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

Julie Shields-Rutyna: [00:00:00] Good morning everyone. Welcome, and my name is Julie Shields. I am the director of college planning, education and training for MEFA. This morning, our Metha Institute lesson is helping students and parents approach the college choice process systematically. And we’re so fortunate to have our, our expert speakers with us this morning.

We have, uh, Timothy Poin, who’s associate professor of counseling and school psychology at UMass Boston, and Amanda Ster, who is CEO and founder. Of college un maed, and I am gonna let them tell you a little bit more about themselves when they, when they begin, um, because they have, uh, great, great backgrounds and they’ve been working together and, and fortunately, uh, helping us and working with us for some time as well.

I’ll just mention that. [00:01:00] Um, this is a Mefa Institute lesson. And so, uh, we will, we will send out the slides and the recording to you later this week. Um, and you can share that with other colleagues and that you can receive professional development points for attending these professional development workshops and, and webinars and, um, so come back often.

We have a lot of offerings here you can find on our. Website in the counselor section. And so we hope you take advantage of all of those throughout the year. And, uh, finally I’ll just say that I hope you know that MEFA really wants to be here to support you and your work. So also just know you can feel free to reach out to us, uh, by phone, by email, any, anything you’d like.

Um. And we wanna be able to be that resource for you. So thank you all and at this point I’m gonna turn it right over to Amanda and Tim.

Amanda Sterk: [00:02:00] Fantastic. Well, thank you everybody be for being here today. So our topic is one that both Tim and our partner Rich really care about and we know that you do as well.

And it’s helping students and parents approach the college. Choice process systematically. Like how do we actually walk students through that college choice process and what are some, um, strategies that you can use to really do so in a comprehensive way? And just as a reminder, please use the chat and the q and a if you have any questions throughout, um, this presentations or if you wanna reach out to us later if you’re watching this as a recording, um, please do so.

Um, we are excited to be here. Go ahead, Tim.

Timothy Poynton: So, uh, again, Tim Pointin. I’ve been working with Amanda now for several years. Um, and, uh, just to give you a little bit of backdrop on, on where this came from, um, [00:03:00] basically Amanda reached out to Rich and I, who have been doing research in college and career readiness for, for a while. We’ll just leave it at that.

Um. Uh, and uh, basically, um, it was fortuitous for Rich and I, because we were just starting to work on a book, um, for, for parents and students on the college choice process. So we looked at what Amanda was doing, uh, focused on the state of Florida, and it was wonderful, um, approachable for students and, and families.

So, um, we took basically, uh, long story short, kind of combined forces in, uh, 2020 I think it was, right. Um. And, uh, developed our, our first book, uh, the College On Maze, your Guide to Navigate the, the High School to to College Maze. Um, which basically speaks to, and what we’ll talk about today is an informed decision making process that helps students and families approach the process, the college going process systematically while paying attention to both facts and feelings.

Um, because I think, uh. [00:04:00] Since the advent of the internet, really the, the problem is that it’s not, it used, the problem used to be that there wasn’t enough information out there about colleges. Now there’s an overwhelming information, uh, amount of information out there about colleges. So what we’ve done, um, through some of the, the tools and techniques that, that we, um, that, that we propose is to really, um.

Make it so that people can make an informed decision, um, without getting overwhelmed. So, and that’s what we’re gonna talk about today and some tools, techniques and resources for, for doing that. Um, do you have anything else to add to that, Amanda?

Amanda Sterk: I’ll just introduce myself. So my name is Dr. Amandas and I, um, have just like you, were a, was a school counselor practitioner and was a department of one and had, you know, several hundred, about 400 students on my caseload.

I. And really wanted to create a curriculum and a program to help my own students. And so slowly started building out some curriculum, partnering with other counselors [00:05:00] within the area. And like I said, when I met up with Tim and Rich and all of their research and background and really kind of the philosophy behind how we can get students and families through this.

You know, kind of overwhelming process. I know. Um, Tim has a freshman in college. I have a senior in high school. And so as parents, and even though we know the system, we know what’s going on is how do we reach all of our students in a very, um, open, you know, systematic way and making sure that everybody has.

The same information and that they can actually make a, an informed decision as they go through the process. And Dr. Richard Lapan is our other partner in crime and, um, is fantastic. So, um, and our information there again is, uh, you can see our websites on ww.college on maze.com. So let’s get in the information.

So the first thing that we did is we really wanted to look at the student and the process [00:06:00] holistically. So how do we start a student as early as freshmen, even eighth grade year, to go through this college and career readiness process? So we divided our materials into two sections. One is to really build the skills and the, um, requisite things that they need to know to be successful.

In a college or career environment. So in the first section, we find that we, um, focus on four key areas, building what we call your U factor, where we talk about your eight strengths as a student. Um, we go into your academic factor. What are some of the opportunities at your school or even outside of your school, whether that’s.

Dual enrollment, AP class, um, MOOCs, massive open online courses, and really talking about, you know, GPAs and transcripts and how that all fits into college admissions. We also then go into the career factor. So how do you use your values and interest and, [00:07:00] um. Your abilities to really define what you wanna be and how to explore those options.

And then we put money early into the conversation. A lot of times we see that not until the very end, until senior year when you start talking about FAFSA and scholarships and we really believe that, um. College is affordable, and so we need to talk about those opportunities early in the student process.

And then the second section of the book is something called the lead strategy, which we’ll go over with that today. So I won’t go too much in depth, but the LEADS is an acronym, building a College List, exploring Colleges, applying to Colleges, deciding on a College, and Succeeding. Once you are there, go ahead, Tim.

