##VIDEO ID:Bd1c61guo7Q## welcome everybody thank you for coming to this really important night um this is really the the big kickoff for your College Planning process um if at any point during the process you might be thinking that maybe College isn't the route you want to go please check in with your school counselor because we have a a wealth of resources that can assist you in other areas other than uh uh just the college process um so sometimes when you go going through this um people's minds change but for the purpose of tonight we are here to talk about College Planning um the first thing we're going to do is we're going to take a quick run through of the workbook that was emailed to all the Juniors and their parents and Guardians uh yesterday um a lot of the stuff in the book is going to be covered tonight so I'm not going to read word for word just going to highlight the the most important things uh the most important piece really is going to be um going on to our software program which is called score to show you how to do a college search and then the panel of experts uh we have a a parent of a current senior and a student that graduated last year that's going to share her perspective and how uh how she worked with two very different uh types of students uh we have a a a admissions counselor from Bridgewater State you know a fairly good siiz p uh public school and we have an admissions the assistant director of admissions from uh Emanual College in an inner city um private small private school so we have a diff a lot of different perspectives here and we're hoping that uh we're going to uh we're going to be able to cover a lot of information for you um obviously they're not representing every single college and university out there but we only had room for four speakers tonight so we will uh we will work with you individually um after this in finding the right school for you and the right fit for you and answering any questions so um the first thing we're going to do is um just to quickly I did for those of you who didn't get a chance to check your email I did send out tonight's agenda um and College Planning for juniors and their families where to begin this is the first part of a three-part series that we do um there's very little repetition from workbook to workbook and workshop to Workshop um the reason we're starting now is this is not a hard process but it's a very detailed uh process and there's a lot of little things and it could become very overwhelming so we're starting you well in advance each workbook on the inside cover has a timeline of what you should be doing up until the point of the next Workshop so you know it's not cast in stone unless there's like a registration deadline for sat or something like that but it's a nice guideline to try to keep you guys on track and so the process does not become overwhelming for you um so right here in January you're here tonight that's the big that's the beginning of it um just to let you know your grade point averages are going to be posted updated as of the midpoint of this year around the first this probably the second week of February um usually just before vacation we get everything all taken care of and that is going to be the number that you're can start working with as far as trying to match yourself up with a with a college um an appropriate College in this uh you'll also see sat deadline registration deadline and we'll talk about SATs in a little bit the next page is just uh contact information on who your school counselor is hopefully you all know your school counselor maybe the parents aren't as familiar um but that is our contact information in the event you have questions who would like to schedule some time to meet with us to talk further about your individual student so way to begin that's where we are now so by mid April you should have attended this Workshop so check that one off uh you should register for the SAT we recommend that you take the May SAT um you will get those scores back before school gets out so if you have questions and want to work with your school counselor um we'll be available to do that you can take the June one in the event that um may you have a major conflict in May the only problem is you may not get those scores back while we're still here so if you have questions you may have to wait a little bit on that um but we do ask you to Target the May one we're actually a test center for May so you don't have to travel you can take it right here um and we'll talk more about SATs in a little bit um time to start thinking about scheduling College visits great time to do college visits April vacation uh February vacation too April's nice because the weather's better and people tend to be out and about a little bit more but if you really need to kind of you have a big list and you want to try to manage this then certainly February vacation will work also this allows you to be able to in the event you want to travel a little bit and go check out schools that are a distance away uh we do excuse two absences uh from school for college visits uh if you uh if if you uh want to do one during the course of the school day but it's really nice to be able to see the schools um and really be able to take your time and not feel rushed um certainly over the summer you can do visits also um and some cases that might be the only thing you the only way you can go about doing this because you know maybe the school is really far away out in the West Coast or something and you just can't get away um right now um and that's fine you do what you have to do um but if it all possible especially with the local schools try to visit them while school is in session the campuses take on a whole different life in the summertime there's not a lot of people around you really don't get a flavor for the in a feel for what the the uh the community and the and and the the life is like like on the campus when there's not a lot of students around okay you should be asking yourself right now what are my reasons for going to college um and if you can't answer that question you have some searching to do and some questions to ask yourself um going to college because that's what everyone's doing isn't necessarily the right thing um certainly uh it's a great opportunity but it's also an expensive proposition and you do not want to um start off doing something like that and say oh no that's not the direction I want to go in and start starting over and you got some bills to pay um so really kind of evaluate why you want to go what you want to uh do for a career um and is it something you need college training for or is it something you can do through a technical train uh program or some sort of other um prep preparation um okay and then pay special attention to SAT and ACT registration deadlines you register directly with those testing agencies we have nothing to do with SATs and acts so if you miss a deadline there is nothing we can do for you it's between you and those companies um so you get to pay particular attention there are late registration deadlines but there's about a $30 fee that you have to pay if you have the late register so uh the sooner you take care of that and cross that off your list the better off you'll be um attend all the College Planning workshops because I said they go in a sequential order so when in May April we're going to pick up will be left off tonight and we're going to cover what you should be doing over the course of the summer and then we'll have another Workshop in either late September or early October and that's called the nuts and bolts of applying to college um so everything kind of goes in a sequence um in hopes that you're going to just follow the timelines and keep track and keep up uh with everything that needs to be done um each month the school counseling department has a monthly newsletter that we uh send out through email and we also attach it to branigan's bulletin um so the first of every month that newsletter comes out really important especially for juniors and seniors uh lots of important information regarding opportunities for college or career planning uh important dates and deadlines and things of that sort um College fears things all that type of stuff so it's important to uh make sure that you're reading that and uh not missing any important information we're on social media we have uh we have our uh web page on the MHS website uh we also have satum guidance which is our X account and we just started an Instagram page uh MHS counseling one um so we post we'll be posting important information there too so that it might be a good opportunity for you to to if you're on those uh on those Med social medias to to um just sign up so you get those alerts um and that is that okay so let's talk about testing there's two types of tests there's the SATs and then there's the acts most of you are probably familiar with the SATs the SATs traditionally have been an East Coast test um years ago if you're going School West of the Mississippi you took an Act and it was just a marketing thing uh Act is located in Iowa and they marketed their test more towards the west and sat is from the College Board which is in Princeton New Jersey and they marketed their test to the east um today 99% of the colleges will accept either one of those tests a lot of schools are now test optional um however we strongly strongly recommend that you take the SATs a couple of times just in case you end up applying to a school that is Rec that is requiring an SAT or a lot of schools that are test optional may have an SAT requirement for specific major so the some some schools with nursing majors that require SATs so um it'd be great to get one of those under your belt this spring and then a second one in either October or November depending on your first college application deadline is we're a test center in November also um but you don't have to worry about that one right now for now I would say make sure you get registered for the spring one and then underneath you see here just what are the differences between the two tests um the SATs are Reading Writing and math uh so the reading and writing is kind of in one section and then there's an optional essay if you uh there's of course there's a fee for that if you want to do the optional essay the acts are broken up more subject based English math re uh reading science reasoning and an essay um the tests are the the SATs have just shortened up a bit so they're not quite three hours anymore they're about two two and a half hours um and the ACT you can see they about um just uh just under 3 hours there's no science on the SS um the most important thing to know is that the the scales so an SAT is on a uh 400-600 scale um so um 400 being the lowest 1,600 being the highest so and then the uh the ACT is on a 1 to 36 scale so an a average SAT score is somewhere around 500 510 okay that's the typical student um that would be the equivalent equivalent of an 18 to 22 on the act now