Have you noticed that the cost of
everything is going up when you go to
the grocery store everything’s costing
more gas is costing more and says College Consulting Scottsdale AZ, even
college is costing more if we go to
college board’s website we can click
on uh on it and we type in the name of
the school and we can look at at this
information at Sarah Lawrence College
it’s $94,000, that’s crazy expensive says the best College Consulting in Scottsdale Arizona uh and that’s per year how much
was it when you went to college and and
these prices are just going to continue
to go up and up and up and the reason
why they’re going to go up is
because and the reason why colleges will
charge more is simply because they can
um and uh many times the reason why they
charge more is because of Publications
like this US News and World Report best
colleges we can go on to their website College Consulting Scottsdale AZ and uh um look at which colleges are ranked the ranked the best in this
category or ranked the best in that
category and check that out and it
really comes down to uh money uh with
these rankings so how it works is this
publication sends a form to the college, College Consulting Scottsdale AZ
and then the college fills out that
information and then and then sends it
back to this publication and then they
rank the college based on this or that
and they say your college is ranked
number one in this Cate category or
number two in that category or number
538 in this category whatever colleges
want to have increase their
rankings and uh they will do anything
and everything and sometimes even
illegal and immoral things to increase
their rankings and the reason why they
increase and want to increase their
rankings is because it comes down to
money when one thing that you need to
know is that College are a business and
they’re going to do things for business
purposes okay so let’s put some let’s
put some numbers behind this last year
UC Berkeley which is ranked the number
one State School uh in the United States
UC Berkeley had
67,000 students apply to their school
and the previous year they had 63,000
students apply so in just a one-year
period they had 5 th more students apply
to their school that’s pretty awesome
there and during that time frame you see
Berkeley used all their marketing
materials to uh um get more and more
students to apply their school uh I went
to Bola University and a couple
months ago I got a letter from Bola that
and whatever College it is that you go
to Once you’ve been once you’ve
gone to that school you’re going to be
on their mailing list forever so so I
get alumni letters for them every once
in a while and the alumni letter said
how awesome Biola was doing and uh all
the great things that they were doing
and all the new construction they were
doing and oh by the way could you send
us some more money say they’re looking
for some alumni donations and in this
letter it stated that they were ranked College Consulting Scottsdale AZ number one in this category by US News
and World Report best colleges and they
were the only college that was ranked uh
in on on the west coast for um for that
particular category and that so colleges
are using these things for marketing
purposes so let’s put some numbers
behind that again I said UC Berkeley had
67,000 students apply to their school
and with every application comes an
application fee and that fee can range
anywhere from0 to $100 and at Berkeley
it’s
$75 if we multiply
$75 multiplied by $67,000 that’s $5
million of Revenue that that college
generated just in application fees alone
so colleges want to increase their
rankings in one in one or more category
to attract more attention and with more
attention comes more applications and
more application fees and all that stuff
so there’s several things that we need
to know one of the one of the first
things that we need to know is what is
the cost of the college what’s the
sticker price that’s our that’s our
starting point if we don’t know that
then how are we supposed to even
negotiate or appeal or try to get more
money or anything like that we need to
know what the starting point is and at
Sarah Lawrence it was uh uh
$64,500 you can see that on the screen
right here so that’s the starting point
the next number that we need to know is
what is your EFC your expected family
contribution and that’s a number that’s
calculated through the federal financial
aid formula through the F form uh
through that Federal U Federal formula
and that that EFC number tells the
colleges how much that that that Federal
formula how much they think that you as
a parent can afford to send your kid to
college regardless of if that number is
astronomically ridiculous or not case in
point is I had a had a family who came
in to uh one of my consultations and
they wanted to know why their EFC was
$93,000 now according to that number
they can afford to send their kid to an
elite college and pay cash for it and
another student maybe yours and pay cash
for that too now in reality we know
that’s not going to happen and we also
know that so here’s the demographics on
this
family is um that that um yes they were
business owners yes they had uh owned a
couple houses and yes they had some
Investments and uh yes their adjusted
gross income was
$160,000 now we know that someone who
Makes $160,000 they don’t have $93,000 worth
of disposable income why was their Student Aid Index S A I
so high it was so high because uh because of a few factors one factor is
that they when they were filling out the
financial aid for they didn’t read the fine print on it and and so they they um
erroneously uh put in some numbers in College Consulting Scottsdale AZ there that really increased their EFC uh and disqualified them from qualify
from getting any type of need-based Aid
so the EFC if you want to look at it
this way the EFC is kind of like your
car insurance deductible that God forbid
you were in a car accident before the
insurance company comes in and pays to
uh fix or replace your vehicle you’ve
got to come up with that deductible