So one of the things that we love in all of our materials, you will find that we really take all the information and break it down into really small, um, chunked [00:08:00] areas where you can focus as a counselor. So some of our big things here are our mind maps. So we have two mind maps. Both showing the critical, um, information and knowledge that a family needs to know at the right time.

Because if you knew this all at one time, it can get really overwhelming for students. I know just recently I went to my daughter’s rising junior night and they threw a lot of terms, a lot of information at families. Again, I’ve been in the field so I understood it, but if I was a family that was a first generation family or um, maybe had never.

Gone through this process with a child before it would’ve been really overwhelming. And so we believe chunking it and looking at each kind of key area together is really important. And these are completely free. We have ’em by 18 by 24 posters. So if you are interested in one, um, feel free to email us your address and we can get you several posters.

So you can see here the key things, um, in each section you factor [00:09:00] academic factor, career factor, and money factor. Go ahead Tim. Then we come into the leads, as I mentioned. So really one of the things that we see going on is, as Tim said, it can be an overwhelming process when you have over 2,400, you know, four year universities.

And if you add in two years and technical colleges on top of that, you’re talking about, you know, 4,000 plus schools. And so how do we narrow down a student’s list? And so we’re gonna walk through that today with you, um, and. So we’re gonna narrow down the list. We want them to explore all of their options and really look at the data and who they are as a student.

And we’re also gonna introduce something to you called the six Keys of College Fit, which you’ll see here in a little bit. And then the apply, we wanna get down a little bit further. We know they can apply to everywhere. And how to really create a, A pathway to do so, how to decide on that college, [00:10:00] and then how to develop a plan for success.

Go ahead. Then here is our other mind map. So again, um, if you would like this poster, please let us know. They’re really fun and to me, I, I point to them all the time as a counselor, like, look at list and these are the things in list you need to know. So you’ll see there we have the six keys. The college, different college programs that they might be interested, whether that’s a two plus two program honors looking at limited access or direct entry programs.

Maybe it’s an HBCU. So really kind of talking about the different types of colleges and what pathway might be good for you. Explore. Um, again, we dive into lots of different areas, so please let us know if you need any of these, but they are really cool and fun to use. All right, let’s get into the leads.

Go ahead, Tim.

Timothy Poynton: So this is, uh, some of you may have seen this picture before. This is from, from Gestalt Psychology, and I like to use this to illustrate, um, what I think the challenge is for students and [00:11:00] families going into the college process. Right? So when you look at this, this picture, um. Usually people see one of two things, but not both things.

There’s two things in this picture. If you look at, if you focus on the white space, uh, you’ll see two faces kind of facing each other. And if you focus on the, uh, the, the black space, uh, if you will, it’s um, it’s a chalice or an ornate face, right? But if I tell you. That focusing on the white space, you can see two faces, then you can see it.

Um, but naturally just, uh, this is, uh, you know, again from Gestalt psychology. Long story short, um, in our world there’s so much stimuli. So our brain uses schemas and takes shortcuts essentially to make sense of all the stimuli that it encounters. Um, so. If we tell you, Hey, slow down and focus on this particular piece, you can see the whole picture.

And that’s what we want as students and families are going through the college process, is to see the whole picture about the colleges that they’re considering. Um, and we can do that with, as Amanda alluded to [00:12:00] earlier, what we call the six keys of college fit. So, uh, in most. To most students and families, they’re using two or three of these keys kind of naturally.

And we think that, um, essentially each of the six keys of college fit deserves at least a little bit of attention in, in the college going process. And, and essentially what we’ve done and what we’ll walk through today is, uh, instead of looking at everything about all six keys right from the get go, um, as you go through the leads process, we’ve basically helped, we help students and families focus on the parts that are most important.

At each step of the college going process so that it’s not so overwhelming and yet all the information still gets attended to. So, um, so these are the six keys. I’ll go over them briefly. Um, you know, the first one’s academic match. That’s things like your academic credentials if you will, your academic, your, your measured academic abilities.

Um, and, and also things about the, uh, the college environment, like the student faculty ratio and the kinds of academic programs that they have available. Um. It’s also the [00:13:00] selectivity of the college, looking at the Ivys and Ivy Lakes, for example, and the, the typically admitted students there. Um, so that’s looking at, again, the, the key, the, the key to fit in that aspect is looking at how do my characteristics match up with what they offer, right?

Academically, we do the same thing career wise. Um, what are the, are the, uh. Career related opportunities available at that college. Uh, aligned with what you feel like you need and includes things like access to an alumni network, um, you know, service learning or internships or co-ops and things like that.

Do they offer robust career placement services? Uh, how many I. Uh, students are placed, um, you know, in, or are employed in, in their chosen field within six months or one year after graduation. Right? A lot of colleges will report that information. You sometimes have to dig for it, but, but it’s there. So that’s the career match.

The financial match is one of the keys that, that students and families often kind of naturally pay attention to, and we really like to focus on, particularly at private colleges, what the difference is [00:14:00] between the sticker price or the advertised price and the actual price. Um, so it’s looking at using the, the more technical terms, the cost of attendance versus the net price, right?

So obviously like we like to focus on the net price, but a lot of students and families will look at a private college, for example, and say, oh, well I’m not applying to any private colleges because they’re too expensive. Um, but if you look into just a few pieces of data, you might find that, you know what?

The average discount at this private college is, is actually, is actually 50%, and that puts it a lot closer to, um, to the cost of attending a state school. Um, if you look at it a little bit, so. We’ll, we’ll provide, we provide tools and resources to get that information easily and, uh, you know, and how to look at the publicly available information to get a sense of that, um, to ensure that people aren’t, um, excluding colleges from consideration that might be great fits.

