##VIDEO ID:_tHnUpiIdgQ## good evening thank you all for coming out thank you for tuning in if you're watching um our Live program at home um if you know someone who couldn't come out tonight or missed it or isn't watching live from home or missed Parts everything we're doing is being recorded just like it's being live streamed right now that live stream will turn into a recording and be available on our 100 and Central TV station very soon so keep an eye open for that that way you don't miss anything so tonight is our 12th grade College and Career planning night for the class of 2025 um my name is Jen nectarine I am the college and career counselor here at Hunter and Central I'm proud to be here this is my 17th year as college and career counselor and uh soon starting my 20th year in ed education so um that's pretty wild I've worked with a lot of classes here I've done this role here all my time here so it's like my 17th senior year um and we just keep going and we just keep doing it so it's um thanks that's really nice of you thank you we just we do it each year is different um it goes without saying I mean the College admission world is always changing the landscape is always changing I like to talk about that at these programs because that's the stuff the students just want the the the information they want to know how to do it when to do it what to do but I do think it's important for parents who are coming from just a different generation and a different context to kind of understand a little bit about what's going on in the world of admissions so you can relate that to your own kids in ways that you think works best for them so um and then I have certain life students who are interested in Trends too and I know that so we'll talk a little bit about all that but first our team there's three counselors covering the senior team some of them are here we have Caitlyn hurg Kimberly sweet and Amar Taylor they break down the whole class in alphabet order so um your students know their grade level counselor that person is on the front line they are working with them very closely very directly um you know we've Caitlyn joined us um this is our second year yeah so so she's gotten to know her kids and then of course an and Kim um it's a great team and I work in the same hallway as them my office is on the 11 12 campus our counselors rotate around but we're all very close in the 11th and 12th grade year so we are just door Todo apart um working very closely throughout the day students bouncing between our offices it's it's a good um a good flow all right so if you are comfortable and checking in at home and you can hear us that's good there is a link that's going to be at the bottom of every single slide hopefully um it's just a shortened bitly link bit. lhcs question that we design this for you to if you're at home even if you're in the audience and you don't want to ask a question at theend end when we open up for Q&A um this is a place you can go just type this into the browser on your phone or or device or computer if you're at home and you can just ask a question it's just a oneline Google form and pop a question in that way we can get to the questions for the people that are watching from home and even the people here but probably about 7:50 I'm going to aim to stop the kind of content part of the night and take some of your questions we'll wrap up and we'll get you out of here all right so what we're going to go over tonight I'm going to do a review of last year's class I think it's so important if I had more time with our students um in the groups that we running with them this week I would do this because I think that history is really important I think it impacts the class in a lot of different ways so I'll share it with you we'll talk a little bit about some of the trends that are impacting College admissions this year and how they're going to impact our applicants and then we're going to get into it what I've been doing with our students all day today tomorrow and Thursday we're going to go over our process our process of how to apply all the little nuts and bolts I'm not going to go over in the depth and detail that we're going over it with the students um and there's a reason we'll talk about that but we're going to just kind of give you a summary of it and then we'll talk about some other themes things you can do to support your kids or whoever you're here representing tonight how you can support them in the process a couple different Pathways outside of foryear college if you're here tonight not really sure if your students going to definitely do fouryear college maybe it's Community College maybe it's not a college pathway we're going to talk about that and some of the programming we're doing a little bit about Athletics couple reminders and we'll close out with a little bit about financial aid but just know that a financial aid night is coming next month all right again those of you watching from home we have a link at the bottom if you'd like to submit any questions for the end so I'm going to start right here um I think that this is really important data I'm going to show you what we put together I I put something like this together at the end of every year and we spend quite a bit of time um I I spend quite a bit of time when I'm here in the summer on some of my summer work days kind of pouring over data because I do think it's important so I want to explain what you're seeing here um this is our senior class that that finished in June graduated um you know the the number I think is always changing it's graduates you know we try to capture that exact number in June but you have some students who may finish up courses in the summer and things like that so right we hovered right around 650 graduates um this right here is a summary of our outcomes our overall percentage and I think this is important and it's transparent this is information on our school profile people are very curious about where our graduates are going so we had 67% of our class pursue four-year College um that's a number that since I've been here over over my 17 years hasn't changed considerably but did take a slight decline over this past year it's still over 430 students there's still a lot of students in the class pursuing for your college giving us a lot of information and data to look at to best support the next classes um but that was a slight decline for us what held steady was our two-year College rate which has always fallen usually between 18 and 20% so that's a good number of our students considering two-year College as a place to start and the vast majority of them are going to rvcc this is what has changed is our other percent other including things like going right into the workforce trade and Technical School militaries apprenticeships studying different things under people or not really even being sure like I I don't have a exact plan I think I'm going to work part-time maybe take a class maybe do some travel um so this was the summary and the snapshot of the class and the other percent is what's ticking up that's what's going up here in our school Community that's a number that hovered between 8 and 10% many years ago and is going up and down usually between 14 and 15% so the response to that is we have to make sure those students we have supports in place for those students that we have programming throughout senior year even touching into junior year to help those students who are not College Bound not 2-year not four-year but they need help they need resources they need someone to help them go into the job market get connected with a military recruiter determine what trades are out there what's going on in the in the job outlook so we're implementing some new programming this week I'll talk about that near the end but in November we're actually devoting an entire week to this programming and we're going to bring a couple new things in it's all stuff we've done before before but we kind of had it happening throughout the late fall early winter and I feel like some things got missed and some opportunities for students to engage with these people got missed we're going to pack it all into a week to try to theme it up and really build it up so that students know hey there's people here that I can talk to about different Pathways so it's going to be called post high schools Pathways week and it's going to be November 18th through 22nd so it's a good time as we kind of get through the big rush of college applications they'll still be going on but we get through the big rush we can start working with our students and then if all goes well we're going to repeat that programming again in the spring capture our seniors who may be really missed out in the fall still weren't sure we want to catch them before they graduate and even tie in some of our Juniors who are starting to look um and then this is just basic data that I run average unweighted and weighted GPA of our College applicants that's slightly higher than the average GPA of the class um we filed just over 3500 applications with most of them falling in early action so what is early action that's filing an application earlier typically with a deadline around November 1st although it can be October 15th or it could be November 15th but the average is about November 1st so when students reach out to their counselors and say I need your help right away I have a November 1st deadline the vast majority of our students are filing at least one no 111 deadline so the volume of work that's going to be accomplished by the counselors and our department between now and November 1 first is pretty significant so know that if your child is falling in the early action or has at least one early action application most of their their classmates do as well early action Advantage you apply earlier you get a result earlier that result could be an acceptance which is a great feeling because you're getting that back usually in December or January and it's nice at the midpoint of senior year to have an idea hey I got into a school um the result could be a deny what is becoming a more popular result though is is a def a deferral deferral means the school the college has chosen to defer your application from early action to regular decision so they're going to give your application another look in the spring and then release a decision by the end of March um and then of course after that a lot of our students filing regular decision applications R regular decision deadlines usually fall in January or February rolling admission is a little bit different and this I do have a slide on this but I may as well just fit it in now rolling admission is like a rolling ball as applications come in completed applications they're reviewed and decisions go out so we are working on rolling admission right now and we are working on our first round of early action which is October 15th deadlines those are the top priorities in our counseling department and that's what we're making clear to our seniors this week in our group sessions is that's what we're going to be working on we do have a handful of seniors who choose to apply to a college early decision you can apply to one college early decision that is a binding commitment so if admitted early decision you are committed to attending last year we had just over 50 students in the class do that and I anticipate with this senior class being just under 600 we're probably