Well, welcome to another edition of College Coffee Talk. Pearl and Andy Lockwood, Lockwood College Prep. Good morning, Pearl. Good morning, Andy. Hello, everybody. Join us in a synchronized coffee or other beverage sip. Cheers to you. I just want to point out, I'm having a cappuccino. I think you are, too. I am. Note how nice my cinnamon dusting is. Excellent. Perfect. Okay, so this is a show that's all about helping get into college, helping pay for college, updating you on the latest news that you can use about college stuff. whether that's student loan forgiveness, which is on tap for today, whether that's the latest on the test optional trends. If you have any questions that you want to lob into the comments section here, fire away. This is your opportunity to get some free advice and some free college coaching. And anything goes, really. College-related, preferably, but anything goes. So let's talk a little bit about the past week. So there's two big stories. There was an update. uh our development to test optional policies and then there was some some uh biden harris administration student loan forgiveness news and I promised last week that if we had time which I will make time for we will talk about the mom who ripped me like it's like the spy who loved me exactly yeah so um all right so in terms of test optional uh this was another blow to proponents of test optional policies on the grounds that they were unfair to people with lesser resources. And they also argued that the test optional policies weren't accurate indicators of how well someone's going to do in college. So last week, Yale University was the latest school following on the heels of Dartmouth to abandon their test optional. I think it's test flexible. Like you can submit SAT, ACT, or your AP classes, AP tests, one more I think it might have been the ib but I i blanked on it not really a reporter in my defense um and you know the thrust of the argument by the dean of admissions at yale was that in direct contravention to the rationale behind the test optional policies number one they reduced not enhanced diversity on campus which I'll explain and number two they are accurate, not perfect, predictors of how well someone will do in college. The main reason why SAT and ACT scores are more accurate is because of rampant grade inflation in high schools that makes it harder for admissions officers to figure out whether someone's actually qualified to do the work at that particular college. So That's just their you know they were saying that so you know we've been saying, probably for a couple years since these tests optional policies became much more widespread. And then the other sort of counterintuitive reason why test optional policies suppressed the. The enrollment of under resourced and disadvantaged minorities and other college applicants was because. apparently those under-resourced students were not submitting their scores because they thought they would be too low and therefore remove them from the running into those particular colleges and specifically Yale. So what Yale realized was that they wanted to see these scores, even if they are below the published median, which might be in the mid-1500s for an SAT, if there was someone from a disadvantaged neighborhood who didn't have the resources to pay for it, let's face it, people like us in our firm, a score for them that was in the 1400s might signal that they were a diamond in the rough, along with the other 20 or 25 factors that admissions officers consider. So that's why they're going back to requiring tests. Who's with us? Give some shout-outs and then Yeah, and then we can get into the next segment and answer your questions. All right. Good morning to our wonderful Christine. Good morning, Gillian, up early on the West Coast. Good morning to Chris. Hi, Lori. And can't stay, but she's looking forward to hearing our replay. All right. Good morning. Nice to see and hear from everybody. Don't be shy. Tell us hi. If you have a question that you want answered and we have time to get to it, then this is a great opportunity for that. Yep. Pop it in. All right. Loan forgiveness? Loan forgiveness. Well, yet again, we're having another go at the loan forgiveness situation and Nothing really has changed in this newest iteration of the loan forgiveness in terms of its legality. Let me first tell you about it and then we can get into that. But basically the newest iteration, which of course, you know, made a huge commercial splash of it's Christmas again. Oh my God, we're getting forgiven all kinds of money. And wow, I have $300,000 in debt and it's all going to get wiped away. Yay. Oh, you know what? Things are good with these guys. I like what they're offering. I'm going to stick with them. Yeah. Okay. Here's the reality of the newest Biden loan forgiveness plan. I believe you mean Biden-Harris. Biden-Harris. Yes, of course. First of all, your original loan balance has to be under $12,000. Everybody else, this doesn't apply to you. OK, so if you borrowed as a student each year, the statutorily prescribed amount, 5500 in the freshman year, 6500 in the sophomore year. Oh, you see where I'm going with my math? 7500 in the junior year. You're out. This doesn't apply to you. So only the people who borrow less, their original loan amount, less than $12,000, does this apply to. This forgiveness, which has already been determined by another branch of government, we've got three of them, to be unconstitutional. That would be the Supreme Court, okay? They already said, no, President, you are going beyond your little branch, your executive branch of power here. If you want to do something like this, who has to do it? A third branch of our government. Somebody needs to tell the