Otherwise, I. Uh, because they’re, they don’t have all of the information to make a good informed decision about the financial match. Uh, personal match is another one [00:15:00] that, that a lot of students and families naturally pay attention to. It’s, it’s things like, how far is it from home? Uh, do I like the dorms and the living arrangements, or is it a commuter school, et cetera.

Um, we also like to encourage people to think about like. Uh, diversity on campus, um, you know, for both for diverse viewpoints and um, for particularly for underrepresented students. Are they gonna feel like they fit in on that campus? Uh, or is it a predominantly white institution, for example? So, um, those are aspects of the personal match I.

And then the student outcomes is one that we find that a lot of students and families don’t pay a ton of attention to, but um, might deserve a little bit more of attention. So, student outcomes are really looking at things like graduation and retention rates, the, the salary of alumni. And, um, right now the loan default rate at every college is zero because.

Loan payments, loan repayment was, was paused for so long during the pandemic, but next year the loan default rates are gonna come out. Um, and what you find, uh, is once you get out of, so at the Ivy League and highly selective colleges, you find the student outcomes [00:16:00] are all really good in those places because they have a history of admitting.

Really successful students who continue being successful when they get to college, right? Um, but once you get below that highly selective tier, uh, you’ll find there’s actually a good bit of variability in student outcomes. Um, so they admit similar kinds of students, uh, with similar, similar academic backgrounds.

I. But the kinds of supports that they provide, um, leads to different outcomes for students in terms of four year and six year graduation rates and the retention rates. So, um, I like to think of the retention rate. So just if you’re not familiar, and I apologize if you are, but the retention rate is to me a really important metric because I like to call that the freshman satisfaction score because it describes the number of students or the percent of freshmen who were supported and satisfied enough.

Supported at that college and satisfied enough with their experience to return as sophomores. So, um, that’s a really important metric and it varies sometimes considerably, um, among colleges. And, um, important to look [00:17:00] at, uh, not, I would never exclude a college based on any one of these metrics, but it raises questions that you should get answers to, uh, as part of the college going process.

Uh. So, and then the last key is the student support. It’s the kinds of academic supports that they provide on the campus from tutoring, you know, academic supports. Do they have counseling center? Uh, if, if you’re working with a student that has a disability, what, what is the level of support that they provide for, for disabilities for students with disabilities?

Um. That’s something that varies tremendously from college to college. So, um, and it’s very different from how the supports are provided in high schools, right? So, as you likely know at college, um, self-advocacy is much more important to, to getting access to accommodations than it is at the K to 12 level.

So students need, students and families need to be prepared for that. Um, and those are the, those are the six keys, right? So. Basically what we do, I is again, going through the leads process. We have people pay attention to particular parts of each of the [00:18:00] six keys at each, at each step to ensure that they’re not overwhelmed and they can make an informed decision, uh, along the way.

Um, something new, relatively new, it’s about a year old now, um, that we’ve been doing at, at college on Maze is, um. Focusing on college fit priorities and, and the college fit priorities are kind of operationalized through the six keys of college fit. So something that we know and you know, right, is that, uh, looking at those six keys, some keys are naturally gonna be more and less important.

So what we would, what we have developed is a way for, for you to help students and families assess what’s important to them in relation to the six keys of college fit. So, uh, I think this is really important, uh, and. Helpful, um, but also necessary for students who are feeling overwhelmed by the, by the college going process.

This helps get them focused so that they’re not trying to pay attention to everything, but they’re really focusing in on those things that are most important to them. Uh, and for students who are less engaged in the process or don’t know what they’re look for, this gives them ideas of things that they should be paying [00:19:00] attention to given their.

They’re kind of measured priorities. So, uh, we developed a card sort activity. It’s, it’s both a set of physical cards that we have. I mean, you can’t see those so well. Um, but also an online platform that we developed through our website. We’re gonna, we’re gonna have the link here in just a second for that.

Um. That gives you a way to really help students think about the six keys of college fit and again, operationalize them in in somewhat tangible ways. So we’ve got two ways of doing this, this, um, assessment, uh, this college fit priorities assessment. Um, if everything seems important, you might use, uh, a highly structured approach, which we’re gonna go over here in a second.

Uh, and if you get the, I don’t know, response for people who are le less, uh, engaged or don’t know what to look for, um, you can use a, a less structured approach to the card sort. Uh. Assessment. So where you’ll find this is at, uh, college of maze.com/my CFP online. We don’t have this linked from our main navigation, but uh, we do provide this link to folks who attend our trainings and, and view our [00:20:00] webinars.

So, um, this is where it is on the website. I’d recommend if you’re gonna do this activity with a student or family that they don’t try to do it on a phone. It’s a little bit frustrating, but it’s better done on a tablet or larger size device. And I would recommend that you go into the full. The full screen mode.

Um, you’ll see on this page there’s two different, uh, assessments at the top. Here is the structured. The highly structured one, which we’ll go over in a second. And then the less or unstructured approach to using the card sort assessment. So in, in the highly structured assessment, basically what we’ve got is, um, 24 cards, uh, four car, or six or four cards for each of the six keys of college fit.

And basically you read each co, each card and then put it into one of these six columns, right? So this basically. Try to be brief. Um, what this does is this forces people to distinguish between what is more and less important to them, because you can only put four cards, uh, in the, in the extremely important column, [00:21:00] right?

So if having, uh, access, uh, easy access to, uh, professors and small class sizes is important to you, um. Then you’ll put this in the extremely important column. And the way that we, what’s underneath here, what it says in, in, in the black area is the student to faculty ratio. That’s the objective piece of information that you can look at to get a sense of that, um, that student to faculty that, um, I.

Class sizes. So you do this for all, I’m not gonna do this for all 24 cards, but basically you go through and you place all the cards, and then what I recommend folks do essentially is they take a screenshot of it so that, um, so that you can keep it. There’s no way that we have right now to be able to log in and create an account or anything like that.

