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[00:00:00] Okay. Welcome, everyone. This is MEFA’s college admissions webinar. Thank you for joining us. Want to introduce myself. I’m Meredith Clement. I’m the editor in chief here at MEFA, and I also worked for 10 years in higher education, so I have a background in higher education, and I’ve been at MEFA since 2012.

Helping families, like all of you, plan for college. We’re going to go through the entire college admissions process today. If you have questions, go ahead and put them in the question section. It’s the Q& A section. The chat feature is disabled for our bigger webinar, so go ahead and type any questions into the Q& A.

I will try to check that throughout the webinar, but if I’m not able to answer during the webinar, we’ll definitely go through them at the end. And so, just type any in there as we go through.

I’m sure many of you are familiar with zoom. This is our slide on how to [00:01:00] participate and the different features that are available. So again, Q and a for questions and the chat is disabled and there is a live transcript feature. If you’d like to use that for those who aren’t familiar with us. We are an agency.

We were started in 1982 by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, and our sole purpose really is to help families like yours plan, save and pay for college. So we have a lot of free resources for families as you’re going through the process from those who have little ones all the way through college and beyond.

The webinar tonight is all about college admissions, so we’re going to talk about trends. So you’re gonna see a lot of folks putting together your college list of your student or if you’re a parent, how you’re helping your child put together the college list campus visits all about the application process.

Financial aid will touch on that and then some free resources that your family can use.

So a few trends we wanted to talk about in college admissions. Students are definitely applying to a greater number of [00:02:00] schools. If you’re a parent, you can think back to when you applied to school. If you went to college and maybe you applied to three or four and students now, A lot are applying to 10, 15, some even 20 schools.

So that number of schools on the college application list has definitely increased. Demonstrated interest is a factor. This is basically describing the phenomenon where colleges are paying more attention to whether students are paying attention to them. Some of Some colleges don’t do this, but a lot really track students and when they’re reviewing their college application, they see if the student has demonstrated any interest prior to submitting the application.

Did they come on a campus tour? Had they opened emails? Because they can track if those emails have been opened. Have they called the school? Have they chatted with the school? Are they following the school on social media? That I’ll just say, if you’re a student or you’re a parent, make sure the student in your family is paying attention to [00:03:00] colleges that they want to be accepted to.

Give those colleges reason to think that you’re interested in them. You’re happy to hear from them. Definitely be in touch with them. If that college comes to your high school, go plan a visit, go on a campus tour. If you’re far away and you can’t do a campus tour, try to do a virtual tour or send an email to your college representative within the admissions office.

Just let them know that you’re excited about the school because a lot of schools do pay attention to that when deciding between students when they’re going through the admissions process. Social media is huge now. Colleges do use social media to market themselves, but they also can check out an applicant’s social media profile.

They say this is fair game. You can see that stat from a Kaplan study that 67 percent of officers believe that the college or the social media posts are fair game when they make decisions. So that all to say, if you’re a student, make sure your social media and really your online [00:04:00] presence is clean, appropriate, professional before you start applying to colleges, just in case colleges do check that.

Cost is a huge factor in college admissions and really when selecting a school, we’ll talk all about that. There’s a lot of ways to interact with colleges virtually. Of course, there’s social media and going on virtual tours. There’s also chat rooms and there’s Facebook live events. There’s Twitter chats.

There’s so many opportunities to interact with the college without even leaving your home. So do take advantage of these if you see them, because again, if you’re, if you’re typing in your name as a student, if you’re registering for a webinar that they’re putting on, they’ll see your name, they’ll see your email address, and they’ll know that you demonstrated interest in that school.

There’s more test optional schools. We’re going to talk all about standardized test and what that means, but there are more of them. There’s over 2, 000 right now. And as a result, those schools where that are test optional, meaning you don’t have to submit an SAT or ACT score. They’re getting more [00:05:00] applicants because applicants know, Oh, I don’t have to worry about a test score.

I can then apply to that school with a little less stress. Test optional does mean that you can. still submit a test score and so a lot of schools welcome you to do that if you feel okay about how you you did on the SAT or ACT. And finally, there are longer wait lists now. So a lot of schools use a wait list.

We can talk about that a bit as we get further along. Uh, know that if your child applies to a school, gets on a wait list, you could never hear from that school. So a lot of colleges uses wait, use wait lists, but then never end up going to the wait list and accepting any students off the wait list.

We do encourage you throughout this process to stay organized. However, it’s best for your family. We have a tool called the College Application Manager. This is really a paper tool. It’s on our website, but you download it, you print it out, and you write into it. And that’s where you can record your school name, admissions deadline, SAT, ACT, what’s [00:06:00] required.

Financial aid, financial aid deadlines, any notes. This is for people who really like to keep papers. A lot of us still want to take notes on something, so that’s a tool for you. A lot of families just use a simple Excel spreadsheet or some other online tool, whatever you choose to use, make sure your whole family has a way to keep track of all the schools where the students applying, deadlines and any details about the school, when you’re going to take a campus tour and other factors that there’s specific scholarships for the school just to make sure you’re all organized.

You will want to start this process by researching schools. So what are the schools that the student is interested in? And to find out that list, to really create that list and figure out which schools might be the best fit. There’s a lot of different online tools. First, we have here is College Navigator.