going to see somewhere in the high 30s or 40s and we know a handful already who are planning to do that early decision to is the same thing binding commitment the date is just um a little bit later and then we have another program restrictive early action so few students doing it um and it is just that is restrictive early action and usually it's maybe five or six IV League schools offering that the average number of applications per student dropped a little bit too it had hovered about nine and a half I don't know what a half application is but um that's what the data tells me um for the vast majority of my years here when I first started it was in the double digits not long after it fell under 10 and it had been N9 and a halfish for a long time and for the first time it fell to almost a whole eight um and that's fine I'm I'm fine with that we have students eight is a really comfortable number it gives students a couple probables a couple targets and a couple reaches um there are going to be seniors with six and there are going to be seniors with 26 and that's okay um that's a lot of work and we want to talk to those seniors but eight is a comfortable number to me I don't I me to me I'm like why isn't it 10 or 11 that's what I feel like I always see on students lists but that's where we were um we had over 400 schools across the globe so not just the US US Canada across the pond I mean we sent students International last year receiving applications from us so that's 100 Central application in over 400 admission offices um if you kind of think about that that's us putting our Mark out there in a lot of places and that's good you know when a college gets 100 in central application they look at our transcript our applicants what we're all about our school profile and the more College gets that the more they get to know us so that's a good thing we want the context of what our school is all about to be in front of as many colle as possible so the kids spread their wings when they apply but when it comes down to it we matriculated we enrolled students at 146 schools that number also ticked down a little bit that had been hovering in the 160s 170s for many years again though with our overall picture of the class changing a little bit and our four-year College percent going down a little we're going to certainly matriculate to less schools but still 146 schools that's a lot of 100 freshman all over the globe and that's a good thing um now this is what I get really excited about is making these charts I don't love numbers I was at a psych undergrad School counseling Masters but this is the data that really gets me gets me going and these guys know they pick on me about it but I like it this is our breakdown of where our kids went for fouryear schools last year this is not terribly different I'm going to highlight a few things our number one um I'm sorry not foure schools all schools cuz our number one school where we sent students was rvcc now um this number can can be a little bit off of course rvcc always has 100% admit rate but I don't know if that 47's right because you know these kids leave us in June and then things change in the summer kids may join in you know apply part-time full-time so that number can certainly fluctuate um but outside of that when we start to talk about fouryear colleges Ruckers remains our number one okay when I um again first started here Trends changing we were sending over 50 students a year to Ruckers but we also had a class of over 800 um so 29 still our highest but really close behind is TCNJ that's a huge number for TCNJ usually we're in the teens um couple things with Ruckers last year Ruckers University last year joined the common application so this is its second full cycle using the Common App and when you join the Common App you make it easier for students to apply so what did Rucker University get in the fall of 2023 a huge up taken applications so they they became more selective the type of students that typically would have been admitted um perhaps were weight listed deferred or eventually not admitted and so it was an interesting year with Ruckers our admit rate has not always been 57% it's been higher but it's it's going down Ruckers University is no longer you know this this this probable place for students to get in so I'm being really transparent with students that I meet with about their chances with Ruckers University and at New Brunswick and also making sure they understand that there are Ruckers options in state that are not at New Brunswick that you could look at the Camden or Newark campus Newark is growing in popularity they visited us this week we had several students interested in seeing them um and that there's other options here in New Jersey for a state school like TCNJ um tcj we've just continued to have a great relationship and I think a lot of the students who wanted to stay in state and wanted a public institution and ended up not being admitted to Ruckers went to TC and they're happy I mean they're two very different institutions if you know New Jersey colleges they're very different um but but they're very happy at tcj um this was an uptick for us JMU in Harrisonburg Virginia that's a great school we've sent a lot of kids there over the years that went up to 15 but always has been fairly High Rowan another really fantastic inate option with 14 Montclair with 13 so the students are looking in state they're looking at value they're thinking about having a good instate option and then it goes down Udell Virginia Tech and then there's a few outliers like Moravian small private school just over the Border in Pennsylvania getting eight of our students um nothing else here really jumps out um we consistently send students to the southern universities I think the one that probably jumps out the most here would be UMass ammer that's a school maybe two or three a year but we jumped to seven last year moving down pit URI Temple NYU got five Elon got five that was a nice little jump there we haven't sent five there in a while so that that's who got five or more and then I think it's still important to look at where we're sending three to four students a year I mean we you know you're a class of over 600 but still three or four of your classmates going to the same institution is a big deal and there's that one at the top where you're thinking wow how'd Penn State get down there usually they're in the double digits again things EB and flow each year so we went down a little bit there but maintained at a lot of the other schools that typically get our students Maryland uh produced Stevens um just taking a look here for going down to LSU in Louisiana so that hasn't been like that before but these Trends um are definitely important I'm just seeing if there's anything else that jumps out Tennessee continues to be popular again a lot of names that are probably very familiar to you but when I go back up to the top and I look at some of these numbers um there's a lot of consistency but you know sending eight students to Virginia Tech like that that's a good thing and I would think any institution that's getting eight students from one high school that's outside of their state is looking at that and going okay okay well let's see our next 60 or 70 apps and maybe they'll admit a little bit more because they know when Central kids are admitted they're coming so that Trend that history impacts the next few classes um and that's that so and then here's just a full list this is every all those 146 schools that got one of our students last year and it's all over it's all over the place so that is our snapshot of the year I think it's really important um it's always tricky to anticipate what the next year might look like um but I think I think we're hearing a lot of the same names you know I'm I'm already underway meeting with students are all of us are and you know you start to hear the same names and it's just kind of fun at the end to see how how it all goes so on top of looking at the past year I think it's important to look at what's trending this year these Trends are not um overly different than anything you might have heard about if you're you know if you're someone who enjoys reading about higher education or in the media um there was a whole lot going on last year with the Fafa the free application for federal student aid things that made CNN headlines um so this this is what I think's happening we know we have this decline in in high school graduates so we know we're going to have it in college enrollment um I'm seeing I I read an several articles this summer just about the significant number growing number of colleges that are closing and not schools that we're we're all talking about not schools we're seeing on these list small schools that have consistently had trouble staying open they might be closing for good they might be being bought out they might be merging um because they they can't survive when you're bringing in a freshman class of 250 and you're an institution a highered institution of a thousand um you got to be really hanging on with a strong brand name in this market right now when you just have less and less students to choose from um it's interesting though because we see less students we know here at Central we have less students and everybody has less students but the apps are going up why are the applications going up well a couple things when we you know post pandemic we're still very much in a world of test optional admissions um in Spring of 2020 just about every College in in America there weren ones who didn't had to go test optional when you couldn't test in the 2020 year um and and some have pulled back and said Okay that was good for a year or two but we're going to start taking test scores again so send us your SATs and acts but several schools have remained test optional so what that means is students who've always you know haven't tested well um they go into this sat they Panic or the ACT they Panic their anxiety comes over them and and a Saturday morning is just is not going to determine their fate they are better off in many cases not submitting their scores so in that case they may do really well on paper their transcript is strong their courses are strong but they don't test well it's like let me just apply and see what happens their test optional but that that idea spreads and and more and more apply because they realize well I'm not a great test taker and and so are you know 30 other people so let's all just apply let's all apply to these IV League schools and see what happens and apps are just going up so even though we don't have more students applying they're they tend to apply to more now our number went down but that's that's us um but across the board if you look at any colleges profile of the last admission cycle they had an uptick in applications we had a 10% increase a 20% increase when you have an increase in applications and your dorms aren't growing overnight you have more nothing you can't do anything more than to deny more students you're just suddenly more selective Ruckers was an example Ruckers joined the Common App they had a huge uptick in applications you can't just create space in dorms and residence halls and and classrooms overnight for all of those students so you have no choice but to deny more students um so test optional emmissions has increased opportunity for students to apply to a wider array of schools a