So just place the cards, take a screenshot, and then they can discuss that with you, uh, and, and keep their results. Um. Something else that can be helpful is doing this, having the students do it with their parents, and have the parents do, uh, one set and the student do another so that they can actually talk about the areas that they, [00:22:00] they have different priorities in, right?

Um, the students may be paying more attention to the money side of things while the, the student is focusing more on the personal match side of things, right? Like that’s somewhat natural. So, but this gives a vehicle for actually highlighting and talking about that. So that’s the highly structured. Um, approach for in the unstructured or the less structured approach.

Basically what you’re doing is you’re taking those same 24 cards. It’s the same cards, um, but you’re gonna put them into basically one of two buckets at the start. Things that are not, at, not at all important to you, and then things that are at least somewhat important. And then you get five spots over here for things that are very important to you.

Um, I. You only get the five spots. So again, this is less structured. A lot of students and families find this a little bit easier to approach. Um, just putting the things into the different buckets, if you will. But then you’ve gotta identify these five things that are, that are really critically important.

And then those five things can become the focus of, of what you, um, what you pay attention to when you’re reviewing colleges to, [00:23:00] um, to apply to and attend. All right. So those are the, that’s the my college fit priorities, um, card sort. Uh, Amanda, do you have anything to add to that or.

Amanda Sterk: No, I think it, it’s fantastic and I know we both have used it with our own children and with students that we work with all the time.

And it really, like you said, as a parent, having gone through the process, um, it really highlights what was important to me and what was important to my daughter. And so when we were having those conversations, like you said, it really just made it like we knew where we were coming from and so we were able to have that conversation.

So such a great activity. And they are color coded. To the keys. So you will start seeing some patterns, um, whether it’s academic, the, you know, academic or career. So you’ll start, start seeing if it’s yellow, green, you know, and so forth. So, um, there’s a lot of great information, so definitely try it with your students for sure.

Good job.

Timothy Poynton: Great. So now we’ll go through the, the lead strategy, [00:24:00] right? Which is that, that, um, step-by-step sequence, all students and families kind of go through this process to some extent, right? Everybody makes a list. Everybody explores the colleges that are on their initial list to figure out which ones to apply to.

And then from those places they applied and received positive decisions from, they decide which one to attend. Right? Like everybody, everybody does that. So what, we’ll, what we’re gonna do now is talk about, um. Which aspects of the six keys do you pay attention to, essentially at each step and, and how you do that?

So in the list phase, we encourage people to pay attention to just three of the six keys. Um, we have people pay attention to the personal match. How far is it from home? Um, location, you know, the small town, big city, et cetera. How big is the campus? Um. We have people also pay attention to the career match in terms of do they have the programs that I’m interested in, even if they’re undecided, they probably have a sense, students and families probably have a sense of, um, do they want to go to a stem oriented school or do they want to go to a more liberal arts oriented school, et cetera.

So they’ve gotta have at least some [00:25:00] programs that you’re interested in exploring, even if you’re undecided. Um, and then academic match. Um. Is the other key that you’re paying attention to? Do, do they have, um, you know, um, online or distance learning courses, if that’s important? Um, you know, what is it a two year or a four year college, et cetera.

So, um, we’re really just paying attention to those things and, and in this initial list phase, we recommend that students ideally have about 10 to 15 colleges. Um, but that varies from place to place. Like, uh, for example, California has, uh, 233 4 year colleges. Massachusetts has 91 Wyoming. Has three, four year colleges.

So, um, again, you’re, we say 10 to 15 and we recommend that. But con as always, context matters, right? Um, if you wanna go to a, if, if you want to ensure that you’re looking at all the state schools in Wyoming, well, there’s only three of them you might not have. Even 10 on your list of colleges that you’re considering there.

So, um, we’re fortunate in Massachusetts to have such a small geographic footprint with such a large number [00:26:00] of, of colleges available to us and free community college now, which is wonderful. So, um, I. All right, so that’s the list phase, right? To me, this is the most important step of the college search process because you want to ensure that you’re not missing any good options, which is why we don’t include finance on here, but we don’t include the financial match key here because we don’t want people to exclude colleges that might otherwise fit them really well just because of the cost.

It’s not that the cost isn’t important, but at this step in the process, um, it might lead to people excluding. Perfectly good, affordable colleges actually. So, um, so we encourage folks to keep even colleges that they perceive to be unaffordable, which very well may be unaffordable, you might learn later, but we, we encourage people not to exclude them too early in the process.

Um. There’s lots of tools you can use for this. We like the college navigator because it’s freely available to everybody across the country, right? It’s paid for by our tax dollars, um, driven by IPEDS data, which all colleges contribute to. But there’s other tools like, uh, [00:27:00] Naviance score, um, MEFA Pathways if, if you are, um, using that in Massachusetts freely available to folks, which does a lot of the things that Score and Naviance do, right?

So if you’re not familiar with P Mefa Pathways, uh, ping Julie and she can get you more information on that. Um, so wonderful tool. Um, so we don’t really care where you get the information from, but again, we focus on the college navigator just because we know that that’s freely and, uh, freely available to everybody that we talk to.

So, um, you can use this, the college navigator or any of the other search tools to essentially go through those initial keys to determine, um, and create a list of results of colleges for you to consider. So, uh, you can put in the zip code here, how far from home you can put in the programs to ensure that you’re only, um, the only colleges that show up on your list have the academic programs that you’re interested in, uh, et cetera.

So you just use this as an initial first step, um, to begin going through and figuring out what colleges are out there that are [00:28:00] available. Now, I’ll say, um, in this, in this, um, just my, my daughter was interested in game design, um, and when I went through this process with her. Um, Yukon never didn’t show up as having a game design program.

