So to me that limits the number of schools we probably apply to unless in the next few years he changes the way that he’s operating. So that’s certainly a uh really a year because I think he’s applying I think in a year and a half, right? Senior year. fresh freshman well first semester of senior year so now in a year from now
yeah and plus he has to hit his SATs out of the park so which he’s preparing for now but it’s a crapshoot right I mean it’s the format’s changed and one or two mistakes on that test and your score dramatically changes so I guess where I’m going with this is you know what let’s step back I mean what exactly does your firm do and how do you guys propose to work with, you know, students like mine and let me just kind of get a grip of that and then let’s talk about how viable is it for him to even think about any of these schools given you just mentioned these schools all require CSS and a FAFSA, right? which means for me there’s no there is no ability to kind of maneuver around given the I guess the success we’ve had or you know unfortunate way the system set up for us to have to pay the full boat which is fine I mean I guess we pay our dues in some way shape or form to pay it forward but of course you can save some money uh unclaimed scholarship college specifically uh I’d like to explore that so in order to answer your question I need to ask a couple questions Please go ahead.
Is your student at a public or a private or a charter school?
Public school. And what how’s his GPA? 1.8 unweighted. Yeah. Weighted is 1.9. Yeah. Okay.. Good job on that.
He’s got five APs. Yeah. I mean, he’s doing okay. He just, you know, I think most kids are doing that these days.
Like I look at his friends, they’re doing like seven APs. Like I don’t know how Yeah. he can even track to that right given time commitments and anything else. Has he taken the SAT, ACT and or PSAT? He’s preparing he’s preparing for SATs as we speak.
Okay.
And I think it’s coming up in two months, month and a half, something like that.
PSATs are on the PSATs I think are in October if I’m not mistaken. Um so no tests currently. Correct. No test currently. Yeah. Okay. and he it will be under that’s his probably his Achilles shield. He’s not a he’s not necessarily a good time test taker. None of my kids were for whatever reason and I mean they’ve all done okay but uh he is uh he’s a little bit more relaxed.
I think the state bug caught on to him more than the other two kids grew up uh in big city and overseas. I had a job in Singapore. So we need mostly okay they graduate with the from the high school there. Okay. Older kid too.
All right. Please encourage him to take the PSAT because it’s in October of his junior year. So this year and this is the year that he could potentially qualify for the National Merit Competition.
What does it take to qualify for that?
What do you have to have? I don’t know what it is. what actual number it is in in state.
Okay. But it’s the top 5% per state.
Wow.
So, um in in state, it’s like a the equivalent of about a 1440 or 1450 or above. Uh I’d have to look up. Maybe Jonah, maybe you can look that up.
I’m on it. I’m looking. I’m on it.
And the magic number is about uh 20 to 25 hours of prep. So if the test is um 20 days away, an hour a day, we’ll hit that really.
You can you can get a score like that even with some serious focus on it. And then when we’re done here, I’ll send you an email with some additional information. I’ll also send you a best prep practice video. Have him have him watch it. It’s like nine minutes. It just talks about how to how to properly prepare for the test and what’s the best way to study for the test.
And I do talk about the 20 to 25 hours and using prep resources and some other resources and stuff. Okay. Thank you.
Does he have an idea of what he wants to study in unclaimed scholarship college? you know, he’s he’s not a STEM kid. U more than likely he will this summer he u did a course up in New York. Uh it’s called Wall Street in the classroom. So just to kind of expose him to science generally speaking and then he did another course up in at BT called economics for leaders and he seems to like that more than anything else. So, if I had to get hazard a guess right now, I think he’s going to be more afford or something like that.
Yeah, probably. Does he like math? Yeah, I think he tolerates it. I’m not sure he enjoys it. So, I think most people I enjoyed it as a kid. Kids somehow never Yeah. Bug. And then you me you mentioned a couple schools like Duke and uh I think he’s like I don’t know BC I’m not sure he’ll go to Colombia. Cornell would be higher than than Colombia would be for him.
He’s been to Colombia a few times. His sister went there. So after going to the women’s unclaimed scholarship college on the campus but are the two are the two older kids out of unclaimed scholarship college? Yeah. Yeah. They’re both working.
Okay. Yeah, my oldest actually just started UVA. He’s doing business school. Okay. Yeah, my son just finished up his MBA from where I state. Okay. school. Yeah. Excellent.
I think the value of these graduate programs are dropping. Unfortunately, I used to recruit I worked for mostly financial services and tech firms most of my career and always valued an advanced degree. I think the firms are reevaluating of that because just the cost of actually going and you know having to do a graduate program and then on the flip side more and more jobs as AI gets more prevalent.
I think we’re going to see people who understand the functional and domain capabilities, they will they will do far better and for that you don’t need an advanced degree. You need to be working for a company or for an industry for a while to figure that out.
It’ll be interesting to see what happens. Although international kids are showing up here or used to I should say before this year for their advanced degrees because we have the best universities.
Yes. It’s unfortunate that our kids won’t be doing that. Jonah, did you find that data?
Yeah, I think I found 217 is what Google said right off the bat, but I’m still looking. I’m trying to Okay, so there there’s something seems low, right?
Because there there’s Well, in state, it’s 212, which is which is the equivalent of about a 1440 or 1450.
Got it. It’s a different scale then. It’s a different trial. So, I’d guess probably like a 1480 60 70 80 somewhere in there.
Okay. Got it. So, um definitely do some prep and study to try and get that. Yeah. I’m going to I’m going to go digest this information and do a search myself and I’ll go look at it.
Explain what that does for me. Well, for her, I should say for me like in terms of getting on a national merit scholarship. What does it do?
Um the older two must have done it because they scored. Here’s a really important question. Here’s a really important question that we need to ask and that is um what does this unclaimed scholarship college value and whatever they value you want to do that.
So a as a national merit finalist um telling a school like uh Harvard or Stanford that they don’t care. They don’t care. But at but at a at dissimilar Public or University of state, they’d probably care. I’d have to look up to see if Boston Unclaimed scholarship college cares about that or not. I want to say Villanova does.
I’ again, have to double check that stuff. Okay. Um, so, so, um, do you want to just walk me through what you do with your Yeah. So, if you don’t mind, I want to be respectful of your time as well. So, I appreciate it. Yeah. So, initially what we’ll do is we’ll schedule some one-on-one meetings, and I’ll ask him a whole bunch of questions and we’ll formulate a game plan as we move forward.