number first right same idea and the
same concept with a college whatever
your EFC number is the college is
expecting you to come up with that
number first and then uh and then from there they’re going to determine how much need-based Aid that you’re going to College Consulting Scottsdale AZ that they’re going to give you um so the that’s the first number that we need to find out is what’s your EFC and what is the cost the sticker price of the college and you can go to any
College’s website and in the search window type in cost of attendance it’ll
bring you to that page and uh you just
add all of those numbers together and
that’s what your total cost is for one
year now remember we’ve got to do this
every every year so at Sarah Lawrence
which is 94,000 that’s for one year you
multiply that times four years and that
that is a Gob of money that University the cost
is uh for any student to attend the school so that’s the first thing is what’s our EFC and what can we do to control College Consulting Scottsdale AZ that number so that we have a lower S A I, so that we can get more need-based Aid
and there are some legal and ethical
things that you can do to control that
number and in this video series we’ll
talk about those things so that’s the
first thing the second thing we want to
look at is Merit a okay and Merit Falls
in a variety of different flavors it’s
grades test scores community service
leadership diversity uh uh talent and
and a few other factors in that so um
some colleges are are willing to give
scholarships for those uh for those uh
different Merit things and and again
your student doesn’t have to have a 4.0
GPA and near-perfect test scores uh to
get these Merit Scholarships and it
varies from school to school I’ve got a
student who has a a low 2.0 GPA is going
to a school and uh received a merit
scholarship uh for her grades and that
uh which I think is incredible that
there is a college for every student so
we want we want to look at what is our
EFC what is the cost of attendance and
what can we do as students to increase
our chances of getting Merit
Scholarships and one of the things that
we can do with that is what I call
student positioning that’s where we
properly position and market and promote
the student to these colleges so that
the college looks at that student and
says yes this is the kind of student
that we want to attend our
school and when when that uh College
makes that determination we don’t want
this student we need this student when
that college makes that determination of we we need this student that college is going to bend over backwards and do College Consulting Scottsdale AZ everything and anything they can to admit that student and entice that student to uh not only apply but to
attend their school and things that they use as enticement are scholarships okay
so when a college looks at a student says we need this student they’re asking
the question if we admit this student
how will it affect our rankings okay and it all goes back to
the rankings again that uh that rankings
are so very important to the college
because it comes back down to money that
the more students that apply to that
school the more students that are
admitted the more applications it all
comes back to
money a couple years ago I had a student
Marcus who when I was reviewing his list
of of
colleges he it was about uh it was about
uh April um of his junior year that we
were reviewing his list of colleges and
I noticed on his list that um that a
college popped up that wasn’t on there
before and I said well why Marcus why do
you want to apply to this college and he
gave me the whole rigar roll of oh this
college is awesome this college has all
these great programs and it has this and
it has that I’m like yeah yeah yeah yada
yada yada what is it really oh they won
the NCAA basketball Division champ ships
and I want to go to a school that has a championship team well because of that because they won that Championship that year that attracted
more attention and more students applied
to that school again more application
fees more students applying to that
school all that equates to more money so
when a college is ranked higher in one
or more category it’s going to attract
more attention so when they win a a some
type of sports championships whether it
be football or basketball because those
are the two Money Maker Sports um it’s
going to attract more attention and more
students are going to apply to that
school now if now if a college looks at
a student and says yes this is the kind
of student that will increase our
rankings in this or that category
they’re going to want to try and recruit
that student case in point is Lynn
applied to a school in Washington
state and and she was admitted to that
school she had some good grades and she
had some good test scores and that but
one of the category that this particular
College liked was she was a
female um going into a mostly male
dominated major well if we have more
girls coming into this into this program
it it’s going to affect our rankings in
that category she was also an an Arizona
student going to a Washington school and
now that College can come back to this
publication and say hey because we’ve
admitted these School these students
from all over the state all over the
country and we’ve got students from this
state and students from that state we’ve
even got students from Arizona we have
Geographic
diversity and because they have
Geographic diversity they increase their
rankings in that category and again with
higher rankings attracts more attention
and it comes back down to money in that
so our question is what can we do to
increase our chances of getting of
getting need-based Aid what can we do to
control our EFC and what can we do to
increase our chances of admission at
this or that school by promoting
ourselves properly by showing the
college how we can increase that
College’s rankings because of us specifically and those are some of the
things that you’re going to learn as you review these different videos.