They actually have a really fantastic game design program, but for whatever reason, they don’t call it game design and doesn’t show up in the navigator or in any of the college search tools. So I learned about the fact that they had a game design program at a college fair. Why? I just happened to walk by and I asked the admissions counselor who engaged me, uh, he said, you have any questions about Yukon?

And I. Said, well, yeah, do you have a game design program? And he surprised me when he said yes. And they actually do. They, and it’s a large program graduates, uh, a good number of students every year. So, um, so that’s just a long way of saying, um. Trust but verify. Trust it. So I trust the results that the college navigator provides, but you also need to verify that something’s not missing on there because for whatever reason, Yukon does not consider their game design program.

They call it digital media and design, but it’s a traditional and, [00:29:00] and a high quality game design program. So, um. So now, so now that you’ve got an initial list of hopefully somewhere between 10 to 15 colleges in contexts matters. So we’re not stuck on that number. But, um, now you go into the explore phase where you dig into the rest of the six keys of the college fit a little bit.

So now in the explore phase, you’re looking at each of the six keys, um, but looking at different aspects of academic match, career match and personal match in addition to. Looking at the financial match, student support and student outcome. So what we’re doing here is now in the next phase of, of the college going process, we we’re trying to go from 10 to 15 colleges to eight to 12 colleges.

Uh, and this process, can we talk about it here in just a few minutes, but this process can take. Months. Um, because this includes you’re gathering information, not just from the computer, but you’re also going and visiting college campuses. You’re doing virtual tours, you’re talking with people, you’re talking with reps when they come into, into the high school, right?

Um, but [00:30:00] here is, uh, is where you begin to consider both cost and chance of admission as you’re narrowing that list down, right? So you wanna make sure that you don’t have all. All schools on the list that, um, in spite of how well they fit you, otherwise you have a low chance of admission out. Right. So that’s the explore phase.

And we’re going through it somewhat briefly here, but this, this phase probably lasts months. Right. Um, and then in the apply phase, or sorry, uh, before we get to that, uh, the apply phase is next. We’re gonna dig into a little bit. Into some things that you can explore. Um, hopefully you’re all familiar with the common dataset.

Um, the Common Dataset Initiative, long story short, is a voluntary initiative that, that colleges participate in, that es, where essentially they provide, um, public facing information. That makes, uh, makes it easier to, to engage in an informed decision. Um, this is the common data set for UMass Amherst, actually, right?

So, um, we like to look at this in section C seven. There’s lots of information in the common data set you might look [00:31:00] at, but in section C seven, they go through the relative importance of factors in the in, in admissions decisions. So, um, we like to focus on these things as both malleable. And less malleable factors, right?

So, uh, for students who’s a junior or a senior in, in high school, um, the GPA is very important at UMass Amherst as is the rigor of their academic school, uh, rigor of their academic record, right? So, um, the, the rigor of the courses that they’ve taken, those things are less malleable. Frankly, um, by the time you’re a senior in high school, right?

But doing things like they don’t consider the interview at, at, um, UMass Amherst. Um, but if a college that you’re considering applying to does consider the interview, um, or considers it important or very important, then you’re gonna want to go out of your way to make sure that you do that optional interview because it matters to them.

And it might be the difference between being admitted and not admitted. Um, the one I like to focus in here. Um, is, uh, the level of applicant applicant interests [00:32:00] more, um, commonly known in, in admission, speak as demonstrated interest? Right. Uh, the level of applicant interest is one of the things that students and families often aren’t prepared for.

Um, I. And basically what it means is that if you don’t demonstrate that you’re interested in the college by doing a, a campus tour, talking with the college rep when they come and visit your high school, for example, um, signing up for, and, and opening email messages that the colleges send you is another way that some colleges track demonstrated interest.

So, um, if you don’t know that a college uses the level of applicant’s interest. When they make an admissions decision, you might be disadvantaged or, or the student will be disadvantaged in the, in the process. So, for example, low income students often can’t afford to go and do the tour at, um, at colleges that they’re considering.

So in spite of them being very interest because they have a demonstrated interest to the college, they might get a markdown on their application because they didn’t do that tour. So, um, and you can find out if a [00:33:00] college, uh, uses demonstrated interest through the common data set. Um, now not every college participates in the Common Data set Initiative, right?

So, um. To find the common dataset information, you just do a Google search, um, with the college’s name and then common dataset. Uh, and then that will bring you most often to the page on the, on the college’s website where they provide this information. But if they don’t participate in the common dataset, um, just ask an admissions rep.

This is not, you know, whether or not they use demonstrated interests when making an admissions decision is not something that they typically advertise. It’s also not something that if you ask them, they’ll hide. So, um. But getting it from the common dataset is, is just often easier, um, and, and efficient.

But do you have anything to add to this, Amanda? I know Amanda is a big fan of the common dataset. So

Amanda Sterk: I am, and actually one of the, um, things that I’ve been using, the common dataset, so this is actually in C seven. And C nine, they actually show the percent of admitted students that use test [00:34:00] scores, a CT and SAT, which we are seeing multiple schools obviously going back to, um, test required.

Um, and then they’ll show you the averages of, you know, kind of the mean there of what they do except so, you know, while they, you know, so colleges, you know, test scores is one area that students, it seems a little vague on. Do you submit, do you not? Who actually got admitted with those scores. So even though here on this example, standardized test scores are considered, I’d want a student to go in and actually see, you know, is 25% of the students being accepted with test scores and they’re truly test optional, right?

Um, but if 80% of the students are coming in with test scores while they’re considered, it’s actually showing that they’re very important. So, um, that’s another good thing that I’ve been using C seven and C nine are my go-to when working with students to provide that sort of. Backend information, um, you can’t really find on the websites.

