Please note that this transcript was auto-generated. We apologize for any minor errors in spelling or grammar.

Jennifer Bento-Pinyoun: [00:00:00] Okay, let’s get started. Good morning everyone. Hello and welcome. Uh, thank you for joining today for our What is now our annual Learn about Common app and parchment integration with Mefa Pathway. Presentation, uh, what a great way to start the day. Uh, my name is Jennifer Bento Pinion. I’m director of K 12 Services here at MEFA, and I am joined by my esteemed colleague at Bila, Joseph, uh, director of MEFA Pathway.

Uh, so we are recording today’s session and, uh, we will follow up with the slides along with the recording. Uh, so you, if you have to leave early, um, no worries. You’ll get all of our, the information that we’re sharing here today. Uh, this session is of, uh, eligible for, um, A PDP. So that will also be in the, the follow-up email as [00:01:00] well.

So just a few, uh, logistics. Let me actually share my, I. My big screen here, um, a few logistics. Uh, ev everyone is on mute throughout the presentation. Uh, the chat is actually disabled, but if you have a question, uh, just pop it in, um, to the q and a and we’ll address that, uh, at the end. So we are pleased to share the opportunity, um, to our MEFA Pathway Affiliate Schools to integrate with Common App and Parchment.

Uh, this is a free service that MEFA offers, uh, and we’re hoping that you will take advantage of it. Um, and just, uh, a little kind of a side note to be an affiliate school. You do, uh, work with us to sign an agreement. Um, and then, um, you have the option to participate in this integration. Okay, so let’s.

Move our slide here. Um, this, uh, is our agenda for the session. Uh, so we’ll go through a few slides [00:02:00] with the bulk of the presentation, showing you the live, uh, demo. So we’ll go through, uh, the student, the counselor, and the teacher experience. So we’ll talk about some benefits. We’ll go through that live demo.

Um, and then we do have some slides that, uh, show the counselor student teacher workflow. Um, and then, uh, we’ll go into, uh, next steps and a little q and a. Alright, so we have a poll, a very short poll for you, if you don’t mind. Uh, we have, uh, three questions. So we’ll just take a minute here if you could, uh.

Just, uh, complete the poll. Should just take a minute or so. Apple, can we see the poll? Yes, I can. Okay, good. Alright.

This is when we need the smooth jazz right in the [00:03:00] background. Mm-hmm.

Alright. Give about, we’ll give a few another 30 seconds or so. I can see people are, are answering. We don’t wanna rush.

Gotta love a good poll, huh? Mm-hmm.

All right. Well, looks like people are still doing their answers and so we can

Apelila Joseph: go another 30 seconds or so. Yeah.[00:04:00]

Jennifer Bento-Pinyoun: This information is really valuable to us too, so it’s good. Good for us to know.

All right. Should we move along? I think so. Looks like we got, yep. Okay. All right. Okay, so let’s get back to our.

I didn’t know that. That’s great. So just some of the benefits we’ll go through. Um. Of our integration, uh, as already mentioned, huge benefit, no cost, um, to this, uh, but also, um, the efficiency. Uh, so we have, [00:05:00] uh, one-time school and counselor profile setups, uh, with, uh, that data automatically populating to the common app reports, uh, the management, uh, so you can view your required forms easily, um, from the managed transcripts and recommendations dashboard in the MEFA Pathway Counselor portal.

The ease of use. Counselors, they can send forms, upload their transcripts, view the status, um, easily, very conveniently, uh, the support that we offer. Instructional resources available along with, uh, direct support from your me, a Pathway account manager. Um, so we’re always here to help. Um, whether you have, you know, technical issues or just any general questions.

Uh, we really, um, we pride ourselves in the support that we provide. And then your voice, so important and so valuable. Um, MEFA Pathway continues to grow and change based on direct user feedback. So every year we’re improving the user experience. [00:06:00] Um, okay. All right, so now we are going to go into our, our live demo, and I am going to turn it over to Oliva, who will lead our, our demo here.

Apelila Joseph: Thank you Jennifer. So to start, we are going to start off, um, showing our student experience. Uh, so Jennifer is gonna get logged into our test student Scrappy do, uh, while she’s logging in. Just to point out, we do offer single sign-on options through Clever if your school utilizes Clever and also Google Single sign-on.