usually if you take both tests you score comparably from one to the other um it's harder to find ACT test centers there are some around here but you'll almost every school is it offers SATs if you choose to take the ACT um then actually we what we would recommend taking the SAT first okay and if you've taken the SAT a couple of times and you're not happy with the scores we do not recommend taking them a third time especially if you're not going to do any significant preparation in between the data that college board gives us shows that for everybody that does keeps taking the test over and over again without doing any real prep work only a third of them actually show any significant Improvement we would recommend switching over to an act at that point to see if you happen to do better on the subject based tests so here's the timeline on when to take these tests we just talked about that and then the here's the a ACT test dates and registration deadlines and how to register you click right on that website right there and the same with the SATs and the highlighted yellow is the one that we're hosting here in May our ceb code is college entrance examination board every high school has a six-digit code every college has a five-digit code um that is how they we are all identified they don't recognize Middleboro high school or manual college or Bridgewater State they recognize Us by our numbers um so it's important to make sure when you're registering for the SATs that you are putting in 22145 um this way we will be have access to your scores and we'll be able to properly advise you um once you get those in these are the instructions to access the school counseling website uh when you go to the MHS website you just click on about our school and then to the right you'll see uh the counseling department pop up you click right on that and that'll bring you right to our homepage um and most of the information that you need to access will be under the junior information link um there are other things down there like the score login and things of that sort but that's some most important on for you right now and then this score which is our soft our uh career and college search software program and um the students are familiar with it because we got them on it as freshmen um the parents may not be as familiar with it so students if your parents have questions log on to your score account and show them how to what you can do on it there's uh career interest stuff on there college search we're going to do a college search in a few minutes um and again here's the link to get on to score so the activity sheet we will talk about a minute why don't we go over to score right now so once you click on and log onto your score account you're going to click up here where it says me and then you're going to click on view profile and you can see there's information there that has been prepopulated by us you can fill in the blanks on stuff that was not if you would like to invite your parent to have access to your account you can do that also um you can see that this person's SAT scores have been added to score we will add those as you start taking test scores so for you for you uh folks the kids that took um PSATs those scores should be loaded in already so that will help you do your college search uh once your GPA is loaded in with that it'll be able to it's I'm going to show you some pretty pretty cool graphs to how to kind of see where you fit with different colleges if you scroll all the way down to the bottom of the page you're going to see three forms here the one that you only need to be concerned with right now is the activity sheet open that up enable editing and and this is what the activity sheet looks like this needs to be filled out for your school counselor it is also the second page of the scholarship application which you do not need to worry about until February of your senior year so it serves a dual purpose so it's just a it's it's like a resume that's all it is so we recommend rather than waiting until the fall to do this when you got a million other things going on in your lives to start filling this out now while you so you don't have to stress and you can just and as you remember more things just go back in and add more information so it's broken down to Athletics music and drama school Publications all we have here is yearbook um Student Government which is student council class Council um school council Honors that you've received and those could be academic honors those can be um other honors in in athletics and other things uh outside clubs and programs you've been involved with community service you've been involved with and all of you should be have done some community service because it's a graduation requirement and then any part-time jobs that you've had um this should pretty much be anything from 9th grade through 12th grade if you did the Walk for Hunger once in seventh grade and you never did it again that doesn't belong on this list this is only most recent your high school it's your high school resume now this is a Word document and we know that you guys are not famili as familiar with word uh but the real world works on word college high schools don't um so this spe this's uh special uh instructions to uh save this you can't just click save it will not save so if you scroll down here this shows you the a how to access your your score account and then down here where it says click on activity sheet and begin whatever you do do not save this in Google Google will change the formatting and mess it up so it's it's not readable so it's important that you follow these instructions to save it either to a um a flash drive or to um to a file on your computer itself and this way you'll be able to go in and edit it and add to it and the next page is just a sample of things you can put on your activity sheet and we've broken it down by Athletics clubs honor societies student government uh pay attention to the last one the outside activities uh every when we're going over this stuff with the seniors they Short Change themselves on things um you want to make sure that you're accounting for everything you did even if you just did it for a year put it on there let us decide whether or not it's something that is usable in a letter of recommendation or um or in the process itself um so the only thing I wouldn't put in is if you got fired from a job or something like that but other than that if you played soccer for a year and you realized soccer wasn't your thing and you decided to play uh football after that then that's fine you can put it on there it just shows that you were involved in something uh matching self to school so this is the College admission selector um and it breaks down from most competitive down highly competitive very competitive competitive less competitive and non-competitive and it gives you in the leftand side um average grades and average combined SAT scores and in in the middle it tells you what the class rank would be um and it gives you some sample schools in the in the in New England that uh fit in that category so this should help you a little bit in uh once you get your grade point averages and your and your your PSAT scores to start trying to uh get a sense and narrow down your your college lists when you're developing your college lists there's three categories of uh colleges you should be applying to realistic the reach or the stretch school and then your safety school or your backup plan realistic is you pretty much you know have what they're asking for maybe one thing might be off a little bit but you're pretty much in the ballpark there uh a reach or stretch is there a bunch of things that you don't quite have but it's been a dream School of yours maybe you had an older sibling or a parent or uncle or something that that attended that school you want to give it a shot and then the safety or backup plan without a doubt no questions asked you have beyond what they're looking for um the safety of backup also is not just for um I won't get in because of my academics it should also be a financial backup plan for you also I had a student years ago who um lost who uh her her dad lost his job she was planning going to school out west um and uh he ended up losing his job and they just couldn't afford to send her out there um so she ended up going she wanted to go school for engineering and she ended up going to UMass low which is a great engineering school but it was an instate school and it was much more affordable for her so that was her safety that was her backup plan um so you know hopefully you not your families don't face any of those types of things but it's always important to make sure you're covering your bases um other s resources uh to help you in the college search there's some links there that you can look at and uh word to the wise organize it's really important to make sure that you are organizing start files set if you have an extra room in the house make it your little war room and set up F school folders of schools that you're considering um you definitely want to apply to um and just keep track of any correspondence you have with the colleges and if once you eliminate a college uh and you like definitely absolutely not I'm not applying there then just put that in in a discarded file okay next thing we're going to do is we're going to do a college search on score so I'm not going to go over this because I'm actually going to do the live search with you right now so we are going to go back up to the top and we're going to click on Discover and I don't want my last search I want to do a new search where is it colleges okay academic Focus so if you know what you want to major in then select that major so let's go and do business and if if you're looking okay we're looking for a four-year degree I'm GNA switch over here okay fouryear degree bachelors and let's say we're going to be looking at small to medium siiz schools today and let's say we're not big city people so we're going to click on everything except for the city and let's say we want to put kind of a a cap on how far away we want to go we're going to type in middleb and let's say we're going to do close by an hour to one to two hours away and in the United States and let's say we're going to look in the Northeast and and but we're not interested in New Jersey or Pennsylvania or New York we just look at New England for now okay and I would skip this section here of farre reach realistic safety backup very likely Sometimes some wonky things happen when you start doing the selectivity of the college sometimes colleges are more selective because of their size not because of their academic program so there's ways to kind of filter that search later on so let's not limit ourselves right now okay and then we're going to go down to school type and we're going to say public or private for now and if you want to play a sport you certainly can put that in but if it's not an absolute must I would not put it