Good morning for another episode of College Coffee Talk with your hosts Pearl and Andy Lockwood. She's Pearl. Hi, I'm Pearl. And I'm not. Get that out of my face. Don't start. Let's start off appropriately. Yeah, you know what? Let's try an approach of unity, shall we? I'm hearing that idea lately. Something happen? I don't know. Let's get on with the show. Join us in a synchronized sip of your coffee or whatever else you may have handy. One, two, three. Good morning. What a lovely cappuccino. Thank you. Okay. Well, funny you should mention the political stuff because I actually am going to tie something in a little bit later when we talk about a few financial aid and essay faux pas. I'm not really sure what the plural of faux pas is. I think it's faux pas. It might be pronounced faux pas. Really? Yeah. I think it's spelled the same way. Okay. So much to cover today. Frenchies out there, weigh in. So let's see what's happening. So this is a show where we talk about tips and strategies and answer your questions. So if you have any questions relating to getting into college or paying for college or whether you should even go to college, anything college-related, pop them in here. We're here to answer those questions every week, Monday, 10 a.m. Eastern, and if you're catching us on recording, then same thing, pop your question into the comments. Okay, so in terms of what's happening just in the college land, so the FAFSA overall, the FAFSA numbers are way down because of all the problems that we've been talking about incessantly for probably two years before the new FAFSA even came out, 250,000 people fewer have filed this year. Right, assuming that number's accurate as well. Yeah. Yeah, I don't think, right, I don't think that's a- Well, we're talking about the inaccuracy of the FAFSA, just saying. Yeah, I don't think that's a high number. No. So there's still some lingering effects. Colleges are still sort of whining about not being able to get out awards and all that. But there's more to financial aid than just FAFSA. So we're going to talk about that a little bit. And because there's more to it, we're going to cover some, I guess, some recent faux pas on the FAFSA, some recent mistakes that we've seen parents make in the college funding process, for lack of a better phrase. Right. I also want to talk a little bit about some essay faux pas, plural, because yesterday we ran the first of four live boot camp working sessions in our new office at Full House. You documented it. Yes. Pearl, our chief snack officer, came in and gave snacks, which were very well received. Thank you. Yesterday at the first break, they went into like piranhas. It was only I'm glad. I picked judiciously. We started writing at 9.15. I gave him a half hour to write before we took our first break. So by 10 o'clock, it Yeah. They crushed the snacks, but, um, you know, some stuff comes up a lot in terms of, uh, essay, you know, ideas and do's and don'ts. So I want to highlight, I think at least three, maybe four potential essay faux pas that I noticed not just yesterday, but, but over the years. Um, I also just, uh, wanted to throw out a story that caught my eye about, you know, you know how all those, um, um, It's not so many, but you know how a lot of medical schools now are offering free medical school tuition, you know, uh, former mayor Bloomberg, pledged, I think, a billion dollars to Johns Hopkins. Yeah, and I know NYU tuition is free. So there's been some sort of unintended consequences that have occurred since those pledges, which are amazing, since they happened. So if we have time, I want to talk a little bit about that, just out of curiosity, not that it's necessarily a college tip or a medical school tip, unless you're considering going to medical school and you want to really learn all you can about that. right okay so let me start with the essay stuff and then we'll get into the financial faux pas so you know writing essays is the equivalent to these days this is what I told my kids yesterday at the uh at the live workshop we did in our office uh writing essays these days is the equivalent of an interview because most colleges don't do interviews anymore So you have to think about if I were on an interview, what would I want the employer to know about me? Same thing with admissions officer. But you also don't want to highlight the stuff that you don't want them to know. I know that's a double negative, but you don't want to call attention to things that are not necessarily in your favor. So one of the kids, he came up with this. This is a very smart and strategic comment. A couple of hours in, We were looking at an essay that he had written which described a physical injury that he suffered when he was little is pretty major pretty major back injury and so I'm not going to use names I'm not going to use too many details. So just to protect the the innocent who didn't give us permission to talk about this and he it was a nice essay shaping up nicely it's about how we had to. They went to all sorts of doctors they couldn't figure out, you know what was what was wrong and. So he finally decided to take over himself and take care of his, become the CEO of his own medical plan. And mature, right? And then he pointed out a couple hours in, he's like, you know, one thought I had, I don't know if this is a big deal or not, but I'm thinking about applying to one of the service academies. And is this going to be some sort of red flag about my physical condition? And I said, you know what? First of all, I'm not sure that it is. I don't think so. And I think we can write it in a