Timothy Poynton: Yeah. Great. Thank you. Um, and we’ve got [00:35:00] about 20 minutes left. Yikes. Um, all right, so here is just an example of, um, information that’s available in the College Navigator. So you find this in the financial aid section of the college navigator that shows that here at this institution, um, 97% of the students were awarded institutional grants of scholarship and the average amount.

Of that is $40,000. So the sticker price was actually the listed sticker price for tuition is $60,000 plus another $14,000. Um, adds up to $75,000. Right? But with the discount, that discount is a 67% discount. So the question here isn’t, how do I get that institutional grant or scholarship? Only 3% don’t. The question is, how do you not get it at this college?

Right? And the answer is, typically international students tend to be the full pay students at colleges like this. But you’ll find a lot of places, particularly the moderately to less selective private colleges, you’ll see this percent of eight [00:36:00] awarded in the high nineties, even a hundred percent in, in a lot of places.

So, um, this is where you can go to get a ballpark figure of, um. What the actual net price is. Um, the other place to get that is there is a section of the college navigator that does list the net price by income. So that’s a, a slightly better tool, but even better than that, it’s to use a net price calculator, which I’m sure you’re familiar with.

But here in Massachusetts, you may recall back in, uh, 2022, um, LaSalle, uh, college, Lasell University, um, made headlines here. I heard about this on the local news before I heard about it. Anywhere else, like on, on the regular news, uh. You know, five o’clock news that LaSalle was cutting their, their tuition by 33%, right?

And this made news because they were dropping it from 59,000 to 39,000. Um, and they were making headlines. And I, I headlines about this, and I applaud LaSalle University’s leadership for doing this because it, it basically increases the transparency so that, uh, students who don’t know [00:37:00] that this kind of thing happens with the discounting, um.

It’s just more transparent pricing. So I actually looked up Lasell University for 22, 23 and the actual average discount, this is, uh, this data does not reflect the 33% discount. This is the old tuition rates. Essentially. Um, the tuition was $42,000 plus the room and board was, uh, 16,500. The actual average discount here if you do the math, is 53%.

So to me. Raises the question, what is the cell university doing with the other 20%? Um, and time will tell. We’re gonna know here in just a few short weeks in March. They tend to update the data. So, uh, we’ll know here in a few short weeks what they’re doing with that other 20%. My hope and my belief right now is that they’re using the other 20%.

Um, to distribute that in a need-based manner as opposed to a more merit-based manner, which is how this typically works. But Lasell University in 22, 23, before they instituted that policy, gave 100% of their students a 53% discount. Um, now they’re gonna be more [00:38:00] transparent, uh, and they’re gonna drop the tuition by 33%.

Um, and I’m assuming that they’re gonna give the rest of that, uh, that 20%, um, that they were giving out that they’re not anymore. Um. In a more need based manner. Alright, so. So here is again, uh, the net price by income for students where, where this falls short a little bit just so that you know, like when we were looking at Yukon, um, the net price by income that’s provided is only provided for the in-state rates.

So if you’re looking at a place like Yukon or University of Rhode Island, that gets a sizable number of students that come from, uh, other states that are out of state students, um. You can’t get the net price by income, unfortunately, using, using this tool or any other tool that I found. So, um, just keep, bear that in mind that this is not for out-of-state to students.

This is for, for in-state students. But this net price info, this net price information is what I like students and families to focus on because it describes the actual rates. And you’ll see here, this is for Umas Amherst. You’ll see here there’s a big. [00:39:00] Big difference between the, the lowest income students and the students and families, uh, the students that come from families that make $110,000 or more.

Um, so for low income students at UMass Amherst, it’s, it’s very, very affordable. You will find, again, long story short, um, if you look at places like Harvard and Yale, highly selective colleges, you’ll find. That number $5,000 or less in, in most of the Ivy League and Ivy Lake colleges. Um, so, um, those can be even more affordable than, than the state universities for talented low income students.

Another thing I’ll just show you quickly, another free tool that we have available, uh, through College on Maze is what we call the College data Organizer, which essentially, uh, is a, uh, you can download this or use it as a Google sheet. This is the Google Sheets version, um, where it pulls in all the information from the, where the.

The College Navigator gets its, its data, um, for all of the two and four year colleges in the United States. So the way to use it, long story [00:40:00] short, again, you can get this from college on maze.com/downloads, um, is if you find the college here. Um, so I like to use Google because you can use the auto complete.

So if we look here at, at UMass Amherst, right, and we can compare that to Suffolk University, my old employer. Um. Basically what you do is when you pull in, when you, uh, put the college’s name here, uh, in the list, it allows you to compare side by side all of the colleges with the publicly available information.

Um. Using the six keys of college fit. So you’ll see this provides the, um, percent of students who are admitted that actually enroll. Uh, that’s the yield rate. It provides the percent of students that are admitted or the selectivity rate, right? It provides the 25th and 75th percentile scores for the SAT and the A CT and how many students submitted test scores.

Right. Um, so it provides all that information, pulls it all in from the publicly available data, um, and allows you to compare [00:41:00] up to 12 colleges using the six keys of college fit. Um, you can get this information from other places, but obviously, um, putting it all here in one place makes it a good bit easier.

And we also provide some links down here at the bottom to, um, to some of their, uh, their, their website, their admissions office, and the nut price calculator. So, um. Again, I’m not gonna spend too much time on this. This is the free publicly available download. You, we don’t even ask for your email address.

So, um, so this is a tool that a lot of, a lot of counselors find helpful when, when working with students and families. And again, the, you can download this as an Excel version or a Google version. Um, I, we like the Google version better just because it works a little bit easier and it’s easier to share with students and families.