wider range of students are applying and it just it just makes it more selective I think this is going to taper off in another year or two I'm really anxious to see what happens this year because even some of the brand names even some of the you know I'm I talk to admission Deans and directors and VPS of enrollment at institutions all the time and they're like John I'm a little nervous like I don't know we're we're we're solid we've got a good reputation we're in the rankings we got the big D1 Sports but we are nervous for what the next couple years are going to bring when we know there's just simply less students graduating high school so how that's going to impact admissions to be determined still here at Central we're going to encourage a healthy balance list we're going to encourage students to have probables to have schools on their list that they love so that come spring they can make a good decision um and again with the applications up selectivity rates I mean they're not outrageous you know there's nothing that surprised me terribly from from the outcomes this past spring I think the right students got into the right schools you know there's a couple times where I looked and I was really surprised a student was admitted and I thought it was a reach and then there was the reverse a student who I thought had a really great shot at a really selective school was just straight denied so we that happens it's going to happen every year but nothing crazy um I don't know if we were completely ready for what our State University I don't even know if they were completely ready for the uptick and apps but we had some pretty some pretty tough conversations in the spring with students who wanted to be at our State University that was their goal through all of high school and it it it didn't work out um so we had some tough conversations made some tough calls some of those students might be transferring Ruck it should be interesting to see what happens with Rucker's transfer population for students who ultimately want to be there but couldn't get there for a freshman year um and then cost is crazy um there's nothing else I can really say the amount of schools over 80 and 90,000 a year is getting downright scary um I'm we're saying this in all of our College Planning groups that we're holding with the seniors this week please consider at least one New Jersey state school and a bunch of them go oh you know I want to get out of here that's my mother staying in New Jersey and I'm sure you've had those conversations too we have really fantastic options here we obviously we have our State University comparable price to Ruckers TCNJ Rowan Montclair Kane Stockton we are loaded with great public universities here in New Jersey all hovering around the same price tag I'm not going to force a student to put one of those on and I don't want them to put it on their list because I said so and they have absolutely no intention of going there but if you can help this and I'm sure you can because you're behind you get it with the the the cost conversation is I don't want it to be March or April and they've gotten all these acceptances they did all the good work and the average cost of those schools is between 60 and $70,000 a year and they got this much money and Aid and they're still at 50k and then the tough conversation happens at home with we can't afford any of these where where was your public school where was your good value school and they're like I don't you know I don't have one and it doesn't necessarily have to be a New Jersey state school but it's got to be a public University that's going to a award them in a way that becomes doable for your family um in New Jersey though when they stay here you know they got State potential state aid state grants coming at them that they lose they lose when they leave so um you can see from the data we absolutely have students staying here for their college education and pursuing options right here in state um and then you know there were students who changed their minds I mean we had all these college applicants the vast majority of them went I can run data on who how the percent of the class that applied and the percent of the class that actually went to college it was different by under 2% but that tells me there were students who applied to college and ended up choosing an alternate pathway they said I'm going to work I'm going to take a year off maybe a gap year maybe I'll pursue Community College but the rate of students that applied to fouryear was just higher than what actually went so there were students at the end who said this is just not affordable I can't do this I didn't get what I thought I was going to get I'm going to give it 6 to 12 months and try again so this is what we're seeing um and I think it's I think it's going to be a year of it'll be interesting though because we we do have a little bit of a smaller class the smaller smallest class I've ever worked with here I'll be interested to see if they end up applying to more than eight schools on average because that was probably one of the stats that surprised me the most from last year um and and we'll see we'll see what the spring brings I don't have a magic ball I wish I did students always tell me so what do you really think Mrs nectarine do you think I so I'm just going to categorize a school for you it's a probable it's a Target it's a reach um we don't we don't have that that crystal ball though so we'll see how the year goes all right so we're going to move into some other topics again if you are tuning in from home um at the bottom of every single slide there is a little shortened bitly link where you can type it into your phone your browser and throw a question and we'll get to all of the questions at the end all right so this is it now I've mentioned a few times about meeting your students this this week so when you got the email for this program tonight you might have noticed there was a line in there mentioning that the senior Senior Team um Kim and Caitlyn and I and Marana Cordova who works with our multilanguage Learners in the senior class we are meeting with the entire senior class in group sessions this week we started today I think I've been talking non-stop since about 7:45 it's been a it's been a day uh we're running three blocks a day three today three tomorrow three Thursday that allowed seniors nine-time options to come sit through our presentation I see a couple of you out there um but that allowed them nine options we like to give seniors some choice you know to say hey look we don't want you missing your whole 80 minute block of math but you have the schedule I send the schedule out to them pick the class where you're going to have the least disruption so we saw over 150 almost 200 seniors today and they know that these sessions we're running this week are solely focused on the fouryear college process so we also tell them not only pick the time that's best for you to come they're getting passes don't worry um but some of them are moving their time around and that's fine but we also tell them self- select do you plan to go to four-year College are you still thinking about it then come but if you know that you are absolutely not pursuing fouryear College after 100 in central you are definitely working definitely going the military definitely doing something else you don't have to sit through this 80-minute session because it's very detailed we're going through the process and the procedures of applying and their time is far better spent in the classroom we also tell them there's programming coming like I mentioned earlier our Pathways week in November that's designed for those students to give them opportunities to learn more so we spend a block a full block with a couple reminders to our seniors and then we Dive Right into this process of how to actually apply to college and we go over step by step screen by screen screen and tell them exactly what they have to do I'm going to show you all tonight what it looks like I'm not going to go into each step I'm going to kind of summarize it but I have to back up because the the question I get from parents who are feeling a little overwhelmed right now especially if you've been through this you're going through this for the first time or it's been a few years is we just don't know where to start so I want to go back to some of our programming that we did prior to this so we have a College Planning night in junior year back in January we held and then we have a program in n9th and 10th grade called Early College Planning night those programs were designed to help your students and help you build this process up start researching getting to know colleges that by the time we get here we're not spending a whole lot of time on that because most seniors are coming back into senior year with at least a short list developed okay that short list might be hanging out in their head it might be on a spreadsheet you've made it it might be somewhere but that's where we want them to have a short working list to colleges so they can start diving into the next steps so organization is key okay today and I'll show you my uh my who's responsible for what chart um part of your responsibility I put under the parents is if you are organized or any more organized than your child you can help here okay because some of our students like what they say what do you mean get organized I I've never really been organized you should see my bedroom like that's okay we get that at 7 19 and 18 but this is where you might be able to come in and say hey look let's just get a chart I'll make it for you I'll put it out you're going to fill it in because this is your process or you know what I'll start a spreadsheet for us that we can work and we can work in together but that's a good place for you to help but organization is key so what is organization it's looking at the college list it's figuring out the deadlines that right there is an excellent starting point let's say you got three or four schools at home that's what you're working with right now there might be more or maybe you got 25 I I don't know but but you've got to get those somewhere this is what we're telling the students this is what we'll tell the parents you have to get them somewhere aligned with a deadline date and that right there is an excellent starting point and you will see after that things will actually start to fall in place because now you know okay what school are we focusing on first we have October 15th deadline University of South Carolina okay this is our first priority so just when you know what has to happen when that tends to get the ball rolling maybe your student has a rolling admission school okay so that's a school that Mrs nectarine said the sooner we apply the better so we're going to actually bump that one up before October 15th so this level of organization is what's going to keep things together okay and I'm going to bring up this document to show you a few other things so you understand what else has to happen Okay so organizing the list organizing the deadline dates what's also helpful in doing that is determining which admission plan your students going to follow with them so are they doing early action if the deadline dates October 15th November 1st somewhere around there it's likely early action are they going to hold off are they really busy this fall and they don't need to be doing early action