Transcript from video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M1NNI_MvJZI
Free College Planning Workshop – How To Not Go Broke Paying For College
I’m the founder of AZ College Planning and if you have any questions just put them in the in the chat and at the end of the presentation I’ll be happy to answer any questions if we still have some time the information that I am providing tonight is more of a general uh general information if you want to talk about your family specific situation come in for a free complimentary consultation then we can talk about your family specific situation if you would like that great I’ll have an opportunity for you to sign up for that if you don’t want that that’s fine too I like to call this talk you don’t know what you don’t know about college but what you really need to know about college and the first thing is the ranking system I’ve got half a dozen of these books we
College Ranking System
probably have seen these before there’s a variety of different Publications that produce college rankings Money Magazine Forbes and U.S news world report is probably the most prevalent one of the ranking systems and there’s a variety of different areas that are ranked have you asked yourself why would a college give out scholarships
is it because they’re generous and kind or is it because they want and need a specific student and the answer is is because they need a specific student so I want to tell you a story about Lynn when Lynn came into the office with her dad and when you come into the
Lynn’s Story
office as well I’m going to ask that’s the same question and that question is what colleges are on your list and Dad pipes up and says she’s going to NAU because that’s all I can afford and I said play the game and part of playing the game is applying to a handful of colleges somewhere between six and and 12 colleges uh 10 is kind of the sweet spot in the middle there well I helped Lynn identify a handful of colleges she I don’t remember exactly how many she applied to six or seven or eight and she was admitted to five of them and two of them fell off the Wayside for one reason or another and it came down to these three colleges Willamette University uh in Oregon Whitman College in the state of Washington and of course NIU well we helped Lynn with her applications we helped her with her essay we showed her how to properly Market herself to the college so that college looked at her and says yes we want you and we need you and the first college that admitted her was Willamette University and Willamette offered her twenty five thousand five hundred dollars in scholarships now this was back in 2010 when the sticker price was about forty five thousand dollars we could kind of translate these numbers to today as well but you’ll get the basic idea and I’ve got some more current examples as we progress through today’s presentation the short story of it is Lynn was super excited she was on cloud nine for days got some scholarships got admitted and dad not quite so much because we still got twenty thousand dollar Gap the next college it admitted her was NAU and Dad’s out-of-pocket cost was ten thousand six hundred fifty dollars uh dad says I can do that I’d rather not in that the offering that she was offered would be the equivalent of The Lumberjack today which is about all of tuition or half the cost of the college okay and then the last college it admitted her was Whitman College and Whitman offered her forty thousand seven hundred fifty dollars in scholarships and Dad’s out-of-pocket net cost was five thousand dollars Whitman gave Lynn full tuition plus most of the cost of the dorm and the meal plan now the question is is why did they give her these scholar trips and the answer is because that college needed her they wanted her she made a
WHY Did that College Give Her an Amazing Scholarship package?
positive impact on one or more categories that was ranked by that College so for the colleges that your student plans on applying to figure out what categories that are ranked that the college values then do things that can help with those rankings and AZ College Planning we can definitely help with that okay so they looked at Lynn and said yes she’s going to make a positive impact in our rankings and one of the one of the categories was girl going into mostly male dominated major don’t ask me which one I don’t remember another category was Arizona student going to this college in the state of Washington now they can go back and say we have Geographic diversity we got kids from here and there and everywhere and all that stuff so that for some colleges Geographic diversity is a category this rank that they value okay so why why is it that that the called ranking system is so important to these colleges the answer is money it always comes back down to money how much how much money is this college going to make so as an example of that this and I love the rivalries that go on between colleges ASU and U of A and UCLA and Berkeley are a couple examples of some rivalries and this last year UCLA knocked Berkeley off the podium the number one school so it’ll be interesting to see what happens and what Berkeley does this next year to try and regain that number one spot again this last year because of all this they’re ranked number one that attracted more attention and anytime there’s any time there is more attention or or any category that is ranked uh any category that’s ranked is gonna and and if there’s an upward Trend in that ranking that attracts attention and with more attention comes more applications and more application fees so this last year on UCLA had