I, Lana Hawkins, am a mom with two awesome daughters. One is almost ready for college, well in two years, but that is just around the corner. The other will follow her so I will be facing at least eight continuous years of funding college expenses.
I've made this blog to share with you information I've found regarding paying for college. Unless your kid will be getting a full scholarship to the college or their choice I know there is going to be some pain involved with finding money and picking the right school, plus probably so many other things.
It looks like gifts to colleges may be getting more money from gifts this year. Does this mean that college cost will not rise greater than inflation or will colleges just go ahead and raise rates anyway, because they can?
Adjusted for inflation, last year’s increase is 4.8 percent over 2010, according to the Voluntary Support of Education survey. The good fundraising news doesn’t automatically mean that parents and students won’t face tuition increases.
… and don’t forget your FAFSA applications whether it’s the first time or the time to redo it for the coming school year….
Just about every college-bound student should take a refresher course on a very important application — the form for the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA). NY1′s Money Matters reporter Tara Lynn Wagner filed the following report.
This Is The Ultimate College Prep Coaching Program Dedicated To Teaching Parents How To Pay Less For College And How To Get Students Into First-choice Colleges.
Medical Students Get Full Tuition Scholarships and a Stipend When They Add A PhD On To Medical School!
According to the AAMC – Association of American Medical Colleges there are 123 combined MD and PhD programs in the United States. These programs are geared towards people that want to become research physicians.
Physician-scientists are needed so that the achievements of basic science laboratories and other focused research efforts can be translated into active clinical practice. However, the financial pressures on MD-only graduates are so great that few physicians choose to spend the time necessary to obtain research training after medical school. In order to address this issue, most MD-PhD programs pay candidates a stipend and tuition scholarships during the training years. The financial support for those willing to undertake MD-PhD training recognizes the additional time that a student must spend in training for this career. The extent of this support varies among programs. For example, some programs only support U.S. citizens and permanent residents.
Here is the list of schools by states offering the dual degree programs. Check each school for their particular tuition scholarships available.
Here is a quick video tutorial to get you started on filling out your FAFSA. Filling out the FAFSA is a real pain!!! It is probably worse that filling out your taxes.
Depending on who you are, student or parent, you may be asked for all kinds of information about your finances and assets and assets of people in your family including children. If you can, gather as much information as possible, including everything you’d use for your taxes, plus bank statements and mortgage information. These guys are not shy about asking for everything!
But just remember that it is probably going to be worth the effort because it is required by about every school in the USA if you even remotely stand a chance of getting financial aid or a merit scholarship. Yes. You or your kid could get a merit based scholarship but the school still uses FAFSA to process it (somehow).
Once you start filling out the FAFSA you can save your work and come back later. You can also start filling out the FAFSA with incomplete information, say if your taxes are not completed yet. There is a chance to update you form when you get exact tax return data of any new information.
Keep all your FAFSA information together where you can find it again next year. You have to fill out the FAFSA EVERY SINGLE YEAR you or your kids is in college receiving financial aid. One good thing is that your information carries over to the next year’s form, some of it anyway.
If you’ve never applied to college before having a few college admissions tips from someone inside a college can help you understand what the colleges are looking for when they are admitting candidates.
As an admissions insider, what tips can you give to help me sound my best in my application?
I would make sure that you investigated the school and you know who we are because in a lot of the things we are ascertaining and asking you, how much do you know about us? Because it’s for the fit. I would clearly look at some of those base facts or base issues of does it read well, is it grammatically put together properly. Those types of things.
I will also make sure that your essays, as we’ve talked about already, are your authentic voice, they’re you coming through, not so pre-packaged. The other thing is that you are mature enough to follow the instructions that if we say 500 words, we want 500. We don’t want 1000. That you are mature enough that you pick recommenders that can talk about you as the person, not at the belief that you needed to pick the most famous person you know, or your parent’s neighbors knows.
So those would be the kind of tips that I will give. I would say if it is a little earlier before the application process, is I encourage student to do this a lot. If they are sophomore, is that one of the things, or junior, they’re starting to narrow – they’re looking at 20 schools or 10 schools at that point.
