of the primary components of a student’s application, it’s the Essay that actually provides the ‘texture’ and context that can sway a borderline candidate from a ‘maybe’ to a ‘yes’!

    The most important part of the essay might just be the opening sentence.  Think about it.  Admissions officers quite literally read thousands of essays, so the opening line had better grab, melt resistance and create enough interest to keep them reading.  That’s a very tall order for one sentence!

    Stanford’s admissions office was recently asked about their favorite opening lines.  Here are my Fave 5 from that list:

    When I was in eighth grade I couldn’t read.

    Cancer tried to defeat me, and it failed.

    I have old hands.

    Some fathers might disapprove of their children handling noxious chemicals in the garage.

    On a hot Hollywood evening, I sat on a bike, sweltering in a winter coat and furry boots.
    These lines get your attention without being ‘gimmicky.’  They keep you interested, and they make you guess and wonder what comes next. By themselves they evoke wonder and passion, surprise and suspense, and we can only assume that they introduce a compelling story. And that’s what makes for an interesting essay – telling a good story.

    There are 17 other openers in the Stanford survey (and tons more from my previous students), all of which I’ll share at my 4th Annual ‘Thick Envelope Magic’ Admissions and Application Boot Camp on July 9.  This day-long event is not just about the opening line of the admissions essay, though an entire class certainly could be.  ‘Thick Envelope’ also covers everything a rising 12th grader needs to know, ask for, do and complete to apply and gain admissions to a great college.  Students who attend will be able to complete (and submit) their college applications before school starts.

    This event is open exclusively to rising 12th graders.  Past attendees gave it rave reviews, and the curriculum has been updated to reflect all of the changes to the process (e.g.,, the essay now has a word limit), and  is even better this year.  If your student is a rising 12th grader and is home for the summer, there is no excuse to miss this event.  You’ll want to register them by clicking here.

    Most college applications can be completed as early as August 1, including the University of Florida.  Give your student a head start and an edge on what can be a stressful application process.  My July event has 14 registered students, so I have room for 6 more.  I look forward to seeing your child there.

     

  • collegepete 1:34 pm on June 15, 2011 Permalink | Reply
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    Major Legislative Changes To Bright Futures’ Requirements 

    First the changes (then my commentary). 

    1. All students who wish to qualify for a Bright Futures Scholarship MUST complete a Free Application for Federal Student Aid, also known as FAFSA, even if they aren’t seeking federal financial aid.
    2. Starting with the 2011-12 high school year, graduates will be required to do more community service hours.  To qualify for a Florida Academic Scholars, you will need 100 hours instead of 75 hours, Florida Medallion Scholars will need 75 hours, and Florida Gold Seal Vocational Scholars will need 30 hours.
    3. Test scores will also change for Florida Medallion Scholars who graduate in the 2013-14 school year. Requirements have gone from 1050 on the SAT to 1170, and from 23 to 26 on the ACT

    You can read more about the new legislative requirements at the official Bright Futures Website.

    Regarding the changes to Bright Futures, my position has been and remains as follows:

    Bright Futures and Florida Pre-paid do not in and of themselves constitute a sound college strategy.  First, admissions to a quality FL State College is not guaranteed.  In fact, college acceptance rates this past year for in-state students were the lowest ever… and you can expect that trend to continue as State University Officials look to out-of-state students to boost their total net tuition revenue.  Second, both programs represent only a very small portion of the financial ‘inducements’ available to students – and with proper and integrated planning – you may find that so-called pricier private options are actually far less expensive and offer better academic preparation than our in-state system.  And finally, no matter which school your child ends up attending, the government will expect you to pay your fair share towards the cost of college.  They call this your Expected Family Contribution (EFC) and it is derived from your responses on the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA).  It is the minimum amount of money any school will expect you to pay.  AND most importantly, it is a number that you can ‘manage’ with proper and ADVANCE planning. 