That’s a tool actually put out by the federal government. And it’s a way for you to filter. It gives you different features of schools, and it gives you then [00:07:00] a narrow list of schools that match those different features. So it’s a great free tool, and it has thousands of schools within the database. So that’s a great tool.

College Scorecard is another tool that’s available from the federal government. The college scorecard concentrates more on finances. So this is going to give you data for schools like the average net price. So that’s the cost minus the average financial aid given to a student, student debt when graduating, the graduation rate and average alumni summary.

Now this is called from students who took federal loans. So this isn’t all students at the school, but it’s going to be a good number of students from every school is where this data comes from. And it’s just helpful to really see. Your return on your investment. Are people graduating for their school?

Are they getting good jobs? So this is a really helpful tool as well. Big future is put out by college board, and this is going to provide information from schools on academics. on the application process in about [00:08:00] pain. So that’s another source for you. And then finally, MEFA pathway is our free tool for students.

Anyone can create a free account and you can go on and do a college search. You create a profile, you can keep a list of your colleges. This is another option for you to organize your, your colleges. So students, MEFA pathway school, we have a. A lot of schools in Massachusetts that use meet the pathway as their organizational tool.

You’re probably already using this, but anyone is able to make a free account. It’s just another tool for you to use to keep yourself organized.

So there’s a lot of factors to consider when going through the college admissions process. And really when searching for schools, one is institution size. How big do you want? Do you want 2000 students on campus? Do you want 20, 000, 40, 000? And of course, location location in the country, but also location, rural, urban, suburban.

So that’s one factor to think about academic fit. Of course, [00:09:00] every school will give you the GPA of their incoming class. What was the GPA of the students in high school? And then of course the academic options, the different majors of the school. It’s helpful for students to think about, what am I interested in?

What do I maybe want to major in? That can help you figure out the schools that offer those programs and that might be best on your list. Intended major learning style. The bigger schools, the schools, the big public universities that have a lot of students are going to have more of those introductory classes.

that have a lot of students in class. For those of you that went to school and were in college, whether it was years ago or recently, you can think back to those one on one classes that had a lot of, lot of students. If you go to a smaller school, your classes are going to be smaller. My niece goes to a small private school in South Carolina.

Her classes are very, very small, 30 students, some, some 20 students. She doesn’t have any classes with 100, 500, 600 students. So the bigger the [00:10:00] school, you’re going to have some of those bigger classes, especially those introductory classes, campus culture. You want to think about students can think about the different clubs that they might be interested in activities.

Do they definitely want to play ultimate Frisbee when they’re on campus? Do they definitely want to play club field hockey? Do they definitely want to play an instrument, whether it’s in a band or an orchestra? So think through that and search the schools that have those options activities. Again, certain clubs that a student might be interested in study abroad is huge.

If you’re a student, you know, you want to study abroad, make sure you’re applying to schools that have a lot of those options for you. Career and internships is getting more and more important. At schools, at colleges, a lot of colleges, pretty much every college is going to have some type of career office or some type of opportunity to help students get to a career after they graduate.

Some colleges, more than others, are really concentrating on helping students get into internships or apprenticeships. So look into those options if that’s something you’re [00:11:00] interested in. And then finally, affordability. You’ve got to make sure you’ve got colleges on your list that are affordable. And we’ll talk more about cost in just a bit.

So campus visits are a great way, of course, to visit a campus, to visit a school, to get a feel for the students, to get a feel for the campus. There’s both informal and formal visits. Informal visits are really where you just stop by a campus. You haven’t signed up for an official tour. But let’s say you’re on vacation.

You’re driving home. You see a campus. Maybe your student might be interested in that campus. You drive through. College campuses are pretty much open environments. Not every building is going to be open, which is good. But you can stop. You can park. You can walk around. You can see where the cafeterias are.

You can see where any sports facilities are. You can see where the dorms are. So that’s an option. It gives you a chance to really get a feel for the size, the setting, what’s around the campus, and the campus culture. What colleges really recommend you do, if possible [00:12:00] though, is to take a formal campus tour.

And you can sign up for that on, really, the admissions webpage of any college. For university in the country, most every college university offers them. They are free. Of course, you have to get yourself there. You might have to stay the night if you’re far, but campus tours usually last anywhere from an hour and a half to three hours.

And they give you a really in depth look at the campus. They’re going to show you academics. They’re going to show you classrooms. They’ll show you the library. They’ll show you different activities, probably the student center. They, a lot of them give you a chance to look into a dorm room, to see the cafeteria, and of course to ask questions.

They’re often given by a current student or someone from the admissions office, or both. Sometimes the professor’s involved. So this is a great way to get yourself to a campus and get a feel for it. If you absolutely can’t get to a campus, virtual tours are helpful. But another thing that’s helpful is if you’re really interested in a giant, giant school, you really think as a [00:13:00] student, maybe you want to go to huge campus.

Let’s say you’re interested in one in California and you live in Virginia, so you can’t get to California right now. Find another giant school in Virginia or somewhere in driving distance and go there and take a tour there, or at least walk around. Even if you’re not interested in that particular school, you can get a sense of what is it like to be on a giant campus.