So Jennifer is navigating to the my college applications page within the student portal. So on this page, this is where students will manage all of their college applications. Um, so at the very top of the page, for students that are applying to college with Common App, they would see a Green Connect button.

Jennifer has already connected [00:07:00] Scrappy’s account with Common App. So that connection functions very similarly to other, um, platforms. So if you’re currently using, um. An online platform for college applications. That Common App connection would be very similar, where students are setting up their common app account, adding a college, completing the ferpa, and then connecting the two accounts together.

So Jennifer has already connected with Common App. She also has a parchment school on here. So for schools that are not signed up with Common App, um, the documents are submitted electronically to colleges through Parchment. Um, and then of course, schools that are using neither common app or Parchment. Um, and within our system they’re categorized as male colleges.

And really that just means they’re not using one of the two electronic. Um, document submission services. Um, in the case of the example we have here, Georgetown University, they have their own system that they utilize, so [00:08:00] we designate them as a male college. Um, but I would encourage, um, students and educators that have male colleges, um, within their, their system to follow up with that college directly to see how they want documents submitted.

Some of them might want them through mail, but some of them also might have, uh, an alternative electronic submission, uh, through their own portal. So Scrappy has, um, added some colleges and so you’ll see that there’s a couple teacher recommendation requests. So we’re just gonna quickly go over sort of what you see here.

So Jennifer’s gonna show how you add a teacher. Um, so students, any teachers that they wanna request letters of recommendation from, they would simply click add, edit, recommender. They can add the teacher, the subject that the teacher teaches, and then their first name, last name, and email address. And clicking save that will add the teacher to their pick list.

Then once the teacher has been [00:09:00] added, they can go to any college, click on the add request dropdown and then select the teacher, and then they’ll click the request button. That request button will send an email notification to the teacher letting them know that they’ve been invited to submit a letter of recommendation for the student.

I will add, teachers won’t get an email for every. Recommendation request, they’ll only receive one email per day, letting them know that they’ve been invited to the teacher portal. There’s an action for them to take. Um, and at that point they can log into the teacher portal, which will show, um, in just a little bit.

While we’re here, as you can see for the Common App Colleges, uh, through Common App, the required documents are already, um, shown. So that’s an automatic thing. Students don’t have to do any work there for Parchment colleges. Um, it is up to the student to review the college’s website, see what documents are required, and then make those [00:10:00] requests in MEFA pathway.

So it’s always a good idea to encourage students to, if you’re applying to MIT, go to MIT’s admissions page view what documents are required. So if it’s a counselor recommendation, a school report, um, you know, initial mid-year final transcript, they have to make those requests within the student portal and me a pathway in order for you as the educator to be able to submit those documents on the other end.

We’ll also point out that we have a college decision and final decision tracking fields. So as students are receiving those college decisions, whether they’re accepted waitlisted or denied, they can update that within MEFA pathway. And then of course, we have a final decision field where they can indicate if they plan on enrolling or not.

Am I missing anything, Jennifer? No. No you aren’t. Okay. Um, so that is really a [00:11:00] snapshot of the student portal, and so I’ll also add. As you, as an educator, as you’re uploading and sending documents, um, students will see those statuses. So they’ll see once a teacher has submitted their letter of recommendation request.

So it’s a great way for students and also their parents as they’re looking to keep an eye on the process. You know, making sure that they’re hitting their deadlines, documents are being submitted. It’s a great way to have that transparency, um, on the student’s end. That way they sort of know where, where they stand within the process.

Okay. With that, we are going to jump over to our teacher portal. Um, so after the student submits a letter of recommendation request, teachers will receive an invite email, and from that invite email, they will receive a link to our teacher portal. As a first time user, they would simply click create an account.

As they’re creating [00:12:00] their teacher portal account, it’s really important that they are using the same email address that they received the email invitation from. And so creating an account is pretty quick and easy. It’s just their email, their password, first name, last name, phone number, and then of course we have a school lookup.

Um, so that way, that way they’re adding the high school, um, that they work at. So pretty quick and easy to create a teacher portal account. Um, once they create the account, they can go ahead and log in.

