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Video-Count: 1
Video-1: youtube.com/watch?v=o7wV0RHWciU

NOTE
MEETING SECTIONS:

Part 1 (Video ID: o7wV0RHWciU):
- 00:00:00: Introduction: College Planning Night Part Two Overview
- 00:05:40: Finding the Right College Fit: Niche and College Scorecard
- 00:08:51: Common Data Set: Understanding Aid & Admission Factors
- 00:11:19: Exploring Colleges Through Social Media & IEP Considerations
- 00:14:49: First Year Experience Programs: Finding a Sense of Belonging
- 00:15:59: Navigating the College Application Process Overview
- 00:17:08: Letters of Recommendation: Tips, Info Sheets & Activities
- 00:22:21: Crafting a Compelling Essay: Tips and Common Mistakes
- 00:25:24: College Interviews, Test Scores, and Application Strategies
- 00:28:26: Application Count, Realistic Fits, and Major Competitiveness
- 00:31:04: Senior Year Application Cycles: Understanding Key Deadlines
- 00:33:48: Completing Applications:  College Boot Camp Resource
- 00:36:00: Paying for College: FAFSA, CSS, and External Scholarships
- 00:39:16: Public Comment: Undecided Major Acceptance & Financial Aid
- 00:40:31: Conclusion: Thank You and Final Remarks


Part: 1

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All right, guys. Um, welcome. Um, this is our college planning night part two workshop for you guys for the junior class. Um, this is going to be a follow-up from our last session that giving you guys the uh basics of what

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you need to be doing between January to April for your college planning process. This is going to cover everything that you guys need to be doing between now and the start of the school year. Um, there's a lot of content here. Um, so if you guys have questions afterwards too,

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um, hold questions till the end. Um, and we'll get started. So, some of the things that you guys should have already done at this point in the college planning process is registering for the SATs or ACTs. um actively participate in the course

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selection process. Um making sure that you guys have a rigorous senior year schedule, starting your college search on SCORE or College Board's Big Future, and really starting to build that beginner list of colleges that um you want to explore or and possibly apply

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to. Um, and then hopefully you guys have already started reaching out to admissions offices to begin um, setting up tours with them cuz that's going to be one of the biggest takeaways that you can get from this college plan process is tour these schools as frequently as

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possible to get a feel for if it's the right fit for you. Okay? And then making sure that you guys identify a college fair to attend to. the junior class um has one that's for free right now and it's going to be that Tuesday we come back from April break. It's at the I think it's the Boston

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Convention Center. Um but they're going to have literally hundreds of uh colleges to check out um at different booths and get information as well as to meet with admissions officers there too. Now, some of the information that we're going to cover in this session and what

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you guys can be doing between now and the the start of the school year um is really about just continuing to fine-tune that that college list. Um we're going to go over some tools that will help you guys narrow down um and and figure out how to search for school

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in a little bit more depth than just simply googling it or using scoreboards big future. um starting to get the process going on your letters of recommendation and utilizing the the Google classroom that we have available to juniors that

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has all the appropriate forms for that and then of course finishing up your SATs or ACTs, preparing for fall retest. Um and then starting the official application process and being as prepared as possible for when those applications open at the start of the

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school year. Um, and then we'll touch a little bit on how you guys can start the application process for scholarships, too. Okay. Now, at the first workshop, we talked about what it means to find um a good match for for you to a school,

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right? and the junior class um of any of our junior students share this with any of their uh parents. They actually had a admissions officer from virtual state come in earlier this week and share the process of how to find a good match to yourself. Some of the things to look for

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um are what kind of size campus are you looking for? Are you looking for a small school, a big school, somewhere in the middle? Are you looking for a school that's in the city, in the suburbs, in a more rural setting? open for a school that has a a big sports scene or extracurricular activity um scope. Um

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and a lot of this stuff can be um discovered as you guys do more and more tours. Um you guys do get two days per year that you can actually get excuse to go on college visits. And so my advice to all my students is simply stack the

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days whenever possible. Try and tour one school in the morning. Um maybe you go see Emanuel College in the morning, um smaller school, school that's in the city, and then balance it out. Find a different school in the afternoon that

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maybe touches on some different features. So that way you guys can um utilize your time as best possible and kind of get a feel for are you guys looking for more small school, big school, city school, whatever it might be. Um