So that’s just one thing you can think about. But if you can get yourself to campus to most of the schools you’re applying to, that’s the best way to figure out if you really do want to go there. There’s also a great resource called College Bears. Maybe some of you have already hit up some College Bears.

These are great resources where a lot of college representatives come together in one building and students and their families can walk around, talk to different representatives. Great way to get information on a lot of schools at once. You usually do have to sign up or they encourage registration just to get a feel for how many people are going to be there on a certain night.

There’s usually [00:14:00] a college list, so they’ll say these 100 schools are going to be here. Check out that list beforehand, because that’s going to give you a great idea of who’s there, and also help you figure out who you might want to talk to. Do you have a plan of attack before you start? So figure out, I’m really interested in these five schools.

I want to talk to representatives at all of these schools before I leave. There are sometimes are information sessions at college fairs. Maybe there’s a financial aid 101 or even how to write a great essay or what to know about letters of recommendation. If any of those interests, you go ahead and sit in those.

Just make sure you set aside time to attend them. Sometimes there are opportunities to schedule one on one meeting with the college. Definitely do this. If you’ve got a college on your list. That’s going to be at the fair and you have time to do so great way to make contact with a representative. Also, often the representative who’s at the college fair would be one who’s reading your college application.

Sometimes that’s not the case at bigger schools, but you could definitely be meeting the person who in a few months is reading your [00:15:00] college essay is looking through your transcript. So it’s great to make that connection. Students show up looking as professional as you can. Make sure you are ready to answer the question, Why do you want to go to this school?

Or what are you interested in? What do you hope to study? Just to make a good first impression, if you are able to chat with some of those representatives. You can look at NACACfairs. org and NIACAC. org. Those are two different resources, and they’ll list upcoming fairs.

When you’re putting together your college list, you want to think about three different buckets and they basically describe how likely you are to get into each school. The first are schools where you think you’re likely to get in and this is really based on GPA and test scores. So look at the GPA and the test scores.

Maybe the average GPA average test scores of students that are normally admitted to this school. If you’re at the top of that range or [00:16:00] above that range, that’s a school where you are likely to be admitted. You want to have some schools on your list where you are likely to be admitted. And this is key.

The student is excited to attend. I’ve definitely worked with students where they had some likely schools on their list. They got into those schools, but they didn’t really want to attend any of those schools. You really need to make sure you have at least one college on your list where you are pretty sure students, you are going to get admitted.

and you would be excited to attend. So make sure you’ve got at least a handful of likely schools on your list. Possible schools are those where you’re right in the range of the average SAT and grades of students who have been admitted in the past. So you, you, you have a good chance of getting admitted.

You might not, it’s not a lock, but you have a good chance of getting admitted. Those are your kind of your possible. And then reach your schools where You might be at the lower end of the grades, the SAT, ACT scores. You could still be admitted, but it’ll be a bit of a reach. But you’re excited about that school, so you put those schools on your list.

[00:17:00] Make sure you’ve got all of these categories, all of these buckets. So you want to make sure that you have at least one of those schools on your list and make sure a lot of those schools. You’re really excited about attending so that if you get admitted, maybe maybe you apply to 10. You only got admitted to three.

Got to make sure at least one of those three. You’re excited to attend once you start actually applying to college. There’s different types of college applications, and there’s different types of timelines. So college application timeline. Regular decision is basically you would apply to the school. And there’s usually a January deadline, and you hear your decision sometime in the spring.

Early action means you’re applying to the school early. So you’re applying sometime November, December. You usually hear within four to six weeks, but it’s not a binding agreement, meaning if you get admitted to an early action school, you don’t have to attend. Early action, the beauty of it is you get an [00:18:00] acceptance early on in senior year.

But once you get accepted, you’re not committed to that school. You just know that you’ve been accepted and you can attend. Early decision means you’re applying to the school early on, sometime November, December, but if you get accepted, you are attending, you are agreeing to attend, you have committed to that school.

So with early decision, you can only apply to one school, early decision, because if you get in, you have to go, and you need to make sure that you are certain you want to go, And you can afford it so early decision, you sign a contract and the guidance counselor signs a contract. So student and guidance counselor signed contract saying yes.

If the student is admitted, the student will attend. So make sure you are 100 percent in with that school. If you do apply early decision, rolling admission means you’re applying to a school and there’s a whole range [00:19:00] of dates of when you can apply. And admissions offices make the decision of whether you’re accepted as they get applications.

So they’re getting applications. They’re making decisions. They’re getting more applications. They’re making decisions, getting applications, making decisions. So that’s rolling admission and then open admission. This is usually with our community colleges. These schools admit most students for most programs.

There is. There’s some competition sometimes for certain programs at some community colleges. They might be a little more competitive than others, but a lot of, of these schools with open admission, except most students who, who want to attend that school. And then these are the different types of college applications.

The common app you might’ve heard of, that’s probably the most common type of application. And the common app with that, the student creates an account. They put in their information, demographic information, basic information about themselves, their grades, their SAT scores, and then they [00:20:00] can send that application to any college that accepts the Common App.