So, um, so know that that’s a free resource that we have through college on maze.com as well. Um, and thank you Julie for putting that link in the links in the chat. Appreciate that. Alright, so that’s the, um, explore phase, right? So now you’ve gathered a lot of [00:42:00] information. Um, you’ve created a list. You’ve explored the list.

Now you’ve got it down. Um, now the task is to figure out which colleges or what the time and money I. For, for the student family to apply to. And the recommendation, not our recommendation, but the recommendation that we see other places, mostly from the college board is five to eight colleges is a good number.

Context matters, that’s gonna vary. So, um, basically what you’re gonna do is you’re gonna go through and figure out how well each college fits you, ideally along, uh, using the six keys of college fit, uh, using the college data or organizer, and your priorities, your measured priorities. To figure out, um, which colleges are worth the time and money for you to apply to.

Alright. Um, the other part of the list phase or the apply phase, sorry, is that, um, that we talk about in the book, is how do you develop competitive applications, right? So we’re looking at, um, to, to focus on this three by three table. What we encourage folks to pay attention to most is looking at, um, their chance of admission.

Alongside the [00:43:00] overall fit. So, um, and we like to talk about chance of mission. We don’t like the language safety, target reach, just because that’s, uh, I feel like anyway that disempowering to students and families. Um, because remember that students and families are evaluating in colleges just as much as they’re being evaluated.

So we like the language, uh, to focus on your chance of admission instead of the, the safety target reach or, or, um, um, forgetting the new, the new language or likely. Target reach, right? Is, is what they’ve replaced safety with. So, um. We like to see using this three by three table. We like to see some diversity in the responses, if basically, um, not every box filled, but that people have some schools on their lists where they have a moderate to high chance of admission.

Um, but all the schools that they’re considering applying to should be a moderate or high overall fit. There’s a low, if there’s a school on there that’s a low fit, even if it’s a high chance of admission. I would encourage that student to really look and see if there’s other better fit colleges out [00:44:00] there, um, that have a high chance of admissions for them.

So, um, so this is a helpful way to look at it instead of just using the buckets, uh, or saying that, oh, well make sure that every college fits you. Um, there’s degrees of fit at these colleges, right? So this allows you to break down those degrees of fit. A little bit. Um, but I know this is, uh, Amanda, do you have anything to add to this?

Sorry, I’m talking a lot.

Amanda Sterk: No worries. Um, no, I, I, and one of the things that I think is important too is throughout, really from page one of the workbook, we talk about how students should interact and use their college support network, right? So that could be you as a school counselor, teachers. Parents, a cousin that maybe went off to college, maybe a, a mentor, anybody that really can help them sort of navigate this process.

And so throughout the entire book, but especially the leads, we really do try to encourage students throughout the way to, as they’re collecting this data and they’re analyzing this information based on, um, who they are, their. [00:45:00] Fit right, that we, we talk about, um, that they are using those adults in their life that can help guide them.

So I think that’s really important when a student can come to you with their three by three and all of a sudden when a student can say, you know, I’ve asked many students like, why this college? Well, I believe this college is a good fit for me because of the student support services they have, because it has a high retention rate, like.

When they can start using some of those qualifiers that we have, now you’re getting that real conversation and you can really help them and, you know, look at blind spots and what’s going on. And so this three by three chart really is again, just such a game changer because it, it brings the student. Into the decision making process where otherwise if we completely focus on chance of admissions, again, they have no sort of advocacy within that application system.

So this actually provides, um, a thing that gives that sort of autonomy to the students. And again, kind of going back to 10, what you said about [00:46:00] safety. You know, there are some amazing schools that are quote unquote safety schools. And so that’s really, like you said, disempowering. So really try to, um.

Change that conversation and saying that it’s really based more on chance of admissions and that they are some amazing schools. And if it’s a good fit and it’s in that safety quote unquote target range, fantastic. Especially if it is a high chance of admissions, um, can really mean scholarships and other opportunities.

So honors programs, you know, things like that. So I’ll go. Okay, go ahead, Tim.

Timothy Poynton: Oh yeah. Oh, sorry. Yeah, no, you go ahead with this. Yeah,

Amanda Sterk: it’s all right. Tim gets excited. So, um, so in the last two in decide and Succeed, one of the things that, you know, as Tim mentioned earlier on, as the students go through the six keys, they’re building on that information.

They’ve learned, they’ve learned it from websites, they’ve learned it from visiting the colleges. They’ve learned it from when they do a college [00:47:00] tour, when they are. Talking to their college support network. You know, a lot of times when students start the process, say as a junior, by the time it’s a senior and they’re making that decision, their list has completely changed.

And so that’s what we love about the card sort activity and going through multiple times and doing that activity as they learn more information. Because one, for example, um, one of the students I was talking to the other day that I, I do college advising for, they. Told me a month into it that they have an accommodation.

And so now as an accommodation, we needed to talk about student support services and their adaptive services. And now the schools that they were interested were less appealing because it really wasn’t a good fit. And so in the decide, once all the decisions come out. And more importantly, once the award letters come out and you can actually look at what that net price is, is we want families to actually go through that whole analysis [00:48:00] again, you know, rank them.

And decide what is most important and which college meets all, you know, as many of those college fit factors as possible. So just throughout, we do it in the list section. We do it in the explore section. We do it in the apply and decide section. We do it again for the last time to make that final decision.

Go ahead. And then lastly. Sorry. Um, so I guess there’s not a, lastly, we got two more slides. Um, so again, when we’re talking about this, um, and I went through the same thing. Tim has gone through the same thing with our child. You know, desirability is really hard. Um, you know, when you’re talking about a.