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and one of the things that we as counselors are always cautioning our students against is some students and it it's really hard to fight the uh this mindset too is you guys might have the idea of like this this one school that's your dream school like you have to go

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there like this is where you were born to go to. It's great to have the aspirations of a certain school that you want to be going to, but we're just asking is that you temper your expectations because there's there's more than one school that would be a

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perfect fit for you. Um, and nothing's worse than when somebody puts all their eggs in one basket and they're they're absolutely devastated when they don't get into that one school and just feel like it's it's all for not. Um, but on the flip side of it too, plenty of

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students get into that dream school and then financially it just doesn't work. Maybe there's not enough financial aid awarded. You aren't able to accumulate enough scholarships and grants um and then you're looking at maybe paying $100,000 to go to Northeastern

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um out of pocket or going a more affordable route that will actually give you um some good opportunities as well. So, um, as you guys think about what it means to find that right fit for you, um, there are a couple websites I want to really reinforce you guys to utilize.

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The first one is Niche. Niche is a a really great one because these are studentbased reviews. Students go on there and they rate their schools based on um, academics, value campus um, like how safe students feel, how they like

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the professors, what the athletics are like. Um and then on top of that too, students actually share their honest opinion in the review section. So you can get a lot of um anecdotal um piece of evidence there of what students

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experiences are like at these colleges, but it's important to remember these are just opinions, right? Um so that's one major one. The other one that is um a really terrific resource is the college scorecard. So about 11 years

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ago, um the Department of Education really um cracked down on colleges to be more transparent with colleges about what students are looking at in terms of outcomes. What's really helpful about this website is that it looks at

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graduates and and tells you what their median salary is over a 5year span. So based off this information, this is actually from Worester State's business uh program. It says that students on average graduate um and within five years are making about $66,000 a year.

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And it compares that as well to the median national average to about 68. So it's a little bit below, but as you guys can also see too, it's they have 144 graduates. So it's a very strong program. If you're looking at a school and it says that they have six graduates

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last year, just exercise caution because um colleges are getting absorbed up by others more and more frequently and you don't want to sign up for a college for a specific major that winds up getting cut after the first year or two. Okay.

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Um, and the other really cool feature about too is that you can go into these um, specific colleges and these majors and use the compare feature to really get a feel for which um, which colleges are going to offer you the most bang for

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your buck based off um, that program. So, at the bottom of this page, you guys can see this is um, mechanical engineering um, and we have four different schools. UMass LOL, UMass Dartmouth, WPI, Northeastern. I think a lot of people at first glance would immediately say well Nor Eastern and WPI

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are easily far above far and away the best options obviously um but when you actually look at it and it's not too surprising to us as counselors as well UMass LOL is an excellent engineering school and they're probably at a fraction of the price too. So, I would

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just say utilize this um just to explore, make sure that the program that you're seeking out um at that specific school is one that's going to be setting you up for success long term. And within that college scorecard, they also have more information, too, about um about

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net prices, um what the what you might be looking at in terms of paying based off your income. like they might say if your income as a family is between 50 and $75,000, this is the average uh net price that students wind up having to

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pay. Okay. The common data set, if you want something that will put you to sleep, the common data set is that it's 50 pages of institutional data um that colleges report on. U most colleges

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u provide this um information just through doing a quick Google search. And I'm I'm not saying that you guys need to be going in and reading every single page. Just take the information that's most uh relevant and helpful for you. So what I find to be most helpful when it

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comes to common data set is um the idea of need-based aid versus meritbased aid or scholarships. So need-based aid is um the amount of financial aid that a college is going to award you um based off your family's financial situation

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and that will be covered through FAFSA which we'll cover at a later point too. Um but need um non-nebased or scholarship is that's based off your academics, your GPA, your extracurriculars. Um may maybe you play

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um an instrument and that college is really looking for more clarinet players. They might even offer scholarships for that too. Um so just try to find a good balance between it. Um because if you if your family does pretty well financially and you only

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apply to need-based um aid schools, you might be looking at paying a much higher overall cost. Um and something that we'll be sharing out to over the next uh month or so is some schools that are um pretty generous with merit scholarships

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too. Um the other very helpful piece of information um when it comes to common data set is um the importance of admission factors. There are a lot of different pieces that go into your application process that we'll cover. Um, but if you go into the common data site, it'll tell you exactly what is