And there are hundreds. If a student applies to a college through Common App, there might be a supplemental application that a college Also requires. So I might be a student filling out the common app, sending it to 10 schools, but three of those schools say to me, okay, we have some supplemental forms you need to fill out.

So make sure when you’re doing your common app, you fill out any paperwork that’s required, fill out any supplemental applications. There might be a few extra questions they’re asking you. So make sure you know, take that universal college app. This works with a small number of schools. It’s been less and less and less and less every year.

So you might not ever have a school that uses the universal college app. I think there’s only really 1 left in West Virginia that uses it. Maybe a few more, but you won’t hear about that 1 as much coalition app. It definitely works with a lot of schools. So you might be filling out the coalition app if you’re applying to certain schools.

There are [00:21:00] some schools less and less every year that might have their own website application. This is more like community colleges. They might have their own application just right on their website and then paper application. And there’s hardly any of these left. But there are some community colleges that do still accept paper applications.

So those are all the different types of forms you’ll complete. And now when you’re applying to college, there’s a lot of different components. of the college application. So first we’ve got the application form that we just went over. You’re going to have to submit your high school transcript and you’ll work with your guidance counselor to submit that to the college students.

Standardized tests, we’ll talk about those. Letters of recommendation, an activity list or a resume, basically all your extracurriculars. You’ll have to write an essay for a lot of schools. Sometimes there’s an interview, just a handful of schools use interviews. An audition if you’re a music student. And then a portfolio if you’re a visual artist.

So these are different components that you’ll have to submit when applying. Let’s go through each one [00:22:00] with the high school transcript. What colleges are really looking at is to make sure that you are academically ready. You can get on the campus students and you can do that work. They are looking at when they review your transcript, the rigor, did you take hard classes?

And the good thing about college admissions offices is they’re very familiar. with different high schools around the country. And if they’re not familiar with their high school or with your high school, they’re going to get themselves familiar. So if you’re a student and you’re at a high school where they only offer two AP classes and you think, oh, I can’t compete with these students who maybe have taken seven or eight AP classes, the admissions office is going to know you’re at a high school that only offered two AP classes.

So if you took one AP class, you took half of the AP classes that were offered. So they’re going to know that. So don’t worry about your high school and what was offered. Really what they’re looking at is with everything that was offered to you. Did you challenge yourself? Did you take hard classes? Did you really push yourself as you were going through each year, nine, 10, 11th and [00:23:00] 12th grade?

If there are challenging classes where you didn’t get an A, but they were a challenging class, they’re going to know that as well. They’re very familiar with AP, IB, honors classes. So they’re really going to look hard at your transcript to see what type of class did you take and then the grades that you got.

They do appreciate improvement over time. If you’ve gotten to ninth grade and you were struggling students and then you did a little bit better every year, they’re going to note that. If you exceeded the minimum requirements of your high school or your county for graduation or your state, they’ll notate that and then they’re, they want to see relevance to college plans.

If you write in your college essay, how you love science, but you really didn’t take a lot of science classes in high school. That’s going to show a disconnect. So they, they want to see that what you took in high school is something that you were. Are saying now that you’re interested in, and it’s okay if you’ve changed course, if you thought you really loved math and science, and then you discovered history in 11th grade, and you figured out you love history, that’s okay to just make sure you notate that in your [00:24:00] essay or in your short answer.

So they see. Okay. This is why she took more history classes in 12th grade. Because she really changed her preference of what she thinks she might want to do later on and in college. And then there is a sliding scale for Massachusetts public colleges and universities having to do with standardized tests and your grade.

So that’s really to be admitted to the public universities and colleges in Massachusetts. So standardized tests. As I mentioned, there are over 2, 000 colleges and universities in the country that are test optional. Some of them say, we don’t want your test scores at all. If you send them to us, we’re not even looking at them, we’re throwing them out.

A lot of them say, you don’t have to submit your test scores if you took the SAT or ACT. But if you took them, And you feel like you did okay, go ahead and submit them. We will consider them. So that’s something to think about as you’re going through, but a test optional school means test optional. You do not have to submit any test scores to any of those schools that are test [00:25:00] optional.

So the difference to standardized tests, and you probably are, or have been familiar with these parents and students first is the PSAT. That’s of course the practice for the SAT. So this doesn’t count for anything can help you win us a couple scholarships down the line, but. It’s not really for for college admissions, but it helps you get familiar with the S.

A. T. So students and you might have taken the P. S. A. T. In 9th grade or 10th grade just to get yourself familiar with standardized tests. SAT that’s going to measure college readiness. That’s that main app or that main standardized test that many of us took and many of us are familiar with. You can register for the SAT online.

You may have already done so, and there is free test prep online. So definitely take advantage of that. They partner with Khan Academy to really help you get ready for that SAT. ACT is the other standardized test and it also is college readiness measurement. It also offers free test prep online and you can register.

It looks like that link didn’t come [00:26:00] through. If you go to our website and you search for SAT or ACT, we have an article which will have the appropriate links for registering, but also compares the SAT and the ACT. So this is a great resource. Students and parents, while you’re helping your students to figure out which one might be better for you, your guidance counselor at school can also help you figure that out as well.