    If you haven’t done a FAFSA – and still expect your child to qualify for a Bright Futures award this school year (or in the future), you should attend my workshop on June 23rd where I will teach you the rules, loopholes, and landmines behind the Title IV Financial Aid Regulations (that are used to determine your EFC).  Know these rules, you win.  Stay in the dark and you could sacrifice thousands of dollars in Bright Futures, not to mention the $150b available in Institutional scholarships and Federal grants that you would have otherwise qualified for.

    I will also show you how to help your child pick other schools that meet his or her academic and social aspirations, AND have the ability to offer you a significant discount.  The difference in the pricing and discounting among similar schools is often substantial and should be the chief driver of your admissions strategy. 

    Anyone who has college-bound or college students at home should attend this class.

    Best Wishes,

    Peter

     

  • collegepete 4:43 pm on May 2, 2011 Permalink | Reply
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    Decision Day! 

    Last Friday was ‘Decision Day’ for our college-bound high school seniors.  It was a stressful week for many, me included, as offers were weighed, appealed and weighed again.  The good news is that when the dust settled at about 5:30 pm on Friday, the vast majority of our students had been accepted to and received considerable inducements to attend one of their top choices.

    The tally:  The overall acceptance rate across the country was 67% according to the NY Times – slightly lower than the 70% I projected, and there was some definite head-scratching, and even outright bizarre turns.  Like students accepted at Brown, but rejected from Vanderbilt; or in at Duke but not Tufts, or in at Indiana but not UCF. 

    Nearly every school saw an uptick in the sheer number of applicants.  And even those that didn’t , with very few exceptions, admitted fewer students as a percentage of applicants than they did last year.  The results shouldn’t surprise – especially as more and more schools have begun accepting the Common Application.  In fact, more than 2 million online applications were filed this year – about 20% more than were filed last year.   Other drivers of ‘application inflation’ and the overall decline in the ‘admit rate’ include supply & demand – the largest number of high school students applying to college ever, vying for the same slots at so-called ‘hot’ schools (thank you US News & World Reports); cold winters that made Southern schools like Vanderbilt more geographically desirable than ever;  fatigue (of the admissions officers reading more applications than ever), and state schools that intentionally accepted more out-of-state students to raise their average net revenue.  There are more reasons, obviously, but I want to spend some time telling you what to do about it.

    Why Less is More!

    More than anything else, what I have seen is, that despite technology or perhaps because of it (see my notes on application inflation above), college admissions — which includes not just who gets in, but what price they’ll pay (list v net) –is a very ‘personal’ process, managed by real people who are moved by emotion and subtleties that are not reflected in scores, GPA or class rank.  What separates two seemingly identical students on paper are intangibles like the student’s demonstrated interest in a school, expressed career aspirations, potential contributions on campus, their ability to move the needle on the school’s competitiveness, etc. 

    In nearly every case that I was involved in, the students who received the best awards were those whose families were able to effectively and sufficiently demonstrate three things: Need, Value AND Desire.  For students who had made a personal connection with the school in some way, I saw money found quite literally in the 11th hour.   

    So, in a crowded field, the importance of niche positioning cannot be underestimated.    What I mean is that instead of defensively submitting more applications to ‘cover your bases’, even if  technology makes it enticing to do so,  it’s far more efficient to build a targeted list of 8-10 schools that you know in advance will consider your demonstrated financial need, find value in your student (be it academically, socially or even geographically), and meet your student’s academic, social and aspirational desires… and then focus your family’s energies on demonstrating those things to those schools. 

    The irony is that while there is now more information available than ever – including various school rankings, net cost calculators, ROI estimates, etc.,  the process is becoming more daunting and confusing than ever.  The best advice I can offer is to go for depth over breadth, look beyond the obvious to identify great schools where you’ll be able to leverage your student’s strengths, and to have an integrated admissions strategy that is driven by both the scholarly and the financial by the time your student is in 11th grade.  (For those of you who have rising seniors, I’ve added a special ‘early bird’ admissions prep program to kick start the application process THIS SUMMER, before your student even steps foot into school for their 12th grade year.  Click here for more info.)