in because you will eliminate a lot of colleges if they do not have that program so for example Boston University eliminated their football program several years ago so if you uh type in football be will never show up on your list and if that's a school you might be interested in then you limit yourself but if it's an absolute must certainly add in the sport um and that'll give you the schools same thing with the student interest in the activities it shows all the different uh types of um types of things that they uh they may offer on college campuses if you uh if it's an absolute must check check it off if not then skip it for now and then the last one is rooc so we're going to skip that for now and we can see we have 58 colleges that showed up in this search so we've just narrowed it down from I think about 1,600 to 15 and here they are now the cool thing once we get SAT scores in um and or PSAT scores R satat scores and your GPA is right here if we click on this scattergram all those green circles are acceptances that star is this student so that tells you whether or not you're in the ballpark for that school or not now there's no not accepted on here um there's no weight listed or deferred okay so what would happen is if we had not accepted or weight listed it would look almost like a weather map with the different colors you'd have the accepted and then the next line would be the blue weight listed and the last line of it would be the red not accepted so you can see that that star is pretty much right in the in the in the ballpark for Bridgewater State um so that would be a very realistic school okay if that star was over here someplace then that would be more of a stretch now the next thing back to the college all right so let's say that we want to take a look at Bridgewater and see what they have well let's see what else we got yeah let's look at bridgew you click on this and now um this is not their website this is still score but right here you're getting a virtual uh tour of the of the campus this is an overview of the school by the Numbers what their acceptance rate is what their average SAT scores are and remember these are averages that means there's people that are above and there's people that are below okay um we click on academics and it'll tell you what majors they offer admission will give you all the numbers of what they're looking for how much it cost to apply there their application deadlines and whether or not they test optional and then we have costs and again right now we're not going to let costs be a factor it certainly is going to be an important piece in making the decision but that decision does not have to happen until May 1st of your senior year so let's not limit yourself right now let's try to find the right school for you and then see how the financial aid process plays out and um and then make a decision on where you end up going and then the most important piece because most of your time is going to be outside of the classroom what's the student life like what's the uh the makeup of the campus what do they offer for athletics and clubs and sports and all that other stuff um so let's say that you're like you know what I'm still I'm interested in Bridgewater what we're going to do is we're going to click on follow you don't have to bother clicking on any of those other things and just click save and then when we go back to my colleges you can see Bridgewater's now showed up in your following column and again you can click on it and you can get you can uh you can get more information again if you want to go back but it's right there for you to follow if you decide that you're not interested in Bridgewater you can just click here and click on not Mark is not interested and it'll disappear if you end up thinking you're going to apply you can drag it over to the applying column and we're not doing that right now and then you have to put in all this information so we're not going to bother doing that right now um so that's how you do a search on score okay um you can do as many different search as you want if you thinking about a couple of different Majors you can do it that way if you thinking well maybe I want to apply to some two-year colleges also or even this trade programs and other things in here um so there's a lot of you can you're not limited to one search you can do as many as you want so that is um that is how you do a search on score here are just some tips for visiting colleges um don't be afraid to ask questions get on campus if they do interviews take advantage of it most schools don't take it don't do interviews anymore they don't have the time some do alumni interviews um it tends to be more of the smaller schools that uh that may want to get really get to know you and we'll do interviews but don't uh don't be afraid to do that um it's an opportunity not only for them to find out about you but for you to find out about them and any of your counselors will be more than happy to sit down and help prepare you for a college interview speak with students when you get on campus very important admissions counselors do not go to school there they don't live on campus they don't they don't know what goes on necessarily after 5:00 on a uh in the afternoon when they when they go home talk to the students ask them what the life is like there what do you do in the weekends you know you know do a lot of people go home you know you know are there things to do off campus can you get off campus you know so talk to the students they'll tell you the Good the Bad and the Ugly about the school um and help you make um make the best choice for for you um and here are some of the questions that we suggest you know admissions questions questions about the classes questions about housing um when you go for tours make sure that you ask when they're bringing you into a residence hall is this where the Freshman live because sometimes they show you the brand new building that you don't get to until you're a senior um take it from someone who used to work in housing um so it's important uh it's important that you make sure that you're asking questions that you just had to had you never had a think about before get on mail and email lists um the more times you go on a college website they track it they can see every time you're hitting their website so that that shows that you have interest in the school the big don'ts we added this this year this is act an actual account from admissions counselors of what not to do and they really say parents pay attention to this this is your child's search you can encourage them and push them behind the scenes but you should not be making the phone calls for them um and you should not be saying we are doing this um they should be saying I am doing this they the the the admissions counselors um some of these sound so crazy but um these are all true accounts so um so make sure you read that over to make sure that you are presenting yourselves in the best possible light and then marking your calendars of important upcoming um events so we have several College fears coming to the area in uh in the in the springtime we will be hosting a field trip to the Boston national college fair um which is I believe on the 28th of March um we're going to be there'll be information going out that so you'll need to sign up it's on the you know first come first serve basis um so there'll be probably close to 3 to 400 colleges from around the country actually there'll be International colleges there too so it's a great opportunity to try to hit as many places as possible but you really should have a list of schools at that point um before you go in even if it's a long list of 20 schools 25 schools going in there without some sort of list you will get lost um it's just it's like a giant trade show for the parents that have gone to trade shows um you will get lost there and you're going to notice that some of the colleges are going to have very long lines UMass Amherst usually has six to eight booths at these things and the line goes down the hall and out into the lobby you don't have to wait in that line and miss out on visiting other schools that don't have lines you can take a trip to umiam hurse it's close enough um so you got to make sure you're maximizing your time when you're at the at the uh at the college fair um College Planning Part Two for the juniors and the families will be on April 16th and as I said before we're going to cover what you should be doing over the summer um and then we have college application boot camp in in over the summer which uh will help uh organize you get your essay taken care of and um the students that have gone through that are about 95% complete with the process at that point before they even come back to school and then College Planning for seniors and their families usually late September early October um financial aid workshops are um usually in the fall and in the winter those go through uh the Massachusetts educational Finance uh Corporation um so we will send you out the information when they become available and then our local scholarship night is usually the week before February vacation um so that is uh that's the workbook here's a sample of how to fill out the activity sheet and then a glossery of terms in the back of the book um you're going to hear a lot of acronyms and words that maybe you're not familiar with it's probably back there if it's not back there let one of us know and we will add it for next year um so that is uh that's the review of the workbook um we're going to move on now to our panel discussion so if we can get the panel to come up on stage for okay so to my right your left we have uh Shannon Fernando Cole who is an admissions counselor at Bridgewater State University and she is a veteran of our College Planning night she's been with us now since we started doing this uh for eight years um so um she's the one that will be reading all the applications from this school I believe for the most part right yes pretty much yeah pretty much okay um then we have uh Jake henrix who is the assistant director of admissions from Emanuel College Cassie satana Satan satona I never stutter with that satona um who is the parent of a student that graduated last year and she has a senior that has just gone through the process um so she's going to talk a little bit about U the differences in with the two boys and we have EJ Smith who is a current Middleboro High School senior who has gone through this process who's going to share um her experience and her expertise so um we're going to start out the night uh by talking a little bit about matching yourself to the school and Shannon you want to kick it off sure can everybody hear me okay okay great um so just a couple things to think about and consider when you are starting your college search process um if you have an academic program a major in mind that is certainly a helpful place to start um you might have a couple different ideas in mind too too that's also