And then AP exams are those exams that students usually take after an AP course at the end of the year. Usually they’re offered in May, and this helps measure how much you learned in that AP course, but it can also earn you college credit at a lot of schools. So do make sure you take that AP exam. If you feel like you mastered the material well enough, You did well in the course, you feel like you could get a score perhaps high enough that could earn you some college credit that can really save you even some money down the line if you’re able to generate enough credits where you could even maybe, maybe graduate a semester early.

FairTest. org is a website where you can look at all those test [00:27:00] optional schools, and again there’s over 2, 000. ActivityList is something else that’s required within the college application. And this is really just a list of extracurriculars. If you’re a student who plays sports, does music, has any kind of activities at all, you want to let the College Admissions Office know that.

So any activities at the school, any activities not at the school. So if you are really interested and have studied karate or skateboarding or origami, anything you’ve done, any club you’ve been in, any community involved, Any activity you want to showcase that you want to let the college know. This is what I’m interested in.

This is what I’ve been doing. What’s the depth of the activity? Have you served in a leadership role? Have you been involved in it since you were in middle school? Let them know that this includes family responsibility. If you’re a student who you come home every day after school and you babysit your younger brother and sister from 2 30 till 5 30, that is an activity and that counts.

[00:28:00] You haven’t been able maybe to take part in more school activities because you had this family responsibility. Yeah. And schools want to know that perhaps you’re a student where you every Saturday morning drive your grandfather to a medical appointment or take your grandmother to her activities. Or perhaps you’re really involved in your cousins or you have You’re an older student, you have nieces and nephews, any family involvement, you could also be working if you primarily work after school and you don’t do any other activities because you’re working so much, that’s an activity, anything you do, what college admissions offices often say to students is think about when the final bell rings at school till you go to bed at night, write down everything that you do.

Are you writing your own comic strip? That’s a big win. So if you’re a volunteer, write that down. Are you a big reader? Write that down. They want to know everything that you’re interested in. Also, if you’re doing anything in your community, that’s a big win, too. So if you’re a volunteer. If you’re a Boy Scout or a Girl Scout who does some type of service project on a regular basis, they want to know that as well.

So just keep that in [00:29:00] mind because you’re going to have to record this all for college admissions offices. And we got a question on a standardized test, so I’ll go back to that. Is there a need to take both the SAT and ACT or is either fine? It’s definitely fine to take either one, so you don’t have to take both by any means.

Some students do try to take both one time, at least to see which they do better in. So that is an option. There is a cost with SAT and ACT. There are fee waivers if you, if you fall into certain criteria, but if you’re able to take both and you’re not sure which one you do better in. You could definitely just take both.

You don’t have to send your scores to anyone. See how you do. And then maybe you feel like you did better in the SAT. Then maybe you could take that one more time just to see if you can get a better score. What most admissions offices will say is you can take the standardized test maybe twice. Maybe three times after that, you’re probably going to not get much of a better score, so you can take [00:30:00] it a few times just to see how you’re doing, but don’t plan to take a 10 or 11 or 12 times because you usually end up getting about the same score after a few tries.

Okay, let’s move into the college essay. Just wanted to see if there’s any more questions. So, most applications are going to require a college essay, and some schools just require one. I would say the majority of schools just require one essay. Perhaps the more competitive schools might require two essays, or they might require an essay and then a handful of short answer.

The essay is an amazing opportunity for students to talk about something that isn’t reflected in the rest of the application. So they’re gonna see your grades, they’re gonna see your standardized tests, they’re gonna see the classes that you took, but if you had some type of hardship, if you have some interest that isn’t coming through in the college application, if there’s anything else you want the admissions office [00:31:00] to know, the essay is the opportunity to do that.

Colleges want you to share something meaningful, something personal, and students, this can be a challenge sometimes because you’re usually used to writing research papers. You’re writing about something else. You’re writing about another person in history, or you’re writing about something in science, or you’re writing about a book that you’ve read.

Instead, the college essay is all about you, what you’ve learned, what your dreams are, some adversity that you’ve overcome, and so it can be a little hard to write because you’re not used to writing about yourself, but that’s what you need to do. It’s really a reflection piece that you’re sharing. with potential colleges.

Do start writing early. It’s helpful if you’re a high school sophomore start or high school junior start writing it now. Don’t wait till senior year to write the college essay. Really start writing it. Work on it a lot over the summer. Try different approaches. Try different topics. It’s plagiarism taken very seriously.

A lot of colleges have software [00:32:00] that detects whether a college essay was taken from the internet from some other source and students who you’re really selling yourself short. If you take a college essay from anywhere else other than your own heart, your own brain, make sure these are your words. This is really your opportunity to tell colleges.

Anything that you want them to know, and definitely, definitely, definitely proofread. So make sure you write about yourself, be reflective. And remember, imagine that you’re the admissions office and you’re reading this essay. Would you want this student on your campus? Would you want to welcome this student into the freshman class?

Be thinking of it from their point of view when you start writing. And parents, help your students to brainstorm ideas and topics. You don’t need to even read it after they’ve written it, but just help them get through maybe some ideas so that when they start writing, they have a good idea of what they want to write about and what they really want to share with those potential colleges.