way that it's not because it doesn't appear to be because he's a very active kid. But great point. And maybe what we do is shift the essay just, I hardly ever recommend this, but shift the essay just for that college. which you can do on the common application. So when you're filling out your common application, all the information goes to each college that you submitted to. But in between those submissions, you can change it. So I usually say don't bother doing that because it's not really that important and it's going to cause confusion and possible mistakes later. You may forget which college you sent which version of the essay too like you don't if you're applying to you know one school like Boston College you don't want to send an essay that's that talks about how how great you know Johns Hopkins is right so um but in his case I thought you know maybe maybe we apply to that top school first and then we switch out the essay so we're still figuring that figuring that out but that was a very good very high level I thought strategic example of avoiding a self-inflicted faux pas And then, of course, that brought me to memories of other similar types or related types of essay faux pas in the past. So one of the ones we've talked about before is from years ago, our client Rissy. You remember that was what her mom called her? Yes. It's all coming back to me now. Is that a song? It is. Meatloaf. Meatloaf. It's all coming back to me now? Isn't there one of his songs? No. That's not on Bad Out of Hell, so I don't know where you came that. It's not from that. Yeah. Well, are there other songs that he's ever... Yes. Okay. All right. We cover so much in this show. Listeners, don't be... Pearl does have a habit, and even if you don't admit this, I don't care. She does have a habit of just, you know, I'll say something, and then she'll kind of rephrase it in a song, and I'll say, like, is that really a song? And most of the time, it's not. In this instance, it is. Okay, fine. Anyway, so Rissy was a little full of herself, which is fine. Listen, when you're applying to college, you are, in effect, bragging about yourself. You're trying to highlight your positive attributes. But her essay came – I read her essay, and I was like, Carl, look at this. And she saw that she had the same reaction that the essay was – know just sort of kind of sending and and braggadocios I spent two minutes with a special needs person and changed their lives right something like that yeah is that a song okay oh look look look excuse me meatloaf it's all coming back to me now Literally. It has the song name. It's all coming back to me now. With the lyrics. I just searched it because I knew I was right. I had to tell everybody that I wasn't crazy. Point for Pearl once again. So anyway, I said to Rissy and I said to the mom, I was like, I really don't think you should write it this way because I think the tone is coming across a little condescending. And the daughter said, you know what, this is how I want to write it. And the mom and I talked for a minute or two. And I said, OK, well, I gave you my comment. And it did turn out that she did not get into the school that I think she should have gotten into. I can't swear that it was because of the essay, but it's one of these things where if I had to pick one thing, that would be it. Another similar type of essay faux pas that may not have been as big a deal was from a client of ours from several years back who's out of college. She was applying to an Ivy, I'll say Ivy caliber school. It's one of the top 12 colleges. There's eight Ivys and there's another four, Duke, Stanford, Amherst and Williams. Those are the other four. So she applied to one of those four colleges, early decision. And she was a, I think she was valedictorian of her class. She was extremely high achieving in many different areas, including track. and she wasn't being recruited for track but she um she wrote an essay about how when the starting gun went off she froze and the essay was about her anxiety that she suffered from which also drove her to be valedictorian so it's a double-edged sword but it was about you know coping and one of the coping mechanisms that she relied pretty heavily on was that she had a service dog or therapy dog when everything else didn't fail because she kept trying different uh remedies also like like the first guy I talked about and um you know I read the essay I thought this I was great and she's you know she's literally great but but after I thought about it I said you know the only possible objection I have is you're probably not bringing this dog to school with you that's before people brought dogs to school and um and her the person who had been helping edit her her essay is was a former admissions officer at um u chicago which is which might as well be in that top 12 you know super hard school to get into and she said you know I didn't really look at it that way but yeah let's let's just change it anyway I don't think that would be an issue but you know why not change that so that was another you know sort of thing too are you going to be a liability to the school one day potentially I guess, yeah. I mean, that's what the first guy was talking about. And that's what I was thinking about with the therapy dog essay. And the last one that I want to talk about. By the way, if you're just joining us, you have questions, pop them in here. Say hi. I didn't check to see who was with us yet. But I'm interested. So let us know that we're coming in loud and clear. I see we've got a bunch of people with us. And Danielle, Maria. Bunch of other