a hundred and sixty thousand students apply for 6 000 freshman seats and it costs seventy dollars to apply so when you do the math UCLA made 10.2 million dollars just in application fees so so of course the ranking system is very important to the college I had a conversation a couple years ago with a student and I was talking with him and it was about uh April of his junior year of high school and and Kyle and I were talking and he and we were I was reviewing his reviewing his list of colleges that he was considering and I had noticed that Kentucky had popped up on his list and I’m like oh that’s interesting why is and I asked Kyle why is this college on your list and he says oh they’ve got a really good program they got good Majors blah blah blah I’m like what’s the real reason and he said well they just won the NCAA March Madness division championship Okay so so that’s a category that’s ranked that can attract attention more attention more applications students want to go to a college that has winning teams so I want to talk about the cost of attendance and when we talk there’s a few acronyms that you need to learn and COA is is one of them cost of attendance and cost of attendance incorporates everything it’s tuition fees books uh lab fees student ID card parking pass meal plan etc etc all of those together what is that total and if we’re looking at the any of the state schools well before I before I answer that what I what I am going to encourage you
Visit some colleges
to do is to go and visit some colleges and we’ve got three colleges right here in town we’ve got ASU Grand Canyon and Arizona Christian University and and the reason why I want you to visit these three colleges is because it’s not a big time or money commitment to go visit any one of these campuses uh ASU GCU or Arizona Christian it’s maybe a 30 45 minute uh drive to the campus and then and then in a couple hour tour and that so again not a big money or time commitment so ASU there’s sticker price is about 33 to 35 000 per year now if you if you’re interested in the Honors College Barrett you can add about five thousand dollars on top of that so now you’re looking at about thirty seven thousand dollars is there COA their sticker price and if you’re looking at U of A or NAU they’re all hovering around the same price about 30 33 to 37 000 depending on the if your student is applying to the Honors College or not so go and visit these colleges because when you do fly out to Chicago and you look at Chicago Loyola Chicago or you go visit University of Chicago or any other college was there or let’s say you fly out to Massachusetts and you visit a couple colleges out there you’ve got something that you can weigh balance compare and contrast and you’re not going to be all starry-eyed and wowed at the first uh College Tour when you visit a college and when you talk to a recruiter if after that you don’t have the impression of wow I really want to apply to that college I really want to go there then they did a bad job that’s their job is to try and sell you on their college sell you to apply and ultimately attend our College well one of the categories that’s ranked is most expensive college and Sarah Lawrence University in in New York they like to claim the number one spot for that but they got knocked out they’re at 86 000 per year as their sticker price Stanford looks like they’ve topped it at ninety six thousand dollars per year and then Duke is about 94 000 in UCLA
out of state cost is about sixty five thousand dollars so if you really want to scare yourself do this go to the college’s website and in the search bar there type in cost of attendance it’ll bring you to that page add all of those numbers together and then multiply it times four years and then multiply it again times the number of kids you’ve got I’ve got two kids three kids Etc that’s enough to give anybody a coronary right there and have you asked yourself how in the world are we going to be able to afford and pay for it well I’ve talked to a lot of different families and these are some ideas that
Ideas of How Families Paid for College
they’ve told me as ways to possibly pay for college and always the first one that comes up is private scholarships and private scholarships are are scholarships that your student has to apply for and then they can win it so if your student gets a letter or an email that says congratulations you’ve you’ve won this scholarship and they haven’t applied for it it’s probably a scam especially if that letter says mail us a hundred dollars and we’ll tell you which one you want so the first thing is they have to apply for it and if they win it it’s portable they could take it up to NAU they could take it over to Texas and go to and use it at TCU they can take it over and use it at UC San Diego it’s portable that way versus if your student applies to a univ University of Arizona and wins the Wildcat scholarship that’s only available at University of Arizona now of the hundred and 56 billion dollars of Aid that’s available less than two percent of that consists of private scholarships everybody wants to go after these these private scholarships that’s the pennies I want to go off to the Lion’s Share and the Lion’s Share is going to be in these three categories the first category is going to be State funds the second category is going to be federal funds and then the third one the this is the Big Kahuna and that is the school endowment funds one of the fun things that I like to do is go to a search engine type in the name of the college and so example would be type in Arizona State University and then Wikipedia and go to their