they can apply to all of their colleges in the winter maybe they're a fall athlete maybe they're busy maybe you've got other things going on in your family right now and they're better off applying in January because maybe they're taking the SATs in December whatever works they do not have to do early action it is Comon it is popular but it doesn't mean you have to do it you can still be a very successful College applicant a L to all of your colleges in January so we are making that very clear to the students it's whatever works in your life right now okay and this is where it's hard to like drown out the noise of what all their friends are doing they have to do what works for them because everyone's individual everyone's got different things going on all right so I'm going to go ahead and open up this document so this document is going to make its way onto our website this week but this is kind of what's getting us through um our group sessions and it's it's a good six or seven pages I told the students when you get this document from me I'm going to I'm going to send it to the whole senior class on Thursday when we're completely done with all of our groups I said I think it's probably a good idea that you bookmark it um because this is it like everything is in here I packed it all into one place there's no reason to have a lot of different things everything is in here so we have an eight-step process okay so you're play eight steps my students eight steps we lay it out for them step by step by step by step how to do this okay it's very organized for them eight-step process visuals B bold highlighted everything we also have a couple charts that we think help them when we show these charts in our groups they all kind of go oh okay now it's making some sense we have a couple charts and then we have a whole section at the end of this document for frequently asked questions and we say before you ping your counselor or Mrs N look at these FAQs is your question answered in here because these are the questions we are constantly getting in our email and we tell them we want you to email we you got to reach out you got to use your resources but when you're asking the same questions that we've gone over in groups that that makes it difficult for us to get to get to everybody so please check the document please look at the procedures read through it take some time with it and chances are your question is answered in there okay so let me go back up to the top I'm not going to go through line by line but I am going through line by line with your kids our eight-step process is broken into three chunks steps one through three are our prep steps I tell them you can't do step four they all want to until you do one through three and if you don't do one through three and you dive into four because some do they're so excited to request everything then it's not going to work right and they will still do it it drives us a little bit crazy but please encourage them to move in the correct order so you got to prepare you have to have everything prepped before you actually go in to the process of requesting your documents here at Central and you have to also understand what's happening while I'm doing that do do I still apply like when do I apply what's my counselor doing how does it all work okay and then steps seven and eight is confirming and tracking let me just go a little bit into the prep steps students have to be organized they've got to have their college list in score in a following Tab and I know some of you are probably thinking what in the world is she talking about score score is our college and career software program every senior has an account they are actively using it oh that's my that's my school account let me log into my student account um they got this account a couple years ago this is like this is everything that we're doing College their list is in here everything they need to do the schools they're following and applying to all of that so all we want them to do and we've been talking about this since junior year is have an updated list of schools in score in the following column that's it that's all they need to be doing right now that's the only column they need to be working with okay um and this is the point this happens in every group I end up with too many tabs open all right so organizing their list making sure they have a good balance we tell them there are three ways to I'm going to get to that in a second um balance spreadsheet make sure they know their application deadline if they're applying test optional that's it and consider a Jersey state school that's their list so then I say in groups how many of you have step one like you've been doing step one most of the hands go up they're like okay so I've got a list underway the list is not definite the list is not today is the list and the list is not changing you've got to let your college list be fluid because so many kids are going to apply to college as early action they're going to get results back in December and they're going to realize oh this isn't going quite the way I thought it would I'm getting deferred to a lot of places I should probably add on another school or two okay so now the list just changed so let the list be fluid yes there's a core list that you're going to push applications out to but you've got to be understanding that there might be schools that naturally fall off the list because maybe you like what you got in early action or there might be additions okay step two is working on applications and the key is working on them over time applications are not a let's sit down on a Tuesday night and get this thing done and submit it they've got to work on them over time okay they can work on them all the way up to when they're due if the application deadline date is November 1st they can submit it at 11:59 p.m. on November M 1st that's on them we are not part of the actual application submission but they've got to create their application accounts and get working on them there's three ways to apply to college through the Common App which is how we want all of them use we want them using the Common App as much as possible there's some schools that don't take the Common App there MIT Georgetown University of California system um service acmy not too many but there's a few out there they have to go on those websites and make those application accounts and then there's a third way to apply to college and that's called apply with score when they're in their score account they'll see some of these colleges have a little button called start app that means you're actually going to fill out the application in score it's scores application it's there as an option but they're going to hear me this week say our preference is that you use common app why would you start a whole other application and score when you've been working so hard on your common app okay so let's jump back to that and I want to highlight one thing we have a comprehensive common app guide there are common app guides all over the Internet there are videos there are tutorials there's webinars there's all these third-party people out there who make commona guides and of course common apppp has their own help this is ours and this is aligned with exactly how they need to be answering questions as aund and Central Senior it takes them section by section by section and tells them exactly how to answer the questions um there's there's a whole section in here on how to do the activities section the activity section of common app is pretty important most of the other parts of the common app are kind of boring it's your basic information here's my background and my my demographics and here's my courses I'm taking but now we get into the activities we start to learn who the student is we see what they're doing outside the classroom who what makes them you know what makes them happy what do they how do they fill their time when they're not in school school this section is very important so I ran four common app workshops this summer I saw about 150 seniors in those workshops we spent 45 minutes on this this is a big big part of a two-hour Workshop this is a big part and then it goes through all the sections you can see extremely important you know after almost 20 years in education you got to be really picky about what you bold and what you highlight so Bolding and highlighting is part of my my packets and they they just they got to read it they've got to read it so so we know a lot of our seniors are using this common app guide um please encourage it and I told them today said if you're filling out the common app without the guide you're doing it wrong you are doing it wrong what stands between you and your admission decision your outcome in or not is your common app so don't you want to do it well don't you want to make it look its best and take the advice from people who know what makes a strong common app so we're we're surprised when students come in say hey can you look over my activity section I can tell right away if they use the guide or not because there's a very strategic way to talk about your activities to make them shine and we can tell right away if they're not using the guide all right so that's applications and then the third prep step third of three is just signing their furpa waiver so when students log in to score their the popup comes up for them to sign their furpa waiver if they're concerned I don't see the popup they just got to read the instructions okay we we talk about if you don't see it here's why you got to log out and log back in it's a popup a lot of seniors have done it the furo the family education rights and Privacy Act release and waiver there's two things they're going to they're going to Grant they're going to Grant permission for 100 and Central to send their official documents to colleges so they're going to click Grant there and then there's a furp a waiver where they're going to Grant the waiver of their rights to see their letters of recommendation and that's their way of saying I'm okay colleges with not seeing my letters of recommendation so they're going to click Grant there Grant and Grant and submit and that's it and that's done so steps one through three you might be sitting here if you're involved in this process with your child thinking well we're we're doing okay we got a list we got a common app started yes you're in a really good place if you don't have those things yet a list is still evolving you're not sure if your child started their common app that's a conversation to have because at this point with the amount we've been talking about this since the spring with them we really want them to be at this point okay so I have a couple sections of my document stop here and read I'm not going to go into detail I just encourage them to read them say if Mrs n's got that on that sheet there's a reason she's got bullets there and highlights you got to read this let's see what this means okay steps four five and six okay this is the stuff they're excited about because that's what they're emailing us about and have been emailing us about all summer um I need my transcripts I need my teacher letters I need my counselor letter because I'm doing everything on my end so I need those things and yes they do they need those things to have a complete application we are just about to embark on that that process where they can begin requesting those items we