The common app, which is again, that’s [00:33:00] an application where probably most of you that are students and parents that are helping students, you’re probably going to have colleges. Maybe all of your colleges are going to use the common app. That’s that main application form. They have essay prompts. There are, I believe there are 71234567 and there are six main ones.

And then the last one is, Really write about anything that you want. These are the prompts that they have used over the past several years. They really love these prompts and these were just announced last week as the prompts for basically high school juniors who are applying to college this coming fall.

So high school juniors, these are the prompts that you have to choose from. If you are applying to a college that uses the common app and most likely you will be. So take a look at these. These are online. So they are easy to find. You can just type in common app prompts and again, you’ll get the slideshow to see, but start thinking about these.

And when you’re sitting at dinner together as a family, start tossing out ideas of what you might want to write [00:34:00] about. Based on any of these prompts, letters of recommendation or another opportunity for colleges to learn about students from a third party. So these are letters that usually the school counselor writes one and sometimes there are teachers that write them.

They are letters written about the student and sent to the college. Students, you’re going to have to request letters of recommendation. Your school counselor will know that they need to write one about you, but a lot of schools will say, get your school counselor and one teacher to write a letter of recommendation for you for college.

So students be thinking about who you want to ask and definitely ask. during your junior year before you leave for the summer because you want to give teachers enough time to write a great letter of recommendation for you. Colleges usually say have a teacher from grade 11, so from your junior year, write your main letter of recommendation because that’s the teacher who has.

Seeing you the most in a full [00:35:00] academic year and most recently, if you have a teacher from sophomore year and you really, really made an impact in that class and you really have a great connection with that teacher, that teacher could still write a letter of recommendation for you. But most colleges will say.

Get someone from your junior year. It’s helpful if it’s a teacher in one of the core subjects. So English or history or math, science, and especially if it’s someone who teaches a subject that you might major in. So you want to major in biology and you’re able to get your biology teacher, chemistry teacher, even physics teacher.

That’s helpful as well. A lot of high schools have guidelines. So students, make sure you follow them. You might have to request in a certain way or fill out a certain form and do remember to say thank you to teachers who have written those letters of recommendation. It’s a lot of work. They put a lot of thought into it.

So make sure you do that after the fact interviews. As I mentioned, this is not it. There is not an option at the majority of colleges, but there are colleges throughout the United States that offer or require [00:36:00] an interview. And this is a way for a student did come face to face with someone representing the college.

There are two types. There’s informative and evaluative. Informational, I should say, and evaluative. Informational interviews are just really an opportunity for students to gain information about a school. It doesn’t really impact your application. It’s a way for you as a student to maybe talk to a recent alum or professor or current student even and learn more about the school.

So you’re asking a lot of questions and just gaining information. The evaluative interviews. Are those where a student shows up and it might be with a representative from the admissions office. It might be with a recent alum even or professor and students are answering questions about themselves. They get a chance to ask questions as well, but you as the student are really.

Answering questions talking about why you’re excited about that school, what you want to do after graduation, what you want to major in [00:37:00] students, be yourself, be professional and make sure you know why you want to attend that school and what you’re interested in. And it’s okay if you don’t know exactly what you want to major in or exactly what you want to do in a career.

But have an idea of what you might want to major in and what you’re excited about, because this is an opportunity, a really great opportunity for you to showcase your interests and your character, your unique personality to show the admissions office another side of you. If you’re interviewing with a recent alum or professor.

Those are representatives who are going to go back to the admissions office, basically write up a summary of this is, I met this student, here’s what he’s interested in. I enjoyed the conversation. Don’t stress, don’t get too nervous. It’s really a great chance to have a great conversation with someone, but do make sure you show up to the interview thinking about what you want to communicate.

So maybe, you know, before the interview, I want to communicate a hardship that I had in my [00:38:00] sophomore year of high school that. reflected my dip in my grades during sophomore year. I want to talk about why I’m really, really passionate about English and how I want to become an English teacher down the line.

And I also really want to talk about why I’m very excited about attending this college. So when you have an interview, make sure you know why you want to attend that particular school, what you’re excited about. Make sure you’ve looked at the website beforehand. In the know about certain programs that are offered so that the admissions representative knows.

Okay, this person has done their homework. They’re really excited about attending the school. So once you apply to college, make sure you submit everything on time. You’re going to get your decision. And there’s a few different options admitted. Of course, the happiest decision you have been admitted. You have been accepted.

You are able to attend that school. Something that is newer in the last couple of years is some schools, and this is a minority of schools, but some schools admit students a small number of students, not for the fall semester, but for the spring [00:39:00] semester. So you are told University of Miami. You can’t come in the fall, but we’d love to have you in the spring.

And that’s basically because they wanted to accept you, but they didn’t have enough seats. They know that a small number of students who come fall semester will withdraw from the school and may transfer to another school or go elsewhere. And so then in the spring, they’ll have a seat for you and you can start in the spring.

So that is an admissions decision you might get. But in most cases, when you’re admitted, you’re going to be admitted for the fall semester and for. Every semester after that deferred means that you have not been accepted yet and you’ve been pushed to the regular applicant pool. So this is a decision you might get when you have applied early action or early decision.

