Coming very soon Is available now! the new book by J.D. Wyczalek (why-zall-ick) entitled:
The College Compass Student Athlete Handbook.
Within it’s pages the secrets of top recruiting coaches are revealed on-
How to get a sport scholarship, financial aid, be noticed by college coaches and get recruited to play on a college team.

You need the answers to these questions.

• Will playing my sport at high school and in summer tournaments get me noticed by the right school for me?
• Are club or high school sports programs better for being seen and recruited?
• Does it matter if I play in state or showcase tournaments and events?
• If I’m not being recruited should I forget about a future in college sports?

College Compass Student Athlete’s Handbook

click here to order it & get it downloaded instantly!

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It sounds too good to be true, but if you meet income qualifications (and are careful with any 529 savings accounts), Uncle Sam is prepared to help cover college bills.

After all we have been paying billions into the tax pool bucket isn’t it time to get a piece of that pie back?

Millions of students and parents struggling to raise cash for college this fall could have a happy surprise early next year: a tax credit of up to $2,500.

The whole key is to properly position yourself to qualify for it.

Download the PDF Special Report here compliments of AZCollegePlanning.com

(you’ll need Acrobat Reader to view it.)

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Private admissions advisers gaining favor
By LESLIE BRODY
5-29-09 http://www.montereyherald.com/living/ci_12476014?nclick_check=1

The number of private admission counselors has grown in recent years – especially in hyper-anxious, high-achieving communities – and colleges are more open to talking with them about the students they represent, say counselors and college admission officers.

Danielle Toglia, an admissions director at George Washington University, recently polled counterparts at 25 colleges and found that most now take calls from independent counselors to discuss specific students or the college’s needs for an incoming freshman class.

While about 30 percent of admissions officers won’t take calls from private counselors, she said, “The trend has been that the college side sees independent counselors more positively than it used to.” She said they’re particularly open to those who had experience as high school guidance counselors or college admissions officers, because they know the ins and outs of the process.

Toglia’s comments came at a conference of the New Jersey Association for College Admission Counseling in Parsippany this month. Several independent counselors, high school guidance counselors and college admission officers echoed her view.

Private counselors have long been a controversial part of the admissions frenzy. Critics charge they give an unfair leg-up to affluent students who already have extra advantages of expensive test prep classes, enrichment activities and homes in neighborhoods with better schools.

One college that won’t communicate with independent counselors is Georgetown. “There’s an equity issue here,” said Bruce Chamberlin, senior associate director of admissions. “We need to make sure we are as accessible to students across all different socioeconomic diversities.” Chamberlin said his office can’t always tell whether an independent counselor has helped a student, but sometimes efforts to polish students’ applications go too far. “We find ourselves yearning to understand the adolescent in the essay or the interview,” he said.

Independent advisers say they help clients choose where to apply, organize visits and give feedback on personal essays but don’t actually write them. They say they can give students more individual attention than high school guidance counselors swamped with disciplinary problems and escalating caseloads.

Private advisers also say they calm overwhelmed parents and spare them from the unsavory job of nagging young procrastinators to finish applications.

According to the Independent Educational Consultants Organization, the average cost of a private counselor nationwide runs about $125 per hour, or $3,600 for a three-year package, with rates slightly higher in the northeast. Rates at the high end hover around $7,000 for a three-year package, with a scant handful charging more than $20,000.

The ranks of private advisers have grown rapidly in recent years. IECO claims 750 members, almost triple the count five years ago, and says members helped place more than 40,000 students last year. Kaplan Test Prep and Admissions, College Coach and other firms have also launched private advising services.

Most clients are upper-middle class, but the students have become more diverse, said Mark Sklarow, executive director of IECO. Beyond academic stars, some need help finding schools that work well with the disabled, or English language learners, or those with special interests in the arts, for example.

Claire Cafaro, an independent adviser in Ridgewood who used to be a guidance counselor at Ridgewood High School, said many college officials recognized that independent advisers could help them find qualified students who were a good match for their schools.