executive branch how this all works. Congress will have to pass laws that actually put this into place. So here's what's going to happen. I'm no Swami, even though I wear that funny hat once a year. This is going to be raised once again with the Supreme Court. You know, the timing is everything. I mean, that may not happen until like after the elections where they're going to slap them down again and say, no, still unconstitutional. Nice try once again. Okay. But... Well, may I? Yeah, sure. A little edgy this morning. I have no feeling about this whatsoever. I know. So dramatic. So the first one, I can't remember when that was, but that was almost a year ago, was under a different... The Heroes Act. The Heroes Act, under a different law. So do you know which authority he's citing for this attempt? And is it a different legal argument? that he does have the ability to do that. Well, this is all it is. It's really I don't see any new legal argument here. I do hear the Heroes Act once again, which was originally supposed to benefit our veterans. And then there was a COVID relief angle to this. But COVID has been determined not really an issue anymore since, I think, March of 23 in terms of these things. Yeah, the president said that. It's no longer an emergency. Therefore, emergency relief under some act that would grant him the authority to do that doesn't exist by his own words. That's right. It's interesting. Now I'm going to tell you a little bit more about how this works, how fettered this is. First, so you have to have a loan balance that's originally under $12,000. Then you needed to have made 10 years of on-time payments towards that original balance of $12,000 to be eligible first for forgiveness. So first you got to live through all of that. You have to have an original loan balance of under $12,000. Then you have to make 120 on-time payments before you can even apply for forgiveness. So. All right. So your advice? There's more that meets the eye. And my advice is that to the extent that all these, you know, what I will see a hollow promises of loan forgiveness have been made now a second time, what's going to happen and what happens to the original forgiveness that was not, um, there's going to be a default into constitutional existing loan forgiveness plans, which are pretty beneficial, but are not exactly as unfair, uneven as this one proffers. Let me ask you this, though. So we have a separate business, which is about consulting people who have these loans coming up on the best ways to repay in all these programs, 150-something scenarios or whatever. I would say, actually, that some of the ways that you've been helping people are borderline unfair. Exactly. So you're in the middle one right now, which I haven't actually asked about in a while. But can you... kind of give a brief outline, just in case anyone watching is feeling the crush of parent loans or student loans, because there really is real relief out there that may not be quite as ridiculous as what you just described. Right. And here's the other thing. If anybody with their loans as is, who've done nothing to their loans, they just, oh, the loan service is reaching out. Here's a notification. Your loan's due on such and such a date. Start paying. Here's your monthly price. If you just go along with that and keep paying along, you will not effectively be eligible for any loan forgiveness until you refinance your loans a couple of times, or it's actually called consolidation when we're dealing with the federal loan program, but it is akin to a refinance. You have to do that a few times to change the nature of the loan that you have into such a characteristic that it becomes then eligible for this loan forgiveness plan altogether. This takes time, months. While you're still maybe confused about what you should be paying or paying, et cetera, and so forth. And then again, once you get to the characteristic, you know, the proper loan type. Transformation. Transformation that qualifies you for loan forgiveness. It is at that point that you have to certify your income every year. For 10 years in a row, you have to make every payment of your payment is going to be tied to your income. So whatever your income is, the borrower's income in a certain year, that is going to in this, you know, for this loan forgiveness. That is going to determine what your monthly payment is going to be for that year. And the next year, you're going to have your income recertified, and then a new monthly payment is going to be established for that year. So to the extent that perhaps you have low income initially in this, but by year four, you got a different job, then you bump up because it's tied to your income, this monthly payment. in this plan, you may have a very high monthly payment, but you need to pay it on time and not miss a payment that entire year to still be in this 10 years of on-time payment. Anyway, let me just get through it. Let's say you do great. Well, all right, so I was asking about So I have a family you guys we've got a few families now I have a few families you them had about four hundred thousand dollars worth of student loans. That's right That's right. And then you've got another one. I don't know the particulars, but it's a similar very similar similar scenario talk about these three families where the before and after and Okay. Just to give people an idea. And if you want more information on this service, check out the site I'm going to post in here. So in each of these situations, both families had approximately $400,000 in parent loan for college, a few kids' worth of parent loans. $400,000, the first kid, it's six months after graduation, the loans become due. In each of these cases, their monthly payment, if they did