    Last week I promised to issue a ‘disslist’ of schools that ‘market’ themselves as meeting 100% of a family’s demonstrated need.  I’m going to hold off on that until I am certain that all of my families have submitted and/or withdrawn their acceptances.  My goal is to hand out a list of 60 schools that claim to meet 100% of demonstrated need at tomorrow night’s workshop and then discuss all the ways some of those schools tried to wiggle their way out of that claim.  I’ll also give a few honorable mentions to school’s whose generosity surpassed my expectations. 

    If you have a child in high school who plans to apply to college in the next few years – or know of someone who does – please consider joining me tomorrow night at 6:30 at the Upper Campus of The Sagemont School in Weston.  This will be the last class I’m teaching in Broward until next Fall.

    Best,
    Peter

    P.S. There is no charge to attend the workshop tomorrow night.  However, if you don’t go, it could cost you and your family thousands in lost financial assistance.  The time to take action is NOW, and not when your child is in 12th grade and it could be too late.

     

  • collegepete 7:12 pm on April 24, 2011 Permalink | Reply
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    Why College Should Cost You Less Today Than In 1957 

    This is the second installment in a four-part series on Effective College Strategies for Today’s ‘Middle Class.’   While I know that right now college may feel like an impossible situation, I hope that this series will show you that it’s not!  

    Last week I wrote about a whole bunch of bad news.  First I told you about a father (not a client) who had just broken his daughter’s heart by telling her (after she had already gotten herself admitted) that her ‘dream college’ wasn’t going to be in the cards financially.  As expected, she wasn’t taking the news well, and he was enraged and raging.  

    Let’s just say this was not the first time I’ve heard this type of after-the-fact shock and rage-against-the-system anger from otherwise intelligent, hard-working, professional middle-class parents… which is why I felt compelled to tell you about Dad # 2 (the one who had blown me off later in the week), and whom I’m pretty sure will be seeing the same look of disappointment on his son’s face and spewing the same vitriol at whomever will listen in a few years time.

    And yeah, I was a bit annoyed by both Dads (but especially Dad #2). 

    And that’s when I introduced Dad #3, my own Dad.  He enrolled in Amherst College in 1957, the year of Sputnik, and he recently returned from his 50 year reunion and shared with me the tuition bill that his parents received in the summer of ’57.  The total cost of attendance at Amherst for one year back in 1957 was $1,532 (click here to see the bill), which is about $12,000 in today’s dollars.  That seems like a small pittance for today’s parents who are looking at published prices in excess of 50 Large ($56,710.00 at Amherst).  But in reality…

    Amherst (and other selective colleges) actually cost MORE back then, relative to average income, than they do today.

    This is not my opinion.  It is a fact, and it is not unique to Amherst.

    You see, the average American family earned $5,000 in 1957, according to the US Census.  There was no financial aid or merit system back then, only the GI bill.  So, based on the averages, in 1957, one year at Amherst would eat up 31% of the average American family’s income. 

    Today, the average American family income is $61,265.  With financial aid and other incentives, a year at Amherst should cost that family only $8,298, or 14% of income. (source: College Board’s Net Cost Calculator ).

    If you earn $100,000, then Amherst should cost you about 19% of income. 

    AGI of $150,000? – you should be out-of-pocket about 23% of your income maximum. 

    So while the media and others like Dad #1 are busy railing about out-of-control and inflated college prices, they are missing the much bigger picture.  College price tags (those that are published and widely touted) are largely meaningless.  They are merely list prices set by the colleges (with the assistance of highly paid marketing consultants) to inflate their prestige, rankings, admit ratios, and yes, even their bond ratings.  If it costs more (at least on paper), it must be better, right? 