people. Welcome and say hi if you're watching on replay too. The last one that I wanted to talk about was related to the events of this past weekend with the assassination attempt and just talking about political things in general. I usually get questions. I occasionally get questions about is it okay to talk about controversial topics? Like if you're it's usually in the context, like if you're sort of a deeply religious person and your faith is important to you, is it okay to mention that if you're not applying to Notre Dame or, you know, the rest of, yeah, the rest of the Holy 12, you know, Jesuit and parochial, well, I guess Catholic type colleges. I call them the Holy 12. And, you know, sometimes people, you know, talk about political stuff. you know, like candidates, that's not as common, but I do get those questions occasionally, some hot, you know, hot button third rail issues like, you know, right to life or abortion or, you know, things like that. And I think I had this conversation actually with that University of Chicago admissions officer, Sarah, She's now a professor of rhetoric at Carnegie Mellon. But we wrote a book together on the college essay. So I think this is in that book. I asked her, what's the deal with writing about controversial topics? Is that OK, or should you just skip it? And her answer was a little surprising to me. It was that, number one, admissions officers are not the students, the ones who protest. They're the administration. so I'm just telling you what she said okay often those two lines are not separate just saying depends depends often they're not separate not a song right uh moving along the other thing she said was you know, what admissions officers are taught and are reminded to do is to check their own biases at the door before they walk into the admissions office and do their jobs. Comment? Song? Laughable. Okay. I think that's challenging. This is like a good counterpoint. And the third thing she said was, That's okay. You have many redeeming qualities. The third thing that Sarah said was along the lines of if you are going to take on a topic like that, what you should not do is just come across as a one-tracked doctrinaire. It's this is my way and no one else is right. You've got to be able to acknowledge the other side and show some respect and not just, you know, ride roughshod over the the other side you've got to show that you're able to reason uh these things out so so if you can't do that don't write about those things well most of the time you know you really shouldn't have to write about something controversial right but if it's so so one of my litmus tests about what topics should you write about is if it's so important if it's such a core part of who you are again that you you know you'd want to talk about if someone were interviewing you then it's hard not to write about that. That's almost where I come down. It would be so weird to not talk about it. And there's an essay prompt, the first essay prompt, which I believe is the most commonly used prompt on the common application, which is, do you have a background or story that if we didn't know about, the rest of your application would be incomplete? So I think if it fits that category, then and it happens to be potentially controversial, I would at least consider it. But a lot of times, it doesn't have to be. You don't have to write about it, because it's not necessarily as big of a deal. But for some kids, it is. Some kids, it isn't. So anyway, I think that's all I had to say about the essay faux pas. I want to talk to you now, and I want you to talk about it. And please, if you have questions, if you're just joining us, KS is here. Maria is here. Good morning to Maria. uh bonnie emily so if you guys have any type of college related questions or comments please let those fingers get a clicking and a clacking and say hi or or voice them So, okay, so we talked before about how there are still lingering FAFSA issues, 250,000 less, a few have been filed this year compared to last year. But one of the things that struck me, and this is probably more of a commentary on our practice and our clients, is that most of those issues have little to no bearing on most of the people that we know. Because the money that we see people getting from college. And our clients are mostly mass affluent, middle class. Some are top 1%, like hedge fund and private equity type people. But most of them are, I would say, mass affluent. So we offer different things for different clients. Most of them don't really benefit. from anything that's filed on the FAFSA? Because that's not the source of money for most people that we see. You talk about this all the time. People say, I didn't get anything from FAFSA. And A, that's kind of an incorrect way to think about it. But B, that's not the only source of money. So can you just give an overview? Right. Let me give an overview so that we clear up some of those mischaracterizations. Because as Andy pointed out, often a financial aid award will be issued and then I'll have a parent saying, but I still want to wait and see what FAFSA gives me. Like he's like, that's as a Santa Claus. Like it is not, it's not. In fact, just so you have a real clear understanding of how these things work, there are multiple financial aid forms that are potentially required at any given institution. The biggest that we know of, that are used most widely, the FAFSA, which is used, which is a form. Okay. It's a form. It's not a bank. It's not an orifice. It's not in Santa Claus. It's a financial aid form application that is available to all students, US