do not allow requesting until we teach them all how to do it because it would be absolute chaos if I just turned on requesting and didn't teach hundreds and hundreds of students how to do it correctly I only know that from experience so we nipped that in the bud many many years ago and said we're not going to turn on requesting till we get in front of them and show them how to do it and has enhanced and neatened up our process so much so when does requesting begin requesting begins this Thursday at 2:15 that's the end of the school day and that's when our seniors can go in and start making all of their requests requesting happens in a couple different phases step four of our process the first part of requesting is where they're actually going to request their transcript and their counselor's letter okay so the counselor recommendation which they would have done a brag sheet for and you might remember that because there was apparent part of the brag sheets those have been out since January to when they were Juniors um so the counselor letter and the transcript always go together they're they're like a bundle okay they've learned they're learning in groups how to request those it's pretty simple it's a movement where they move their schools when they move them to applying they get popup screens that say okay how are you applying what deadline date are you following the screens are so easy this is what we love about score it's so userfriendly to an 18-year-old like it okay this makes sense I'm applying through the Common App I'm applying regular decision I'm going test optional here's the email address I use for my application save okay that school just got put into their applying column which means going back to our procedures they just requested their transcript and counselor letter so that movement is the request okay that movement can't happen until Thursday okay so that is requesting that's all you have to do there's no button there's no request transcript that's what they have to do so if you are sitting with them you might say Okay read those instructions we ask that you don't do it for them but if you want to be there when they do it that's fine okay this is very doable for them so there's a couple notes in here what the request the movement all means what's going to happen next and then we get into teacher recommendations which is another part of score okay and again that if you're like what is this score thing it looks like Squire it's score um your students know they've had their account for several years teacher recommendation requesting happens up here in the application documents screen it's all laid out on the document on the procedures and they're going to see a little button appear right here by letters of recommendation on Thursday afternoon it's going to say add request or new request and they've got step by step by step exactly where to click okay and I say this to them I go guys you could walk out of this where we meet down on 11:12 with them in the in the Little Theater I say if you walk out this door right now if you paid attention to nothing on and I said this document would get you through it the key is you have to read it you've got to read every line and it's hard I get it they are so inundated with emails and all the things a 17 and 18yearold are inundated with I get it however I say raise your hand if you've ever applied to college before no hands go up I say you have to learn how to do this you have to do it correctly because this is your future in in the screen okay we're not filling out applications anymore and sending them in with postage stamp it's all happening on a computer I say you have to read the instructions so if there's a where place you can support them it's by saying hey Mrs N designed this process for you step by step just follow it just follow it as is you can't mess it up okay the students who get stressed out really stressed panicked emails to us come to you really upset are skipping around because this process has been in place for years here it works so please help us encourage them to read it we have screenshots of exactly what they're going to see when they make the teacher request and that's it now the really nice thing is they can track everything that they've requested right in score they can see when the transcripts got uploaded and sent to the colleges that by college they can see when the counselor's letter got sent they can see when the teachers letters got sent so they don't need to reach out to their teachers and counselors hey did you get it done it's all trackable in score you can log in if you're like I want this score thing too just ask them for their login and say you know what rather than me bother you about college let can I take a look at score can I see what's going on in there but please don't do the actions for them but if you want to log in see what's going on on on that end too that's fine I have another little stop here in read and then we get into the last thing they need to request this part actually has has nothing to do with Central this is the request of their test scores okay so they need to have official test scores sent to their colleges if they are applying with scores so if they're applying with their SATs or acts official score reports need to be sent directly from college board to the college or from act to the college depending on what they're doing so we tell them it is about $15 per college so if you're applying to 10 schools that's going to add up on top of the fact that all of your colleges have application fees which could be $75 a college this adds up I said here's a way to save money actually gave them a couple ways to save money today I'm in I I enjoy doing that myself check with your colleges go to the website Google search University of Delaware official score reports or University of Delaware admission requirements get yourself to the admission page does that college require official score reports okay if they say no you can just self-report your scores on your common app you just save 15 bucks so I said just do the leg work and this is a par a part where a parent could come in again you're not doing the process for them but you're doing a little bit of the backend research just to take something off their plate okay um the other thing I mentioned today too is about those application fees like actually applying to college 10 10 12 schools even eight schools those application fees can range from $25 to $75 it can add up very fast there are absolutely students who are going to be eligible for fee waivers we talked about how to how to um do that in um score how to apply for that and your counselor will help determine your eligibility but as your visiting colleges or when your students are visiting with the college reps who come to Central I'll talk about that before we're done tonight ask say you have a fee wer you got a fee waiver code I'm really interested in your school but you know it's it's tough coming up with all these application fees I really want to apply they might just hand it right to them okay so that is our requesting phase and then we get into the final part when they officially apply to colleges they're going to just keep moving them they're going to move them over to applied right now I'm getting a red alert because things aren't turned on they will be Thursday but how exciting I applied to Florida State I'm done we're going to move it to the applied column that is solely an organizational step that does not impact their application that's happening over in common apppp this is just here to say hey it's it's submitted and then the counselors can see on the back end how our students are actually doing with their submissions um and then the tracking and and practicing patience um it's tough I know they're looking at these screens there's a score app so a lot of kids run around their phones look at the app look at the app it hasn't been sent I go it's going to get sent your stuff's going to get sent your teachers are working diligently your counselors are working diligently those are the people that are responsible for the sending it will get submitted just be patient so how to track everything is right there okay all right I'm going to show you this chart um responsibilities by person and I I kind of said jokingly I said um there it is clear as day guys I said to the students you have the most responsibilities in this process so what is the student responsible for in their college process they're responsible for their application they are the ones who are submitting it applications are not coming through 100 and Central Okay so we've had a couple students and parents reach out so when are you going to sit with me and help me submit my apps that is not something we are going to sit with the students and do that's something they're going to do on their own time we've provided a comprehensive common app guide been talking about college process for nine months now they are ready to do these applications take control of that and submit them okay so they're responsible for their application and anything that goes with it they are responsible for moving those colleges from following to applying which is making their requests from applying to applied telling us they've applied these are just these are just cursor moves they're responsible for requesting their teacher recommendations brag sheets and sending their test scores all things they've heard about before okay nothing new and a lot of these are just basic computer actions okay the the counselor is responsible for submitting the transcripts so submitting an official School transcript to every College the counselor recommendation they will complete it and submit it and any required school report forms there's a couple little forms our counselors have to fill out in score the students can't even see them they're on our end that just tell a little bit about our school and kind of summarize things that gets kind of attached in with every transcript um so they do that teachers are responsible for receiving those recommendation requests completing them and submitting them all of our teachers have a score account too so when the students go in and make that teacher request the teacher gets it they upload their letter they send it to all the colleges on that students list um and then parents um most of our parents typically do take over in the financial aid process we'll talk about that at the end but that's where we typically see our parents um support and getting and staying organized you know can I help you make that chart can I help you go through this mail can I help you with your inbox getting organized and then check-ins okay just gently reminding them checking in um years and years ago one of um my colleagues here in the department Julie Blake she's been through this process with her own kids and she just has so much real life great advice and she said it over a decade ago and I'll never forget it and I've stolen it from her um is suggesting to families and it it makes so much sense to pick one time a week maybe two it just depends on your family dynamic I I don't know that you're going to talk about college okay because I know that some parents are talking about college every day with their kids and then I know some are completely hands off but maybe you can design a time or a space or routine in your family that works for you that this is the one time a week on