Wikipedia page because on the Wikipedia page for most of them it’ll tell you how much they have in their endowments and if we do that for ASU it’s going to show that they have 1.1 billion dollars in their endowment what that tells me is that college has money to give out okay some of these colleges are rich and some of these callers are flat out Uber Rich Harvard claims the number one spot as being the wealthiest College they have 42 billion dollars in their endowment so let’s not neglect the the big dollars which is going to be the school endowment funds the next category as a way to pay for college that some families have told me is my kid’s an athlete my kids got to get an athletic scholarship and I’m sorry to tell you this that unless your kid is the next NFL the next NBA or the next Olympian the ikelihood of getting a full athletic ride probably not going to happen if you go to the ncaa’s website it shows that the average men’s baseball scholarship is around five or six thousand dollars that’s way short of the total cost of attendance I’m not going to say no to five thousand dollars but where’s the other 30 to 75 000 is going to come from the next category that parents have told me as a way to pay for college is that they have saved some money and I read a statistic that the average family has saved ten thousand dollars for college now if you save ten thousand uh or more then God bless you you’re better than the average now the question is that the money that you have saved how does the financial aid system look at that and there are two three categories that that the financial aid system looks at monies the first category is money it’s in the student’s name that could just gets assessed at the highest percentage the second category is money it’s in the parent’s name and that gets assessed at a lower percentage so sometimes just by shifting who the owner is know the student’s not the owner the parent is the owner of this financial product sometimes we can qualify for more need-based Aid just by shifting money around that way and then there’s a third category and that third category is money it’s in the retirement system that is not counted at all so ideally we want to have the bulk of your money uh in in that retirement sheltered hidden category now for some families they’ve told me that they have 529s and with a 529 that is technically owned by the parent and so it’s technically owned by the parent however when a college sees that a a family or a student has a 529 they’re going to go tag that’s my money I want it and they’re going to split it into quarters 25 the freshman year 25 the sophomore year etc etc I had a family who applied to a college in California he got a really nice scholarship package and then when they found out that that that family had a 529 they had forty thousand dollars in the 529 and they were what the college did was they said oh okay 10 000 of that 25 percent is ours the freshman year and they actually reduce the aid package by 10 grand so we don’t want to hinder or hurt us hurt ourselves by having money in a in an account that’s going to have a negative impact on financial aid okay the next idea that families have told me as a way to pay for college is pay as you go most colleges do not have payment plans typically they want a full semester up front now granted there are some colleges that do have payment plans for example La Sierra University in Riverside California they have a payment plan and last time I looked at it it was 75 a month on top of whatever the payment was so again typically they want you to pay a full semester up front the next category that families have told me as a way to pay for college is through loans and borrowing borrowing money to pay for college there’s a loan called the plus loan plus and that stands for parent loan of undergraduate students and theoretically if your student was admitted to Sarah Lawrence University and Sarah Lawrence had that sticker price that we talked about that was eighty six thousand dollars a year and theoretically if your student did not get any scholarship Aid uh hypothetically and theoretically that college could offer the parents a parent plus loan for eighty six thousand dollars for one year please don’t do that I had a family who came in for the free complimentary consultation and they wanted me to review their award letter and the award letter is it is like an invoice from the college in the award letter States this is how much we’re giving you in scholarships grants loans work study uh whatever else it is that the college is offering and this particular College in Chicago was kind of devious with their wording because it said plus 25 000 and they they came in they’re like we got a 25000 scholarship and I had to break their heart and say I’m sorry no that is not a scholarship that’s a loan and I’m happy to report they didn’t actually go that route if you go to my website and click on the testimonials you can see that the testimonial that that Darlene wrote and she was telling us about how her daughter graduated from college on time four years and graduated 100 debt free that’s exactly where we want our kids to start their lives the next category as a way to pay for college is that some parents have told me is use a homework equity line of credit you guys know what that is I won’t go into details on that and then the last one is liquidate retirement accounts please don’t do that in fact we’re not even going to talk about that as an option we’re just going to skip over that one that’s pretty much the end of the depressing portion okay so let’s let’s move on to some more insights so don’t throw out a college based on a sticker price don’t throw the baby out with a bath water an important question to ask each college that your student is going