students who are applying to schools in the United States, some international schools as well. And it determines your eligibility for federal aid. And I just say, it's like saying I didn't get a refund from my 1040 and for my tax return. Right. Right. It's, it's just a form like a Pearl, you know, profile is a 400 families worth of these for our clients every year, but just a place to put in data. So the FAFSA is one such form and it is taken by all the schools that are out there. Then many schools say, require an additional financial aid form. It's another application called the CSS Profile. That form is required at approximately 400 of the 4,000 or so schools that are out there. And that form determines your institutional aid at that school. So now it's not like a one or the other. It's now you have schools that are required you know, the CSS profile requiring schools are looking at the CSS profile you have submitted, the FAFSA you have submitted, because everybody gets the FAFSA. And then that same school could have potentially other institutional forms of its own that is going to require you, the applicant, to complete. And OK, or not. So let's say it's just the FAFSA and the CSS profile and then responsive to the submission of the CSS profile. That same institution also asks for and gets your tax returns and the W-2s. And if you own a business, they're going to ask some additional information, potentially ask for the business. Okay. My point is all of this information comes in from the FAFSA, from the CSS profile, from whatever else the school you've applied to wants from you. And then the school, the school has its own process for determining and issuing financial aid. So it takes all of that information from the FAFSA, from the CSS, from the tax returns, from the business form supplement, if it has asked you for it. And then it may even say, well, where did this kid stack up on our whole list of applicants? How great, did this kid like claw his way in and get, is this an off the wait list kid and maybe like not as high quality a candidate as maybe the kid who is like the brightest shiny object we have in that top 10% of our applicants this year. Because that's also gonna make a difference in the financial aid package that that school is now having all that information going to issue to you, the students. Okay, that's how it works. The school is awarding a package to you, some of which may include federal eligibility awards that you are eligible for. And so it's providing you where that all fits in. But there's one financial aid package from each school. They use all these applications, the FAFSA, the CSS profile, other documents to come up with that award. It is not such that these respective applications are orifices where money comes out of, like an ATM. Capiche? Like a geyser? It's not a geyser. Anyway, that's how it works. If you have questions about what I've said or any of this, please pop them in chat and we'll clear it up for you. Right. And the other thing is that none of this discussion is about merit aid, which there's actually more of that out there than there is need-based aid. Right. And that's a whole nother process. And that has to do with what Pearl was saying about where do you stack up compared to your competition? Right. All right. Let's talk about some of the faux pas. So you were talking this morning about some impulsivity type things. Right. If, for example, like I know right now in this time of year, well, and I'll talk about it two different ways. I have one client. We are now in July, middle of July, right? Yeah. Smack in the middle of July. Um, and I have somebody who's still talking about filing their 2023 returns so that we can appeal the award from last year like hello the year is over it's coming to an end the next year's get on with it or give up the notion that you're gonna swiftly file your 23 tax returns so that we can appeal because your 23 income is vastly different than 22 it's down and so therefore we have a strong argument but what are you waiting for next christmas like There is a timeline to these things. And just like the application process and applying for and getting your essays done. And we always encourage families to students to get that work out of the way during the summer. So because the train keeps on moving, you know, in the fall, you have your senior body of work that is judged on. that you need to be concentrating on making sure it's fabulous or more fabulous than the work that preceded it. Wait a minute. What? Let me rein you in here. So you're talking about someone who is entering college this year. Yes. And they filed for aid last year when you did the financial aid application in like maybe July, maybe this or June, maybe, or sorry, maybe December or January. Three quarters of a year ago. And now it's based on 2022. Right. Okay. And they, since then they said, we want to appeal for more money. Right. So my advice was way back then, make sure you get your 2023 tax return filed as soon Because because wait because that you thought strategically was going to show a drop in income, right? So the argument is even though you made he gave me an offer based on my 22 Returns right which my income which was nice the reality since then is that my income has dropped Right and here are my 23 returns and request and you made that suggestion months ago, right? And here we are June July 15th. Yes, and it still hasn't happened, right? Okay So that's a faux pas. Yeah. That's 100% in your control. Don't bother. Don't bother. Give up. Let that kind of go because come on. Well, in the, whatever college