Go out and print out their application. Start looking a couple of years before you come. What looks like the questions that they are asking? So that you have a sense of what that value of that campus is because that can perhaps guide you in choices to prepare in application. I say that with a little bit of hesitancy though because you don’t want it to look like you have pre-packaged, you want it to be this authentic.
So those would be the kind of pieces that I would give and I always love to give an example of the school that I worked out once where they’re kind of arch-rival in the student’s essay. The essay was reading along smashingly well. I’m so excited, this is the dream school that I want to go to. Talking about the school that I was working at. Then in the final paragraph, they noted the other school because they didn’t change their word document. So you want to think about that you’ve done some of those base facts that you’re talking to the school and that wonderful search and replace, you do that.
If there’s anything that I can leave today, it is the application process - we look at applications to admit you, not to deny because we are building a community of learners in this wonderful building, this new freshmen commons – we’re building a sense of the class and we want those people that we admit, that we are trying to build that so that it’s a wonderful experience for all. And if you don’t quite really know who you are, it’s not going to work.
Hopefully you’ve gotten something out of this transcript of the video and these summary college admissions tips. Please leave a comment listing your main questions about getting into college. Share this post!!!
How many people see your application and have a say in whether is gets through? Interesting to hear…
How do I choose who should write my letters of recommendation?
We want somebody who can talk about the applicant, who has seen their maturation over a period of time that can tell us the inside of their character, their background, their experiences. Then if it’s a Math teacher, a Science teacher, may be how they took on a particular research project, how they handled that, how they led the group or what have you versus kind of the, well a very good person. The good person does not cut it. So it is who really can talk about you, not who is the most important person you know that can write a letter.
Hopefully you’ll have a teacher or two that has seen your work in several classes. Or maybe there are a group of teachers that know each other and they talk about the students (in a good way) and you’re one that they talk about. Maybe you have an adviser that knows you and also talks to your other teachers and can make a fair assessment about you in regards to schooling.
— The next article contains Tips from and Admission Insider! You’ll want to read that. — The last segment of the transcript offers some tips for getting into college.
One trick that business people know is to write the letters of recommendation yourself for the person so they can easily sign and submit. Maybe this isn’t quite appropriate in high school, however, you could certainly mention a few things you want your recommender to know or remember about your.
Finding the right people to write your letters of recommendation and write the correct stuff is quite important.
Haven’t saved enough for college? Think your parents have good enough jobs? Don’t compare your situation to the neighbors. Read More.
Getting Admitted to College:
How many people actually decide if I’m going to get admitted or not?
Typically the process and I can and I will give you a brief synopsis here at Vanderbilt that would be a standard metric or a standard rubrix, if you will at most schools like Vanderbilt where the IBs and schools like Vanderbilt. The application is going to come in.
There’s going to be an initial read and that’s typically the person called the territory manager. That manager that I visited at high school, I probably already talked to you when you were thinking of applying and or perhaps not as well. That comes in and so we walk around the United States all that way. So there’s somebody.
Then there’s what’s called a second reader and that second reader comes along with the first person makes a series of decisions and notes and that, the second one comes along and then that’s their reading the file.
Those two together, if they both agree, then goes to what’s called a sign-off officer which is the senior member of the staff. And then that sign-off officer either comes up with kind of agrees with or deny. Let’s hold that for a while and let’s see what happens in the whole pool to we think that should be an admit. That admits still never happen until the day we sent the admit letter because it’s changing. So that’s the third person.
Then when we work it out we made through our series of our evaluation. There’s kind of that a broader clear admit based on this or a broader clear deny.
Then there’s this whole pool in the middle. And that is where every single one comes to the admissions committee and the territory officer advocates to admit that student to a group of 3 people.
I chair all early decision 1 and early decision 2 with two senior members. Then in regular decision, I chair one of the committees with two senior people and then we have two other committees just of sheer volume.
And then that all comes together and then in that time, someone right there and they’re verbally telling me about the student and I make, as a group, we make the decision admit or deny at that point, or hold again.
And then it goes back. We just think it’s should be admitted or maybe shouldn’t. Can’t quite make it and it goes back to the whole pile and then we will do that again. And then eventually, that final group comes back to me and the senior folks and we look at that one more time.
Well what can you do about getting admitted to college is to talk to your college placement people at your school and also the college reps that come to your school and make a good impression.