Questions (3)
to apply to is what is the average graduation timeline how long is it going to take my student to graduate from your college and the average graduation timeline at many of the state schools is six years so if you go if you go check out asu’s uh graduation timeline the average student takes six years to graduate from ASU there’s a really great website you can go to my website azcollegeplaining.com and on the sidebar is the called results button you can click on that type in the name of any college and it’ll bring you to this information and this one just happens to be NAU and it says the four-year graduation rate at NAU is 36 and then the six-year graduation rate is 53 percent why is it taking these students so long to graduate one of the reasons is because especially at a large College they’re trying to get into a class I need to get into this 100 class before I can get into the 200 class I need to get a 200 class before I can get into the 300 classes etc etc and if the the lower level classes are popular or required then those classes do tend to fill up and then if that Cross isn’t available until the next cycle the next year and that student’s kind of stuck in uh until the next year to try and get into that class that’s one reason but the most prevalent reason is because this week I’m a biology major no I think I’ll try philosophy that sounds really cool I’ll try that no I think I’ll go over here architecture I’ll try that every time a student changes Majors that pushes the graduation window further and further so one of the things that we do at AZ College Planning is we help with that we help students figure out what career and what major to study so that when they do go to college they’re more solidified with yes this is the direction I want to go into and they’re less likely to change your major and change their mind and we do that with a with an award-winning career assessment tool so here’s my story yep that’s me on the screen there that’s my senior picture I walked in and met with my guidance counselor and as I walked into her little tiny office I I said hello Miss Nuss and she you know she greeted me hi JD how are you and all that and and she says JD you’re a good artist you should be an art major and I said okay all right next student come in and that’s about how much time I spent with my guidance counselor so no no offense to any of these guidance counselors they’re overworked and overbooked well I went home and I thought about it for all about 37 seconds I thought ours don’t make any money I’ve got to do something else and at that time there was a TV show and maybe you guys remember this TV show it was 30 something Gary and Elliott had an ad agency had a beautiful office beautiful wives all that stuff and I said oh a graphic designer I’ll do that also around that same time at the beginning of my senior year I was talking with a friend of mine who was a freshman at Biola University in Los Angeles and as I was talking with him he was telling me about all the amazing awesome things about the college and he was telling me about the amazing Beach bonfire parties that they had and they were they were awesome I won’t go into details on that and then he says all the girls here are super cute I’m like okay that’s two check marks yes and then my next question was do they have a graphics department and he says yeah and I said dude I’m in and that’s how much thought would I would put into picking my college picking my career and all that stuff well what ended up happening and I recommend this for your student as well not the negative side but the positive side and the positive side is I got an internship I I do highly recommend that for your student as well well I got an internship in my junior year at a graphics house and I figured out I don’t want to do this the rest of my life and had to reset and all that stuff so AZ College Planning we’re going to help with that yes we can help so there’s two main financial aid forms you probably heard about some of them the first one is the FAFSA form and
Financial Aid Forms
the typically the FAFSA form opens in October of your students senior year of high school and um this year it’s not going to open in October I’m on several different email distribution lists and one of them one of the lists I’m on is the student studentaid.gov website and they sent out an email oh about about a month and a half ago that said that they’re not going to make the October deadline to open up and the reason is because they’re revamping the entire site they’re they’re scrapping everything and and creating all new code and doing all that stuff they’re anticipating that it’ll open sometime in December by law they have to have an open uh January 1st now if your student’s not a not going to be a senior high school senior class of 24s yeah it’s not going to really matter too much for you if you’re if your student’s going to be a 25 or 26 or 27 student because by by the time 25 comes around the website will will have already been running for a year and hopefully all the bugs are out of it and all that stuff the FAFSA form is the major form that every college is going to ask you to submit that information and I’ve had conversations with families that have said we make too much money we’re not going to qualify for any any Aid at any college so why should we fill out these forms and it’s part of the game what are the definitions that you’re going to hear over and over again is called demonstrated interest