And it will bring teachers to their teacher portal dashboard. So on their dashboard, they will see the student’s common app ID number, the student’s name, the number of common app applications, the number of parchment applications, the number of postal mail applications, deadlines, the FERPA status. And then the common app and the parchment columns are where the work happens for the teachers.

[00:13:00] So for our students, scrappy, scrappy has invited Hermione as a common app and a parchment recommender. Um, so. Harmione’s actions. So the teacher’s actions would be to click on the open bubble. So an open bubble on the dashboard means that there’s an action to complete. Uh, you would click on the open bubble that would launch the common app teacher evaluation form, and from there you would.

The teacher would complete the standard common App teacher eval form. So we have no control over the questions of that form. That completely comes from Common App. We just package it in a nice, easy platform for educators to access. So they would fill out the teacher evaluation form, upload their letter of recommendation, and then click submit.

Uh, if the student were to go and invite Hermione for additional Common app, um, common App Colleges as a recommender. The letter of recommendation would automatically go to those colleges, [00:14:00] so the teacher only has to upload that letter one time for the student, for the application type, so as common app, and then it’ll automatically be sent to subsequent colleges.

The same applies for parchment. Uh, parchment does not have a teacher evaluation form in the way that Common app does for parchment colleges. The teacher would just upload their letter of recommendation. Click submit. If the student were to request the teacher for subsequent parchment colleges, that letter would automatically be sent to all of those parchment colleges.

So it really makes it nice and easy. It’s not a heavy lift on teachers because once you upload it once and complete it, it’ll automatically be sent. Uh, there is an application status key at the top, um, for teachers who, you know, need a, a little refresher on, on how it operates. Again, open bubble means there’s an action to take.

The green check mark means that an a letter has been uploaded, and this is our, our test [00:15:00] account. Um, and then the white check mark in the green circle means it’s been submitted, so it’s been submitted to Common App, or it’s been submitted to Parchment. And so we submit, um, forms to those providers every hour on the half hour.

So every hour, those documents are submitted to those um, services com app or parchment. Then the blue circle with the white arrow means that it’s been downloaded and delivered to the college, so they have received it. Um, and then the red circle with the exclamation mark is just attention. Usually that appears if there is, you know, a FERPA issue.

So if a student has an unanswered ferpa, uh, we also include. Um, Jennifer, you could, if you can, just click on the little carrot next to her’s name. Um, we do have a link to a resource library where we provide instructional videos, um, and steps for educators if they have questions. Um, or again, as you’re rolling this out in your [00:16:00] school and, you know, teachers need, you know, support aides, um, you can always direct them to our resource library.

So that is our teacher portal. Uh, we are gonna transition over to the counselor role. So, uh, Jennifer is logged into our counselor portal as Charles. Um, we are at, uh, Northeast Metro. This is just our test environment and so when a counselor logs into the counselor portal for this process, there are a couple steps that need to be completed.

Uh, so we have our pre-setup steps. Which really focus on making sure, um, you have a complete roster uploaded, including the primary counselor assignment, which is important in terms of what students you view on your management transcripts and recommendations dashboard. Uh, there’s also the pre-setup of completing the school configuration section, um, which has stuff like your school profile.

So [00:17:00] uploading a copy of your high school profile that goes out, um. Answering a couple questions around, you know, when you know midyear transcripts are ready, um, and that sort of thing, your grading scale. So all those fields that you’re answering in your pre-setup feeds directly into the common app forms that you’ll be completing on your managed transcripts and recommendations dashboard.

Counselors also have to just double check their profile every year. Again, this information is being sent to Common App, so you wanna make sure that your name, your title, your email address, your phone number, all of that’s up to date as that data will pre-populate into those common app forms. Another feature that we have for our schools is a batch transcript upload tool.

Um, so this is really great for schools that, especially if you’re larger and you don’t wanna upload transcripts one by one. If you export a batch file of [00:18:00] transcripts from your SIS system, uh, you can upload the batch here. So if you have a batch of initial transcripts, you can upload it here. We will match it to the students that are contained within the roster, and then those transcripts will automatically attach to the student’s record.

So that’s a really nice feature. Again, making things a little bit easier. So if you have, you know, a guidance clerk or someone who manages the transcripts in your school or a data manager, they can go ahead and do that upload, and then the transcript is ready when you’re ready to submit the rest of the students’ documents.