You might be told we haven’t admitted you yet, but we’re still interested in you. We’re going to push your application to the regular decision pool. My niece, we went through the entire application process with her. She was told from one early [00:40:00] action school, you’ve been deferred and was sent an email saying we actually deferred a large number of students this year because we actually couldn’t get through all the applications.

So don’t get too upset if you’ve been deferred. It might be that they were so many students that applied that they had to push a lot of decisions to the regular application pool. Denied unfortunately means that you have not been accepted. If you’re applying to a, even a medium number of schools, you’re going to get likely denied.

Do not take it personally. There are not enough seats for the best students. I remember sitting on an admissions, sitting in front of an admissions panel once, and there were Admissions representatives from several top tier schools, and one of the admissions officers said I could fill three freshman classes with the amount of phenomenal applicants that I get, and I don’t have enough seats.

So we have to pay three. students. So mean deny doesn’t mean that you can’t cut it academically. It doesn’t mean that they don’t even want you. Sometimes there’s just [00:41:00] not enough seats. So don’t take it personally. Hopefully you’ll be excited to a school that you’re excited about. You’ll be accepted to a school that you’re excited about.

And then waitlisted means that The school cannot accept you right now, but they are still interested in you. So they’re going to put you on a waitlist if some seats open up, you might get pulled in. You might get excited, accepted. You could get accepted as late as July or August. So keep that in mind. You do have to submit an enrollment deposit at some other school.

You have to make sure that you attend or decide to attend another school. In most cases, you’re not going to hear from the waitlist. You’re not going to be accepted off the waitlist. You probably won’t ever receive a response. So that’s something to keep in mind as well. You can have a little bit of hope being on the waitlist.

You might get accepted late, but you might not. So that’s what to know about the waitlist. Okay. So let’s talk about college affordability. When you’re researching schools, you got to think about the price. So what is the cost of [00:42:00] attendance? The cost of attendance is basically the cost to attend that school for one year.

It’s going to be tuition fees, room and meal plan. As well as an estimate for books and personal expenses and supplies and transportation. So you might be applying to schools where the cost of attendance is 80, 000, 90, 000. They are all, so a lot of schools are getting close to 100, 000. So cost of attendance is going to be huge.

But keep in mind that there’s a lot of financial aid available. So next, next bullet, financial aid applications, what’s required and what are the due dates? That’s what you really need to, as you’re making that college list. Make sure that you know, every college is going to require the FAFSA, but there are other applications that might be required.

Need based versus merit based aid. The two main differences here, need based financial aid is financial aid based on your, your family finances. Merit based financial aid is financial aid given to the student, really based on, in most cases academics, [00:43:00] sometimes it’s athletics or artistic ability. So it’s good to know what types of aid are available and if there’s different applications.

This information is usually on the financial aid website, webpage of every school, so make sure you do your homework and find out that information. And then private scholarships. These are funds that can help you pay for college costs, and these are offered not by the college or the university or the government.

But by private sources. We have a lot of articles on MEFA. org that are scholarship articles. They list different scholarships you can apply to. Start looking at those articles. Start researching. Start looking for private scholarships now. Start with your guidance counselor. They will have some ideas of where you can start looking for private scholarships.

Net price calculators. Just want to mention this tool. This is a great tool that is available. It’s on every single college and university website. Go to the main website, go to the search bar, just search for net price calculator. This is an anonymous tool. You don’t have to identify yourself. [00:44:00] It’s going to ask you a few questions about your family finances.

It might ask you to about student grades, student GPA, student SAT score. And then it is going to provide for you an estimate of the financial aid that the student could receive at that school. And as a result, your, your net price. So the total cost of the school minus your estimated financial aid net price.

What might you pay if you end up going to that school? This is not a guarantee. You can’t take this to them in a year and say, you told me this would be my net price. But it gives you an idea of what you might receive in financial aid based on your finances. And as a result, what your net cost would be at that school, what are you going to pay out of pocket to attend that school or for the student to attend that school?

So applying for financial aid, the main application, as I mentioned, is the FAFSA. So you can’t apply for, you can’t do the FAFSA yet, you can’t submit the FAFSA yet. Once your student is a high school senior, [00:45:00] the FAFSA will become available October 1st. So if you are the parent of a high school junior or you’re a high school junior on the webinar, you will basically attend college in 26 27.

So you’ll be completing the 26 27 FAFSA. That becomes available October 1st, 2025. It’s going to ask you parents and students about your 2024 income, your current assets, how many people are in your household, just some basic, basic questions about your finances. About 200 colleges and universities require something called the CSS profile.

It’s just another application. This one is more detailed, has more questions. The colleges that require this CSS profile also require the FAFSA. So you’re going to do the FAFSA, you’re going to send it to every school on the students list, and then you’re going to do the CSS profile for any other schools that require it.

That’s also going to be available October 1st. Also going to ask about 2024 income. And then [00:46:00] there are some colleges that have some college specific financial aid applications. There’s not a lot of those, but just check the financial aid web page of every college and university just to see what their requirements are.

And so we’ve got a question here. My child is going to join college in fall 2026. That’s great. So you’ve got a high school junior. You’ll have to fill out the FAFSA and CSS profile on or after October 1st, 2025. That is correct. And then the taxes that you’ll enter are from 2024. So they kind of go back two years from when the student will start college.