Attitudes toward independent counselors “have really changed a lot,” said Cafaro, immediate past president of the NJACAC. “Some independent counselors have convinced admission reps that they know what they’re doing and are valid people who can be trusted. … There is an understanding that high school counselors may not have the opportunity to advocate for their students as much.”

Dennis Vasquez, a guidance counselor in Livingston, N.J., public schools, lamented that unequal access to private advisers has had a discouraging “psychological impact” on disadvantaged students: “They think rich families have the extra help – ‘I can’t afford it, so it puts me at the bottom of the totem pole.’”

Cafaro acknowledged the inequity but said private advisers had no magic tricks, and noted that outside of the most highly competitive colleges, most schools accepted most applicants. “There’s a notion that independent counselors help kids get in in a secret way**,” she said. “I’d be the first to say the majority of students can apply on their own. I could do my taxes without help but would rather hire an accountant.”

One of her clients, David Zrike of Ridgewood, N.J., said the money paid off. His daughter Caroline got into her first choice. Ironically, it was Georgetown.

“Since college is one of the most important decisions we will face bringing up children, as well as the most expensive, my wife and I decided that the relatively small investment in an independent counselor was certainly worthwhile,” he said. The independent counselor “helped to make what is an extremely stressful process a little less stressful.”

J.D.’s Comments: ** If you know how the game is played we can stack the deck legally in your favor

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The Tylenol scholarship program helps students who are pursuing careers in the healthcare, life sciences, or related fields, manage the rising costs of education.

The program will award $250,000 in scholarships based on leadership qualities and academic performance, including ten $10,000 and thirty $5,000 grants.

Qualifications: 

1)Must be a resident of the 50 United States, Puerto Rico, or the District of Columbia.

2)Must have completed at least one year of undergraduate or graduate course of study in the Spring of 2009 at an accredited two or four year college, university or vocational – technical school.

3)Must provide proof of enrollment to a public health/health education, medical school, nursing and/or pharmacy degree program.

4)Must have one or more years of school remaining.

5)Past winners are not eligible to apply or win for the 2009/2010 year.

**Employees of McNeil Consumer and Specialty Pharmaceuticals, ISTS, Inc., their affiliates, subsidiaries, advertising and promotion agencies and the families of each are not eligible.

http://www.tylenol.com/page.jhtml?id=tylenol/news/subptyschol.inc

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College in Need Closes a Door to Needy Students

By JONATHAN D. GLATER June 10, 2009

PORTLAND, Ore. — The admissions team at Reed College, known for its free-spirited students, learned in March that the prospective freshman class it had so carefully composed after weeks of reviewing essays, scores and recommendations was unworkable.

Money was the problem. Too many of the students needed financial aid, and the college did not have enough. So the director of financial aid gave the team another task: drop more than 100 needy students before sending out acceptances, and substitute those who could pay full freight.

The whole idea of excluding a student simply because of money clashed with the college’s ideals, Leslie Limper, the aid director, acknowledged. “None of us are very happy,” she said, adding that Reed did not strike anyone from its list last year and that never before had it needed to weed out so many worthy students. “Sometimes I wonder why I’m still doing this.”

That decision was one of several agonizing ones for this small private college, celebrated for its combination of academic rigor and a laid-back approach to education that once attracted Steven P. Jobs, the chief executive of Apple, to study on its leafy campus minutes from downtown.

With their endowments ravaged by the financial markets and more students clamoring for assistance, private colleges like Reed are making numerous changes this year in staff, students, tuition and classes that they hope will tide them over without harming their reputations or their educational goals.

Reed and others have admitted more students to bolster revenue with larger classes. Many are cutting costs by freezing or reducing salaries, suspending hiring and postponing building maintenance and construction. And the cost of attendance is rising; in Reed’s case, by 3.8 percent, to nearly $50,000 a year for its 1,300 students. (that’s an amazing $65,000,000.00 Million Dollars!)