So we are going to jump over to our managed transcripts and recommendations page. Thank you. So on the page, um, it’s set up similar to the teacher portal, but of course there’s a lot more information on this page for counselors. Um, so you’ll see the student’s common app id, the student’s name, the common app column contains the number of [00:19:00] common app colleges.

Same with the parchment and the postal mail columns. You can sort by earliest deadline, which is also helpful, um, as you’re managing your workload. There is a primary counselor column, so by default, um, as an educator, you will only see the students that are assigned to you as, as their primary counselor on this dashboard.

If your school functions in a way where you want all counselors to see all students on this managed transcripts and recommendations dashboard, that is something that we can certainly accommodate for. Um, but the default method is that you will only see your assigned students on this dashboard. And you’ll see students that have either connected their common app accounts or they have added, uh, a non-com app, so a Parchman or a postal male college, um, on the student’s, my applications page.

You’ll also see the FERPA column Again, this is helpful just in man managing students. So sometimes [00:20:00] students will not complete the ferpa, either they have closed out the window before it makes the full connection. Uh, and so you see that little red circle with the exclamation mark needing attention. Um, that’s due to an unanswered ferpa.

Um. You also see, um, the transcript section. So if you use the batch transcript upload tool, all of the initial transcripts would upload here and you would see the green check mark going all the way down. Um, for the purposes of our test today, we did not use the batch transcript upload. Um, you also see a transfer transcript column.

So if you have students that are transferring in from another school and you want to include their previous transcript, you can do so there. Um, we have a spot for optional one and optional two transcript. So if you’re updating a transcript or a report card, um, you would do it here and complete the uh, uh, accompanying common app form a common app report.

And then of [00:21:00] course we have the midyear and the final transcript columns as well. So if you were to use the batch transcript manager for midyear, midyear, or final transcripts, they would upload to those columns. Um, you can also do a transcript upload manually just by clicking on the open bubble, excuse me, and uploading it, uh, the same as you would any document.

So you can do it on a one by one student basis, or you can use the batch feature. We have the common at forms column. So you’ll see the school report, the fee waiver if that’s needed, uh, council recommendation column, and then an early decision agreement. So again, whether or not there are open bubbles for these columns are, are dependent on the requirements, um, the required documents that are established in common app.

So nothing that your student needs to do just by adding them to their common app. Uh, those requirements will flow through on your end. And then of course we have the common app report, so the optional, midyear, and final. [00:22:00] Um, we also have, you’ll see a parchment tab. So just by clicking on the parchment tab, it will bring forward the parchment requirements and hide the common app ones.

So this is just helpful, like this is where you will do all of your work, so all of your uploading of documents, uh, and you can toggle between the different tabs. So if the student has made the request for the required parchment forms, again, that’s something the student has to do on their end in the student portal.

You will see the open bubbles for what students have requested. So you can go ahead and upload the school report fee waiver counselor rec. Um, I will say for Parchment colleges, the initial transcript is automatically requested. Um, so that’s not something that students will have to do. And then of course for postal male colleges, um, we have a tab for that.

The best thing that you can do for postal male colleges, if you were to click on the student’s name, [00:23:00] we can go ahead and click on Scrappy. Do. Clicking on the student’s name will pull up a quick preview of what the students have in their college application section in Mefa pathway, so you can see the details of which colleges they have added.

Uh, you can see the status of the teacher recommendation requests. You can see which, which forms are required. Common app and then which forms the student has requested for parchment. Um, and then for the postal male colleges, um, you can see what’s been requested as well. And on your end as an educator, you can go ahead and update the status to say this has been mailed.

Again, helping with that transparency for students so they know where, um, forms are in the process, um, makes it a little bit easier that way. You can also update the college and the final decision on your end as well. Um, but again, we wanna encourage students to take ownership and do that.[00:24:00]

Jennifer, am I missing anything here? I don’t think so. No, that was, that was great. Um, no, I will also point out, um. You can sort all of the, any of the columns, but we also have a little search bar. Um, so if you want to zoom in on one student, you can search their name and that will just make your view just that single student, which makes it nice and easy.