    But there’s a game changer that wasn’t around in 1957 or in 1987, for that matter.  Today, there is more than $150 billion in aid, scholarships and ‘discounts’ that each school strategically distributes to induce desirable applicants to enroll.  So, while the list prices of colleges may be rising disproportionate to inflation, so too are the discounts.    

    In fact, in 2011, unlike in 1957, two-thirds of college students will receive scholarships and grants that discount the published list price considerably.  This discounting is strategic, it is business, and it is intentional on the part of the schools.  Think about it: if a college can appear selective (read: pricey) and therefore prestigious, and then get to offer generous price incentives to boot; well then, they are not only better than the next guy, but they deliver more value as well. 

    I mean, who doesn’t like a good bargain?  It’s brilliant marketing, but more importantly, it presents you with an opportunity.

    College is a capitalist enterprise, and a very big one at that.  And like most large enterprises, they try to set the rules in their favor.  But that doesn’t mean that you can’t manage them to yours. When the President announces ‘spending reductions in the tax code’  (as he did last week), do you sit back and wait until you’re hit with the bill in April, or do you call your CPA and find out how to ‘manage’ the change?  

    Well then, consider this my announcement of a ’spending reduction in your college bill’ and your welcome to the new college reality. If you’re savvy (and if you’re reading this then I believe that you are), you will learn about the new rules of the college game, and you will alter your tactics to give yourself an advantage!

    If you’re the parent of a college-bound child, the question you should be asking  is not how much a particular school ‘costs’, but how much of that cost you will actually bear.  That’s what Higher Ed insiders call the Net price, and that’s what most of us should be paying!  And despite whatever else you’ve read or heard, that’s how you build an affordable college game plan in 2011. 

    For Dad #1 it’s too late (this year).  And for Dad #2 it might be, based on his apathy.  And that’s because despite all of the evidence, there remains a very real disconnect between how a family should shop for college today and how they actually do so.  Please don’t let this become your family.

    At my college planning workshops, I go over the Net College Cost Calculators and specific strategies and steps that you can take to help your child select and get admitted to the best possible college for them, at a discounted NET price that you can afford.  I’ll be conducting my last one of the school year on May 3 in Weston.  Click here to register and feel free to forward to a friend or neighbor with a high-school age student.  They’ll thank you for it. 

    Best,
    Peter

    P.S. In next week’s installment, we’ll take an uncensored look at what’s driving the recent uptick in applicants, a.k.a. ‘application inflation’, yield, and how to look beyond the obvious when researching colleges.  I’ll also be calling out those schools that I believe are using misleading statistics to seduce applicants.  You might be surprised at which schools make my disslist.

     

  • collegepete 9:59 am on March 29, 2011 Permalink | Reply
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    Will Free Tuition at MDC Encourage Mediocrity? 

    Miami Dade College recently announced that it was offering free tuition to all high school graduates from Miami Dade high schools, public or private, who earn at least a 3.0 weighted GPA. This is great news for students and parents who feel pinched by the rising cost of a college degree, and it should open the door to greater opportunity for many students of lower income households.

    The concern here is that this new policy will encourage mediocrity.

    While free tuition is great, it may lead students to enroll at MDC when they may be better served going to a 4-year university or even a private college that has a generous financial aid program. Remember – you get what you pay for. Miami Dade College is already the largest higher education institution in the nation at over 170,000 students. It’s over-crowded, with students having difficulty enrolling in some classes. The stated strategy among many who enroll at MDC is that they will get their A.A. in 2 years, then transfer. But the reality is that it will likely take much longer than 2 years to earn their A.A. By the time they’re done and ready to transfer, they’re well into their 20s and ready for a full time job, not another 2 years (or more) working towards their bachelors degree.

    My advice is to apply to a number of 4-year colleges, both private and public. About 6-8 schools, or up to 10 max should be fine. Apply for financial aid by completing a FAFSA, and make sure you meet the priority deadlines. If things don’t work out, then you can always fall back on the option of enrolling at a local community college.