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most important to them when they're making their decisions as admissions officers of whether or not they're going to accept you. Um, unsurprisingly, grade point average and your course selection or the rigor of your classes are going to be the most important. Um,

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that's because you're going to school to be a student. They want to make sure that how you perform at high school is um is strong and going to be hopefully a predictor of how you're going to perform at their college. Now, a couple other ways that you guys

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can kind of be exploring colleges. Um social media, um Instagram, YouTube, um colleges are on Snapchat, whatever it might be. There are a lot of different options to explore through um through social media and simply subscribing,

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following, engaging in any of their posts is a great way to um what the colleges call demonstrate interest. Um colleges keep track of every time that uh you signed up for an email listing for them and you clicked into that email or every time you went onto their

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website. Maybe they saw that so and so went on to the the nursing school page for um for UMass Dartmouth 25 times last week that admissions officers probably think, "Okay, this student is very interested

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in us." Um, I've even had some students that they um hadn't demonstrated enough interest and so the colleges had reached out saying like, "We're we're willing to accept you, but we we want to see you come in for a college interview or or tour with us." Um, and maybe based off

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the fact that they hadn't demonstrated that interest ahead of time. So, this is one of the easiest ways to just kind of jump into it and you can find out pretty quickly if it's um if it's a legit um school website. Um, usually they'll have some some information that will be tied

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to their u pages that might say like.edu um to verify that it is a um an official WPI or UMass LOL um program. Now, keep in mind too these colleges um as they post all this stuff, you can get some good information on what the campus is

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going to look like, what kinds of programs they have, but at the end of the day, they're sales people. they're trying to get you to pay for college and go to them so that way they can they can sell their product. So, just keep that in mind. Um, maybe balance it out with also maybe try and find some students

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that might have their own YouTube or Instagram accounts where they're posting all things UMass Boston or Westfield. I don't know why I'm saying all the Massachusetts schools right now. Uh, but just for an idea of that, um, you can get some good information from that. But

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once again, it's all anecdotal and they may exaggerate cases at times too. So take it all with a grain of salt. Um, and then the other piece when it comes to social media is that it goes both ways. You can utilize it, they can utilize it as well, too. So, be mindful

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of what you post because college admissions officers think that it's completely fair game to see uh that students applied and start looking up their own social media pages and see if there's anything that's concerning that would make them think that you know what, so and so may not be a great fit

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for us um cuz they're posting whatever inappropriate thing. Um so, just be mindful of what you post. Remove anything that you think could be detrimental to your your college application. And then as it relates to um finding the right fit with um IEPs and 504 plans,

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all colleges offer supports to students that are currently on IEPs or on a 504 plan. Um but that may look different depending on the school. So uh be proactive with it if you're already on an IEP or 504 plan. reach out to the um

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students with disability services office at that school and figure out how do they support students with um with accommodations or specialized instruction needs. Okay. And then the last piece as far as it goes when it comes to finding your

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finding your fit um first year experience programs. We're seeing a record number of students that are transferring out of schools. Um and a lot of that can be traced back to they just feel no sense of belonging at that college. Um, so really do your research to figure out how does the school that

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you're interested in try to immerse you into that college. What kind of seminars do they have you guys do? Do they do an option for community based housing? Um, maybe if you're really interested in community service, you can sign up to live on a floor with all students that are doing community service efforts. Um,

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and they they may even have one that's like geared towards like athletics, too. So, um, really try to ask admissions officers about that whether you're on tours or you're looking into a school. Um, that's a really important piece to make sure that you guys enjoy your time

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there, get the most out of it, and you're not wanting to transfer after a really short amount of time. So, the application process for college, there are a lot of pieces that go into it. Um, some of the things that you guys going to have to do, obviously, it's

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your own common application. Um, you're going to have to work on your own essay. And then there will be other parts that will also need to be completed to fill out your application. um things like letter is a recommendation um your official transcript your school profile if um if you're looking to go

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into engineering but your school doesn't offer an AP engineering class they wouldn't hold that against you kind of thing all right um your test scores um whether that's SAT or ACT and then ultimately the the acceptance criteria like you guys were seeing with that

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common data set the colleges look at all this information um some are more important than others Um, but it it's funny. They did a recent survey um to kind of see what um students and parents thought were the most important when it came to applying to colleges. And I think the the number