But Reed has put off drastic measures like spending more of its endowment, closing some departments or selling some real estate near campus. Instead, college officials are counting on the economy to turn around quickly, as became apparent when they allowed a New York Times reporter to sit in on budget discussions this spring.

So for now, the changes are modest and nearly invisible to students. The impact is mostly in the composition of the student body over the next four years.

Reed has for now cast aside its hopes of accepting students based purely on merit, without regard to wealth, and still meeting their financial need. Only the nation’s richest colleges do that. What’s more, when Reed turned to its waiting list this year, it tapped only students who could pay their way.

This year, the financial aid office put together its own, separate wait list for students whose circumstances had changed or whose financial requests were incomplete. Though Reed had pruned its admissions list for financial reasons before, it always found a way to help the few students with unexpected setbacks. This year, dozens of requests came in. Only a few got extra.

Hannah C. Moser, 17, needed financial help; her father is a paramedic, her mother is ill and her parents are divorcing. Thrilled with the small classes and quirky students, she applied to Reed last fall and was ecstatic when she learned she was admitted — through an informal announcement that came in haikus by e-mail.

But she said she qualified for only $14,000 in aid, far less than any other college offered. She later discovered that she had not sent in a required form. She was placed on the aid wait list, to no avail. This fall, she will enroll at Willamette University in Salem, Ore., not too far from her hometown, Sedro-Woolley, Wash.

“I’ve actually struggled pretty bad with not being able to go to Reed, just because it was my reach school and everything about it was perfect and I impossibly got in,” said Ms. Moser, an aspiring writer. “And then I couldn’t go.”

The board members have approved increases in tuition and fees that bring the total cost of a year at Reed to $49,950. The college will have nearly 400 new first-year and transfer students in the fall, up from 355 last year.

Reed has increased its financial aid budget by 7.8 percent. It aims to use part of the $200 million it hopes to raise in a capital campaign, announced this spring, for financial aid in future years.

The college has cut 5 percent of its spending except on personnel. It has avoided layoffs — unlike some other institutions — though it is not filling vacancies.

Like many colleges, Reed is betting on a quick recovery of the economy and the financial markets to fuel endowment growth of 10 percent annually — including investment returns and gifts — beginning next year.

Asked by a board member what would happen if those assumptions did not pan out, the college’s treasurer, Edwin O. McFarlane, was blunt: “We’ll have to revisit the whole ballgame.”

J.D.’s Comments: Will Obama save us? Or do we need to just grab the bull by the horns and take care of ourselves? I ask all my clients what is the easiest way to get free money for college? Get good grades and test great on the standardized tests (SAT/ACT)! The next order of business is to research (or hire a professional to research) the HGP the historical giving pattern of the college and discover if the college is typically generous or not AND does the college have money to give out? From this important step then and only then can we learn what the true cost of attendance is for your particular family and your child so that we can develop a college financial plan to cover these costs.

Original article appears in NY Times here

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This means that colleges that have higher graduation rates would have more money to hand out.

States consider basing college funding on graduation rates

States fund public colleges primarily based on how many students are enrolled. But a number of legislatures are considering policies that would link funding to whether students graduate.

Lawmakers in Ohio appear likely to adopt a plan, introduced this year, that would base 100% of higher education spending on course and degree completion. Indiana is considering a similar but more modest proposal. And in Louisiana, the governor and Legislature have called for plans that tie 25% of higher education funding to student success.

President Obama wants the USA to lead the world in college graduates by 2020 and has proposed $2.5 billion over five years to states that seek to boost college completion rates for low-income students.

J.D.’s comments: Makes sense (or cents) to me, base it on results. Maybe we should do the same with every political office… What do you think?

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THE question every future college student must ask is…

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Get more great tips LIVE and in-person at a Free No-Holds-Barred, Take No Prisoners Guide to Everything College workshop. Click the Free workshop RSVP button on the right side of this page.

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