##VIDEO ID:1yd5G7UCbus## yeah I don't know it um welcome and I'm excited for um I'm really excited for this journey we to really complete itself so I was saying to some people in the office T were talking about the event tonight and I had commented of how you know when you started this back in February January of the College Planning process and here we are now in September getting ready for all those college applications and I know that so many of you participated in the college boot camp so many of you ended up doing um you know with the letters of recommendation and the requests that you've been putting out it's been great so I'm really excited when I'm hearing about where people are thinking about applying and and in getting things ready for that so I'm I'm really looking forward to seeing where this journey is going to take you over the next couple of weeks and of course as we get ready to celebrate as the as the spring and the acceptances and all of that but um this night is really about information it's about questions and and Mr Goldman is really quite a stute and really helping guide families and students through this process so um without further Ado I welcome you all here tonight for your third workshop for College Planning and I'll turn over Mr have a good night everyone we love you right back at you enjoy let me welcome you guys too thanks for coming out um so this is part three of the College Planning series that we have we started back in January um with uh where to begin and then in April with what you should be doing over the summer and here we are in the final lap but there still important work to be done um to make sure that everything is is taken care of and uh we're presenting ourselves in the best possible life to the colleges um so we have the nuts and bolts of applying to college um if if any of you were not able to attend Workshop one or workshop two some of what we're talking about tonight may be a little unclear to you because these are it's a series it's not a repeat of what we've done in the past if that's the case um we do have these workshops were recorded and if you go to the midar high school website and on the right hand side click on um School counseling and then click on the junior information link on the left hand side uh you will see um the recordings and the work the two workbooks that went with uh each one of those workshops uh and that'll bring you right up to speed with things so let's uh get into the nuts and bolts of applying to college so like the previous two workbooks the inside cover is a rough timeline of what you should be doing and when you should be doing it um so in August we we had boot camp uh anybody here boot camp okay so this is going to be a little repetitive for you because this is pretty much what we covered in boot camp also but it's a good repression for you um so important um testing dates uh if you have not taken an SAT yet even though so many schools are test optional at this point we strongly strongly recommend that you take at least one sat um depending on your first college application deadline is we are a test center in November it's the first Saturday in November um if you have a November 1st deadline or an October 15th deadline then you will probably want to register for the October sat um and um we not a test center but you can take them at any school you would like to you just go into college board and select the school and you show up that morning and take the test um so important dates and deadlines here at the absolute latest December is the last last sat that would be relevant for this class um after that the next sat isn't until March and at that point decisions are rolling in at Mo for most of the colleges so you do not want to miss miss that you don't have to submit scores at the colleges don't want them or or don't don't require them but that's a good question for your school counselor to uh to address with you uh we got some mailings over the summer from some of the colleges saying yes we are test optional however if your test scores are good enough it may impact M intoa um so that's a reason why you may want to submit if they if they are strong scores but that's a good question that conversation to have with your school counsel can I ask a question yes what's considered a strong score it really depends on the competitiveness of the college an average SAT score is between a th000 and uh a, uh 20 10 20 that range um but it really depends if it's uh competitive more competitive highly competitive or most competitive school here we have the contact information for your school counselor please it's important that you communicate very clearly with your school counselor um deadlines are very important when it comes to the college committing process a phone call from and dad doesn't work with the colleges first of all they don't want to talk to Mom and Dad they want to talk to the applicant second of all they have so many qualified people for a limited amount of spaces at the colleges and you might be a strong candidate but all they needed was a reason to eliminate you from the process and missing a deadline will do it every single time so it's really important that you making sure that you are making your deadlines with the colleges um as always this just kind of tells you what we are responsible responsible for counselors what you're responsible for is uh as students and how we all how everything comes together to get uh all the information off to the colleges this is just a review of what was covered in Workshop one and what was covered in Workshop to and there's the link to um to access that information um we did just as a heads up if you have any check your email we've sent out this presentation to all the seniors and all the parents we sent it I believe on Monday and then it went out again yesterday with additional information um regarding the College Planning process so um so you should all have a copy of this um a couple of students said that uh they didn't get it um and we had them check the junk folder and sure enough it showed up in there in the in the J folder so um so uh if you did not get one let us know and we can certainly send it to you so right here is the process of how to apply to college there's three steps is the teacher recommendations there the applications and then there the standardized test scores let's talk about teacher recommendations first how many You' already asked the teacher to write a letter of recommendation excellent excellent if you have not done that that is number one on your priority list right now the teachers do not have to write the letters okay so and you know who the popular teachers in this building are so it's really and and so it's important that you get locked in with a teacher before they get overwhelmed and they say I just can't do another one because they're doing these on their own time and they have lives they have families uh and they want to do what they can but it's really important that you work with them so they can and you don't want your teacher or your counselor throwing together a lousy letter because it's last minute it's not going to do you any good you really want some thought and time to to go into these letters also so make sure you get a commitment also something that's come up this year um all the councils are noticing the students are asking teachers out of areas that they're uh planning on majoring in so we had uh Mr sidki had a student today who was planning on majoring in engineering and he asked the student asked Mr moer um who's the theater teacher and asked um I think it might have been Mr BR again who a teacher these These are academic letters or recommendations so your primary letter needs to at least be an academic one um really if you're applying for engineering you should be looking to ask a math or a science teacher um so you you really want to try to get at least one in most cases you only need one letter of recommendation from the teacher and the other one comes from the school counselor um but it's really important you try to match it up with the with the um with the major you're thinking about if you're UND decided doesn't matter as much um you just want a strong recommendation it doesn't have to be a teacher that you got an A with if you got a C in a class and you worked really really hard in that class it was a tough subject for you that speaks a lot about your commitment and there's a lot that your teacher can write about about you as a student um and how important how uh seriously you take your studies so um so think about that again if you're having trouble trying to figure that piece out talk to your school counselor so after you ask the teacher then you need to go into score and you need to select uh you need to complete the letter of recommendation information sheet we're going to go over this in a few minutes I'm going to show you how to access that it's on the bottom of your profile page you're going to complete that form you're going to save that form and then you're going to email it to your teacher you're going to do the same thing um with your school counselor this is one for the counselor to fill out and there is also an activity sheet that you need to fill out for the school and the activity sheet also doubles as a uh as the second page of the scholarship application which you guys