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one and two were like test scores and extracurriculars. Um but in reality it was actually GPA, course rigor, um your essay too. Um but it's going to fluctuate depending on the school too. Now, the letter of recommendation, um,

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which is a very central point to your application. This is, as some admissions officers will call it, this is like the the season or the salt and pepper to your application. They're looking for who you are as a person. They want to see a teacher that knows you well. Write about

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anecdotal, specific examples of who you are as a student and as a person. Okay? So when you guys are thinking about who you want to write your letter of recommendation, keep that in mind. You want to be a teacher that knows you well. You want it to be a teacher preferably in the field that you want to

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pursue. Um doesn't have to be, but it really strengthen your application. If you're thinking about going to nursing, the teacher that you're asking for a letter recommendation should probably be a science teacher, maybe a math teacher, but it should probably be in that STEM field. Um most colleges will only

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require one letter. Um however some do require a second one. So for instance MIT is notorious for um always requiring two letters recommendation um from teachers and they've been specific that they wanted to be somebody that's in the STEM field and also somebody that's humanities based so that way they get a

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good well-rounded picture of who you are as a student across all domains, right? Um and to assist with um the letters of recommendation when you guys go to um reach out to teachers um there's a letter of recommendation

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info sheet that you can actually complete and hand to your teacher um as well as your counselor that kind of gives them extra ammo to really talk you up and paint you in the best picture cuz your teachers, your counselors, we document all of our our meetings and everything. We we keep track of all that

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stuff and we we um do our best to remember every single thing that that you guys have ever done in high school, but sometimes we do need um a little bit of a a memory jogger of certain things. So, this is your um almost like a brag sheet to share with the teacher to make sure that they're hitting on the most

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important things that you think um you want them to to highlight when when you go to apply to colleges. Um, so for instance, one of the things that they talk about in that letter recommendation info sheet is, "What is your most proud accomplishment in my class?" I see a lot of students that just write, "I got an

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A." Cool. That's fine. But that does nothing for the admissions officer to really understand um what you're like in terms of your behaviors in the classroom, your study habits. Um whereas if you said,

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"Yeah, I I took um AP chemistry. I bit off more than I could chew. It was really hard. I thought it was going to be a lot easier, but I stuck with it. Um had a rough term one, but you know, I I used my success blocks, my directed studies. Um I maybe I formed like a

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study group with some of my peers after school, too. And maybe it wasn't the prettiest grade, but I I worked really hard to get that grade up to a B or whatever it might be. that does a lot more to give your your teachers and your counselors uh more ammunition to paint you in the best possible light. All

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right. Um and one of the things that we do like to say with this is like you get out of the letter recommendation what you're willing to put into it. If you only put one word answers for each of these questions, you may not get as strong of a letter. We'll of course we're going to talk you guys up as best we can, but um

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we just ask that you guys highlight anything that you think is important that we need to touch on. And we'll have this closest to the Google classroom um probably by the end of the weekend. So you guys can start working on that um pretty soon as well.

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Um but some of the information that might be covered in it include the college that you're applying to. Um what kind of work experience, community service they have, um your your parents information. Um, that also kind of helps too with um with us being able to talk

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about like maybe if you're a first generation college student, meaning like you're the first um person in your family to go to college, that could also be something that we can highlight for you. The activity shoot we already kind of talked on um at the first um workshop,

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but the key thing to know is that you only get 10 spots for write about extracurriculars. So, you want to make sure that these are the most impactful. And I say impactful in all bolds, all caps. I couldn't do that

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in like size 45 font. It would look pretty ugly on us. Um, it it's it's unanimous across colleges. They if they hear a lot of people might start a nonprofit and sounds all good on paper, but all they did was they just

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filed a piece of paper and they did nothing with it. Whereas if you actually did something that was very impactful, you were consistent with it. Um whether it means like you're volunteering with like a youth soccer clinic or maybe you were um practicing an instrument and you

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did all these extra um sessions outside of school hours to work on it, too. That's going to be a lot more impactful than just a fancy title with not a lot of substance to show for it. Okay. Um, the essay, this is another piece for

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you as students to really highlight who you are as as individuals. And when you guys go to even talk about certain activities on your extracurriculars for your application, you only really get like a sentence, two sentences to talk about um what you did in that role. But