No need to over stress yourself in the college admissions process. Read More.
My parents have good jobs, but we haven’t saved much for college. Will I be able to get financial aid?
The first thing that I will tell you, independent, there are so many myths about “Will I get financial aid?” “Will I not get financial aid?” That my number one piece of advice is fill out the federal form that is required for all federal programs, and most schools, they take the federal form and then some will also have an additional of what’s called profile.
Fill those out because what I find students end up doing is; “Mom, here’s our next door neighbor. Didn’t get aid.” And they’ve made the impression in their mind that we must have more money than them so if they didn’t get it, we surely won’t get it.
It’s free, it’s takes an hour and a half to fill out. But I would highly first recommend that.
The other thing that they may do is depending on the student. Someone may not get a Pell Grant or a SEOG or some of the federal program. But institutions have need-based aid too. Particularly the school like Vanderbilt. We’re one of 25 to 30 schools in the United States that meets full demonstrated need and we’re hundred per cent need-blind.
So what that means is if you can afford to come based on our methodology, not based on what your parents think. So there’s a divide there. We’re going to make that up and gift a loan to you. Filling out the form at least let you know what you might get.
The other thing is that people confuse institutional funds with federal funds and a school like Vanderbilt, our average gift award is $30,000 a year per student. So that’s a lot of money. So some are getting more and some are getting less. But that’s the average gift.
And so apply and see first what you can get. You might not get any gift money but you may look at some structured loans, how they work and start a combination of what you can earn during the school year, what little your parents may or may not have set aside for you. How you will take some loans that are deferred, meaning you don’t have to start paying those back until upon graduation and all that.
So really applying is the first thing instead of what other families do is kind of psych themselves out of anything to begin with. Now that may end up being the case in the end. But you never know. I’ve just seen families who didn’t apply and then two years later I am talking to them like why you didn’t apply and they would’ve gotten something.
But they make assumptions of where their wealth is to the neighbor. Remember, a lot of federal aid and institutional aid has to do with income, number of dependents, extenuating circumstances, equity of homes, equity of assets, and it’s a complex picture that just making the judgment they didn’t get and I won’t. I sure – don’t find yourself in that spot.
Is a private school always more expensive than a state school?
That’s really hard to tell because what you really work at is the net cost to you after everything is paid. So a lot of times, in the state program, the tuition and the total cost is less but there’s less aid to give.
In a private education that costs us more, but then it’s adjusted for your income, and so to some degree, you can actually be equal or in some instances actually may be cheaper to go to in private school than a public school based on their financial aid policies. And so what you want to do is to make sure you’ve taken advantage of those three opportunities and analysis so you know.
The other thing is that sometimes families get really caught into where they think a lot of life is. And part of college is pointing out your bootstraps and changing that.
So if your family was here, whatever here is, and you have a sight you want to be here, the only way that you are going to get there is you got to be a full contributing member in this group of schools that will help get you there.
Here is one family’s story: Both parents had “good jobs.” Real estate investments caused the yearly cash flow to be quite low and assets to liabilities were not favorable. Every situation is different and you need to supply all the information when you fill out your yearly FAFSA submission. Significant financial aid was available to this family.
For the previous segment: High School Profile. Your high school profile tells a lot about your school and how it compares to other high schools.
What can I do to ease some of the stress surrounding the college admissions process?
When I talked to students a lot and then I say, “Tell me the schools that you are looking at.” And they ran a lot of 5 schools. Any of those schools, education is going to be superb.
We are so fortunate in the United States to have the top higher education in the world. So the student will say,
“Here are my 5 choices and I feel that if I pick the wrong one -”
First of all, educationally, you can’t go wrong at any of them.
Second, extracurricularly, prestige-wise, you can’t go wrong at any of them.
And that brings us back to the fit – the ability to say, where do I look like I resonate, I feel like I could add to that community and be an active citizen is the critical piece.
What ends up happening though and is one thing that I help to reduce the stress is that I tell students; don’t make it a public discourse of the 29 schools that you are looking at. Because all of a sudden if you are not admitted, you choose not to go there, you have everybody in what I call admissions cheap seats doing second guessing. It’s your life, it’s your choice. And so I find students.
College Admissions Stress Reduction Tip: Don’t tell the world about every college you are applying to.