Um, as you’re going through and completing, um, any of your workflow steps. The application status key is the same as what’s on the teacher portal. Um, so all of the statuses mean the same. Um, and again, it just is helpful giving you a snapshot view of where all of the documents and where, where students stand.

Jennifer Bento-Pinyoun: We also have our resource library with a complete, um, instructional [00:25:00] guides, both from PDFs and videos. That are accessible as well.

Apelila Joseph: Yes. So right on the dashboard, under the tool section, we also have a link to our resource library, and I will add, we have a link to our MEFA pathway curriculum library as well, um, which contains PDF, uh, curriculum lessons.

And so there are a couple, um, college application lessons as well, which will help students and educators get started, um, using these features.

Okay. And with that, um, Jennifer, I think we can jump back over to the, uh, PowerPoint. Um, okay. See if I can get that back.

Jennifer Bento-Pinyoun: Alright. Okay. So we did our, so these, uh, these slides, we’re not gonna go through these slides ’cause we just did this live. But you’ll get a copy of all of these. Um, [00:26:00] so we just wanted to share a list of our current participating schools.

Um, so we are in year six of this integration and, um, we have, um, 11 schools that have joined us and our number has grown each year. Uh, and then we have a, a, a little, uh, little testimonial from, um, R McCabe over at, uh, ASBE Valley. So, you know, connect with any of these schools. They’re willing to share their experience, they’re willing to talk.

Um, and then just next steps for, for you. Uh, you’re welcome to schedule a time to meet with us, uh, one-on-one if you have questions or if you wanna. Go through any of the, the features that we looked at today, um, together, um, the QR code is here and there’s also a link on the PowerPoint. And then what we are asking of schools that want to participate for the 25 26, uh, college application season is that you [00:27:00] confirm that participation.

By June 1st, 2025. So just, um, within the next couple of months. Um, and we do that because, um, we, we want you to, uh, participate as a new school in our, in a training, uh, and you, and we usually do those in August to get you all set up for your, uh, for your first year, um, you know, set you up for success. Uh, so there, um, there are these links here linked to the scheduled time to meet.

Link to the submission form, and then here’s our contact information. If you just wanna reach out to us. All right. And then we’re just gonna go through a couple more slides here and then we’ll take, um, I see there are a couple questions in the qa, so if you have any questions, pop ’em right in there. Uh, but this is, um, all of, uh, you know, MFA’s guidance, our continual outreach.

Uh, we have a great podcast series. Um, Jonathan Hughes does a it. Does an amazing job. All sorts of different topics. Um, our college planning team, uh, always offering, um, [00:28:00] one-on-one appointments. If you, um, wanna share that with your students and families and take advantage of that, we have our live and on-demand webinars.

Uh, MEFA.org is a wealth of information. We just did a, an amazing, uh, update on the website, so check that out if you haven’t already. Um, and then we are. Uh, also active on many of the social channels. So, so Facebook, uh, Instagram, uh, LinkedIn. Um, and we also just to share, uh, a lot of community resources out there.

Uh, FASTA Day Mass holds the, uh, virtual support events, uh. For the next, at least through April. So two virtual events per month. Check that out, share that with your students and families. Mass Edco also offering support. Um, they do in-person, um, in multiple languages as well. And then here’s a, a link to, uh, our school counselors page.

So, um, a [00:29:00] lot of, lot of information on that page. We have an ambassador program, of course, MEFA Institute, which you’re taking advantage of this morning. Uh, so check us out. Alright, so let’s pause there for questions. Let’s see, we have a few in the chat here or the qa. Let’s see. Okay, so first question, just clarifying is parchment provided through Mefa pathway in the answer is yes.

So all of that, um, when you confirm participation, that is part of, part of the common app parchment integration, so yes. All right, so let’s see, what’s the second we got? Um, students request the counselor rec and school report through their portal. Initial transcript is automatic. So Aply, you wanna speak to that a little bit?

Apelila Joseph: Yes. So for it’s dependent on the application type. So students that are applying to a college through common app, so [00:30:00] if they’ve set up their common app account, all of those required documents are automatically requested. There’s nothing that the student needs to do, aside from making those teacher recommendation requests, the counselor recommendation the school report, all of that is automatically.