    If you live in South Florida and want to understand how to afford a 4 year college, then check out one of my free community workshops. My next event is on Thursday, April 7 at 6:30 pm at the Alonzo & Tracy Mourning Senior High School, in the Media Center. For more info or to register, visit http://www.LearnCollegeFunding.com.

     

  • collegepete 1:36 pm on March 18, 2011 Permalink | Reply
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    Will They Really Cancel FL Prepaid? 

    Today’s Herald and Sun-Sentinel ran stories about a proposal in the FL Senate to suspend the ever-popular FL Prepaid Program. While this proposal is far from becoming law, it does indicate the dire financial straits that the State finds itself. The concern from Sen. Evelyn Lynn (R-Ormond Beach) is that, with rising state tuition of 15% per year, the FL Prepaid Program will not have the earnings to keep up with such tuition hikes given the volatility in the stock market. Even though the Plan does not invest in the stock market, tuition hikes of 15% per year put a severe financial strain on a plan that is based on 6-7% increases per year.

    The Good News: if you already have a plan, you are unaffected by this proposal.

    The Bad News: The FL Prepaid Plan only covers a small fraction of the total cost of attendance (COA). The current COA at a FL school is, on average, $18,000 per year. That includes tuition, room, board, books, fees, travel money, pizza money, etc. The typical FL Prepaid Plan provides about $3,000 – $4,000 per year. That leaves you with about 15-Large left over to pay for one year at a State U.

    The Ugly News: Bright Futures, the scholarship program that is funded by our collective lottery addiction, is expected to shrink by $1,000 per student. And that’s if your student can meet the new standards of qualification. Also, it’s getting tougher to even get accepted to a FL state school, as reported by the Sun Sentinel this morning.

    If you are tossing and turning at night, wondering if you will be able to afford a college education for your child, then don’t miss my upcoming workshop next Wednesday, March 23. To register, visit http://www.LearnCollegeFunding.com. The event is free, but it could cost you thousands if you don’t hear this information.

    Also, if you missed my segment last night on “The Jonathan Zaslow Show”, then click here to listen in for 10 minutes of pure infotainment.

     

  • collegepete 10:30 pm on March 17, 2011 Permalink | Reply
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    “Close to the Most Perfect Thing in Sports” 

    That’s Jonathan Zaslow’s description of the NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament. We had a pleasant, 10 minute chat on 790 The Ticket about March Madness, school generosity, financial aid, and even The Tebow Effect. Click below to listen in:

    College Pete on 790TheTicket 3-17-11

    Special thanks to Zaz and his producer, Brendan Tobin, for their support.

     

  • collegepete 1:18 pm on February 1, 2011 Permalink | Reply
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    Financial Aid Budgets Tighten! 

    It should be more difficult to get financial aid in 2011-12, according to an article from yesterday’s US News & World Report. Colleges have seen their asset portfolios decline in recent years, putting the pinch on financial aid and other university budgets. And the Obama Administration has eliminated the Academic Competitiveness Grant (ACG), a small but helpful grant awarded to first and second year students who are high achievers.

    These are uneasy, strange times. In last week’s State of the Union Address, President Obama stressed the importance of higher education, explaining that 50% of all new jobs will require a college degree. Yet because of our rising national deficit and debt, the administration is moving to eliminate the ACG in order to save about $860 million.

    The good news is that the Pell Grant will remain unchanged, at $5,550 for families in the greatest need. The bad news is that the Pell Grant will remain unchanged, at $5,550 and won’t be increasing. Who knows what next year will bring, but don’t be surprised if they slash the Pell Grant somehow, or make eligibility more difficult.

    More “good” news: Interest rates on subsidized student loans will decline from 4.5% today to 3.4% next year. This is great for students who incur debt, but the better approach would be to avoid debt entirely.

    A college degree is more important than ever. And paying for it is more difficult than ever. That’s why you should attend one of my FREE workshops on the subject.

     

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