will be completing in February um so these are Word documents I know you guys most of you are not used to using Word documents because we use Google in this school but you cannot put these forms in Google if you do it is going to really mess up the formatting and make it unreadable okay these are just for your counselors and teaches okay but if it's not readable it doesn't help us fill in the blanks of the things that we don't know about you that are it's important information for us to share about you with the college so please save it as a Word document on your computer on your desktop and then add it as an attachment to your email and and send it off to the appropriate person your counselor or your teacher um this way we will have what we need and we'll be able to process things in the timey way and get it out for you so after you um after you complete that email that to the teacher the teacher is going to write the letter they're going to upload it into score and they're going to submit it and you can see that goes directly to the college um any questions about whether or not a letter has been sent need to be addressed a teacher letter needs to be addressed with the teacher not with your school counselor we don't have any part in that that's them um that's them um sending directly to the college through our score program um just don't accuse your teacher of not writing it because a lot of times that stuff has been written and sent the callers just have not updated their files um at the time you happen to check your account um and it ends up being said so don't accuse them of not doing I haven't written it yet I put it sour taste in Theo okay so that is the teacher recommendation process let's talk about standardized test scores there's two different types of the SATs and the acts most of our students use take the SATs um it really doesn't matter uh which one you take um but like I said we're a test center for SATs and that's what most of our students and most students on the East Coast tend to take SATs the the acts tend to be more a Midwest test but um all the colleges take both of them now can I ask another question sorry how do you know if they've been the letters have gone in like what do you what do the students see like will they see the teacher that actually submitted it like how do they get confirmation of that I'm not I think the students can see it okay okay I I can see it as a counselor um so I but they're not looking in score to check on that once you apply to a college you get an account at that college and you can go and you can check and see what they received and what they haven't and like I said a lot of times what ends up happening is the college you know the students are nervous so they're checking every five minutes and you know they're up at midnight you know you know or before school early the the college admissions people work 9 to5 so they haven't gone in and click the button to update yet so a lot of times uh it looks like you know it's November 1st I submitted it and it says it's not there somebody screwed up but you like I said 99.9% of the time it's sitting there thank you how long do those letters stay in store so if your child chooses to take a gap year will they still be there the following year for applications yes they will be in there um yeah they they would be in there we also have um we also have the option if they're applying through Common App we have the option of submitting through Common App we don't do that in the course of a traditional school year so like all you folks that are here that are applying right now we don't submit anything through through the Common App so do not invite me and do not invite your teachers through the Common App um you do have to put your teachers name names into the Common App um but do not put their email address in there okay we um it's a little bit of a glitch with common app U there are schools that use common app to submit and you have to do that but um if you do not put your teacher name in you won't get the little green check mark next to furpa furpa is the federal education rights and privacy act in a nutshell we can't release your records Without You completing that um so um for some reason they' they've connected the teacher recommendation to that piece of it so you may have to put in most cases you may have to put a teacher name and just do not invite the teacher and put their email address and just put their name in and save it and you'll be done you'll get your green check mark and you can move on okay so um sat so if you if you do want SAT scores sent to the college and this is very important because there's somebody every year that um doesn't uh doesn't do this the right way we have no legal right to submit your SAT scores they are not considered official what makes sat or ACT scores official is it doesn't pass through anybody's hands it goes directly from the testing agency to the college so if you do want test scores sent you need to go back into your account if it's sat that would be college board and you need to plug in the code number there a five-digit code number for the college that you that you want those scores sent to and then they will send them electronically directly to the college um we cannot do that for you um so every year somebody think just assumes that we're sending those scores and we don't um we can't so it's really important that you make sure that you you take care of that piece okay and then you can see the they as I said they send it directly to the college and then it just all goes into one electronic file all right so the big piece that we're going to be working on is the application so for those of you went to boot camp you are probably about 95% complete with the process at this point you have your essays done you we went line by line um through the common application um for those of you who have not opened up a common app account yet um I would check with your school counselor before you do that uh just to make sure that you're putting the right information in I just met with half a dozen students of mine that didn't go to boot camp um on Tuesday and I'm meeting with the the rest of them uh on Friday that did not go to boot camp so this way I know at least they opening the account properly and then we'll go through again line by line to make sure that we're not answering the questions the way they're intended to be answered and we're not missing anything along the way um do not use your school email address very important use your personal email address when you're opening up those accounts and um and the reason for that is when you graduate that email is going to be shut off and you may this information about orientation or or uh deposit deadlines and things of that sort so it's really important that you use your personal email address and even more important check your email that seems to be a problem sometimes with students and check your email daily to make sure you're not missing anything important whether it's coming from us about important things coming up uh or whether it's coming from a college that you've appli to so there's two pieces of the application there's the app uh there the app itself and then is the essay okay so for those of you who have not started the essay that is the hardest part of the application and everyone Waits until the very end to do that and usually you're like okay I only got a couple weeks left and I got to rush through this essay and that can be really stressful and potentially sloy too so it's really important that you start the essay early if you're using the Common App which most of you will be using they give you six or seven prompts and you get to select what subject you want to write about the last one that as an option is a topic of your own choice sometimes people are relieved to hear that sometimes that scares people um but in general they want to learn about you they want to know about an obstacle or a challenge you overcome a person you admire and why if you're writing about another person make sure you are bringing it back back to yourself I have a friend of mine that uh worked at Boston College admissions for years and he used to tell stories about these wonderful stories about Grandma and Grandpa um and what wonderful people they are and the impact they had in their community and they gladly accept Grandma and Grandpa to their college U but the student brought it back to themselves as a result of their experience with them these are their values their beliefs their goals and how they choose to live their life so it it always has to come back to you um so pick that topic start with maybe just little notes phrases words and then get away from it for a while clear your head come back to it and maybe start roughing out an outline get away from it from a little while come back to it maybe get a first good solid first draft get away from it come back tweak that draft ask an English teacher if they'd be willing to proofread it for you and then keep going through that process of Corrections and proof free Corrections and proof fre until you have a nice clean document that you can upload into your application same thing with the application itself too um you should always make sure you have a parent or caregiver um proof free okay now as counselors we do review the application with you guys as long