Requested and ready for the counselor to upload for Common App Colleges if the student is applying to non-com app colleges, so either schools that are connected with parchment for electronic delivery. Or if the school is a male college or they have their own sort of platform in our system, we designate those schools as male colleges.

Um, it would be up to the student to make those requests. So if they need a school report, they will have to click the request button in the student portal. So, and I, I will share the vast majority, um, of our participating schools, the students are using mainly common op colleges because there’s so many colleges that are, are a part of that.

Um, but for [00:31:00] every year there’s a couple students that are applying to non-com op colleges, so through Parchment. Um, and it really just is up to the student too. Pull up the admissions requirements page for that college and they’re just gonna simply click the request button within the student portal. And that lets you, as the educator know, okay, Johnny is applying to M-I-T-M-I-T requires my counselor recommendation, a school report and you know, the initial and midyear transcripts.

Um, for all parchment colleges, the initial transcript is automatically. Requested. So that’s not something that the student will need to check off as they add that non, that Parchment College. It’ll automatically show as requested next to the initial transcript, but any other documents, it’s up to the student to click the request button for those parchment colleges.

And that’s just because Parchment is not set up in the way that comment app is with all of those, each individual school’s requirements sort of on the front end. Parchment does not have that set up at this time. [00:32:00]

Jennifer Bento-Pinyoun: Thanks Aila. Um, here’s a question around the batch upload transcripts. Um, so if you batch upload the transcripts, are you then able to individually replace a transcript for one student if you need to?

So, yes. So you can use the optional one as to, you can’t, um, you can’t replace an initial transcript once it’s been sent, but you can upload to that opt one. With an updated, um, transcript or report card.

Apelila Joseph: Yes. So just to clarify, if you have used the batch transcript upload and you have submitted it to Common App already, so just by virtue of using the batch transcript upload tool, it’ll just attach all of the transcripts to the student’s record.

Once you submit the school report, then the transcript goes and it’s with Common App and Common App passes, passes it along to the school. Once that happens, you can’t replace anything. But if [00:33:00] you have. Just uploaded, you know, some batch transcripts. The student hasn’t applied to college yet, and you haven’t submitted any documents for that student.

You can go into the student’s record and remove that initial transcript and replace it if there’s a more updated one before you send out documents. So if you’ve already submitted, you can’t replace it, you would need to use the optional report to send a new updated transcript. But if it’s before, prior to submitting any documents, you can replace it.

Jennifer Bento-Pinyoun: Thank you for clarifying. All right, so here’s one. Can we still send a transcript if the student has not requested beforehand? Initial get sent automatically, but thinking of more of the mid-year.

Apelila Joseph: So do you want me to take that one? Yeah, sure. Uh, again, for the Parchment Colleges, the student has to click the request button for midyear. And final. [00:34:00] So that, that’s just the, the way the Parchment colleges are set up for common app colleges. All of all of those requests are automatic. Um, so I, I believe it’s Common App.

I don’t know if they made this change yet, but. At some point they’re gonna make a change where they’ll only send mid-year transcripts if the college is requiring the mid-year transcript. Um, but in terms of your load as an educator, um, you would just upload the batch of transcripts and it would go to all the schools that are, are requiring them.

Jennifer Bento-Pinyoun: Okay, great, thank you Aila. Um, and here’s a great piece of feedback. Most of our students apply early, so early action or decision can deferred be added as a college outcome. Into the addition to admit denying wait list. Wait list. Yeah. That’s great. We’ll put that into our, okay, great. Um, is there a way for a teacher to upload a school specific letter to be sent only to [00:35:00] one college that is different from the letter that is being sent to most places?

You

Apelila Joseph: want me to take that phone? Yeah. So, um, for this, no, unless. No, only because unless, like let’s say there’s one teacher who, you know, graduated from. I’ll just say Smith College. I’m a Smithy. So they graduated from Smith. Maybe that’s the only school that the student is requesting that teacher to write a letter for.

In that case, there’s no problem they can, they can do that. Um, otherwise the way it’s set up. For every subsequent college, the letter is automatically sent by Common App to those subsequent colleges. So if there’s a special case, I would encourage that the teacher e either mail or email the letter directly to the college’s admissions office.

Um, and that the student does not make that [00:36:00] request for that one school within MEFA pathway if the teacher will submit it, um, an alternative way, if there’s a a, a special case.