and demonstrated interest at a college is exactly what it sounds like you’re showing the college hey I’m interested in your college one way to demonstrate interest is to submit the FAFSA form okay there’s a second form called the CSS profile and the CSS profile is going to ask all the same questions that are on the uh on the FAFSA and then some additional questions now there are some colleges that use the FAFSA form and then there are some colleges that use a FAFSA form and the CSS profile form and the CSS profile form is administered by College Board college board is the entity that makes the SAT test AP tests and a few other things one of the primary differences between the CSS and the FAFSA is there is no fee to submit the FAFSA there is a fee to submit the CSS profile and it’s 25 for the first college and 16 for each additional College so if your student applies to eight colleges as an example and four of them require the CSS profile and it’s going to cost an extra 73 bucks to do that okay there are about 400 colleges that use the CSS profile and the majority of those colleges are the selective or the highly selective colleges another major difference between this the FAFSA and the CSS is the CSS is going to ask about your primary home equity where the FAFSA does not another uh primary difference between the CSS and the FAFSA is that the FAFSA is a static form colleges cannot add or subtract questions whatever questions are on there that’s what’s on there the CSS profile in the supplemental questions section colleges can add whatever questions that they want an example is for MIT and MIT uses a CSS profile in their supplemental questions section they ask the question what’s your kid’s cell phone number well I’ve got a conspiracy theory for that one okay another question that some colleges are asking in the supplemental question section on the CSS profile is what’s the make model and year of your vehicles well JD why are they asking that question because if you’re claiming that your income is fifty thousand dollars a year and you’re driving a 2023 Bentley those don’t match and then they’re going to start asking more and more questions okay so again families have said we make too much money why should we even bother with this I’m not going to tell you the name of the college I’ll just give you their initials USC okay USC is notorious for rejecting students who do not supply to their college everything they’re asking for and those things that they’re asking for is uh in addition to the FAFSA and essays and all and resumes is the FAFSA and the CSS profile the reason why USC is asking for both of those financial aid forms is because they want to know if we admit your kid can you pay okay and there are some strategies that we can employ to maximize all of these things I’m not going to go into the details on all that just yet so wait for it the number one way to get more money is apply to eight to ten colleges and then
Apply to 8 to 10 college
negotiate the thought is to apply to some reach colleges some colleges and some safety schools and all that if a student applies to a reach college and is admitted it will be expensive to go to that college every College when when a student applies to when students apply to colleges every colleges every College asks questions one of the many questions that colleges ask is how will this student impact our rankings positive neutral or negative and if it’s negative forget it we’re going to reject the student if it’s neutral then they’re going to go well maybe we’ll admit the student and maybe we’ll give them a dollar scholarship if it’s positive they’re going to go how do we get this kid to come to our school so at in the example that I used previously with Lynn and she was offered that incredible scholarship package where it where her dad only had to pay uh five thousand dollars per year for her to go to that school that college looked at Lin and said she’s going to make a positive impact on our rankings and as I mentioned apply to eight to ten colleges and negotiate so I had a conversation with another student Danielle and it was her sophomore year of high school that we first met and her parents hired me to help out with that again I helped her with her applications essays and and and all those things and in one of our first meetings I had asked her and her parents have you visited any colleges and she and Danielle and her parents said no we haven’t visited any colleges I said go and visit some colleges go visit the schools that are here in town and and they said well we’re heading down to Tucson uh for the weekend why don’t we go and visit University of Arizona I said yeah go ahead and do that well well Daniel went on the tour and when she came back we had a conversation and Danielle said that’s the school I want to apply to it’s awesome I want to go to that school that’s the only College I’m going to apply to and I encouraged her please apply to more than one school now whoever that tour guide was that that Danielle went with they did a fabulous job at selling her on applying to their college and making that appear to be her number one college while she agreed and she applied to a handful of different colleges and jumped forward now to her senior year she got her admission notification from U of A congratulations you’re admitted we knew that she was going to get admitted based on her on her grades and all that stuff and her original award letter listed scholarships as zero well Dad called me up on the phone and said I don’t want to pay full price what’s going on and I said what other colleges was she admitted to and she was admitted to