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your essay is your opportunity to figure out like, okay, maybe there's a certain activity that I really want to spend a good chunk of time to talk about that really highlights who I am as a person and what's most important to me and what I'm most passionate about. Um, this is

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your your best way to do that. Um, some common mistakes that we'll see with people writing their essay is that they'll try and use um words that are outside just normal jargon or or just they they try too hard to sound like

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somebody that they're not. Just just be yourself with it. I mean, I'm not saying like write fragments and and run off sentences. It should be it should still be grammatically sound. Um, but you want it to be true to who you are as a

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person. Um, and and don't stretch yourself out just to hit that 650 word limit just to say that you reached it. If you feel like you can make your point in in fewer words, too. Um, another notorious thing I hear from admissions officers, avoid

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the cliche big sports scene. It was the bottom of the night, two outs, all eyes were on me. I came up to the plate, I hit a home run and won the game and it was awesome. like that's cool, but they they've read those stories millions of times. Um, if you're going to write

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about something athletic related, I'd say like focus more on the process of how much um you enjoy um the practice and like even the things that are going to be like the less the less glamorous stuff and the the gritty stuff that you have to put in um work for day in and

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day out. Um but your counselor and your English teachers can also help you with that. Um, and then the the essay prompts are have been pretty much the same for the last few years. Um, I'd say feel free to take a look through the prompts though, kind

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of get a feel for which one you think is your the one that would be most comfortable for you to write about and just just start just start working on a rough draft of it. You guys will have all summer to work on editing, revising, um, and so forth. But, um, it can't hurt to

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just get started. Um, last thing that you want is to be a senior in midocctober just starting your essay and you've got sports 5 days a week. You got student council um, every so often and

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then your stress and then you also got um, honors and AP classes and then you're you're rushing to get it all done. Um, this should not be a rushed work. This should be something that you put a lot of time and effort into. Um, because this is going to be the thing that truly shows the colleges uh who you

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are or who you want them to to think that you are. Don't don't try to be what they want to see. Just be true to who you are. Another part as far as the application process too is some colleges will give you the opportunity to do an interview. If you have the option to do it, take

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full advantage of it because this is for one a great way to demonstrate interest check um to that college and show them that you're very invested in them. Um but it's also a good opportunity for you to learn about the school and figure out if it is the right fit for you. Ask them

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questions about, okay, well, you guys are just starting this um program in mechanical engineering. What's the outlook looking like? How are you preparing students um to ensure that this program is sustainable? Um but also what do students like to do on campus?

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Um what's do a lot of students go home on weekends? Um this is I'm not going to believe the point. There's uh there's a lot to go off of with this, but um I just say if you have the opportunity, take it and uh and treat it like a job

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interview. um dress appropriately um and and save your your top choice for a college last so that way you get more practice and opportunities to get a feel for um what the process is going to look like and then ultimately you'll be kind

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of a seasoned bet by the time you get to that last interview. Uh test scores, a lot of schools, like we mentioned at the last workshop, these are optional. However, if you feel like your grades or the rigor in your schedule is lacking, this could be a

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good thing that could um help balance out and um help your application show in colleges your academic abilities. Um so, by now you should all be registered for SAT or ACT. If you haven't, deadline to register for SAT I think is Friday if

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I'm not mistaken. Um but spots are first come first serve. I think we still have a few spots open at Middle. So, if you have the opportunity, sign up or maybe not. Um, but um after you guys sign up for SATs, you can use the Blue Book platform to get

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downloaded and complete practice tests. And based off those practice tests, they will actually give you guys training modules to work on. And then after you actually finish your test and get your scores, they'll give you this little bit of a detailed breakdown that tells you where you did well in and where you most need to improve upon. And that can give

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you some more targeted practice. um to work on for fall retests. Same kind of thing for ACT. Um although the free resources that I found um were mainly through PDF form, so more of a paperbased test where then you look at your results and then similarly it'll

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tell you what parts um were fell within what category that you need to most improvement on. Now when it comes to actually applying to colleges, we get the question, how many schools should I be applying to? applications can run anywhere from 50 to 100 bucks um if not more. So, we

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recommend anywhere from four to eight colleges. Some people might do a little bit less than that. Some people might do a little bit more and probably the 15 to 20. Uh just be mindful though that um you don't want to stretch yourself out too thin because as part of a lot of