fine um so when you're searching score to see some of those schools having an academic program in mind is helpful um also some things to consider that maybe you aren't thinking about now but you want to start thinking about is uh where is the school located do you want to be in state do you want to be out of state keeping in mind that out of state does come typically with additional fees um do you want a larger school do you want a smaller school do you want to be in a City set setting or a more Suburban um setting so those are kind of some of those important things to think about when you are looking at schools as Mr Goldman said uh cost shouldn't be a factor right now but it is certainly something to consider later on down the line um additionally looking at what these schools offer for um extracurricular activities clubs um Sports If Sports is something that's important to you um and if they offer housing on campus so those are just some kind of important factors that you want to have a general sense and idea of what you are looking for in the school so you can make sure that while you're searching and visiting these schools that they're going to have what it is that you need and are looking for J yeah I would definitely Echo a lot of uh a lot of what you said there with kind of finding the right fit for you that's I know we're going to touch on this later on but that's also the importance of visiting a lot of these schools in person um in an increasingly virtual world you know websites are great social media pages are great um emails and phone calls are great but they truly only go so far so getting out there going to a college tour going to an open house coming for a student interview which we do offer by the way um I would definitely encourage all of you to you know take the day off of school take the day off of work bite the bullet and go and do it cuz that's really where you're going to get a full kind of total experience not only from you know uh a prospective view but you can also have the chance to interact with admissions counselors interact with current students there talk with the faculty talk with you know residents life student support whatever the case is um so get out there go and visit and make yourself shine because it's the one chance that you really can do that okay so Cassie you had two boys I have two boys with very different uh um ways of doing things put it that way um so maybe you can talk about the differences of what they went through to to kind of find their schools um so as we stated you know matching your student with the school is very important um our now freshman in college his process was pretty much by the book that we um discussed we went through the whole whole timeline um he did everything regular decision um we applied visited schools did the whole you know the normal process my senior this year went through an AC um an athletic process he was being recruited um instead of picking our school in May we literally had an NCAA commitment this past November um so it's much faster paced um it's a different process because there's now we have NCAA rules involved on when he can and can't visit and how many visits he can official visits just one um you know uh so it was really catered towards what our sons needed what they wanted what their plans were for their future our oldest one is doing fabulous at UMass L he's here locally um our senior has already committed to a division one school in Delaware so it's two different you know types of school L is huge the school in Delaware is a little bit smaller about 2500 um so they fell in love with their schools individually their processes it was all different but it goes according to what your child needs what they look for their future because they're going to be the ones at that school for four years and doing that program so yeah we really had to cater towards what they needed mhm it's it is a very individual process and um you know while we're talking about size of school just because a school is on TV a lot does not mean it they're athletic programs does not mean that they are a large school um so for example Bridgewater which is a division three school is about the same size as Boston College which is a division one school um it's just because of the division that they get TV time okay was Mr dael Stonehill College is now D1 right they were D3 a few years ago D2 they were they were D3 before that though I think w't they no D D2 okay so I was I put on my TV um last winter and I see them playing St John's in basketball and I'm just like what is this um so it's it could be very misleading the University of Miami um is not a large school it's probably about 6,500 7,000 students that go to school there they got one of the best football programs in the country you always see them on TV um so you really got to be careful because what you think you're getting uh may not be what you're actually getting um and everyone wants to go far away at first as far away as I possibly can but then as you get the reality of it starts to hit kick in maybe you want the comfort of being a little bit closer to home um so uh so you got to really be careful with u with those choices that you're making right now and try to be a little bit bit realistic in the process EJ what were some of the things you did to match up with the with the colleges my first filter that went on my score count was I want to stay in New England one because housing especially when you go far away is going to be expensive Apartments way too expensive and it was important to me that I was going to stay close to family or had family nearby so if something went wrong while I was away I would have something close by and in my corner that if all goes wrong I can go back to my family and everything will be okay another big thing that you want to consider is how do you learn because a lot of the smaller schools will be more like classrooms that we have in high school while a lot of bigger class A lot of bigger schools will have things like lecture Halls rather and I know that I'm horrible with lectures I struggle with that sort of thing so I chose a lot of smaller schools or ones that did like smaller classrooms of students so you can have that more High schoolish experience of it so those were really big important factors of that yeah and it's you know schools like Bridgewater which is actually considered a large school now has been able to maintain small classroom sizes um so um it's and that's a real credit to to what they really have tried to focus on there um so those are all the types of questions you should be asking when you when you go and visit um you know what's the average class size now if you're going to be taking you know a biology class you're going to be an lecture hall that's just the way it is wherever you go um but once you get through if you're not a bio major and you once you get through that required science course then hopefully the other classes will be manageable for you um okay um the interview and the visit so we we know that Emanuel uh does visits and I was I kind of guessed that they did because you are on the smaller side you want to really get to know your students and anybody that's been on that campus before can tell you that it is a very tight-knit Community there um everyone knows everybody there um and there's a lot there are a lot of schools that do that but um did uh EJ did you go in any uh any interviews or um so none of my schools asked me for any of the interviews things or any of that and I haven't had time to do a visit for any of my schools sadly but one of the big things I found even if I wasn't able to get there physically a big thing is their social medias a lot of students or like a lot of schools will have their own social media pages and that's a good way to figure out what events that school has done in the past it's a way to good take a good look and if students will post about their opinion on the college itself so you can have that sort of experience of seeing what other students think well if you're not able to get there right so um and you still have a chance to visit before you put the deposit down oh yeah no we're trying to trying to set up a visit so and a lot of times the reality is if you're applying to schools that are far away and you hadn't had a chance to to do that visit once you get to decisions and you know which ones were interested in you you don't have to waste a trip some someplace you just say okay you know what I want to check this place out before I put down that that deposit on at the school okay um recommendation if you when you're visiting see us and get an unofficial copy of your transcript um this way you can share that with uh anybody that you might be meeting with at the college um a lot of times the admissions councils are very helpful also if if it looks like maybe you don't quite meet the their criteria um they have a vast Network and might be able to steer you in the direction of another school that is similar to them um that might be a better better fit for you uh can we talk a little bit about how to dress for a visit to campus sure so um I do always encourage students to try to dress at least semi casual I mean like some or like B some not necessarily business casual but um dress up a little bit like I wouldn't come to campus in sweatpants or pajama pants um because you want to remember that you will be meeting with professional staff members you will be meeting with admission counselors um so you want to make a good impression you want to put your best foot forward um and kind of even though it's not an interview you want to think of it like an interview and that you're seeing if this school's a good fit for you and admission staff um are going to be meeting with you and chatting with you to see if you are a good fit for their campus as well especially if they're on the more competitive side and they need to kind of make those tougher decisions um so certainly just try trying to dress a little bit more professionally um and obviously too like we live in New England and weather is not always great um but a lot of these tours take place outside so do be prepared for the elements wear layers jackets raincoats things like that um because a lot of the time unless it's a severe storm or there's a school cancellation those tours are going out rain or shine absolutely yeah I Echo a lot of what you said um it's always good to you know put your best foot forward um use your best judgment you know uh I wouldn't like you said go to a college tour or a student interview in sweatpants and a t-shirt but you know uh use your best judgment put your best foot forward and you know like I said sell yourself because it's the one chance that you get to do that I had a thought about that and I just lost it sorry I got a bit of a head cold tonight so of course it happened tonight at College Planning night so I'm not like I do also want to say one more thing too with the visits it's it is really important