NAU and a couple other colleges and NAU gave her some scholarship money I said great take any use award letter go down to U of A and say NAU gave me this what can you guys do not only do they meet the scholarship they actually beat it and they gave Danielle an iPad Danielle was really excited about the iPad and and dad was more excited about the scholarships okay that is not unusual that a college will lowball an initial offering if you ask the college if they negotiate they will tell you no I had a dad this particular year who whose daughter was admitted to ASU and ASU gave her gave her some okay money and and dad and I were having a conversation he says do you think I should appeal I’m like yeah it can’t hurt let’s try and negotiate so he he called up the college and I don’t know who he talked to on the phone but that person that he talked to on the phone was not uh not a key decision maker and they were given flat instructions the answer is no to everything so he called me back and said I called ASU in the end they’re not going to negotiate at all and I said you talked to the wrong person we’ve got to talk to the right person so we figure out who to talk to and he reached out to that person who actually has the authority to make decisions who is a key decision maker and they came back and they offered an extra two thousand dollars in scholarships per year so yes colleges do negotiate so I want to tell your student success story here’s a couple examples of that is McConnell applied to NYU and he was offered sixty five thousand
McConnell’s Story
eight hundred twenty dollars in scholarships parents net cost was eight thousand nine hundred and fourteen dollars it was less expensive for this student to go to an out-of-state private college than it would have been for him to stay in state and go to ASU now here’s the question and the and the question is the same why did this college give such an incredible scholarship package uh did you have good grades yeah perfect grades yeah perfect test scores uh was he valedictorian all those things and yeah he had good grades and had good test scores but he wasn’t valedictorian he was he was a good student the reason why this particular College gave him that is because he did not apply as a theater major if you look at NYU statistics 40 percent of the students are theater majors and McConnell applied as a Real Estate Management and development major and NYU look at him and said oh we need more of those students let’s bring him in and um and give him a good scholarship package because more students in that category is going to help our rankings being more diverse and blah blah I love to ask this question what’s good good is being admitted to college what’s better than being admitted to the college getting a scholarship what’s better than getting a scholarship getting a full tuition scholarship what’s better than getting a full tuition scholarship getting the coveted full ride now when I talk about full ride I mean that that everything is covered the only thing that parents have to pay for is transportation from your home to the college and maybe pizza money okay when you hear other friends and students or or parents talking or boasting about my kid got a full ride at ASU more than likely they did not get a full ride they probably got full tuition which is about thirteen thousand dollars and when the when the sticker price is thirty three thousand dollars or thirty five thousand dollars where’s the other twenty to twenty two thousand dollars gonna come from okay so again what’s what’s better than full tuition getting the coveted full ride what’s better than getting the full ride this example that I’m giving you here and I’m going to zoom in on it and he was offered all tuition and mandatory fees for four years he was offered four thousand dollar per semester cash stipend he was offered fifteen hundred dollar per semester on campus housing stipend and he was offered six thousand dollar one-time award for in a for study abroad if we add all those numbers together and after he paid for his dorm room and after he paid for his meal plan he was netting three thousand dollars so what’s better than giving getting the coveted full ride getting paid to go to college and yes there are a handful of colleges that do offer that here’s another example Nicole was
Nicole’s story
admitted to wash you forty five thousand dollars in scholarships parents net cost was 11 Grand per year same story it was less expensive for Nicole to go to this college than it would have been for her to go to ASU and this it’s the same question over and over and over again why did this college give her this money it’s because they wanted her they needed her because she would have a positive impact on their rankings Bruce was admitted to Notre Dame it’s the same story over again 51 000 in scholarships 13 13k was his parents that cost and it was less expensive for for Bruce to go to Notre Dame than it would have been for him to go to ASU and dad said that he thought my tagline it could be cheaper to go to an out-of-state College than attend an in-state was just a sales pitch until we did it for his son well we did it again for his daughter who’s going who which who is at TCU and she is yeah she’s going into her senior year so she’ll be graduating in about a year now are all these students brainiacs and are they all super smart have perfect grades perfect test scores Perfect gpas all that stuff no the answer is no colleges look for different things from different students and at certain colleges some things are are that a college and a a college a college and we have B College if at a college they value these things that are ranked and B College may not value those things but B College values different things that are ranked that’s something that we need to look up and and do some research on and this is what uh and like I tell you her name her initial is l fuse admit to Spring Hill College in Alabama and she had a 2.3 GPA so you don’t have to have perfect grades and perfect test scores to get a scholarship she was offered a merit scholarship and then she was also offered a leadership scholarship and and some other things and the ending result was it was less expensive for her to go to Spring Hill than it would have been for her to go to an in-state College whether it be ASU U of A or even NAU I love to tell this story about Tanner