nothing, it defaults to the standard monthly payment, which in their case was going to be $4,000 a month every month for 10 years. I'll repeat that, $4,000 a month for just student loan payments, okay? Every month. So in both of these situations, the borrower has a low enough income when we are able to separate out from the spouse who is the non-borrower. It's going to require a different type of tax filing. when it's tied to income in each of these situations, I'll just sum it up. Their loan payments are going from $4,000 a month to $750 a month. And that's because there is some income, but if there's income even lower, the monthly payment could even be zero. And as long as you're paying zero, if that's what your income-based repayment is determined to be, every month on time payments, your loan balance is going to go up because even though you're considered on time, you are not reducing your loan balance. Obviously when you're not making payments, that's the catch. That's the catch. So you got to, once you're in it, you got to stay in it. Eventually what happens if you then successfully, again, recertifying the income every single year is going to determine that year's monthly payments. At the end of 10 years, having done this all on time, the rest of the now accrued loan balance at the 10th year will get forgiven. And then there is though, unless you are eligible for public service loan forgiveness for everybody else, you're going to have a tax bomb or tax hit in that 10th year on that forgiven amount. But, you know, basically, so that, yes, there is some reality to this plan. But it's a real benefit. Economically, it's a huge savings. I'm sparing a family from paying $4,000 a month every month for 10 years. It's like unfathomable for so many families to be able to come up with that to something that's manageable, doable, where they're going to get the rest of it. Certainly, they can kick this can down the road. know 10 years plus however many years you didn't have to make payments while you were in school those four years you know from the minute you took out that loan and paid for handled that college expense and I put you know the loans themselves are very very either the easiest loans to obtain Out of loans out there, easier than a car loan, easier than a house loan, easier than any other loan, even if you were renting a place, this is easier. They don't ask for a debt to income ratio. There is no two years of tax returns that you need to supply like you ordinarily would if you're trying to borrow money. It's just your credit passes. Yes, your credit passes. No. And if it's a yes, just tell us what you want to borrow and it's yours. then we're going to tell you how to forgive it and you don't have to have a high credit score so far right basically the no's come to those who have tax liens recent bankruptcies recent foreclosures otherwise passes yep so there's different plans um you don't have to go drop down to the lowest payment right and negatively amortize your loan as much. You've had other people who chose a higher payment just so that wouldn't happen. Right. For those who were not comfortable with making such a commitment for 10 years to keep their income at a certain place, et cetera, and so forth, there are options to have that $4,000 payment where more like going from exactly like going from a 15-year mortgage looks one way, you're going to pay it off in 15 years, And now you refinance into a 30-year mortgage where your payments are cut in half, but now you're taking twice as long to pay it. And of course, you'll have more interest accrual. But you can still make extra payments just the same way you could on a 30-year mortgage without any penalties. That's right. Exactly. There's no payment penalty on these educational loans. So if you want information on that, if you're in a situation like that, Pearl can probably help you. Go to yesterdaysdat.com. If I can't, I'll tell you that too. And hello to Todd Johnson, pride of Quinnipiac. One of the greatest hockey players ever to come out of that school. Just ask him. Michelle Lubke, Chris Couch. We already said hi to Lori. Hello to Amy Douglas Moore. Hello to Robert Jarvis. If you guys have any questions... This is your opportunity, Liz Fitzpatrick, Kareem Drapetz, Beth Pickett. Hello, Beth, from the West Coast. Another one of our family members here, Lockwood College advisor extraordinaire, Dawn Parsons, Bloody Mara. All right, nice. The author and teacher. She should be teaching now, I think. This is kind of awkward, but anyway. All right, so can I talk a little bit about the mom who ripped me? Sure. And I don't mean Pearl here. This was about three weeks ago. I was going down my list of our seniors class of 2024 kids that hadn't heard from in a while, which is normal in this cycle because there's a big rush to get all the applications in November through December, etc. And then it becomes like a waiting game. Sometimes, you know, there's extra little cleanup stuff to do financial aid wise or whatever, but it's kind of a lull after an intense summer. So I emailed the family. I said, Hey, what's going on? You know, can you tell me, uh, Tom's, uh, latest college results, not his real name. And I got a message back saying, we need to speak to you on the phone. I'm like, okay. Um, yeah, that could mean anything. So we finally connected on the phone and the mom started screaming at me saying, uh, why don't I know what his results are? Um, you know, you're not giving us the, the personal service and advice that we hired you for. And she just launched into this whole thing. And I was, um, it takes a lot for me to be speechless. This, this was the one time where I was, you know, I couldn't get anything else. My jaw was, was