Julie Shields Rutyna: [00:00:00] Okay, well good morning everyone, and thank you for joining us. My name is Julie Shields Rina, and I am the senior Director of college planning, education and training at MEFA. And this morning we are joined by Dr. Timothy Poin, uh, who is a professor at UMass Boston. Um, and he works, uh, a whole lot with aspiring, uh, counselors.

And others. Um, and this morning we’re gonna talk about helping students and parents approach the college choice process systematically. So, um, Tim, Tim works with us on, on a number of different, um, topics and projects and, uh, we’re so lucky to have him here. So I will turn it over to Tim. If you have questions, uh, during the webinar, please put them in the q and a and I will monitor that.

And we can, we can bring those questions up either during the presentation if it makes sense or at the [00:01:00] end. And if you need to leave, uh, no worries. We are recording this and so tomorrow I will send you a link to both the recording and the slides. So you’ll have those, you don’t have to take a whole lot of notes right now.

And, um, you can share those with others who maybe couldn’t be here this morning. So with that, Tim, I’ll turn it over to you.

Timothy Poynton: Great. Thank you. Um, and uh, so thank you for that nice introduction and um, just if you’re not familiar with all the great resources that MEFA has, like MEFA Yes. They are the loan service provider, right?

Um, that’s kind of how they pay the bills, but they give back so much. Um, in terms of running these webinars as one free resources, the MEFA Pathways, um, lots of really great resources available for free through MEFA, um, to support your students and even. Working directly with students and families on financial planning and that kind of a thing.

So, um, great free resources. Um, you can contact Julie and [00:02:00] she can connect you with other people, uh, at MEFA who can really instrumentally support your students. So all year, all year round, not just during FAFSA completion times. So, um, so really some great resources. If you’re not familiar, just check them out even further, but you probably wouldn’t be here if you weren’t familiar.

So, um. So, yeah, so what we’re gonna talk about today is I’ll provide access. Really, uh, the focus is on talking about, um, some of the work that we’ve done at college on maed related to my work, um, in school counselor education somewhat, but, um, and really provide you with access to some recent. Some free resources that can help you help students and families, like that’s, that’s the goal.

So College on Mays started really with, with, uh, Amanda Sterk. Um, Amanda was a, um, was a school counselor down in Florida, long story short. And, uh, what she did was she found she was repeating a lot of the same information over and over with students and families. So she developed. What amounts to a workbook that students could, could work through, so she could kind of flip her conversations as she [00:03:00] says, to instead of repeating the same information, she would have them read the information before they came in for the meetings, um, and then they could focus on the substantive parts of the conversation by personalizing that information instead of just providing information.

So, um, when she decided that she wanted to maybe open that up to, to a more national audience instead of just a Florida audience where, where she focused, she reached out to, to Rich Le Pan. And I, uh, rich is a Professor Amus recent, somewhat recently retired from UMass Amherst, school counselor educator there.

And, um. As Julie mentioned, I’m a counselor educator, uh, at, um, UMass Boston. And, um, Amanda read some of the research that we published on this, uh, school counselor supporting, um, college and career readiness for students. So that’s how she connected with us. And, and collectively we developed College on mes, um, which is a, a student focused workbook.

Um. That can help students really go through the college planning process in an informed, [00:04:00] uh, in an informed and effective kind of way. And this is an overview of, of the book, essentially each of these factors, um, and steps, if you will, going through the maze. It’s a chapter in the book. It begins with the, the U factor, kind of getting to know yourself, the academic factor, um, focusing on the academic planning, really starting from freshman year in high school.

Um. The career factor, getting to know yourself and your interest and your values, et cetera. And then the money factor is how to pay for college. Um, so that describes what we call the self knowledge, um, and the college knowledge. Um, and with that foundation of knowledge, essentially students and families are then prepared to go through an informed planning process to really choose the right college for them.

And that’s the second half of the book really focuses on this. What we call the lead strategy, which begins with building a list, exploring the colleges on that list, applying to college, deciding, and then deciding on which college to attend of those you were admitted to, and then succeeding in college.