especially if you have like a top couple schools that you're interested in everything on paper can look kind of the same like a lot of these schools may offer very similar programs um so when you go on campus is really when you're going to get a feel for if you can see yourself there if it feels like a good fit for you and you may have a school that you absolutely love on paper and you've looked at the virtual tour and you might go on campus and not like it at all like that certainly does happen so visits absolutely can kind of make or break your decision so I always highly encourage to see as many schools as you can yeah the pictures that you always see in the view books and online and everything it's always a sunny day everyone's wearing their college sweatshirt and smiling and having a great time and um once you start doing some tours you're going to start to really see the differences and what was I thinking about that first one that was nothing compared to this one so um you really need to eat opportunity to compare and contrast uh in the event that you do meet with uh with somebody for an interview make sure that you send them a thank you note um is email okay email is okay all right um but make sure again all those things go into your file okay you're going to be a me possibly be a member of their community and they want to see that you're a thoughtful person and that you're being respectful and doing the right things okay I think you had it in your I'm sorry did somebody was somebody else um I think you had it in your workbook too but I always encourage students to have a professional email um some students open an email just for applying to colleges because you will get a lot of emails um but if you email me and your email is Dragon Slayer and you don't say who you are I don't know who you are so I can't help you um so a proper introduction and saying hello my name is so and so if you've met me before remind me where we've met because it will jog my memory and then ask any questions questions that you have I'm always happy to answer any questions but I certainly want to know who I'm speaking with and if I'm looking up stuff for your application I don't know who dragon slayer is um so yeah just definitely make sure that you are having that professional email address and introducing yourself in that email and an email is not a text message yes I can't tell you the amount of emails that I open are like one giant block of text please go through it look for spell mistakes look for grammar mistakes use a introduction etiquette thank you you know all the all the bells and whistles because can't tell you the amount of emails that we look at that are you know meant to be a text message and they're not so just all the little things add up after a while and make sure also and this is in the don'ts uh on the don'ts page that you have an appropriate email address not party girl 25 or anything like that um make sure it is an appropriate email and those are all fun to have and you know some of us probably have our own cutesy little emails but not for professional purposes so um and social media make sure that you have your social media under control because they do look sometimes and if you have all kinds of crazy pictures and inappropriate language on there that could be a big turnoff to the colleges and the universities I think one of the biggest quotes that my dad has ever said to me throughout this entire project uh process is that college is a business their first thing is that they are a business and they will try to make themselves look as pretty and pristine as possible so you're going to have to try and look and see well okay I need to compare the cons that may be out there and they're going to be hard to find but it's going to be really important when trying to make that final decision of well here's the pros here's the cons between each of these colleges so when we would do College Planning we would literally list out the schools and have the order this is number one too kind of like how you have it lined out but when we started the visits a lot of that started to shift and that's when you stay that you know the visits are important we had a school that was number one for the longest time um we were going through the recruiting process we were constantly well we weren't um our son was constantly on the phone with them they were constantly contacting him and they literally offered us you know you know Red Carpet Service and when we flew out there and he visited the school he came back and he said you just didn't connect there and we thought that's where we were going to end up cuz for we were you know on their radar for a long time um and going to social media especially when we were going through the recruiting process he had a lot of coaches from different colleges that will start following him and he could see that these colleges were following his Instagram his ex account so it is very important to utilize that as best as you can um um we started to make sure that he put all of his statistics um and his racing on there cuz we know that's what they were looking for but we also make sure he had nothing derogatory on his social media that would also turn them away so that's also a tool that I'm not sure if you guys um do checks um of social media but that's a tool I know when we were going through the recruiting process because they want you to come into that school and represent them well yep I remember my question okay um how do you set up a visit so for most schools you go right on their website um for Bridgewater we have a nice little button right in the top that says visit it'll have you create an account and this is actually something you can log back into later to check the status of your application so always good to remember your uh email and password associated with it once you create that account you can go in and select your date we offer a wide array of different um times and dates uh we do some weekends some evenings for folks um and then we have our daily campus tours we do holiday tours Friday information sessions so lot of different options for students yeah very similar with us um right on the website uh there's a visit tab right under the admissions page so you can feel free to sign up on there um we do have three daily campus tours 11:00 a.m. 1:30 p.m. and 3 p.m. um we do Saturday information sessions a couple of open houses during The Fall season too so um feel free to to check us out on there so if I'm interested in playing sports and I want to try to um talk to a coach how do I go about doing that so for BSU you would want to um reach out to one of the coaches you can find their information right on our Athletics website they do also have a brand new system that they're using this year um to have recruits fill out a form and then they'll be able to compile your information and reach out to you sometimes we're D3 school so um there are less restrictions on visits so a lot of the times the coaches will reach out and have you come to campus or come to some sort of a clinic or something like that yeah very similar here um contact information is on the website or the coach May reach out to you directly um again you know be in contact with them if you're interested they do track interest same as we do so um if you're really thinking about you know playing a varc sport with us we are D3 as well so if you're thinking about that uh that's a good option to do that very good and when you're on the campuses look around and and see what the environment looks like um I remember um I did a tour of um a college in the Worcester area I won't mention the school but the school actually still no longer exists um it uh I was on campus and we're walking around I didn't sing see a single student um and this is I was there as a guidance counselor doing a tour um and after we did the tour of the campus and we had the info session I raised my hand and I said where are the students they're like oh the wrong class right now I'm like we've been here for 4 hours I haven't seen a single student I was walking through the residence Halls every single door was closed there's no sense of community at all um and again if there might there are people that that's the environment they're looking for they've already they're there for their education they don't they're not social people and that's fine but if if that's not you that can be an an awfully tough place to spend all your downtime um if it's you know if if there's really no sense a community um I was out at um Springfield College several years ago on a tour and as soon as I stepped off the bus people were like hey how you doing hey how you I thought the admissions people were like planting these students out there knowing that all these guidance counselors were coming it was just that was just the environment um I ended up breaking off of the tour and um just kind of wandering around to see you know for myself what the campus was like and I got lost and student noticed that I'm just kind of walking around confused and they said can I help you I said yeah they took the time to walk me all the way back to the other side of Campus um really made an impression with me um and I had I was that was the last of four schools that I had visited that uh that week and uh I think that's the one that stuck out in my head all right so let's talk a little bit about the application and the essay um two very important pieces um as I mentioned we offer a college application boot camp um usually towards the end of July beginning of August um and there'll be information that will come out in the spring about that um and it's usually like a 4 day um couple hours a day um type of deal where you work with an English teacher uh for most of the time and then the LA one day you work with your school counselor um and so you're doing the essay with the English teacher and you're working with the school counselor on opening up a common applic uh common app is an application that um there's about a thousand colleges now that subscribe to it so it's one application it's one essay and you can just say submit it to this school submit it to that school um so not every school is on it but for the most part the most of the schools our students tend to apply to are on the common application um so when you uh we will go line by line through that application with you um and by the time you're done you will be about 95 % complete with the whole college application process you'll have a essay that's been approved by your English teach by the English teacher and an application that's been reviewed by your counselor um so if we can talk a little bit EJ went to boot camp this past year um so she can talk a little bit about your experience there go to the boot camp it is it it has helped me so much with everything I'm not really one for English like classes I don't don't like writing essays but there you are paired up with a group of other students and you work with uh one of the ELA