as you don't submit them before uh before you meet with us um however I'm not going to notice if you put a wrong birthday down or if you misspelled um a family name or something like that or you put the wrong phone number down or something like that so it's really important that you have somebody that knows that information really take a hard look at it to make sure you get a nice clean document then you're going to um once you have the application completed you uh need to put a credit card number in to pay for the application fees an application fee R ranges anywhere from $25 up into about 100 125 depending on the college which is a good reason not to apply to like 20 schools we recommend four to six colleges if you've done your research you should be able to narrow it down and at least three of those should really be in that um in that realistic range um you should always have a back a backup school and it's not necessarily for financial reasons it could be I had a student years ago parent um un father unexpectedly passed away she was an only child and uh it just devastated moment her and she was going to go to school out in I think it's Colorado and she um ended up going to her backup at Yukon she Liv this is schools in Central Mass so it was only about an hour hour and 15 minutes from the house um I had another student whose father lost his job after the financial aid process had been completed um she ended up she went to go to school for engineering she ended up going m l which is a fine engineering school um she was a very uh she was top of the class and she got into some pretty heavy duty schools though and uh luckily um she had a backup that um she could at least get started at and actually she ended up staying there she loved it so much so you never know what's going to happen so it's not always because academically you won't get in it's a lot of other reasons um sometimes that you you just want to cover your basis um and if you want to have a stretch school that's fine also um but um strange things if it's a real stretch strange things just don't happen like Harvard takes about 3% of their applicants so if you're not number one or number two in your class and you don't have almost perfect SAT scores strange things don't happen when it comes to schools like that okay um but certainly we'll review the list with you we will send your stuff anywhere you want it to go okay you want to apply to schools uh uh schools that maybe are a little bit beyond your range we will send the stuff to you and we do our best to help you uh help you in that process so that's totally up to you we will never say no all right so there's a whole bunch of things that we need to complete and submit in this process so we ask for 15 school days not three weeks 15 school days to be able to process everything and the things that we need to process are listed at the bottom we need to upload your high school transcript we need to upload your for schedule we need to complete the secondary school report form we need to complete the first quarter and midar grade form and upload and upload those grades we need to upload a school profile we need to complete the school report form and then of course the one that takes the most time is we need to write your recommendation and upload that in too um and I don't like Rec writing recommendations I like writing I don't like writing recommendations that are garbage but the student came to me the day before cuz that just just to meet a deadline that's not going to help anybody it takes honestly to write a recommendation a good recommendation it takes each conso about an hour and 20 minutes per student to write to really make sure that we are really capturing and and not just doing a one draft and just saying check it off and and send it out we don't like doing that it doesn't help you um so it's really important that we stick to deadlines so later in this workbook we have the the college application deadlines and when you have to have all your materials to us so we have enough time to prepare for that okay so we talked a little bit about testing here's the ACT schedule and the SAT schedule um if you were planning on taking an October sat the deadline to register was the 20th of September um and we just missed the late registration deadline so hopefully if you plan UND do that you did reg um you did register for it already but the next one is the one that we are a test center for so um you do have some time to register for that okay we talked about sending scores so this explains how to do that and the cost so if you send the scores and most people want to see the scores before they send the scores um so you do are had the four free score reports to be sent to any college you'd like to have them sent to um but most people want to see the scores before they send them out so I believe you have I think it's nine days after you take the test um to to make that decision okay if you don't um if you if you the timing of it just doesn't work they're going to charge you sat charges you $14 per report that get sent up and they'll charge the credit card that you use to register um the important the uh School CB code number college entrance exam Board number 22405 that's how we are identified um so if you want us to be able to see your scores then you need to make sure that you're putting that code number in there so we can see them we just can't send them U but it also does help us advise you on whether or not to send them or matching up against the GPA if uh the schools you're looking at are stretch realistic or C schools um and as I said earlier the um the colleges have five digigit code um if you need if you need to send them to the schools so the forms that I was talking about earlier the teacher recommendation form the school council recommendation form and the activity sheet so these are the instructions to access them the only thing that you send to your teacher is the teacher recommendation form okay if they ask you for an activity sheet do not send it to them the teachers are supposed to be writing about your academic performance in their classroom they should not be listing a laundry list of outside activities that they have no firsthand knowledge of now if your English teacher is writing for you and they also your lacrosse coach that's different okay they can talk about seeing you in the class and outside of the class um the school counselor writes the allround recommendation the academic the extracurriculars in and out of school and so that's that's why we get both but the teachers only get number one and I'm going to jump over to score to show you how to access those right now so when you log into your score account if you go over to where it says me right here and then view profile you scroll all the way down to the bottom and there are your three forms so the activity sheet just click edit and you type away okay so we just ask about different things it's kind of like a resume if you need more lines all you need to do is click on the outside of a line and hit enter and another line will be added see then you go to file save as and save it as a Word document and email it to your school counselor and save it for yourself because as I said this is page two of the scholarship application that you're going to be completing in February so and it's only a two-page application so you'll save yourself some time so don't just click save and score because sometimes it doesn't save in score save it to your desktop the letter Rec info sheet for the teacher just going to ask you questions about your experience with that teacher so um recommendation usually it's a junior teacher that get uh that the junior teachers that get inundated with the request because they've seen you most recently for the longest period of time you Pro you want to stay away from a teacher you had freshman a sophomore year and you haven't had them again um it's just it's too far in the past colleges are more interested in where you're at right now um now if you had that teacher freshman sophomore year and you just started with them now as a senior that might not be bad because they can also talk about the growth they've seen you over the last several years too um so just regular just you know pretty basic information about about your experience in their class and then it's uh that's it it's a short one and then the guidance one the school counselor one is longer because again we're doing the all round so we're going to ask you some information where you're applying and what your deadlines are who's writing your recommendations if you've taken any tests what your scores are what you think your most admirable qualities are your career interest if you're undecided that's fine if you have a couple of ideas write about it so I'm thinking about nursing I'm also thinking about architecture I'm going to go and take some electives and try to figure out where you know what what direction I'm going to go in um again it's got It's a little repetitive from the activity sheet uh but there's a reason for that um extracurricular activities outside activities see the subheadings read those okay we always tell the students you get out of these what you put into them you give us one word answers yes go ahead sorry if student transferred halfway through school should they put their activities at their previous