Tanner’s story
when Tanner came into the office I asked him some questions and when you and your student come into the office I’ll ask those questions as well and Tanner was one of those rare kids that had an idea of what he wanted to to study and what career he wanted to go into and he says JD I want to fly jets for the Air Force I said awesome he says I’m going to only apply to the Air Force Academy because because I want to fight jets for the Air Force and I said please play the game please apply to every Military Academy please apply to every ROTC program you can and then have a backup plan and he agreed to all that a little while later he came in the office we had we had another follow-up meeting and we were talking about his test scores he had just finished taking the ACT and he said JD I’ve been doing some research on the Air Force’s website and the minimum ACT score is 24. I got a 25 what do you think I said they’re going to take your application and they’re going to crinkle up and throw it in the trash he says what really I said yeah because you’re just barely above the minimum so we plugged him into our uh program and the program is called beat the test and in the beta test program we teach students how to beat the test it doesn’t matter if it’s the SAT act or APS those are all standardized tests because they are a standardized test they have to follow a pattern so we teach these students how to identify these patterns and the short story of it is Tanner went through the program and he ended up with a 29 ACT score and was admitted to the Merchant Marine Academy in Kings Point New York now when you graduate from the from West Point your assignment is in the Army when you graduate from the Naval Academy your Simon is in the Navy when you graduate from the Air Force Academy your assignment is in the Air Force when you graduate from The Merchant Marine Academy your assignment is in trick question anywhere you want to go so when they were handing out assignments like Tanner where do you want to go he says Air Force and he is now flying jets for the Air Force here’s another great story about Jonathan uh and the story is the same helped him
Jonathan’s story
with his applications helped him with his essays we held we helped him identify a
handful of colleges he applied to those colleges and he was admitted to George
Fox University which is uh right outside of Portland Oregon
and it was late March early April of his senior
year Jonathan and his parents and I were having a round table conversation and his parents said we are willing to
help you go to college Jonathan but we’re only willing to spend this much money anything above that is going to be
on you Scholars you’ve got to earn scholarships or loans or or work study
or sell a kidney or whatever anything above what we’re willing to to spend you’ve got to take care of that well he
was offered a pretty good scholarship package and the scholarships that he was offered
plus what his parents were willing to pay we were five thousand dollars short
and Jonathan says I’ve got a really great idea what if I defer admission and
yes you could do that almost every College you can defer admission and the
process is pretty simple you reach out to the college fill out the appropriate form and and tell them please hold my
spot for one year I’ll I’ll attend your college in a year and yes you can do that at most every
college so Jonathan says I’ll defer admission and I’ll go get a job and I’ll save up five thousand dollars
I said then what are you going to do you you work for a year and then um
work for a year and then go to school for a year and then take another year off and work again and then take eight years to graduate I said no no no here’s
what I would like you to do Jonathan I would like you to call the college and call your recruiter contact
Jonathan do you know who your recruiter contact is now I’m asking him loaded questions because I had already
instructed him on how to develop rapport with that recruiter and Jonathan goes yeah of course I know who that is and I
said call that person up on the phone and I want you to say this thank you very much for admitting me
my parents and I were talking and my parents are willing to spend um
a certain amount to uh to pay for me to go to college and the amount that
they’re willing to pay plus the scholarships that you’ve given me I’m five thousand dollars short what can I
do and poof magically another five thousand dollar scholarship appeared and Jonathan
graduated from George Fox University in four years
uh here are some examples of students who did the work were coachable and followed through and got the results I
Examples of Students who did the work, were coachable, followed through and got the results
told you the story about Bruce this is his sister she’s going to TCU she was offered 216
820 in scholarships for four years and parents net cost was about eight