teachers and they sit you down and they help you brainstorm ideas for your essay they help you come up with different ways to start your essay they help proofread your essay they can help you like come up with different things to put in your essay they can help you rephrase things they are such a useful resource to have during that week and with the teachers helping you set up all the Common App stuff it just makes the whole process run a lot smoother it has help it just helps so much to go to that and I would not have gotten my essay done as well as I did without it yeah and really I mean no one likes to come to school in the summertime and that includes us also um but it it makes our job easier too when we come back because when you come back especially if you're taking heavy duty classes the last thing you wanted this process is like taking a whole another class so if you can knock all this stuff off in one week and not even a full week it's really it's um three of the days are two hours the day with us with the school counselors is three because the application is a long one um but you come back all you have to do is focus on your academics and enjoy your senior year you know so it is really and and it like I said it makes it easier for the student it makes it a lot easier for us because when we meet individually with the student in the fall and a meeting that would normally take an hour and 20 minutes now takes 20 20 minutes so we can get all the students in and out a lot faster and get them rolling on getting those applications out um so um let's talk a little bit about the applications um and what you see on your end when they come through to you so um the application process is traditionally you know nowadays online I don't know many schools that have a paper application at this point so um for most schools you can apply via the Common App which again as Mr Goldman said is just a large application that can apply to many different schools um so that's certainly an easy way to do it if you know you're applying to multiple schools if you're someone who maybe is only applying to two or three schools you can certainly apply to individual schools on their website so BSU has our own application as well as common app either one is totally fine you don't need to submit both just one is good um be aware of the different deadlines um for some schools they have early decision there might be two different waves of the early decision an early decision is typ is contractually binding um so if you get accepted you are committing to that University so certainly be aware of that um then there's early action so that's a non-committal um way to show interest and apply early you hear back earlier and you're typically not um rejected in that phase you would be deferred to regular decision if you are not meeting admission standards um and then there's the regular decision deadlines every school has either a November 1st or 15th deadline so certainly be familiar with those deadlines and dates for early action and then there's regular decision there's nothing wrong with applying regular decision if you are someone who needs to wait needs a little bit more time um if you're somebody who's gone to boot camp and is ready to apply early action certainly do it because there's really no downside to doing it um be familiar with the schools that are requiring sat or acts for BSU we are test option um we're also essay optional uh letters recommendation are also optional the only things you really need including if you're applying early action are the application itself and then your high school transcript so as long as you can get us that information um by the November 15th deadline you are good um I think that's kind of like generally speaking what I wanted to cover yeah absolutely yeah um I can touch on our application a little bit we're exclusively on common app so we don't charge the fee um it's free to apply with us which is always a good thing saves you about 50 bucks right off the bat which is always nice um we do offer paper applications but we don't encourage them just apply online it saves you a lot of time saves you a lot of stress just do the online application so we don't typically encourage that um but we do have a few different decision plans so we do have early decision um as you had mentioned That's The Binding deadline November 1st meaning that if you apply and you are accepted you have to attend that Institution we also have early action one um which is November 1st as well we have early action two on December 15th and then our regular decision on February 15th so um pretty pretty seamless pretty self-explanatory there we do require a couple letters of recommendation and we are test optional too so I will say too be even though it's it's online people can still make mistakes on their application I have students who spell their name wrong or put the wrong address um so that's certainly something to be very aware of when you're applying it is a process I mean we can do it but it is a little bit challenging um when the record your files already created to go in and change that information so it's just easier if you take an extra minute when you are applying to make sure that everything is submitted correctly and it's way way too early to start filling out applications right now if you start filling out applications now you're filling out applications for the this Falls admission the applications don't usually turn over until August 1st anybody that's planning on attending boot camp our recommendation is do not open up a common app account prior to boot camp we will do it with you because once you open it up if you make a mistake on it it's nearly impossible to get in touch with somebody from common app to try to fix it so we will help guide you through that step by step um also um talking about Bridgewater we host an instant decision day right here at Middleboro high school with Bridgewater usually in November so anybody that's interested in applying to Bridgewater State will uh they apply before the early deadline um and we um and then they sign up with us in our office um to go through an instant decision day so what happens is um the admissions another admissions counselor from Bridgewater comes in here and she meets with each student that signed up for for about 10 minutes and they walk out with an acceptance letter in their hand or if they're not quite ready for Bridgewater with instructions of how to get to Bridgewater but usually it's an acceptance letter um if they listen to us in our advising um so um so that's nice in November when people are just starting to submit applications actually have one in your back pocket uh knowing that you got you got uh something even if it's a backup for you um so um a couple of other things too with the early decision you're not going to find many uh school counselors that are real crazy about early decision as um as these guys were saying it is a binding contract that you are signing with the college you are only allowed to apply to one college early decision uh and they will find out I had a student many years ago who applied early decision to Bentley and to bapson and she was a tennis player and I happen to know the coach at bapson College the tennis coach she had done an overnight with the team and and spent went to a meet and all a match and everything and it was all good to go and then they found out that she applied to Bentley and then both schools rescinded their offers to her um so and the other thing too with early decision is you are not going to find out about financial aid for months later and sometimes the schools might use that as a little leverage say well you know what they're going to you know we can try to squeeze them a little bit more and get a little bit money out of them because they're making that commitment to us ahead of time so be very careful with early decision it is I have to sign that contract also so I once I sign it once I can't sign a second one um so I can't submit your stuff it won't allow me to submit your stuff um be very careful early action apply to as many schools as you want early action there's no harm in that and as uh um Shannon was saying um if you just not ready to do this don't rush just because a lot of people are doing it doesn't mean you have to do it okay uh you know it's if you're a strong candidate for the school you're going to get in regular decision um so you just got to be real careful uh real careful about that because the one thing you don't want to do is Rush do sloppy work because you got a deadline November 1st because that doesn't help your candidacy when you put in an application that's either incomplete or has errors in it or it just doesn't look it doesn't present you in the in the perfect light um so uh just just kind of keep that in the back of your mind um we did that we did that um and rolling admissions we didn't talk about rolling admissions so a lot of schools have not as many but there's schools that have rolling admissions so um you Mass Dartmouth has a rolling admissions deadline that means you can apply anytime you can apply in August of your you know after you've graduated from high school um so the positive to Rolling admissions is always a place to apply to the downside is with rolling admissions the application comes in they read it they make a decision they get the next one they read it to make a decision with a with an actual deadline once that November 1st deadline comes they take that pool of candidates they read and they make a decision on that pool who the best candidates are for them um so getting it in early for for a an established dead line doesn't matter okay it just you just need to get it in by that deadline but with the rolling if you wait too long and it's a very popular school they could fill up very early and just not have any more room for you um so it's kind of the dos and the don'ts there um as far as the Common App versus the college's own application um being part of the Common App family is optional they don't the colleges don't have to do that so if they didn't want to put their name on it they wouldn't so you don't get any bonus points using their own application over the Common App do yourselves a favor save the time and just do the Common App and knock off as many schools through the Common App as you possibly can um there's no sense of having to write more essays and um and have to just keep repeating the same information because you're using an individual application um and uh Cassie you want to talk a little bit about about uh how it went with the application process with your boys for the College Planning and the application process yeah yeah so um like I said my my older one he did regular decision you know like I said he wasn't in a big hurry you know um so we had time you know it was it was pretty if you stick to the program and the the timeline everything will go fine um the boot camps everything super helpful um both of them were required to