High School on this AB these sheets the act the uh activity sheet and the um letter Rec info sheet uh for the counselor um should cover everything the student wants to share from n9th grade through 12th so if you play baseball even though you haven't played your senior year if you know you're going to be playing again you should include that you should include grade 12 otherwise it's going to look like you just stopped and they're going to college is going to say why' you stop after 3 years of playing the sport okay so make sure you're giving yourself credit what creditors do students always jip themselves U and we actually put a list of uh of activities in the workbook to jog some people's memories um so we always tell the students you get out of this what you put into it you you give us one word answers you may get one word responses not intentionally but we have some students that fly so high they don't need us we see them maybe once or twice a year I have other students that are in my office daily that I get to I know very very well so this is is important to kind of fill in the important gaps and pieces that we maybe don't know about you so we can show you was a well-rounded person now it does not need to be the Great American novel okay they don't want your teacher or your counselor writing more than a onepage letter recommendation because they get thousands and thousands of applications with thousands of pieces of well many pieces of of uh documentation in there so they want but they want to hear anecdotal information so the general rule of thumb for each one is state what it is give two or three examples of why it was meaning meaningful or significant and then move on to the next question if there's two things you want to talk about I after you give examples of the first give a few samples of the second one um the one that um people tend to be very short on is my proudest accomplishment do not put my proudest accomplishment was getting an A in your class period next question that doesn't tell us or the admissions counselors anything that we can't already read on a transcript so that's why it's important to read underneath the subheadings okay why was that your prous accomplishment okay and it doesn't necessarily have to be an a it could have been again it could have been I got a C in pre-calculus math is a hard subject it was important to me to get to that level I went for extra help I did extra credit questions I was in a study group I had a tutor those are all examples of anecdotal information that shows your commitment as a student um so again doesn't have to be a novel this is the guidance one here like you saying Guidance with School counseling now um School counseling one is four pages these boxes expand as you type by the time you're done it really should it just touches a fourth page right there by the time you're done you really should still be at four maybe touching a fifth page so it doesn't have to be a novel just enough information state it examples moving on to the next set you should be able to answer a question in every single one the only one we will exempt you from is special circumstances if you have not had any special circumstances don't feel compelled to come up with anything okay and a special circumstance is and I work full-time and I play sports and I and I take classes that is being the student now if you have a family situation where you have to work and you're contributing to the the family po so you guys can pay bills and eat and everything that's a different situation okay all right so any questions about these letters okay what don't we do with these save them to Google we don't save them where Google Google that's a big noo no Google okay I already had to send two back to a student I couldn't read them all right so that is that um and then we're going to go back over here here are a sample of some of the things you should be thinking about athletic clubs these are in school clubs the honor societies if any of you member of Honor societies these are the correct titles of the honor societies okay so don't say World Language Honor Society here at Middleboro we just combine Russian Spanish and French but there are actually three separate ones so you can see that there is a French uh Honor Society a Spanish Honor Society and then there is the uh Slavic which is the Russian one okay um so these the official titles of these uh those would go under honors um in the Common App and if you're in the National Honor Society I always list that one first because that's the granddaddy of um student uh Student Government we have class counil we have student council and we have school council and then outside activities we gave you some suggestions of some things that uh our students tend to get involved with every year when I'm meeting with st with seniors I ask them do you have part time job no your babysit yeah well that's a job with a lot of responsibility so make sure you're giving yourself credit for that okay all right and then anything else you think of okay if I don't think it's we don't think it's worthwhile we'll tell you that we we would recommend you take it out but at least you know to start put it in you have 10 spots in the common application to include your extracurricular activities and there another spot if you're super involved in things that we can show you we can add additional information if you really need to um always start with your most important or longest commitment activities and then to the least um if you only did something for one year and you have the room to list it on there list it on there okay uh I've had students that have come to high school never played a sport before and decided you know I'm going to try off for cross country and they do it for the year and they're like you know what running just isn't my thing they weren't kicked off the team they tried it they didn't do it they went on to something else if you have room include that counts for your time okay um how many people here have done St strong okay you can put that under community service volunteer that's also one of the categories in the activity section on the p pa okay so um you can list that there and that's usually about 20 to 25 hours so that's that's that's a a big one all right the application we've talked a lot about the application already so um www.com app.org is where you go to um to start the process as I said before I really check in with your school counselor before you start before you open up that account we want just want to make sure that you're using your personal email you're using your legal name you're capitalizing and that there's a lot of questions that you can interpret different ways and we just want to make sure that you're interpreting things the correct way at least to get get you started you don't and then then we will be checking in with all the seniors throughout the course of the Fall um based on deadline so right now we there's more there's several Southern schools that have switched to an October 15th deadline so if you have November 1st deadlines be patient please we will get to you we just have to hit the no the October 15's first again if you have a November 15th please be patient we have to hit the November 1st December 1st December 15th and then the regular decisions start in um in January and run until April okay so we will uh we will get to you if you have not heard from us and you are getting nervous or concern just shoot us an email if it's something that needs to be addressed right away we will make room for you okay um if it's something that we're like we got some time we'll say okay next week let's get through what we have right now okay but we communication is really important we know it's stressful for students and parents we get that okay um and we want to try to keep that stress level as low as possible and part of that was having three workshops over the course of the Year back in the day we used to have two one started in in uh April and then one was in October and it's just too much information like what's and the process had sped up so much like let's just break this down and do bits and pieces and keep trying to keep keep people nice and calm all right when you're filling out the applications it is important to read people don't read anymore okay make sure you are reading clearly make sure you remember that this not is not one giant text message you have to use capitalization and punctuation okay uh it's really important proper nouns need to be capitalized um again we'll go through this with you but it's really important that you act like this is like an English test okay and you are doing your best work um so there's different types of applications okay five different types there early action his early decision priority regular decision and rolling admissions it's so bad that I might back to you that's right okay um early action do applications they run from November 1st to December 15th and the same with the early decision ones now not every school offers early action not every school offers early decision so Boston University only offers early decision the difference between the two early action is a non-binding process you can apply to as many colleges as you'd like early action you just find out sooner usually if it's an earlier one usually by Christmas time you'll have an