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these applications, some of these colleges may ask supplemental essay questions where they might say, "Why do you want to go to Berto State University?" or why do you want to go to Marramac College? Um, and then they might have additional questions that are specific to the school. Now, think about

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how much time you're going to pour into writing your essay. How much time you going to pour into all these steps. Now, imagine having to write an extra two essays for for every school that you're applying to and you apply to 20 schools. That's it. It's it's going to be a slop. That's

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going to be rough. Um, so just um just try to stick to that four to eight range as best you can and try to have a good range of schools that are going to be a realistic fit for you, a reach and a safety. Um, so you can do this very

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easily by looking at the schools on uh College Board's big future, the common data set, um, any number of these websites and you can just do a quick u breakdown. So for instance, we're looking at UMass full here. Um 29% have

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3.7 GPA plus the 12 that have 35 higher plus the 13 have 3.25 and higher. So really like 55% of students have a 3.2 GPA or higher. So that means that you probably need to be around 3.3ish to have a pretty good shot at getting

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into UMass school. Now keep in mind too, some majors are going to be more competitive than others. Um, if you go in undeclared or undecided or go in for a major that's less competitive like a like a history um or psychology, your chances of getting admitted are going to

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be a little bit higher. Now, if you're thinking about anybody think about nursing, engineering, computer science, showing hands, anybody engineering, nursing, computer science, those ones will be a little bit more competitive. They'll probably be in that 3.3 um 3.7 range u depending on the school.

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Um so just keep that in mind as you guys are building out this list. Um and when uh figuring out schools that are reach safety and um realistic also keep in mind too you also want to have good uh

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financial um options too. Schools that maybe are a safety for admissions but also safety because you know that they're going to offer a lot of merit based u based off your GPA too. Now, when it comes to planning out your

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senior year, um if once you kind get an idea of which colleges that you want to apply for, you can start figuring out what their application cycles look like. They have um really about five or so different kinds of applications. There's first early decision, early action,

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priority, regular decision, and rolling. Um early decision and early action get conflated a lot. Um, but please know early decision is a binding contract. If you sign um up for early decision, let's

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say you want to do early decision to um Bentley University and and you get accepted, you're going um and if you don't go, the college is coming for that money either way. Um and if you back out of it, it can um it can lead to legal

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ramifications as well. So, we really caution against early decision unless um you know that you have the money on hand too because if you accept the early decision, this is before you even get in financial aid. So, you have to feel really confident that you're going to go there and you can pay that full sticker

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price um of whatever that maximum tuition, housing, and everything is. Um, with early action, it's similar to early decision in the sense that you find out sooner, but there's no legally binding aspect to it. Um, it's just a good

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advantageous thing to do if um if your application is completely done and you're ready to roll. Um, and you might um get answers a lot faster that way. Priority. Um, this is similar to early action, but it's usually specific to the individual college. Um, we see this a lot with nursing. So a lot of schools

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that are offering um nursing as a major they may say early action for psychology or history whatever might be but nursing for priority. So if anybody's thinking about nursing especially that's uh you really have to have your applications ready to go at

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the start of the school year. Um and then regular decision. This one is also non-binding but is just more in the middle of the year. We usually recommend um early action if you feel like your grades are strong enough that you can get in to that school if you feel like

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um your grades are not quite what they're looking for, but if they see your first semester senior grades, that could really tip the scales. We might recommend regular decision at that point. Okay. Um and then rolling admissions, that's

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usually just first come, first serve. We see that a lot with Southern Schools especially. Um they're they're rolling starts I want to say it's like last week of August if not sooner. Um and like I said it's first come first serve. Once the spots are gone they're gone. Okay.

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Um and then we just have some information that um you guys can reference in terms of completing applications that they're going to ask about. Now we get that this is a lot to piece together and it's hard to figure out where to where to um proceed from here. But just know that the English

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department and school counseling departments offer a college boot camp. This is our way to try and help you get about 95% of your application fully completed. Um on that Monday, you'll meet with your counselor and we will go through your entire application filling

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out everything um including your GPA, your senior classes, what kind of extracurriculars um that you've done throughout high school um to the point that really the only things that you'll still have to do by the end of that day is um is just

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whatever you didn't finish in the in the classroom with us as well as any supplemental essays with that that college. the rest of the week, the Tuesday to Friday, that's your time in a small group with one of our English teachers to work on your your college essay. So, if you think ahead of time

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and you start planning out your essay, start figuring out what you want to write about, even start working on a rough draft, that's a great place to start in preparation for that college boot camp. Um, so just keep that in mind. Um, that this is a really great resource. Um, I think it's about $75.

