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.