Student saying, oh, that’s just really my school. This is what, that’s that emotional factor. So throughout this whole kind of scaffolded approach that we’ve been talking about, and we’re systematic is we’ve really tried to remove the emotionality or the desirability, is what we call it in [00:49:00] the book. Out of the equation, right?

We want them to focus on those outcomes, you know, those kind of data points. This is when now we need to have that conversation is where do you feel you’re gonna be most successful? And that’s really hard to quantify. Right? Um, and what does that look like for each student is vastly different. So once they’re making that decision, we do bring in this.

Next step, we have the data and now we have that sort of emotional, so what is that fit based on? Is, is it really low that I, I really don’t wanna go there. There’s something about it. What’s going on moderate high along with your overall fit. Again, to make that, um, that three by three decision making. And then we do have them go through a process of really thinking of all the whole lead section.

Building the list, exploring, applying, and really going through this kind of hierarchy of decision making to really make sure that they’re thinking of everything [00:50:00] before they make that big. You know, it’s the first big life decision, and so really just walking them through that systematically. Go ahead.

And now lastly, um, one of the things that, you know, as a school counselor, this was something that, you know, I did a really great job at the first part of leads, you know, the list exploring, even the applying, deciding was a little bit harder. I kind of said, oh, you know, let me know where you’re going and what that is.

I didn’t really teach a decision making process. Um, and now. I do. And the other thing that I did not do well as a counselor, and I think a lot of counselors can attest to this, ’cause the end of the year we get busy, there’s a lot of stuff going on is that we’re not, um, teaching them how to develop a success plan.

And unfortunately, about half of students who start a four year degree. Aren’t going to graduate within four years, and they’re either getting completely out of the college funnel and they’re dropping out, or they’re taking five or six years. So we really want you to consider developing into your [00:51:00] curriculum the three kind of areas that every student should have a plan for one.

Is financial integration. How are you going to either maintain your scholarships, continue with financial aid, um, look for opportunities, but what are, and how are you gonna pay that sort of, um, the final price? You know, are you taking loans? What does that look like? What are your parents paying? But really talking through the financial piece and what do you need to do to keep that as low as possible?

All the way through your four years of college, your academic integration, like how are you from day one gonna be, be meeting with your advisor. What if you change your major? How are you interacting with your professors? You know, what are the plan to make sure that if you’re struggling, that you’re going to go to.

The, the tutoring labs and, and get help. So just again, making sure that students are aware and have a plan to for their success. And then lastly, how to use the resources of the college, um, socially, right? And of course there’s the [00:52:00] dorm life, but there’s also the clubs and the activities and. Um, all the things that they can do to really not only build their resume, but also feel like they are a part of the campus.

And I think that that’s a really critical, um, piece for everybody. So in the last chapter, we have them develop these three plans to really make sure that they are not one of those, um, statistics that aren’t gonna be successful once they go off to post-secondary education. Go ahead. So one of the things, um, Julie is gonna put in the chat is, um, we have, um, given you a 30 day, um, view of the college on May’s books.

We get it every year. We get questions about, Hey, we really wanna see the book, we wanna see what it looks like. And you wanna see how that curriculum is laid out. So, um, she’s gonna put that link into the chat. The other book she’s gonna put in the chat is one of our newer books. It’s a short, we call a mini book, and it’s on dual enrollment, which is an area that I’m very [00:53:00] passionate about.

We worked with, um, naep, the National Alliance of Concurrent Enrollment Partnerships and some other. The CCRC and other programs to build the only dual enrollment curriculum that is available on the market. And just so you know, we do talk about both sort of the general education classes like in at comp one or college algebra, but also CTE Career technical education, we feel is very important in definitely on the rise.

So CTE and um, general education courses are included, whether they’re on your campus or they are going to another. Uh, college or university online or on their campus. Um, it will be a valuable resource. So both of those, um, their flip books, um, are available to you. So you definitely want to keep those links.

And if you do have any questions, um, definitely reach out to Tim or I, my email is. [email protected]. And then, uh, Dr. Pointin is Tim Do [00:54:00] [email protected]. And so everything, um, is there. And like I said, if you wanted some of those mind map posters, just email me your address. Um, and happy to, um, send those over to you.

And we also have the PDF version too. You can put on your, you know, your canvas page or whatever that may be. Julie, what did, did we miss anything or, I know we got just a few minutes left.

Julie Shields-Rutyna: No, that was terrific and so much amazing information. I’ll just give people a moment if you have any questions that, um, you feel are still still hanging out there that we haven’t talked about.

So I’ll give people a moment, but I did put those links in the, in the um, q and a, so everyone should receive those. And

Amanda Sterk: Ooh. And I will say with the, the new student book, uh, we do have videos that go along with it. So when you click on it, you’ll see a little kind of YouTube, um, link at the beginning of each chapter and which is really nice ’cause it helps engage [00:55:00] students and, um, and just know that that.

Flipbook is available for all schools. So we, um, provide kind of a, a one-stop shop, um, accessible for all families if you’re interested.

Julie Shields-Rutyna: That’s great. And, um, Amanda and Timothy are going to be doing, um, a workshop for families if you’d like to send your families to that. And that is on, I’ll just give the day.

Well, you can go to the MEFA website, just the general MEFA.org/events, and you can find that link and send your families there. And I, and I think that’s it. I’m just, thank you so much, both of you and thank you all for joining us this morning. It’s such a pleasure.

Amanda Sterk: We always appreciate being on.

Julie Shields-Rutyna: All right, and everyone have a great day.

Thank you. Thank you.[00:56:00]

Oh, everyone did hang up, so I can say thank you. Usually I can’t, usually,

Amanda Sterk: well, I think it’s still recording though, so you might wanna stop the recording.

Julie Shields-Rutyna: Yes. Thank you.