And sometimes, parents in most cases, more parents – it becomes a reflection of the parent, the reflection of how I’ll be perceived at the Bridge Club, the Country Club, my business partners, my colleagues at work, where my child goes, and what we need to make sure we do is that you find the best fit so you will be successful. And sometimes if it becomes – I’m applying and they rattle off, all of these schools, then you don’t get in, then you feel embarrassed, you shouldn’t be embarrassed.
Part of this is getting out and trying where you see the fit. And so sometimes I say students should contain it a little more. The other thing is – my experience is this for what it’s worth. If a student has a certain SAT and they tell you, in most cases, it’s 50 points less.
Everybody, you know publicly wants to say, you know they never really wanted – you know the test score is one measure, one day for a handful of hours. We need it for a national norming, the ability to look for students from different school districts and corporations and high schools but that also becomes a stress.
That’s not a competition on who can get the best test score. It’s just simply not. That’s one variable but we tend to get caught up with who we are as a human and a number. Would we like the number to be higher? You bet. But that does not take away who you are as a unique, contributing individual to your family and to your community.
And if you can learn to separate that if I’m denied, it’s not denied because Dean Christianson is a bad person. He’s denied because the fit didn’t appear to be there and all the variables. Very different. And if it’s to internalize, it’s become very stressful and if you know the real concern I have is it may become very serious with some students right to the point of suicide or pre-suicide or attempt. I mean it’s very serious that you’ve got to be able to disassociate your self-esteem with the ones that were admitted.
You high school profile tells a lot about your school and how it compares to other high schools.
How do colleges find out about the quality and size of my high school?
Every student here at Vanderbilt and then again in any of these schools that I’ve worked at or consulted with or been with, they require what is called a high school profile. And a high school profile is a profile of the high school that lets us know the courses offered, the rigor of that curriculum, this lets us know of the students how many AP, IBs that were offered.
Lets us know how many go on to college and lets us know – we look for mean distributions within and distribution of A, B, C, and D, the class rank, percentile. Because we are looking at the competitiveness of the environment because that environment may be different from another school environment and that’s where we started getting that a 4.0 at one school may not be a 4.0 at another school. You’re looking at the curriculum, the rigor..
This is taking AP classes and if an “A” is required.
Before we get to the transcript let me say that you don’t need to get a A. Just take as many AP courses or Honors classes as you can and manage your workload. You can take the college placement test if you have taken the AP classes or the honors classes. Sometimes the honors classes are better than the AP classes.
I want to take AP classes in my high school, but I’m not sure I’ll get A’s. Should I still take them?
That is really almost a million-dollar question that I’m asked constantly and I think let’s back that up a little and talk about balance and risk. That’s what we are talking about here.
We want students that want to be intellectually challenged and not always take the safe bet. That being said, whether you are in an AP classes, or a age-specific course or grade-specific course, you still need to do well. So there’s the balance there.
AP Classes or Honors Classes?
If somebody were in a high school, and remember again, we are talking in generalities here. If somebody were in a high school and that high school offered 10 honors programs, honors courses, maybe 10 AP classes and a couple of IB courses, and you did not take any and you came out with a really good GPA, that would not look very good at all because the rigor of your curriculum then comes into play.
So you need a balance – you know taking off and being intellectually challenged and knowing that you are just protecting that GPA.
Remember that we talked earlier; one variable does not get you in or out. It’s the multiplicity of all of these. So my best advice would be you need to be in college preparatory courses, AP, IB, a lot of schools particularly private schools may not even offer. They’ll say all of their courses are honors courses which is okay as well, that will all be reflected in the school profile from the counselor.
But what we are looking for that people seize the environment that they were in. And seizing it does not mean that if they are offered 10 APs they should take all 10.
But it’s – I hope that helps you think about the balance of your APs. But at the end of the day, if you take all APs and you’re getting Cs, we would think that there are some judgment issues here because you are more concerned about taking their course but you have not mastered the topic before.
So there’s some balance and that helps us understand intellectual maturity development of the student as we are building the community as well.
It looks like gifts to colleges may be getting more money from gifts this year. Does this mean that college cost will not rise greater than inflation or will colleges just go ahead and raise rates anyway, because they can?