answer um early decision is a binding contract that the student the caregiver and the school counselor are signing a contract um and it's being signed to a score whether you realize it or not you you are sign or through the Common App depending on the school um you can only apply to one college early decision if you get in that's where you're going and you will not know about financial aid for months after that um so it was not put in place to benefit the student other than finding out sooner it was put in place because the colleges know who they compete with uh you know uh the state colleges in massachus know they compete with each other the Harvard's know they compete with the other IV League schools um and it's an opportunity to try to lock in students before their competitors college is a business yes the what you just said about the financial age that you would have know if you get accepted in let's say November 1st yeah um what happens if Don the RO can't go to that college because something happened you know you lost your job or walk what happens into the student to different collegey applied for or okay so the question was if uh you apply early decision get locked in and then something happens like losing a job you know you're still bound to go to that school that's a question youd have take up at the college um they don't tell us that stuff they just tell us what I just told you um and that it would probably be policy based I would hope that they would be understanding with something like that um but um I I I I I'm sure every college has their own policy on it but the financial aid process I'm sure you guys heard last year they revamped the whole process last year and the application has always been out the fa forms always come out on October 1st every year and they delayed it until late December um and then they ended up having delay decisions and then you know the universal deadline to put a deposit down at college is always be May 1st some colleges had to move it to June 1st or June 15th because they just didn't have enough time information from the federal government so um it's and we've already been told the workbook says October 1st for financial aid for the fter opening for you folks we just were informed they've already pushed it to December 1st for this year okay so that is um that's been changed um so um like I said there's not a lot of schools that offer early decision it used tends to be the very high level schools that do that um we're not big fans of it is School coun uh only for that reason it just it just it just it locks you in I had a student many years ago who applied early decision to um Babson into Bentley and she was being recruited to play tennis she had done overnights at both schools with the tennis team traveled with them you know ate with them and there's a universal list out there somewhere and both schools found I happened to know the tennis coach at ABS I went I went to school with him um and he called me and and he goes do you know where she applied I'm like tell me what you know first and he told me and I'm like well yeah and she lost both schools um so it is a contract that you signed so you just going to be very careful early action go for it if they're offering it and you have the time don't rush your applications do sloppy work if you don't if you're playing a false Sport and you got heavy duty classes and you just don't think you can put the proper time into the application in the essay don't rush it Go regular ision um but if you can do it and you want to bring it on let's get these things done and out okay U priority is similar to early action um it's uh usually specific to the colleges anybody here interested in nursing hey couple of nursing prospects Mo most schools um most schools have a priority deadline for nursing there's so many people that want to be nurses and there's so many opportunities to be a nurse there's just not enough places to get trained enough seats so a school like UMass Amer that has 30,000 students they take 85 students a year to the nursing program um and you can't transfer into sophomore or Junior um so um so usually the nursing programs and some specialy programs in certain colleges that something they known for have a priority um deadline regardless of priority deadline if they don't you're applying for nursing I'd still say get your applications in sooner than later okay all right regular decisions begin January 1st and run the 1st and the 15th all the way up to April each College will say select one of those dates sometimes they're off a little bit if the 1 or the 15th is on a Saturday or Sunday they may say you know the day before the day after um but that's traditionally what it's been so for example UMass Amherst is January 15th deadline for regular decision Bridgewater State is February 15th um so they each pi what they like um and then there is rolling Admissions and rolling admissions is there's no deadline you can apply whenever you want so the positive piece to worldly admissions if things don't work out in your search hopefully they do because hopefully you'll take our advice and make sure you get that safet to scool there but if it doesn't there's always a place you can still apply to the downside to Rolling is how they process the applications with a with a with a hard deadline they wait for the deadline and then they process the whole pool together and they decide who are their definites who are their weight lists and who are their notes with rolling admissions the application comes in today they read it they make a decision next one comes in tomorrow they read it they make a decision so several years ago nor Eastern used to be a rolling admission school and I had a whole bunch of students that applied in January and February which was early in the process back then and all of a sudden all these students were getting rejected so I called the emissions office and I'm like why are you taking our kids anymore they filled up in December because so many people applied early earlier in the rolling process and they just filled up and they were very apologetic but there was nothing they could do about at that point so um so like I said so don't wait too long um you know I would only use rolling if wait on the rolling if it was a last minute decision um you should really I would say for everybody you should really Target unless as a specialty school out there you really should Target um on a rolling ad s some between January 15th and February 1st just to be safe and as I mentioned earlier over here we have the college application deadlines so on the left hand side of the traditional dates and deadlines on the right are the school counseling department deadlines so for October 15th everything was due to your school counselor by September 20th where this gets a little hairy is when we have vacation periods and things of that sort so when you look at a December 1st deadline everything is due to us on November 1st because of Thanksgiving uh at January 1st everything is due to us on November 26 so it's so it's very it's very important that you kind of keep track of this stuff now you don't have to wait until that 15-day window I've already had probably seven or eight students already submit their letter Rec info sheet and their activity sheet to me um it's one of those things that just kind of hangs over your head so over the weekend or something just get it done send an email it to your counselor cross it off your to-do list the other piece is you need to request your transcripts through score if you don't do this piece we will never know what toools you're applying to so in score let's see if I can show you this okay I can't so when you're in my colleges in score so you can see here this student here is following seven schools it just means that they read about them they're interested in them they haven't done anything yet okay once they know for sure that they're they definitely apply you just click can hold it and drag it over to the applying column and then if you're using the Common App then you click Common App if you're using their application on their website you click that if a school has two applications use the Common App there's only there's about a thousand colleges that are on the Common App so it's not if they don't like it they don't put their name on it and saves just so much time it's one application it's one essay you don't get any bonus points using their own application um so I would say with c common app on this one if you're applying let's say this person's applying for November 1st we'll click early action and sat reporting will say this person does not want to submit their SATs okay and then you click save okay and it's not going to allow me to do it because this is a student that uh a fictitious student that is not active right now um so how do I get out of this quick question wouldn't you click that over if they were not submitting scores because you said this person is not going to but you didn't move touch that thing let me do that again so see intend like wouldn't you have to turn that on to say I intend to test option I appli yes you are correct okay and that so that's how you would do that okay and then so it's over here in the applying column and we did that okay and I can't I can't do because I'm not saving it I can't it won't stick in there but this