Sundays at 3:00 okay maybe there's football on but perhaps another time um a football fan here um that you can find that works for your family you can sit around the table we're going to talk about college we're put the phones away I want your attention for this 45 minutes or this hour and I won't bug you any other time this week about it but you're going to come ready show me what you got I'm here to help you and that's it but this this constant daily um it's it's it's going to make some of them shut down okay and it's going to make them not get the work done and we do ask um to please let them do the work um to please let them fill out their applications um you know we we do get calls all the time parents at home during the workday and filling out their kids apps and having questions and I will I will be totally honest with you um we've had parents come into the process to the point where they've they've screwed something up for their kids um it's really important to let them do it be there with them hold their hands support them but please give them the opportunity to take this and take ownership over it it's been designed so that it's easy to follow they just have to read the instructions but sometimes that parent involvement they they get too far in and they might make a glitch somewhere that we can't always reverse and fix so be there with them but we ask you to not do it for them um so this green chart helped a lot in our groups this is the one where I I saw the light bulb going off for a lot of kids like oh okay so this is what an a completed application is it's three parts it's things coming from three places from the student it's the application submission of the Common App submission of whatever application they're using and any the little pieces that go with it the essays the application fee portfolio plus everything coming from the school the counselor recommendation the transcript the teacher recommendations and any of those little extra reports we do plus the testing agency scores if they're applying with scores those three things things coming from three places make a completed application okay this is the big key though and we said this over and over in our groups because this is where the students really get hung up and tend to get confused it is very typical and very normal for all of those things to arrive to a college at different times okay so I'm going to break that down and that's where a lot of that stop here and read above here talks about this okay because we're having seniors come to us and go well you need to submit my transcripts I can't apply yet I go where'd you hear that that's not true they can apply whenever they want all of these things in each of these boxes can happen in independently of one another okay they have to get into to score and they've got to make those requests with the lead time we've told them 15 school days for a transcript and counselor wreck request and one month in advance for a teacher request you have to give time for that stuff to process here at Central but once you're done requesting it's it's in motion now you're going to go back and you're going to work on your end of it your applications your essays so so imagine this everyone is doing their part at the same time but we can't do our part here unless you trigger it you got to request it so we know that you need it so then we come to this green chart and they're like oh that's how it works so then the hands start going up so if you send my transcripts to my colleges before I apply that's okay it's perfectly fine or if I apply tonight and you don't send my transcripts for another month is that okay that's perfectly fine it's impossible for everything to arrive at the same exact time that's just not reality you know you're talking about some of these universities getting 60 70,000 applications imagine the influx of electronic documents from all over the globe it's wild but they have a system that brings it all together okay we're going to have some students who come Thursday they're going to go in here to score and they're just they're going to start moving every single school we told them move them all get them all in the applying column well what if I'm not applying till January that's fine we're going to send that transcript as soon as it's ready and it's going to sit there for 3 months and wait for your application to arrive well what if if I never apply then they toss it like we just want to get the stuff there okay so when we start explaining it that way they're like oh I I kind of get it so they do not need anything from us to do their part nothing because application is fully their responsibility this is our part and then they have to request our test scores when all three of these sections are at the college electronically which is how everything goes that is a completed application okay and you can track the status of all of that online they can track their applications they'll do that through the college they can track everything leaving Central through score and they can go on college board or act and see when their scores got delivered you can track everything okay and that makes an application complete all right frequently asked questions this is a little bit of everything okay and I'm just going to touch on these because you might be thinking them so what happens after we apply this is the big one they get so excited I got an application out I they run into our offices and it's a good feeling we love when they come down and say oh my gosh I applied to these four schools last night it was the best feeling I was so nervous but I just did it I go great you know watch the screen too and they they they submit their first Common app it's it's kind of cute what happens but watch the screen all right so they submit an application what now well track your stuff did everything go out and score nope not yet because my deadline's November 1st and I applied on October 4th well it's probably going to take a couple weeks but it'll get there by November November 1st and remember things are coming at all different times from different places the bottom line is it's got to be there by the deadline okay so what did they do they need to watch their email because once they submit an application to the school the school's now going to the college is now going to start talking with them through email thank you for your application here is an applicant portal this is super important they cannot miss these emails with the applicant portal so University of Delaware here's your blue hen portal log in so what's this now this is another account they have to create bookmarket that's how they find out is Udell missing anything from me did they get my transcript nope it hasn't left the school yet so this is the tracking part of it okay this is also where they're likely going to log in eventually and find out their admission decision eventually their financial aid package that portal you're kind of done with common app you submitted the app you don't need Common App common app is just to apply but now they're going to have this portal with the c College that's going to tell them what they need to know okay and now they're working directly in that portal okay so that's explained here in number one number two is a huge one they really start to panic when we get close to the deadline and go the college says they don't have my stuff they didn't get my stuff but Score says you sent everything well if Score says we sent it we sent it and it's there but if you take 60,000 applications times 10 documents per student will you do the math that college is going to take a while to in take in all that information and Link it up to the different portals they just have to have patience score is like our backbone if Score says we sent it and it has a date and they all have a date we sent it the college just has to do their part okay um a little bit more about order of operations and what's happening there if they have Polytech teachers all of this this is the stuff we just get over and over and over someone outside of 100 in central that's a big one a lot of our students do have someone outside of central how does that happen process is here this is a this is one that really took a lot of them like what is what is this thing the SAR the self-reported academic record the self-reported academic record is taken by about 35 colleges okay this is where students have to create an account and they're going to know if you're if any of these look familiar to you your students applying to any of these they have to and I've talked about this in groups I mean they were writing these kids were writing like crazy and going to get all this okay the self-reported academic record also known as the SAR is a place you log in and you have to fill out a little form with all of your courses and grades in high school you are transposing you are self-reporting your transcript to this site okay so look at the schools okay big universities for the most part I told them today and I'll tell you they're essentially doing the work for the college these are colleges that get tens of thousands of applications and years ago they came came together and said this is this is a lot of transcripts well maybe we'll come up with a site that makes it easier for us and they all dump their grades into the same site and we can read them all the same way rather than reading all these different high school transcripts and the SAR was born it was born at Ruckers University um so so that is it um so that's the SAR number seven a college has presented an optional supplement or essay should I do it that's a simple one-word answer every single time okay um how do I get applic fee waivers um that's all right here I'm applying early decision is there anything extra yes there's an agreement and score you have to do this explains it here um I want to apply this is a big one I want to apply to more schools so let's say it's December or January the list is changing well what do I do you do the same thing you did before they get them in the applying column they show up on the counselor's end as active applications and we do the process we get your stuff there by the deadline okay it's that simple um and then I talk a little bit about finan Aid we don't have a lot of time in our student groups this week to get into financial aid and the reason is is the Focus right now September October November is really on applying there are there's just so many applications so many transcripts letters of wreck there's so much happening in the counseling office with that you're going to see about around Thanksgiving in December we're going to start to push out scholarship information and that's typically when they start coming to us anyway because most scholarship organizations know they're so focused on admission applications those High School offices that is what we're focusing on now we do have a financial aid night on October 10th um it will be virtual not here it will be fully virtual so you can tune in for that we have a speaker for that someone from the financial aid profession um we have a page here on our website and again this entire document that has everything the kids need to know will be on our website within the next day or two and they're getting it they're getting it on Thursday I'll email it out to them all right so so that is a lot and questions may have come up and I will absolutely take them at the