there, and I'm not even sure who this is, I can guess, but in the defense of the college, you know, they've already, they're already done issuing any type of responses to appeals because it's the summer. Right. And the thing to be mindful about is you may have a great appeal, but, It is still discretionary. It is still up to the school. So you want to do things really right. You want to cross your T's. You want to doctorize. You want to get your appeal in early. You don't want to just say, um, my, my 23 income has changed dramatically. Wait till you see my tax returns one day. Cause I haven't filed them, but take my word for it. That's not as strong as see attached 2023 taxes filed. This is the new or better evidence of my income now. Look how it's dropped. Can you make it more in kind with this income? All right. So we have a couple minutes left. So that's one faux pas, which is just delaying, I guess, and agonizing and waffling. So let's talk about some impulsivity faux pas. Well, impulsivity is you don't get multiple bites at the appeal apple, if you will. So what you wouldn't want to do in this scenario, and there is another such scenario where a client couldn't wait a day to just get our say-so stamp of approval expert opinion on what she was writing and sent off her appeal email. That happens frequently. It does. Because you get so late. You go into a dream sequence where you think the gauntlet's going to drop. When, unfortunately, I hate to break it to you, you don't get like a little four-year-old who's asking his mommy over and over and over and over again for ice cream, ice cream, like that. You don't get 20 times that you get to nudge like that. You get one bite at the apple, so you make your argument very succinctly and strong, and you send it off. Once you start saying, and another thing, and another thing, and another thing, it loses credibility. It's kind of like if you were... appearing before the Supreme Court, you would have a court date, and you have an allotted time, a short allotted time to make your arguments, and then you're done. You can't keep going back. Oh, I forgot, Your Honor, I forgot to tell you this and that. So now with the right speedy, impulsive hit of the send button, if we have other things that should have been addressed, included, et cetera, in this appeal, it's an uphill battle. It just is. All right, so the last thing I want to talk about today, as we are now at the bottom of the half hour, as we're at half ten, as they say. Where? Not in this country. Right, as they say. On Downton Abbey? Yeah. So I just want to mention that I thought it was interesting that the pledge by former Mayor Bloomberg of a billion dollars to Johns Hopkins that benefits families who make $300,000 or less, those families, the kids who get into medical school, are able to have all their tuition paid for. And if you make less than $175,000, this is not new. This is a study about this stuff. And if you make less than $175,000, then it's tuition plus room and board, I believe. And similar, NYU and Albert Einstein, and I think there may be one or two other. No, that's just our monitor. There may be one or two other similar types of medical schools out there that do that. So what the article I just read in the Chronicle, which is one of those industry publications for people in the college world, is that number one, the projected shortage of physicians by 2030 is something like 86,000. So Johns Hopkins will take in 120 students per year. So these are nice gestures and meaningful to individual families. But they're not necessarily going to address this bigger problem as the population ages and we need more physicians. No matter how many schools do this, it's still a huge problem. The second thing is that it looks like that Johns Hopkins according to their stats roughly one out of three of the kids that they admit are from families that make more than three hundred thousand dollars so they're so they're in effect using the influx of applications to become more selective and drop their admissions rates to become more highly ranked and more elite. And that's sort of what the article is saying about NYU and potentially Albert Einstein is that it's not necessarily benefiting people who need it. In fact, the stat that they cited was that in terms of minorities at NYU, the share of NYU medical students who identified as Black or African American actually dropped after the free tuition announcement from 14% in 2017 to 11% between 2019 and 2022. And then at NYU also, the percentage of applicants who self-reported as financially disadvantaged dropped from 12%, sorry, plunged from 12% in 2017 to 3%. in 2019 and since then hasn't gone past seven percent so these are just sort of you know unintended consequences I guess or I don't know if they're consequences but they're they're just dynamics that um don't really get reported on I think it's great public relations you know for schools like nyu and for johns hopkins and other and other schools to announce the the free tuition and free room and board but the reality is that they're still relying very heavily on high-income, mass affluent, and highly affluent families. So there you go. That's your dose of cynicism for the week. Pearl, any closing comments before we wrap? Have a great week. Pop in your questions if you have them as they rise about anything we've talked about today or anything college-related that you are confused about, have heard differing information about that you want cleared up. We'll try to do that for you. All right. Good closing comments. We'll see you next week. Have a great week.