is the important piece once you've applied you need to drag it over to the applied column see where it says Bridgewater State over here if you don't drag it over there we will not get notified okay so we won't know that you appli to a college and this happens sometimes student does everything else it's supposed to do and we we don't get a notification like did you just send my stuff out I'm like you didn't apply anywhere you didn't this is how you this is how you're actually requesting your transcript okay um so make make sure now if you know you're definitely applying you don't have to wait to drag it over to the appli column okay if you know 100% you're applying there right now today you can drag it over there so we get the notification it has no impact on your application okay score is a whole separate piece it's just this is just our software program here um so once you do that we'll be notified so I do have one student that emailed me last night uh and she uh dragged three schools over into that applied call so I have she emailed me her letter of Rec info sheet last night her activity sheet and she dragged those over so she's ready to go okay what happens is we each have probably about 50 or 50 50 and 55 seniors not to mention the other kids in our case load students tend to wait until that 15-day Mark and then they all submit it one time and now we've got a whole lot of work to do in one shot if you're done with your stuff get it over to us right now I'm coming off summer vacation I'm fresh I haven't written any recommendations I can tell you by January I'm going to be like I feel like I've already said this 20 times and I want we really want to try to make these individual letters and not form letters um so get it off your to do list get it to your counselor the more leeway and your teachers too um the more leeway we get the better work you get out of us also um so and again communication is the key to the this whole thing if you are think you may have a problem meeting a guidance deadline don't let it come and go contact your counselor if we get enough advanced notice we still have a window that we can work in and we can PL around that it's when the student shows up the day before or the day after the deadline um um and I mean the college deadline not the school counseling deadline that it becomes really ha you and then we end up saying okay you know what get your forms out but the letter is not going out today it's going to have to come go out in a few days CU we we have other stuff ahead of you right now was there a question um what if they're applying somewhere that doesn't take the Common App is there anything that she needs to get from here yes so the question is what if you're applying to a college that does not use the Common App and there are a lot of colleges out there um you just go to their website and you click on Admissions and then it usually says either freshman or first year applicants um sometimes it's a graduate school application make sure you're clicking on the first year ref freshman application they're going to have you set up an account like you would with the common application and you're going to uh and you're going to fill it out just like you would the Common App it's a lot shorter it's usually only two maybe three pages um and then they'll tell you what else is required all the colleges are going to want an official transcript all the colleges are going to want at least well I shouldn't say all of them but majority of them want at least a teacher recommendation um some want both teacher and a councel recommendation you don't have to go nuts in the teacher recommendations most colleges one is fine um if they say it'll take more than one you really feel strongly about sending other one that's fine but if they say two or whatever their number is don't send three don't send four call them first and say can I send another one um they get get a little aggravated when you start sending additional pieces of paper that not asking for because again it's just a lot of paper to to process and stuff so you don't you know from your perspective like I'm just sending it read it throw in the trash out of here you know it's just it's just additional information from their perspective like okay students not following Direction so you're already put a negative thought in the admissions counselor's head sorry okay is he behaving yes okay good job all right so communicate talk to your counselor if you think you going to have problem this and we can always try to work something out ahead of time this is school information that you're going to need to put on your application our code number um our address our phone number our fact number is anybody facts anymore okay correct spelling of Mr branigan's name correct spelling of your school counselor's name important to make sure you're being thorough my name is spelled with a pH not a v now I don't care but that's the way my all my stuff goes out and it's just of those things that they see and they say do they take the time to to read and do do things the right way so just be as thorough as you can okay your class size has changed we this booklet was put together for boot camp this summer and then we had some students to give us last minute so your official class size is not 191 your official class size is 183 183 if you would like an unofficial copy of your transcript just to have that on record and if you're doing visit so it's good to make copies of that and bring it and show it to the adions counselors Mrs Pont our secretary um has printed out a one copy for each senior and you can just come into the office and ask her if you can get your unofficial copy and the lower right hand corner it has your GPA and your class Rank and the size of your class there was a question over here yes yes so the question was um in score when you when the student moves over moves the college drags the college over to the applied column not applying but applied column does the school councelor get a notification yes we get an email and it tells us um for each School you do you uh you move over there we get an email for each one of those so what I do is I just I have a spreadsheet so I just put that right into my spreadsheet right away uh with the earliest deadline and then I sort all my students by earliest deadline so I can try to process things in the time of the day is there a question up here no okay all right do we have anybody here who transferred to Middleboro during High School okay so that did I [Music] get we somebody go on a road trip right so your uh gear attended midoro high school will be a little different right okay so just make sure that you're accounting for that and don't put yourself in the why is this I'm not even touching bottom window what's that move your mouse it's on the bottom left corner oh oh oh oh no actually oh God hard reset oh it's I can't oh go home that's our technology for you my computer actually crashed two weeks ago and it's the reason why the the information on this is uh hasn't been updated because when I edited this over the summer it didn't back up and I lost everything so I happen to have a PDF that I had sent to all the other counselors so that's what we're looking at right now anyways so make sure you don't put yourself in the 5year plan okay when you're working those dates out okay teacher requests so this here is a step by step of how to get into your score account and request your teacher uh writing a letter recommendation ask your teacher before you make the official request it's as simple as Mr and Mrs so and so would you be willing to write a letter of recommendation for me for college yes great I will email you my letter of info she and make the official request of score the teacher will be notified once you once you make that request and that will give them the ability to upload your letter into score so it can be submitted and this is these screenshots are step by step it's a touch screen um of how to do that see if I can do this is there a time frame like from when the student the thing through score what you know the like says they they want to request like is there a time frame I just don't want them to send it to them and you know and it needed like you know what I mean I just want to make sure they give them enough time usually if they send it we get it within minutes we get the we get the in within minutes know what I mean for the teacher to work on the teachers we ask them again same for the teachers is account for 15 school days okay perfect all right so I can't oh my all right so it's not allowing me to do that so I can't uh so apparently it's just score that is doing this not not the okay so this is step by step of how to do it's very simple what you end up see if I can zoom in on this you click on my colleges and then the application documents and then you click on request recommendation and then a Dropbox will pop up you select the teacher that you want and just send them a quick thank you note cuz they doing this on their own time just thanks for writing my letter recommendation I'll forward my documents to you um let me know if you have any questions about anything that's all keep it simple but just you know they're taking time out of their their personal schedule to help you guys out okay um same thing for the uh transcript requests I showed you how