dropping. And then I finally, as she's ripping me, because it was like a filibuster, I went into my calendar and just to sort of quell my own curiosity to see how many meetings we had over the summer and all that. And so when she came up for air and took a breath, I was like, well, wait a minute. Between July and the beginning of October, when we were rushing to get everything in before November, we had 13 meetings. okay in addition uh he attended all four of our boot camps which we did over the summer two in uh sept and I'm sorry two in july two in august and actually there's one in september which he also attended and those were in the mornings from on sundays from 9 00 a.m until about one true during some of the sessions he was like this on on a desk Not exactly, you know, burning the midnight oil. Maybe we need a pincher. Well, that's not what they hired us for. I think that's what her expectations were about why she hired us. And then on top of that, she worked with one of our, the child, Tom, still not as brilliant, worked with one of our essay editors for 12 hours that the guy billed me. And I think there were a few more hours that I don't know why he didn't bill me for. So I was adding all these hours up in my head, and I'm like, okay. And most of these meetings that we had one-on-one, the mom was there too. Short memory? That wasn't enough, apparently. And I had to point out, I said, look, before you retained us, I explained to you the whole deal is that this is a two-way street. We can give advice. We can hold kids accountable. We can have multiple meetings with them, but they have to do the work. We're not babysitters. We're not going to write the essays. By the way, his essay went through probably 12 different drafts. It was excessive just because he – couldn't pull it together, which is not a terrible thing if you finally pull it together. So I was baffled and a little shocked, but that's the thing. When you hire anyone, whether it's us or some other professional in a different field or another college advisor or whatever, you have to understand that it's a two-way street. We're only as good as the kids that we coach if they're coachable. It's kind of like if you You know, I mentioned before about Todd, you know, if you were a hockey player and the coach said, okay, you've got to take, you know, 300 slap shots every day over the summer, 10 from up top, 10 from this side of the ice, 10 from this side of the ice, and that's how you get better. And if you don't do that, but you still expect to get better, you can't blame the coach, you know, for not implementing that advice. So it was kind of weird. I hadn't had something like that happen in, I mean, I can't remember that happening for years before I got really careful about screening people before they hired us by giving this speech like, look, we're not right for everyone. We're not good with kids who aren't coachable. We're not good with kids who aren't motivated. I don't think anyone can motivate anyone else. We certainly can't motivate kids. We can help kids who are motivated do a lot better. So that was awkward. Did you introduce them to your friend, Mr. Personal Responsibility? I did mention the word responsibility. How about what's going to happen next year when your kid's going to be all by their lonesome at college? Right. Now that's a very good point. I did not say that. I was remiss. That's going to get awkward and then you're going to be paying for it a lot more. Yeah, exactly. um and of course you know some of the schools that he applied to with his 3.3 gpa were like university of chicago and a bunch of ivys and I just see myself well it was more than his his mom was pressuring him into applying to these schools even though when we had these meetings you know even before the 13 meetings we had over the summer which which were probably another 13 to 15 over that previous year um you know we have a software which helps predict chances of getting into each school on your list and those who are in the red you know meaning 2% you know or less in terms of his odds of getting in stats don't lie right so you know it was it was kind of awkward and unpleasant but here we are now you know so it's not all peaches and cream with with us all right any questions come in yeah I see a lot of people on We've got six minutes left. Go ahead. David wants to know, have we seen any anecdotal stories on student experiences accepting guaranteed transfer offers at Cornell? Also, is Cornell the only Ivy League school that makes guaranteed transfer offers? I have one anecdote. Yeah, our older daughter. We have four kids and we have one child at Cornell. And we have her older sister, Lizzie, who got the guaranteed transfer option at Cornell. And she was like, I'm going to Michigan. Because she got into the Honors College. She won that whole rah-rah thing. And it was totally the right pick for her. So anecdotally, she blew that off. I actually have another client. But I have clients that have done that. And it's great. I have other clients who haven't. Also. Right. In terms of... I can just... in terms of other ivy leagues I'm not really sure not to my knowledge but I can tell you that cornell does have a very robust transfer program uh your student if they transfer to cornell is not going to feel like they have to really go and navigate it on their own they have an organized transfer program like the freshman orientation program just for transfers it's it's that um well attended. And it's not just a handful, like for example, University of Pennsylvania, they take maybe two transfers a year, but at Cornell, it's like many, many, many, many enough to have a whole orientation class for the transfers. Don't you know someone who did that? I did