end I just have a little bit more content to go over with you I touched on this quite a bit on the admission plans regular decision very general regular decision is probably what if you happen to go through the college process you might remember back when we would did it you applied to a college and you know it was loose December January things weren't quite what they are now that's regular decision that might be a very good plan for some of your students because they're just not ready to embark on this right now it's like we just got back to school and I'm working and I've got a sport and I've got commitments at home and applying in January is perfectly fine okay so they can take their time with this process rolling admission the sooner they apply the better because decisions are going to be going out um I just got an email today um from W Southern University we released our first batch of decisions this week I think there's some other Southern schools that were releasing in late August because they went back to school much earlier and that that tends to to get make students feel like they're starting to live in a little bit of a pressure cooker like students are getting in now that's in the South we just got back to school two and a half weeks ago the ball's going to start rolling they're going to start to hear classmates go I got in I got in because it's rolling admission okay early decision we have the Ed agreement they have to do that's one school that's a binding commitment less than 50 of our students will do it early action is is much more popular non-binding commitment apply earlier find out your decision earlier again if you're tuning in from home there's a link at the bottom you can type in your browser and submit questions um I talked a little bit about parental role here we just ask for your support but support them in a way that gives them the ability to do this um it's so so important that they are in charge of the process if you see mistakes start happening you know they're missing things by all means get in there swoop in help out but please talk to them about hey Mrs NS designed a process for you that works just follow it let me know how I can help you want to talk about this maybe one night a week one day a week just let me know and again you do what works for your family um and the financial aid process um I know that when we have our financial aid night in October there'll be parents tuning in this is where you come in filling out the FAFSA the FAFSA is the free application for federal student aid it will open up in December I have another slide on that I talked a little little bit about this but I just want to re highlight this so post High School Pathways week November 18th to 22nd please encourage your students or if you have you know friends that you've been coming up the ranks with here over the years and you know their kids are not College Bound say hey you know the counseling Department's putting on some stuff in November make sure your student checks their email trade and technical schools we're trying to have um we're actually we are having our very first First Responders fair with EMS fire police here so people can look at those options uh we'll have our military recruiters we're going to have some Gap year programming people here in different things throughout the week and rvcc we have a fantastic relationship with them they'll be here a couple times throughout the year again students get emails about this um College athletics division one or two correct me if I'm wrong Miss hurg she's our Guru On Athletics if I say any of this wrong division one or two must register with the NCAA eligibility center division um three schools could have different requirements but I will say this and Miss halberg might you know we have had students go I'm going D3 and all of a sudden a D2 swoops in and recruits them they they have to register but those requirements are different by um by division but division one or two have to register they're probably if they're a recruited athlete likely working closely with their counselor at this point to say Hey you know can we check make sure I'm NCAA eligible we'll get their transcripts to NCAA and all of that okay um a couple reminders so it is the season of scheduled changes um so just remind your children and students watching and listening that if they do make any changes to their schedule later this year like especially at the semester Mark in late January if they've already applied to colleges we've sent a transcript that has courses they're intending to take in senior year semester 1 and two they've also put on their application courses they're intending to take in senior year that tells a college this is what I'm coming in with so when you come into semester 2 and you want to drop a class especially in academic core class you need to notify the college CU you're no longer going to come in with that class completed and that could impact a decision that's under review or a decision that's been made so please have them be very mindful about making those choices midyear um staying engaged it's tough senioritis kicks in for some of these kids you know they start to hear back from colleges in December and think I'm in I'm in great shape I have a couple more to hear from and it gets tough keeping them focused some of them in second semester um colleges absolutely will resend admission offers if we send out fi well if we send out we send out final transcripts to all colleges wherever the student is going we're sending a final transcript in late June early July and if the grades tanked and they weren't characteristic of what that student applied with they're going to hear from that college and in some cases it could be as Extreme as a resending offer so they've got to stay with it all senior year okay a little bit more about financial aid financi Cal Aid the FAFSA free application for federal student aid will open up in December if you watched the news or heard anything it was a messy messy year with the FAFSA the Fafa the government did an overhaul on the FAFSA last year typically the FAFSA opens up on October 1st for you to fill out as a senior family for next year so last year with the new FAFSA it took a little while and it opened up on like December 31st cuz the government said we'll have it done in 2023 and they made it by a couple hours okay and then it was January 24 it was February 24 I have seniors getting into colleges I have seniors wanting to make commitments I have seniors who still can't file the Fafa because it was a mess January and February and March ended up being three of the most hectic months I've ever had in this profession because as I was supposed to start shifting to Juniors I had this mess with so many seniors who could not successfully apply for financial aid and then we started getting through it and the fasta worked out it's Kinks well now we're up on May 1st which is when they all have to make a college decision and they don't even have a package they have no idea how much money they're getting so then colleg has extended their enrollment deadline to June 1st so it really draw it it drew out the senior year process of deciding so long okay but we got them off and running and honestly I I think it probably impacted our data a little bit I really think it might be you know these kids it got to May June like I don't even know what how much money I'm getting I'm not even dealing with this and and I think that probably had a little bit of an impact too on our overall um College matriculation however the government tells us different this year they say it's going to be better but it's not going to happen till December so we thought we'd have access to the Fafa in October they're rolling out some different beta and testing and things like that um but I'm anticipating it's going to be December we are still going to have our financial aid night Thursday October 10th it's virtual so don't come here there'll be some information sent to parents by our HC Communications with a link to join that webinar our speaker for financial aid night has been the speaker for 17 years I found her my first year and I've never let her go she's the financial aid officer at Mammoth University and she's fantastic so Kristen Isaacson will be joining us virtually that night and you can tune in from anywhere when you fill out the favus starting that and starting in December just remember this is so key you are filing the Fafa for the 2526 school year don't do the wrong one look at they go well we're in the 2425 school year that's this current school year you are going to file the FAFSA for what will be your child's freshman year of college so make sure you select the 25 26 Fafa um what can you do in the meantime you can prepare your documents make sure everything's in line from 2023 that's what you're going to need um but it's it's so electronic I mean you're going to be pulling in data from the IRS into the FAFSA it just it it really has streamlined it was just kind of a messy process getting there we're going to talk about scholarships a lot more in November December and moving forward again Focus right now is on applications we have a pretty robust local scholarship program here that Awards over $150,000 just from this local community 200 and Central seniors and this room transforms in June and we have a wonderful senior Awards night giving out all of those scholarships um there's a couple things here on our school website your students can start browsing but again Focus right right now is on applying for admission we will update all of this as we get closer to scholarship season okay um and I think that's it wow that wasn't bad so we are at just about quarter to8 we're going to take some questions I'm going to um I'm going to actually turn this off so I can look at my um my screen if you are still watching us from home know that I'm about to go in and look at your questions and I'll try to toggle between any that might here in the audience and any that have come in through our um our bitly link so um let me look at that and see is there anything just from our audience right now that that I can answer anything out there and I will repeat them so everybody here and home can hear them go ahead sure so the question was um what we asked our students to do as juniors starting in January of junior year we said you know you need to approach two teachers and verbally ask them for a letter of wreck and many began that process we reminded them a lot through spring we met with them again in the um right before the end of the year and then another influx of requests so up until this point they just needed to have a verbal conversation with their teacher and their teacher hopefully agreed to write there was nothing else they really had to do up to this point some some students would check in with their teacher over the summer you know maybe they got an email back some teachers have a mini questionnaire for students to fill out if they want a recommendation about their time in class but up to this point that's all they had to do but to answer your question so what if they put this request in score now and it's it doesn't the teacher says no I will tell you I don't I don't think that's ever happened since I've been here um the teacher if they agreed verbally to write the letter they're going to write the letter that's it so if if a student runs into an issue with that I think it'd