to access that already um but again if you know a lot of information it's right here for you to uh to go step by step if you need to okay so the financial aid there's three forms of financial aid is the federal aid that's the FAFSA form and that is the new link for it it used to be fafsa.ed.gov um it is changed so that is the new link for it um again just a reminder the first FN FAFSA stands for free application for federal student aid so if you are asked for a credit card you're on the wrong website okay so um please uh make sure that the whole purpose is to get money not spend money um and as I said that will be available I believe they said it's December 1st U it'll be available for you to uh to start completing if you click on it right now it tested it this morning you're going to get last year's so you don't you want to avoid that the CSS profile that is for private schools this not all private schools but several private schools have the CSS profile which is a college board form so there's a charge for it um private colleges have access to additional funding through endowments and things of that sort so what they do after your federal uh application is reviewed by the college uh if they accept the CSS profile they go in they see if there's additional need and uh you may get money through that okay so check to see what private school if you're buying a private schools check to see if they take the CSS profile you could actually log on to college board and start that now I wouldn't submit it yet but you can start the form now uh you don't have to wait um and then there institutional Aid and that is through through the work that you've already done here at the high school Merit Scholarships um and also work study and things like that so you got to remember that most financial aid is in the form of either low interest student loans or work studies so it's not necessarily free money okay low interest student loans all that means is you're getting low interest and you have 20 years to pay it off from the time you finish college if you go to grad school that counts also so you don't have to pay to you know on graduate school um but um and then work study is they'll give you a job on campus they're not usually the most high paying jobs you might be working in the cafeteria or checking people in at front desk at a residence hall or working in a in a graduate school office doing filing or something um but it's convenient okay if you don't have a car it's right there you just walk and walk to it and all that so um and M that's the bottom line we've all been there um okay so uh this is a new link that we came across uh about uh col uh funding a college education so it looks they have some good information on there if you want to kind of peruse uh peruse that um they we used to have somebody come in to do a financial aid night to help you guys manage the application because it is a lengthy application since covid they don't come in anymore they do virtual workshops um so Massachusetts has fasta days and that's the link I haven't looked at it since August and they did not have any uh fall workshops scheduled yet but they if they're not there yet they will be scheduling throughout the fall and early winter um they are very helpful um and they will take questions from you also from what I've been told um if you uh from from the you know virtual platform if anybody here is interested in playing division one or division 2 Athletics you must register with the NCAA eligibility center that's to assure that you are not being illegally recruited um and that is an absolute must um you have to that is the website right there that you go to to start the process um I Believe Miss Bretton is now our NCAA coordinator here at the high school so if you have any questions about this piece talk to her because there is some things that she's going to need to do also she's going to need to submit your application your your application your um your transcript to the NCAA don't panic because it always initially comes back as a rejection and the reason for that is the NCAA for D1 and D2 have very rigid eligibility rules when it comes to high school course requirements so all of you have to take four years of English cuz we requireed right they requireed too but you haven't got a final grade in that class yet so that is the reason why it's coming back as a rejection okay um and there may there's other there may be other things too but um but don't panic okay that is that's what happens and then what happens at the end is we resubmit at graduation time we resubmit those to the NCAA and then usually everything's fine because you've met the the requirements for everything that you need okay um mark your calendars anybody here sit in applying to Bridgewater State okay so every year we have a relationship with one of your classmates mothers actually that works in admissions over at Bridgewater State and she comes in here and does instant decision day so um in November and it is coming up I can't remember the date it's in mid November it's on the guidance calendar on our site you'll start to hear announcements for it if you are planning on applying there apply early action okay and we will send your stuff into her she will come in here she will conduct a 10 or 15 minute interview and it's just to get to know you interview it is nothing to stress out about but we certainly can talk with you about it beforehand if you want to talk to your counselor before you you go into it and you will walk away if you meet the criteria you will walk away with an Acceptance in your hand in November how's that okay so um we never have enough people take advantage of that um because we know we have a lot of people that apply bridgew and we probably maybe get 10 people that go through the process every year but uh it's a great way to start the process and know you got one in your back pocket okay scholarship information night they haven't finalized the date yet but it's usually the week before February uh vacation um and at that night we uh we will launch our local scholarship book and the applications and show you how to access that information Miss Bretton is our scholarship coordinator um and um so any questions regarding scholarship she can answer I can probably answer a few things because I was the scholarship coordinator before I ped off in the new person um but she uh you know she's uh it's U it's a very easy process but and we start you nice and early so you have February vacation to knock those applications out and just be done with it and and then when you come back to school you don't have to worry about it you just focus on your classes we also have mass soy on the spot admissions uh they come in in March usually and again same as uh Bridgewater's instant decision day they come in quick interview and you walk out with an Acceptance in your back pocket uh May 1st is National College signing day that is the deadline to put your deposit down at the college that you would like to attend um if any of you are PL well I'm sure a lot of you are planning on living on College on a college campus make sure when you get the information from the Residence Life and housing office I worked in res life and housing for seven years I U make sure that you were getting your deposit in immediately if you want to live on campus and the reason for that is they book like the airlines they overbook okay because they don't want to have empty beds and then what ends up happening is if they told you you're going to have a place to live you will have a place to live uh because I know people drop uh drop and decide to go a different school but if they not enough people don't and you put your deposit in late or later in the process because they date stamp all of them as they come in you end up in a triple room okay and a triped room is a room designed for two people that has two closets two bureaus two desks and three beds okay or you might be in a trip room with four people okay those rooms are a little bit bigger but still it's tight um so they um so even though you made the deadline they date stamp them as they come in and they get priority you look out that stuff in first okay so it's just a little uh inside information for you guys then the important stuff Senior Week starts on June 2nd and there's some of the events that are going to be planned and finally graduation June 7th at 6 p.m. I'm the go ball field um like the other workbooks we have a copy of the sample forms sample forms here um the activity sheet actually has info on it to show you how to word things and answer things don't put member of things if it's a if it's a sport put your position if you're a captain make sure you're putting that in there too um if you're a student council person don't put member put representative um if you have a leadership role like president or Treasurer or something like that make sure you show that because that showing the colleges that you are a leader at your high school um again make sure that you are giving yourself credit for your your work experiences and your extracurricular experiences and again a lost three of terms at the end because there's a lot of acronyms in higher education um so this will help help uh answer some of those for you if you come across one that's not listed here let us know we will add it for the next group and