Something to keep in mind that’s great about the FAFSA is that with recent updates to the FAFSA, you’re going to log on to the FAFSA, you’re going to put in your information, and then you have to basically sign consent for the FAFSA to go to the IRS electronically and pull in your tax data. You do have to give them consent if you want to receive any financial aid.

But they’re going to go to the IRS electronically, pull in your taxes from 2024. You don’t have to enter a thing, which is [00:47:00] great. So a lot of families we were helping this year, we’re doing the FAFSA in 10 or 15 minutes because you’re putting in your demographic information. You’re signing away saying, yep, I provide consent for the FAFSA to grab my IRS data.

My tax return data, you put in your assets, what’s in your bank account, just estimates. What kind of investments do you have? Student does the same thing. You list how many people in your household, you’re done. So it’s actually become, there were some headaches a few years ago, but it’s actually become a very quick process, which is nice.

Yeah. So there’s a follow up question here. So tax return you filed in 2025, correct? For the year 2024. So for those who are high school juniors, you’re starting college in 2026, you’re going to fill out the 26. It’s gonna ask about your 2024 income. So that’s the tax return. Yes, you did at the beginning of the year.

You’re actually doing right now. So the tax return that [00:48:00] you’re doing right now. It’s all about your 2024 income. That’s the information that’s going to be pulled into your FAFSA. If you have a high school junior right now. All right. Great questions. So paying for college in Massachusetts, if you live in Massachusetts, you have some great options to help you pay for college costs.

Mass transfer is a great program for students that started at community college. There are some wonderful benefits, frees on tuition, uh, actually tuition credit, credit transfers. So that’s an option that makes college really affordable. If you could start at a community college and then transfer to a two year school.

MassEducate actually covers all tuition and fees at Massachusetts community colleges. So if you want two years of college free, you can take advantage of that in Massachusetts. Start at a community college, all free for you. You do have to cover room and board, or maybe for students, if you’re able to stay at home.

Parents can help fund your life for a little, for those two years. You got free [00:49:00] tuition and fees and then you can transfer to a two year school and finish up and get your bachelor’s tuition break. You might not have heard of this is a great program. If you study at another school in New England at a public college and you major in something that’s not offered in your home state, you can get a deep discount on your tuition.

So if I live in Massachusetts and I want to So if I want to study, let’s say oceanography and I am making this up, but let’s say oceanography is not a major that is offered in Massachusetts, but it’s offered in Maine at a public college, I can go to Maine. I can major in that and I’m going to get a deep discount on my out of state tuition from Maine because it’s a major that’s not offered in Massachusetts.

So just an example, you can go to the Tuition Break website. We also have a great webinar on Tuition Break that gives you more details about that opportunity. And then finally, this mass tuition equity law, this is an opportunity for undocumented students in Massachusetts to get in state tuition and some Massachusetts state financial aid.

We have an article on that as well, if you’d like to learn more about that [00:50:00] opportunity. This is a timeline. I won’t go through the whole thing, but this is a timeline and we have something on our website that goes through. It starts with summer and spring of junior year. It goes all the way through until spring of your senior year.

So students and parents definitely recommend that you follow this timeline. Just keeps you on track with the college admissions and college financial aid process, really all of your college prep. So you can see that URL at the bottom. Make sure that you’re on track with every step of this process. MEFA Pathway, this is that resource I mentioned a little, a little earlier in the webinar.

This is basically a college planning tool for students. It is free. You can create a free account. It’s got a scholarship search, it’s got a career search and options. It’s just got a lot of fun activities for students to help them learn more about themselves, plan for college, and then look ahead to careers.

So what you can do now, definitely [00:51:00] sign up for any additional webinars. We have webinars throughout the year. So we have a lot on financial aid and some more on college admissions. And then even when you get into senior year, we have different and different webinars on how to pay that college bill, student loans, different things to know.

So. If you sign up for our emails, which you can do right on our website, you’ll get emails that prompt you to sign up for any webinars like you did for this one today. Start researching colleges, making that college list. And then you’ll be well on your way. We are all over social media. So Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter.

We have a great presence on YouTube. We have so many videos that are instructional. And we’re on X as well. So definitely connect with us. We just send out little tidbits usually throughout the week. Just to help you stay on track with college planning. And that’s the conclusion of the webinar today. If you need to jump off, here’s our 800 number, here’s our email address.

You can call us anytime, 9 to 5 Monday through Friday. And then email [00:52:00] us anytime. We’re usually pretty good about answering emails the day we get them, or at least by the next day. So if you have any questions, also available are one on one appointments, so you can find on our What We Offer page on metha.

org, which is our website. You can find, what you can find is the link to sign up for a one on one appointment. And that’s helpful if you want to just talk to someone one on one over Zoom, just about college admissions or financial aid, anything about this entire process. Let me just see. It doesn’t look like we have any additional questions.

So I wanted to thank you for joining today. So great to have all of you here. We are going to continue again, this webinar series going through just helping you plan for college. So definitely jump on additional webinars. And again, we’ll send this out to this, the recording of this webinar and then the slides in the next couple of days.

So thank you for joining us. Have a great night, [00:53:00] everyone.