Jennifer Bento-Pinyoun: Great. Thank you. Um, and here’s one. Um, can students delete colleges from their MEFA pathway list after documents have been submitted? Want take that one?

Apelila Joseph: I don’t, uh. Yeah.

Jennifer Bento-Pinyoun: Yeah.

Apelila Joseph: Go ahead.

Jennifer Bento-Pinyoun: Yep.

Apelila Joseph: Well, I’m gonna say, yeah, so even, you know, and submitting and submitting documents, um, sometimes students will not complete the application so.

As an educator, you can submit, you know, your counselor recommendation, you know the school report, all of that. Let’s say it’s a common app school and the student has not completed their common app application. You can go ahead and submit all the documentation. Common app will hold the documentation until the student submits their application.

So even though [00:37:00] you’re going through and doing your workload and submitting everything. Sometimes it’s being held because the student hasn’t completed their steps in Common App. Um, so it’s not uncommon that, you know, as an educator you might submit all the required forms for a school. And in many ways for Common App, because it’s, you know, sort of one and done, you’ve uploaded everything, it’ll automatically be sent to subsequent colleges.

Um, but if a student doesn’t complete the application, um, then the school just won’t receive the materials and, and they can remove that college.

Jennifer Bento-Pinyoun: Okay, great. Thank you Aila. And then, um, does MEFA Pathway have a college search feature and does it link to rep visits? So MEFA Pathway does have an extensive college search feature, so that’s right within, um, that, uh, discover Colleges page there.

And at this time we do not link to rep visits. And then last question here, um, on the teacher recommend recommendation request page, do they have to enter a [00:38:00] subject for the teacher or is there an other option? Is there an other option? That’s a good question. I don’t believe there is app. Is

Apelila Joseph: there. Um, off the top of my head, I do not believe there’s another option.

So, um, one thing I will point out about the teacher recommendation page. Um, so if students are looking for like a coach or someone, someone else who’s not like an academic teacher to write a letter of recommendation, um, they should make those requests for like. You know, like an other, if it’s like a pastor or a coach or someone, they can make those requests for like an other recommend recommender through Common App directly.

Um, and then that way the, like that coach or pastor or whoever that person may be, can upload their letter directly to Common App. Um, instead of taking the slot of one of the core teachers. And so that’s, that’s a difference with Common App. [00:39:00] There’s a whole teacher evaluation that teachers have to complete.

Um, so Common App has made that distinction. Um, if it’s not like a core teacher, if it’s like a coach or you know, a mentor or someone, um, there is another recommender spot directly within Common App that students can make a request that way

Jennifer Bento-Pinyoun: and that, um. That addresses the, the next question that Emily had about outside letters of rec.

So thank you. And then one comment came in, um, because we are a comprehensive high school with a CTE program, many students will ask their, for example, dental assisting teacher for a letter of rec as they apply. Yep. That’s a good point. Okay. I don’t think we have any other questions come in. Thank you Aila, for answering all of those.[00:40:00]

Okay. So the question, the follow-up question would be how would they, how would they, how would the student handle it if the teacher does not fit into those subjects

Apelila Joseph: so we can, um. And we have, we have a couple CTE schools that are, um, using the system we can follow up. Um, so it’s like essentially like their shop teacher who they’re looking to write the letter of recommendation Yeah.

Health careers. Yep. We can follow up, um, with our, um, connection at Common App, um, to um, see if we can just add like A-A-C-T-E. Teacher field, um, in that dropdown. Um, as long as, you know, common App says that’s fine to do, that’s something that we can certainly do. And then, um, students can just select CTE. Um, I don’t, I don’t believe there’s another, I don’t think so.

We can, we can, um, double check.

Jennifer Bento-Pinyoun: That’s good. [00:41:00] Thank you. Thank you, Melanie. All right. Any other last minute questions? For today. Oh, you know, you can always reach out to us. We will send the, the PowerPoint and the recording, uh, probably later on today or tomorrow and you’ll have our contact information that link to the form.

If you wanna talk to us further, you can schedule some time. But we appreciate your time here this morning and um, look forward to maybe connecting with you in the future. Alright, have a great day everyone. Thank you.