that is nuts and bolts of applying to college so I uh there any questions are we overwhelmed yes don't be overwhelmed it is a lot of information but we really really took a lot of care and developing these workbooks to get precise to the point bullet information step byep instructions usually when we get emails or phone calls from students it's because they just didn't read it and it is in there um and we don't mind answering them obviously um but we are this is where we spend the bulk of our time as counselors you know as freshmen and sophomores you probably didn't see a heck of a lot of US unless there was other reasons to see us um this is where we are we're the seniors a lot and even the Juniors um as of mid year um really trying to prepare them for the future um so please don't hesitate that's why we here um one uh one other thing too for you folks uh before you submit applications make sure your schedule is finalized okay if you have a second semester course that you're thinking you don't want change it now okay because you're going to report those classes to the colleges and they are making decisions based on what they're seeing in your application including your your schedule even though you may drop an elective that has absolutely nothing to do with the major you're going into sometimes it changes things I had a student several years ago who dropped an accounting class wanted to drop an accounting class go to the going to the apply to the University of Delaware and Delaware told me I told her to call it first to make sure and Delaware called me and said if she drops it her application comes out and then once she submits her schedule they you have to start from the beginning and reconsider so let's um before you anything make sure that everything is finalized okay if you have any question about a course they not sure about the second half of the Year let's fix that now all right was there a question yes it really depends on how quickly they process it and get that information to the colleges and then the colleges will notify you so what happened last year it it was late March early April that the colleges started to release um their decisions hopefully it's not that late again it's again it was the Govern the federal government had been working on this for years how they screwed this up is beyond all of us well federal government are we still rolling the camera it was a long way to get on it it was like the uh when ObamaCare opened up um the website crashed that's what happened with the new website so um but uh I said I would just when soon as December 1st comes around St checking you to see if yes go ahead just a stup question for instance I want he wants to apply to Northeast and northeast's acceptance rates is below four right now m is should you do the ear decision for them you do early action for it depends on what they offer do they offer both I can't remember if they offer both yes I think they offer both they don't do early decision I would do early action early action I would do early action so not early decision no so we shouldn't do early decision for anything basically that's a personal choice you have to make uh I'm not a fan of it and the counselors aren a fan of it because again we we just we we you're going to get locked into something and you're not going to have all the information in front of you that you need to make the right choice but if money's not an object or or that's your dream place you don't mind paying that over the course of 20 years that's that's up to you okay okay yeah was there a question over here yes are you doing this with the kids in the school like obviously like you know like are they having like seminars for the seniors in the school that what we just went over okay so this is we uh for those students that went to boot camp we did all of this and we we opened up the Common App went line by line speaking for myself and my students I had about 12 to 15 students that in my case load that are GPA wise could get into a four-year college that did not attend boot camp so if you have a GPA really below a 2.6 2.5 depending most likely you're not going to get accepted to a four-year College uh you started a two-year um on occasion you we may find a program that they can start in and then get accepted uh get accepted uh into the into the program a summer session to start with but what I what I did was I met with half of those students on Tuesday in my gr Road and I did I didn't do this part of it I did the Common App piece like we did in boot camp and I went line by line and I answered all those questions for them that they had I'm meeting with the other half of them on Friday and then the other kids that are more towards the bottom those are the kids that we have some time on and we'll we'll handle them one-onone but every sing and I know the other councils are thinking about doing something similar to that um so um but what we do as counselors is we meet with every single senior individually so what's going to happen is again based on deadlines starting with the October 15s I'm going to start calling those students down next week and I'm going to meet with them oneon-one we're going to have I'm going to have them open up their application we're going to go line by line through the application just even if they went to boot camp just to make sure everything's in order answer any questions review the book and make sure that they understand the process of the the requesting transcript and getting the forms to the teacher and to the counselor and uh and then after that I just tell the students the seniors I said email and pop in whenever you need to see me um I said that's why we here and uh and we'll make sure we get everything on the time right again the communication is really critical um sometimes I have parents that call sometimes the students are doing it taking care of their business but they're not telling their parents and the parents are getting nervous and the parents will call and they'll say my God you know it's November they haven't done anything yet it's December they haven't done anything yet and I'd be like no I've actually sent out three things already for them or no um I've been telling them they need to get on the stick you know they need to stop mov so we we do try to make sure the ones that we know four year foure bound we really try to make sure that they're being processed in a time in life yes so I may have Mard um so there isn't a standardized process with the council School counseling team or guidance counseling team you're choosing to do this for your students is what I heard okay that um I've been doing it now for probably three or four years um and each counselor does it differently I know Miss burn has did workshops last year for those students and she was talking about it today I don't think she scheduled anything yet um and Miss Bretton and Mr swederski I believe just met with all the students oneon-one and made sure they got the information so for Miss burn and I because we're the old folks in the department um we would rather get the bulk that can be done as a group out of the way so when we meet with them oneon-one we're not pulling them out of class for an hour and a half we pulling them out for 20 minutes now and just doing the review and answering the questions um so it it keeps them especially for the kids that are taking the heavy duty glasses we don't want to pull them out of like AP glasses and stuff like that so um so it's worked out really well um it's just a preference on the councelors and how they like how they like to handle it Miss mrki and and Miss Brenton are um would just rather take do do it one-on-one like that we still do the one-on-one but we feel like we're saving time by doing the some of the group stuff and then following up knowing they're all knowing that they're all to a certain point at that in the process and now we can just bring them along together and are they then the uh two that you mentioned are they also then looking at the AP classes so they don't interrupt those they do the best they can sometimes we have students taking all the AP classes you don't have much of a choice what we end up doing though as counselors is we look at we also look at the grades so we're try you know so if we see a kid that's got an A in a class versus a c in a class we'll try to pull them out of the class like at the A and and not to see uh cuz clearly they need more instructional time in a class like that so so we do the best we can with it um schedule's not perfect for anybody so um the teachers are great they understand the importance of it um and uh I never call whenever I call a classroom to teach I say at your convenience I tell the teacher if they doing something important I'll find another time to meet with them um teachers are always like nope nope absolutely take them take them you know so they it's it's worked out really well and we know who the students are that really shouldn't be pulled out of classes you know so we'll figure out times for for those kids okay other questions well I'll be around for a little bit if anybody has questions uh more specific to their uh to them or to their or to their students um thank you all for coming out I really appreciate it um good questions tonight and uh please reach out to us um we're here to to make this gooo as possible okay