go because my husband and I our degrees are not in English so they needed that work um everything went a little bit faster with my current senior um because we had to get everything in very fast um but he he worked well he works well under that um we were able to reach out to the counseling staff and everything to get everything that we needed his um unofficial transcripts and everything in place um so both in my opinion were seamless processes they were different processes but the school worked very well with us when we needed um information right away um I suggest like I said this College Planning from the junior year on was what helped make both of the boys successful um in their college choices and the application process so just stick with it like you said it's like a whole other class in itself but they have it outlined in such a way to make it more you know make it easier for the families and less of a stress so yeah addj about what specifically like just the application yeah the application you talked a lot about it already yeah so I mean the application process itself I know that one of uh my colleges had to be done externally they didn't do common app so that was its own separate thing where they'll ask you to make your own separate account with that school and then you'll have to V their own application they'll ask you a whole different thing of questions but doing the application on Common App is genuinely just makes everything a whole lot easier it's one thing you answer your questions and then everybody just sends out the same document to all the schools and it's genuinely a lot easier I mean my applications I applied um early action for all of my colleges so I've already gotten two of my colleges back I've gotten sorry I've gotten three of them them back out of the five that I applied to and then I should be getting another one this month so I think that early action is probably the best way to go at least for me it was but again early decision was kind of one of those that I was shaky on and yeah yeah yeah um anybody here interested in nursing if is anyone out there interested in nursing that's an early application regardless if they say it's an early application or not um nursing is a very um High demand major now and um there's just not enough places to get trained in it so this the spots fill up very fast so that you always want to get those applications out early the other application we didn't mention was the priority one and a lot of times those nursing ones are what they call Priority um they're not they similar to early action um but it's just specific usually to like a major or something like that um so uh with that being said um anything else the panel would like to share before we go to questions um about the application common app is very easy um and if you are someone who likes a lot of different schools it can be easy to apply to a lot of schools but something to know is more is not necessarily better um and it does get very costly very quickly especially with you know usually minimum $50 application fee if that ever is a concern too um you can certainly talk to guidance you the guidance staff usually has some resources or waivers for uh students you can also email admissions directly if Financial um if there's Financial need for a waiver a lot of schools can grant that there might also be certain like if you go on tour if you're an athlete um sometimes they have different waivers so certainly look into that um and then being aware of when schools for the essay when schools require that um something I always encourage so as I said we're essay optional but I certainly have had had uh many events where I've worked with students on their essays and I think something important to remember is keeping the essay about yourself uh sometimes students get wrapped up in a story that involves other people and we kind of lose the message um so what I what I want to know about a student if I am reading an essay is about you specifically um and what that means how it has shaped you how it will help you moving forward uh things like that so that's something to keep in mind as well as you are working through those essays to keep the message about yourself because ultimately that's what we want to know is about you and in your own word they can tell when it's been written by somebody that's not 18 or 17 years old or a computer or right AI okay it's okay they know that you are at a certain level as far as writing goes okay but they want they're interested in um in getting to know you through that I mean your grades your activities you know that it that all speaks it's a piece to the puzzle um but to be able to express yourself in there you know I've always been told that a well-written essay if you're on the cusp of getting into a school a well-written essay can put you over the top every time a big thing that it is is that on your application you're pitching the student in your essay you're pitching the person it's who you are and how you're going to impact their Community it's how you're going to interact with other students how you're going to interact with your teachers this is no longer you pitching yourself as a student or as what your academics are it's how are you as a person are you fun do you want to go hang out and with friends after school are you going to try to set up a club are you going to join Sports it's what are your interests what motivates you as a person it's really important yeah and you we've always said you know if if you're if you're known as a funny person it's okay to interject a little bit of humor into your essay but if humor is not what you're known for now's not the time to test that out I also want to recognize too that everybody in this crowd is in a very different spot right now and this is a very arduous process at times so some people may be feeling excited some may be feeling nervous some may be feeling completely overwhelmed and uncertain and all of that is okay just know that we're not as scary as we look no this table is here to help you um so get out there ask questions get information because it's the only time in your life that you get to do something like this yeah and that goes for your counselors also um that's why we're here you know I mean a lot of you didn't see a lot of us you know early on in your high school careers because you took care of your business and you didn't need to see us this is where we spend a lot of our time um with the career in the College Planning piece um and we have um we have very good counselors in our office that are very well-versed um in this process and um can really help ease this the stress of this and walk you through it step by step that goes for the parents too sometimes the parents call stressed out going oh my God we got deadlines coming up and they haven't done anything and we've already like sent stuff out for the for the kids um so you know if if a if a quick get together um is what it takes for you know for the three or four of us to sit down and and kind of go over things and let know exactly where we're at just email or call your counselor and we'll be happy to do that for you another big thing on applications is you want to make sure and check how many letters of recommendation you need because most of mine only needed one but one of mine needed two of them and I had to go scrambling for another teacher and I felt so bad but make sure to check exactly how many letters of recommendation your college requires and don't send them more than they need just send if they're asking for one send them for one if they're asking for two send them two but don't send them more they don't need more stuff to read yeah that's true um several years ago Notre Dame actually put in their application that um they want two letters of recommendation and if you send more than two and noting in your file that you don't follow directions so here you are thinking oh just throw an extra one in there read it don't read it whatever you know and the first line you're in the folder when the admissions committee opens it up says applicant doesn't follow directions so um it's all if if you want to send an extra one if you really think it's that necessary to send it then call the admissions office and ask if it's okay to do that and they will tell you yes or no and just follow their their guidance on that um but usually in most cases one will take care of it for you uh and it will tell you right on the application how many that they're looking for so also this process is an individual process kind of like you said everybody's going to be in a different phase so don't compare where you're at to where other people are um I see it a lot too at College fairs uh students that come in groups of friends and they won't go and see the schools that they want cuz their friends are visiting other tables so don't be afraid to break off and go visit at those tables especially like when you if you go on the field trip to the Boston uh National Fair because there are so many schools there that if you are sticking with your friend groups you're not going to get to see the schools that you want to see um and also as a student this is your kind of beginning into that that step into Independence um do not get me wrong if a family member calls and has questions I'm more than happy to answer those questions but if I am getting questions from a parent about a student's application one uh legally there are only certain things that I can share and two I it raises my eyebrows a little bit because I'm wondering well why didn't the student call me about these issues um so if you the student have questions about your application about admissions please call or email us um because it's much more beneficial for us to have that conversation with you and it's a good kind of practice in getting comfortable with making those conversations I know that maybe the phone is not um when it's not texting it's maybe not as familiar and not as comfortable but um it's a good step in kind of getting that practice as well and off of what she said you know we allowed our boys to have to lead the way to where they wanted to go so they did spend a lot of time speaking to the different colleges we would step in we would always like level set with them after they had a discussion or chat with someone um what was the discussion about or we will just you know give give them some guidance but we really chimed in and sat down as a family especially when it came time to making financial decisions because we're the finances in that decision and um you know and just overall you know this would be a good fit for you because you know they are 17 and 18 years old and they may see a school and like oh that's a great fun place to be it's like okay that may not be you know the best place to be at this time but we still let lead the way and they made good decisions for them and we just made sure that we sat back and supported them and gave them additional guidance along the way so and