that. Oh, great. I was thinking about Cindy. And my best friend did, too. But she did. She went to GW her first year. I went to Skidmore my first year. It wasn't the right place for me. It wasn't the right place for her. And we each transferred, became best friends, and have lived happily ever after ever since. Yes, personally happy ever since. Yes. the smaller schools don't have that so so pen dartmouth definitely doesn't have right when if you're at all considering transfer you really do need to look very specifically at the transfer information you cannot make a oh well this is how it was like as an entering freshman can't do that you got to really look at the statistics and see is this a school that has a robust transfer program or not The client I was thinking of besides our daughter Lizzie who opted not to do that was his name is Jack and He got into Bucknell and he at the same time he and a few other schools, but also he was offered this option and And so he was gearing up to do this. And then he said, you know what? I just love Bucknell. And that happens most of the time when people start off at a college. They generally love it, even if it's not their top choice. They grow to be comfortable and they know where all the whatever the bathrooms are and the coffee places. And they end up marrying the natives, so to speak, and loving it. So it's great to have the transfer option. but you may not avail yourself of it. And a word on transferring altogether. We do find, and every year, just to hear it from our bird's eye view, a lot of kids in their adjustment period at school, their first semester, around Thanksgiving time, So my kid's not that happy. They're thinking of transferring. I need some advice on transferring. Sometimes that's August. Right. Sometimes it's like two minutes. I think our earliest record was we had a kid 48 hours in school, then hopped on a plane unbeknownst to mom and flew home from Indiana. I don't think they lasted 48 hours. I think they left after 24. Exactly. But it took another day to get to the airport, whatever. Anyway. It was more like, Mom, I'm at the airport. I'm in Newark. In Newark. Yeah, Long Island, Mom. I'm in Newark. Can you pick me up? That's right. True story. But what I can share with you, because this happens every single year, a lot of kids, when they're not fully adjusted to their school yet, they're unhappy, they're homesick. Our daughter started off very homesick at Cornell this year. It's because you make it so nice for her. I try. What generally happens, if that's something you want to consider, then you got to do really work really hard so that you have an exit strategy. If you don't do so great in college, that's not going to be helpful when you transfer. They're not going to rely more on your high school work because now you have better, more recent evidence of college work. That's the opposite. So you really need to do very well. If you're planning on transfer always, you know, cover your basis. So even if you end up deciding not to, and don't, don't entrench yourself so into transferring that you ultimately like it there and then feel like you can't go backwards. You should do a transferring, whatever, like it's okay. You can just give it a chance by, you got to give it at least until middle of the spring to really adjust to a place for it to feel familiar. I always say it takes like, Four seasons to really know a person, know a school. It's true. The other advice that you gave, which I thought was very good to our own daughter and to everyone, is go get involved. Get out of your dorm room and do stuff. So to her credit, she joined a sorority. She got a role in a play, in a musical recently. She joined an a cappella group. She's an officer now of that a cappella group. She's thrown herself into it. Yeah, and there's no homesickness anymore. Right. There isn't. But it happens. And if it's but just leave room for getting over that homesickness. And what I have found just statistically is by spring. Oh, no, they decided they liked it there. We're not transferring. So it happens. So if and when that happens, don't panic. It's okay. Cover your bases both ways. Try to get involved. Try to entrench yourself and root yourself in a new environment. Of course people are going to be homesick. You're literally pulling yourself away from anything that was ever familiar. Your family, your friends, whatever... things you activities you and sports and um extracurriculars curriculars you were involved in in in high school it hasn't really happened yet you know you don't touch down to college and have an established life it's one that you need to create and it takes some time and there's an adjustment and as you adjust you become more comfortable in your new place in your new space so um Just don't panic if that happens. Cover all your bases. And hopefully, you know, things will adjust and there isn't a transfer ultimately. All right. So we're going to wrap up here. Final comments here from Pearl. This is Leslie. So you don't think my husband is a creeper. Just wanted to say you were looking great and your hair looks awesome. Thanks. That's so nice. And Beth, one of our family members here is one of our college advisors. reiterated that a student got into BU as a transfer, and it sounds like she was going to do that, but then she ended up loving her first school, which was Indiana, so she stayed. And that, I think, is the rule, not the exception. Yes, definitely. All right, guys. Thanks a lot for watching. We'll be here again next week, every Monday, 10 a.m., College Coffee Talk. And if you have any questions about anything we said or anything else, pop them right here in the comments, and one of us will get back to you lickety-split. Have a great week.