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um if you qualify for a fee waiver too that there's um a reduction available for that too. Um but we hear um constantly from students that um very few students regret doing the college boot camp. Many students regret not

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doing the boot camp um because it just gives them that peace of mind of knowing that they got everything done and and completed well ahead of time and then they can start their senior year and just go through the motions of like their classes, their sports, their extracurriculars, their jobs, um

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whatever they might be um without the stress of all that stuff going on. And now you need to start your application process at the same time too. Okay. Um, and we'll have that link officially

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ready to post pretty soon, too, as far as registration goes. Um, and then last, as far as it goes for paying for college, I know we talked a little bit about uh finding that balance between schools um that offer need-based aid versus non-nebased aid or scholarships.

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um in preparation for this thought this was a little bit ahead of um might be a little bit too forward of planning but we wanted to let you guys know about two websites in particular the FAFSA which is the free application for federal student aid and the CSS profile um both

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of which are going to be pretty huge in terms of trying to secure as much financial aid as possible um from colleges that you're applying to. Not anything that you guys can be doing about it right now. Those portals don't open until October 1st and we'll be doing a financial aid and paying for

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college workshop in the fall as well too. Um, but it can't hurt to take a look at some of the checklist items that they have here and start making sure that you have these items ready to go for when those portals do open up in October.

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Um, in addition to that, um, another small thing that you guys can be doing is start working on external scholarships. Um, when you guys go to apply to the colleges, the financial aid uh through FAFSA and the CSS profile will definitely cover a good chunk of

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financial aid, but you guys can be treating this like a like a part-time job. Trying to reach out to uh fast.com, scholarships.com, and try and see what scholarships you can start applying for. They'll have the criteria listed. It might say if you are a high school junior and you're thinking

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about going into nursing or you're a first generation um college student um and you're looking to go into math. Um so I'll have different criteria listed. Feel free to take a look at I even posted something in the Google classroom. I think it was start of this

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week or end of last week with some information that's specific to the class of 2027 for scholarships. So uh take full advantage of that. Uh, College Board's big future website also does have options for scholarships. And then, um, when the fall starts, we'll also be

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posting in the Google classroom different weekly scholarship opportunities, too. Um, but also, please don't confuse that with our formal Middle High School scholarship book through our local um, vendors. That doesn't come out until February. But

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this is just one thing that you guys can be doing to start being proactive, start figuring out how to finance college. Um, but at the end of the day too, like be mindful that there are scams out there. So if any website is asking you to pay

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to sign up for it, run for the hills. Reach out to me, Mrs. Burn, Mrs. um Breton, or Mr. Peron, or any one of us to uh take a look at. We'd be happy to vet something. We'd rather that you guys exercise caution and air on the side of caution um instead of just jumping right

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in and being like, "Oh, well, got to go freeze my credit score now." Um but that pretty much concludes everything that we have for tonight. Um but I'll open up to questions.

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>> Well, Mrs. Mrs. Brett and Mrs. B and I will be around too. We'll hang out for a little bit. So, if you guys have individual questions that you do want to come up and ask. Yes. Go ahead. >> If you're going to college unclear what you want to do, is it much harder to get financial aid or get accepted into a school?

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>> Great question. Um, so the question is, if you uh go in undeclared, does that hurt your chance for admission and um and or does it hurt your chance for financial aid? Um, no. It will not impact financial aid. um it may help your chances actually of

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acceptance. Um but just be uh mindful too if you go in undeclared um you can't necessarily uh transfer or switch to a an extremely competitive major. Like we might see some people that are like, "Oh well, I don't have

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the GPA to get accepted into nursing school, so I'll I'll go in undeclared and then once I'm enrolled, I'll switch my major to nursing." You can't do that. Um, so just be mindful of that. >> Of course, um, well, thank you guys again for

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coming in tonight. Um, I know this is probably information overload, so if you guys do have questions, feel free to shoot any of us an email. Um, and, uh, we'll be around. Thank you guys so much. Thank you.