like I said with both of our boys two completely different institutions two completely different kids and we just had to let them leave where they wanted to go well thank you all right so I do promise you that the second Workshop will be shorter okay this is the long one um the next one will probably be about an hour and and the third one will probably be about an hour also so what we're going to do now is my lovely assistant Mr Sylvia has a microphone and if there's any questions in the audience he's happy to pass that mic along to you for our panel I have a question for Shannon and Jake with test optional and submit test can you guys talk a little bit about how you approach the review of application for a test submitter or a test optional app as well as consideration for scholarships yeah great question thank you um so for us we as I said are test optional um so it truly is up to the student if they want to submit it um if they do submit it and it does not help them we will kind of turn a blind eye to it and not use it so we're trying to maximize admissibility um we do offer Merit Scholarships that do not require the SAT um to be submitted at this point um so that's not a factor and the consideration for that we're basing it off of GPA so students that are recalculated at a 3.4 GPA or higher are getting a merit scholarship um so yeah so in terms of that submitting or not if students are on the cusp um typically we're looking at about a 3.0 if they're on the cusp of that 3.0 maybe consider sending those test scores and again if it doesn't work to their benefit we just don't use it yeah that's a good question thank you for for for bringing that up we're very similar um we're test optional for every program so that's including nursing and everything here um we are not test blind necessarily so if you do submit the scores we will look at them so I always try to tell students think about the type of student that you are when you're submitting that we look for as well-rounded applications as possible so not just the grades not just necessarily that test score but everything kind of rolled into one um so think about the type of student that you are and think about if this really is going to push me over the edge if it's really going to add anything extra um in terms of the GPA we're about a B+ average so we're 34 35 somewhere in there um but like I said we look for as well-rounded as possible other questions we did that good a job up up front Mr Sylvia I need my steps don't be shy for the admissions counselors what is your biggest pet peeve on applications great question me first yeah go right ahead good question my biggest pet peeve is errors in the essay and I know it seems a little bit nitpicky I know it seems a little bit harsh but I always try to think of it through the lens of if you submit an essay with your application that's loaded with errors that's loaded with wrong formatting or maybe misspelled words or whatever that sends an enormous I don't care and that's something that obviously nobody wants to submit or nobody wants to read because if you do it in high school when you're submitting your college application you're probably going to do that same thing in college and if you do the same thing in college you probably going to do it as an adult so that's really my biggest pet peeve is formatting and misspelled words in the essay go through it multiple times give it to everybody that you know get feedback take a red pen to it rip it up and try again but that will set me off quite a bit um because we're essay optional I I I don't know that I have many pet peeves I think when when students aren't taking the time and attention to detail with the general information about themselves their names their address things like that um that certainly is a little bit um cumbersome to have to go and undo um another Factor so we have um we're on an app called zi um so if you have other schools that you're looking at they also have some of them have this app and it's a great way to connect with students uh get more information look for roommates it's also a great way to connect with Admissions and I see a lot of the times in the general chat like we can see all of that messaging we're not going like admission counselors are not going in there and answering them but I'm seeing a lot of like conversations about how long it takes for the decision to come back and those students are chatting about it amongst each other and not coming to admissions I would love for students to come and and chat with me individually because I can look up the status of their application um I think that's I guess a pet peeve is when you know there's that frustration of how long it's taking without the accountability of like reaching out and saying like hey what is the status of my application because we can look that up we can tell students hey we're actually missing this information and we emailed you about it um and sometimes those things are missed um so I guess that in a way is a pet peeve of mine if you have questions about the status of your application you can either check the status for most schools on their website or you can call or email Admissions and they can give you an update I can tell you as a person that proofreads a lot of applications the lack of capitalization drives me nuts because I know our English teachers teach it um and it's just amazing first names proper nouns um starting of a sentence um just it just I you know it it is a giant text message um and uh and also if you're communicating with with people don't address them by their last name okay you know either Mr Miz or if they've introduced themselves by their first name that's fine but not like hey Goldman um you know that just it's it just I know that's kind of the culture right now but it for you're dealing with different generations and it's disrespectful to the some of the other to the older Generations so you just want to present yourself in the most proper way possible also check your emails I've had students that have sent multiple emails to multiple admissions counselors and they don't forget to take the other admission counselor's name out um so that doesn't leave a great impression so so just check your emails make sure you're addressing it to the right person before we continue can I just talk to you [Music] quick you are I just had a question C is that going include any gu application scholarships okay that's the good question um you'll notice that we really didn't talk much about scholarships or financial aid tonight and that was purposeful um because there was nothing we can do about either one of those things for quite some time um and again this is a long process and the reason we broke it up into three workshops was so we weren't going to overwhelm you with all this information so the short answer to that is we do not cover anything about financial ler scholarships during boot camp that is strictly just the opportunity to get the application and the essay completed um the financial aid stuff does not begin until October 1st that's you there's been delays the last two years because the government changed the forms but that's traditionally been the when the FAFSA form is available so in the third Workshop we'll start to talk about financial aid um and then what the and the financial aid workshops that are offered to help walk you through that process and for the local scholarships that begins that process begins in February of the senior year I haven't even gotten anything for scholarship so on occasion you will get you guys will get random emails from our office about scholarships that just come into us through the mail or through email and we'll send those right out and if you want to apply apply if you need transcript just ask but as far as the local scholarship stuff our scholarship book where we have our Awards tonight in the spring for the seniors that all starts in February also just uh uh quick uh every uh senior is can join our scholarship Google Classroom so I know our scholarship coordinator Mrs Bretton has a Google classroom for scholarships explicitly so and I know um because I had a senior last year so I went through scholarship night um and Mr Goldman stated that there like scholarships left on the table and I was blown away by that that you know we applied for everything that he qualified for just do it you know and I think we walked away with three scholarships from that night so when you get to your senior year do not be shy about the scholarships the local area scholarships do not the this town really puts in for the students here at Middleboro high school so make sure that you apply apply apply I think we had students at eight nine scholarships and that really you know helped us a lot at L and we really appreciated it so when we get to that point that you do the financial regular scholarships do not be shy about it going there and you know when application was when I was a scholarship coordinator my very first year one of my students got over $14,000 in local scholarships and part of the reason other than being a good Stu strong student was he just took the time to fill out the applications um and we've made the process a lot easier it's digital now um it's a Dropbox so you fill up the application for the most part you fill up the application once and then go to the Dropbox select the scholarship print it select the next one print it so you don't have to keep doing it over and over again we start the reason we start before February vacation is so you have that time over February vacation to go through it and do it and it's not a hard process it it does not take a lot of time it's just getting motivated to do it some of the scholarships have no criteria it's just open to any Middleboro high school student and then we'll get like five people apply for it we should have like like 80 people applying for it you know um yeah it's and I mean so I mean it all adds up I me some of them are small some of them might be like $500 but some of them can be upwards of you know of you know 89,000 so um it's just it's just the motivation of getting it done and that's just the local stuff if you go to our website um and you look under some of the scholarship links there's all kinds of stuff you can start researching now if you want to for just stuff that's out there any other questions see I told you we weren't going to talk about financial aid here we are talking about financial aid all right well if there's no more questions we'll be around for a few more minutes if anybody has something here and ask um in the meantime I just want to thank our present Shannon Fernando Cole from Bridgewater State Jake Kendricks from Emanuel College Cassie satana our parent and EJ Smith also would like to thank thank Scott hogen our custodian our head custodian his staff and Nick Katra our Tech Guy for uh making all this happen for us and of course thanking all of you for coming out tonight excuse me drive safely and we will see you soon good night