grand this is her brother he got a he got 204
000 uh sister got a little bit more We’re not gonna tell Bruce that’s okay
uh here’s Cole Cole is finishing up at La Tech and he was offered full tuition
Plus and then this year he got he got an additional six thousand dollars for his
last senior year on top of the scholarships that he had already he had already earned because we were
able to do some other things for him
this is Chad and Chad went to Vanderbilt when when Chad and
his mom came into the office and we were having a conversation and I was helping Chad create a
college list I suggested to Chad hey you may want to consider applying to Vanderbilt and Mom
pulls me aside and says please don’t tell him to apply to Vanderbilt please don’t tell him to do that because yes he
he has the the the talent and everything to potentially get admitted to Vanderbilt but if he gets admitted we
can’t afford 70 80 000 a year and I said play the game please play the
game the long story uh short of it uh Chad was offered 231 thousand dollars in
scholarships over four years and his parents net cost was about six thousand dollars right after that I got a very
nice email from Chad’s mom okay uh I told you about McConnell going to
NYU and and I’m super excited um
for him because he’s now doing a study abroad in
Australia so awesome yeah again here’s Nicole going to
wash you Trevor went to TCU got an incredible scholarship package 212 000. he got a
little bit less than Adele but still got a great scholarship package and this story is the same thing
TCU looked at him and said yes we need this student because this student will make a positive impact on our rankings
and we showed uh showed him how to properly Market himself to the colleges
so that so that college looks at him and says yes we need you and you will make a
positive impact on our rankings here’s another student
who graduated from NAU and he graduated 100 debt free again that is exactly
where we want our students to start their lives so you’re next if you do the work follow the plan and
do these things there is a strong possibility that you could get into some great colleges and get some amazing
scholarships how are we going to do that we’re going to do things on purpose
here’s another example uh Genevieve went to U of A if you got a
she she was one of these rare kids that did get a true full ride okay
and I’ve had a handful of students who went to ASU UVA or NAU and did get
the true coveted full ride she was one of them and and the reason why she got
that is because we started early on the process so you may have heard this ancient
Chinese proverb when is the best time to plant a tree it was 20 years ago the
second best time is now so by starting now we can hand pick and
purposely select activities and things to do now so you can so your student can
put those on their resume that will impress colleges so start the college process now
so because we started early with Jared at Illinois Institute of Technology
he was offered 39 900 in scholarships per year and it was less expensive for
him to go to this college than it would have been for him to go in state so again I want to help tell your
student success story so how do we do that
we do that with one-on-one meetings so when your student comes into my office I’ll ask a whole bunch of questions and
we’ll format a game plan as we move forward and in one of those meetings I’ll set your student up on my
award-winning career assessment tool and show your student how that process works so that they can choose a call they can
choose a career and a major and I’ll show them how to research that
career while they’re still in high school so that when they do go to college they’re more solidified with yes
this is the direction I want to go into so my goal isn’t to get your student
into college my goal is to get your student out of college on the cheapest
level the least expensive level and do it in four years or less that’s my
ultimate goal so we’ll have several student meetings we’ll have several parent meetings and then also I host a
variety of different classes and I already mentioned the beat the test class in which we teach students how to
identify patterns within the test we have a how to study class A how to Market class and how to Market class is
specifically at it’s it’s specifically held at certain times of the year and
the next time that this class is going to be held is going to be in September which is right before the big
college fair the fall college fair and in the marketing class I’m going to
instruct students when you go to the fair here’s the questions you ask
here’s how you develop rapport with the recruiter here’s how you develop a relationship without recruiter and
here’s how you follow up with that recruiter because it will be the recruiter or the recruiter and a panel
of people that make the decision do we admit you and do we give you scholarships and then human psychology
is if they know you and they like you the probability of admission and scholarships goes up so that’s what we
teach in in the marketing class we also have a resume class and an essay class we also have a couple different parent
classes that cover the financial aid and financial forms and all that
so if you would like a complimentary consultation please send me an email JD AZ College Planning please include a
phone number that you can be reached at during the day if you would like that if you don’t
want that no problem so
there’s my email on the screen JD azcollegeplan.com and again if you would like a
complimentary consultation please do uh give me a call or send an email or so
1-888-237-2087