be good for them to see their counselor or me especially if a conversation was had and the teacher said yes and then the teacher you know says hey I saw your requests and score but but I can't do that anymore I I could not tell you a single time that happened here in my years so the followup the official request and score is successful usually I I don't know any any different so um all right I'm just going to pull up here anything else in the audience here that I can answer um yes closes yeah yeah so um so our score count looks different and and I'm I'm not going to get in and show you it's so when we log into score as as administrators as councelors we get to see a whole view of basically what they're doing but organized by deadline date so we have a full ongoing realtime dashboard that has taken and this is why you know we were we were using a different program from any of your score is just so intuitive it tells us in real time what's happening so it'll link us to a date November 15th all these kids need something December for all these kids uh rolling and things like that so we we actually had our first year using this program last year we learned a ton and I think we're in really good shape this year I mean we have obviously we have the team of three counselors here Mariana Cordova working with our multilanguage Learners um one of our secretaries in the department helps on the back end of ton and I'm kind of watching over it too but the three counselors that serve the class Caitlyn um an and and Kim are really the ones who are in that dashboard every day seeing what's coming in for their case load and starting that process so we cons oh yeah we we yeah the the admission type is not as important to us as the date because it doesn't matter if you're eae regular we're going to get it done by the date so we can see it if we need to but we are so focused here on who and when when do they need it and who needs it all right let me jump over to my screen because there is quite a bit here in um in this spreadsheet and I just want to see if there's anything that jumps out okay so a couple things we definitely went over how will the college get the students transcripts through score everything is going through score colleges have a score they pull the data they pull the documents we send they attach them to Applications all right um let me find a way to check off what I've answered um can students do all their college applications via common app and not on school well I hope so common app is is the Pinnacle that's what we want students using if a college accepts the Common App and over a thousand do they should be using the Common App the option to apply with score should be your last option okay um let me take another one here did you just have a question yeah no the the commonapp is a website commonapp.org yeah so so the Common App is a web it our our guide on how to fill out the Common App literally will take a student from application creation on how to fill out every section how to add their colleges to it in the Common App itself you add schools to it that you are applying to so it takes over a thousand there's over a thousand schools and you will build your own personal list in the Common App of the schools you're applying to but we have a very comprehensive guide that walks students through how to do that question yes we are yes the question was great and I was so hoping someone would ask because I saw people when I said that earlier go wait that doesn't make sense all right so what was asked is um yes you have to give a month lead time for coun for um I'm sorry let me repeat that you have to give a one-month lead time for Teacher recommendation request so we do have a handful of students um that have October 15th deadlines and you're going wait a second it's September 17th so we missed it no you didn't miss it last week we put a survey out to the entire senior class it's now been sent out twice and I know they're doing it because we have a lot of responses to it asking our seniors who has October 15th deadlines and rolling admission deadlines we put this survey out every year within the first couple days of the school year I talked about it standing right here in front of the entire senior class in a meeting last week so they know about it and I said the reason we do that survey is because October 15th is going to creep up on us really quickly we as a Counseling Group here need to capture who those students are that have number one the earliest deadlines and number two whose requests are going to be coming in a little bit later than they should solely because of when we open up our requesting system so we know that there are students with October 15 deadlines we're sharing that with the teachers hey these these guys are coming up but you're not going to see their requests until about September 19th 20th and we're saying in our groups guys we turn this system on Thursday at 2:15 you have off on Friday you have the whole weekend if you have an October 15th deadline you scheduled a date with score this weekend so get in there and make your request because we're waiting for it the survey is not a request the survey was a was a a a heads up okay okay so that's how we're dealing with October 15th yeah all right let me take one in here um do I have a list of schools that are sat optional I do not but fair test.org does f a i teest fairtest.org it's a phenomenal website they do a tremendous job keeping the test optional list updated okay let me see there is a lot in here uh where can I find the testing schedule for for the SATs and acts college board for the SAT act for the ACT um okay if you complete the Common App self-reporting your SAT scores can you choose to go test optional oh this is a good one for some schools you're applying to okay we talk about this a lot so in the common application there is a section called testing my common app guide talks about how to fill it out this is a place where students can self-report their scores this is about that 15 savings I was talking about earlier so in the testing section of common apppp they can self-report their scores here's my best Reading Writing here's my best math this is my best sat they can also self-report their best act if they've taken AP classes they can self-report their AP exams they put it in there now there's going to be some colleges that want official score reports they have to send them so now all these scores are sitting in the testing section but they're looking at their college list thinking well I'm going test optional to those four but I want these other eight to see my scores what do I do there is a question asked by every single College in the Common App so you have you have the main common app which has all these parts and every College sees it and then in the Common App there's what we call the college specific questions those are the questions you answer for each college and only that college sees the responses it's there where they're going to say if they're coming in test optional or not if they're coming in test optional the college is not looking at those SAT scores it's that simple so I tell students always self-report your scores in the Common App and then declare your test optional or not in the college specific questions this might sound really like a not I'm speaking another language trust me when I tell you your kids know what I mean by this because they're all nodding their heads today yep we we get it that was all in the common app guide so yes you absolutely can allow colleges to see your scores in common app and then you can elect to say no I want to be test optional okay um there's a lot I know I'm not going to get to every single one tonight please reach out to us if you have questions um okay oh will parents receive an email with the updated 100 and Central common app guide the common app guide is on our website um there is a section on our website devoted to College and Career I'm going to be putting a I'm going to be putting out to Communications to update a few things on there this week keep an eye on it but it currently has the common app guide and it's going to have all of those procedures that big heavy do document we went over tonight is going to be on there in a few days so you guys can view all of that but again to ask your kids hey you're getting these emails let's talk about them okay um my students said everything was so easy thank you that's nice we we look I we tell them like there's there's a lot of you and there's just a couple of us so if we design a process that's confusing we're we're just it's hurting us it has to be laid out step by step and that's exact ly why it why it is like that what else here in the audience anything else I can answer before we wrap up yes yeah okay okay so um so we we we test APS in the spring so if you're taking AP exams in May of 2025 you can share that on Common App because in the testing section it asks do you have re do you have passed a um a AP exams do you have future AP exams obviously if you have future the score part is going to be empty okay AP exam scores I recommend sending threes fours and fives to colleges so if you got a three four or five you are going to send AP scores to a college one time and to one college only and that's going to happen in July of 2025 after you've graduated any APS you're taking senior year have come out and you know where you're going otherwise you do not need to send official AP scores to any college during this part of the process that's a big waste of money just report your scores on your common app or on any of your apps and then you're going to bundle if you've been taking APS in 10th Grade 11th grade 12th grade you're going to bundle it all next July and you're going to send one official AP school report for evaluation of credit to the school you're going to okay it's a good student question there all right I'll take one more and then we're going to let you guys go way way in the back that is a great question so that actually was part of um and I I didn't go into detail with it I think it was part of step one so here's what what happened when when um and this is a for those of you listening at home the question was about email addresses and what to use um when they got their score account it was always linked to their 100 Central email so some never changed it but there is a place in score for them to add an alternate email address and they should if they are using a personal Gmail or a personal email for common app or anything else in the college process they need to give that email to score and score has a place to add an alternate email it helps documents link up and also when I don't know if you noticed but when I was moving colleges from following to applying it's like what date are you following what admission plan the last field was email address used for the application they want to know score wants to know what email address did you use for this application well go into your common app upper right corner of your home screen and see what email you use for your common app account and pop that in there this helps score link documents up when they're sent from the high school to the college to the Common App so emails can be whatever they want as long as it's something they're going to commit to checking every day okay all right thank you all so much for being a great audience be in touch if we can help you okay take care drive home safe