We’re gonna talk a little bit more about that here in in a [00:05:00] second. So. This is a mind map. We’ve got two mind maps If you’d like, you can email me. Um, and I think that we have some of these posters printed up. We can send it to you. And they’re nice. 18 by 24. You can’t see ’em. They’re blurred out right now, but I have ’em on my door here.

Um. We can mail ’em to you or you can download them from our website and print them for yourself. Um, but this is really just, uh, describing kind of the content of the first half of the student workbook. Essentially the, the money factor you factor, academic factor and career factor, and all the pieces that go into that.

These are the things that, the kinds of knowledge that suits are gonna gain, uh, if they go through that first half of the workbook and then the second half. Just skip here for a second. On the back of that poster is this, um, what we call the lead strategy. And the lead strategy is, um. My colleagues go a little bit nuts when I say this, but the lead strategy really describes a process that every student and family kind of goes through to some extent.

Um, we just came up with a, a somewhat interesting [00:06:00] acronym to describe the process. So everybody comes up with a list of colleges that they’re gonna initially explore, right? In the United States, we’ve got more than 2400, 4 year colleges for, for people to choose from. It goes up to. Um, over 3000 if you include two year colleges, right?

So, so in that initial list phase of the informed decision making process, people are really just trying to figure out what’s my focus and try to get that the, the whole realm of possibilities down to a reasonable number. Without missing good options, and we’ll talk about some strategies perhaps to do that here in a little bit.

Um, so from that initial list that you develop, um, you know, we say somewhere 12 to 15 colleges or so is a number, but that’s just a, a, a ballpark figure. Some will have more and some will have less depending on their individual circumstances, but that’s a good number to try and make sure that you’re not missing any good, good options of somewhere in the 12 to 15 range.

Um, and then from that initial list. You wean that list down a little bit in the explore phase. So now you dig in and you learn some more facts about each of those [00:07:00] colleges, um, to whittle it down to eight to 12 or so that are, that are good for you. And then from that eight to 12, you whittle it down even further to the, the.

Widely recommended five to eight colleges in the apply stage, which is the a. Um, so in the apply stage, basically, uh, you’re trying to figure out which colleges are worth your time and money to apply to, um, in terms of how, how well they fit you with fit being a primary consideration more than just, um, what are my chances of actually getting accepted, right?

So, um. And then after you submit the applications and you wait a little while, you get those decisions back in most cases. And then from those places where you were accepted, you then go through the decide phase to figure out which college is, is the right one for you to attend. And then finally, the last step, and this is the part where I fell down a little bit when I worked as a school counselor, um, the success planning.

So now you’ve got, um. You’ve decided which college to attend. Like our work as counselors is not done. Like, [00:08:00] what can we do to ensure that they succeed in that transition from high school to college? Because as you’ve probably heard, there’s this phenomenon called summer melt. Um, and the estimate, uh, you know, summer melt is something that affects every high school in Massachusetts to some extent.

Um, and just if you don’t know, summer melt describes students who have. Placed a deposit at a college who don’t actually show up on that college campus, uh, in the fall. So the estimates range from, you know, a low of 8%, you know, five to 8% or so. I believe the number is, don’t quote me on the numbers, to up to 40% in urban schools.

Um, the summer melt rate students who say I’m going to college at graduation, who don’t actually show up on a college campuses up to near 40% in some schools, uh, here in Massachusetts. So, um. The success planning is, is important, and I believe we’re slated actually, if you wanna refer students and families to MEFA, we do a success planning webinar.

Uh, we did it last year for the first time. When we plan on doing it again this year, [00:09:00] we do a success planning webinar for students and families, um, not you so much as counselors, but for students and families. We do that in May after National College Decision Day on May 1st. Um, I don’t know exactly when we had that slated for this year, but it’s, uh, if it’s not on the Metha calendar yet, it will be.

Julie, do you have that? I’ll,

I’ll,

Julie Shields Rutyna: I’ll find out. While we’re here and I’ll put it in the, uh, in the, uh, q and a. Yep. Great. Or chat to everyone.

Timothy Poynton: Great. All right. So that’s the overview of, of the process. So to, so to speak. So now we’ll talk a little bit about, about what is fit. And this is a graphic, we actually have this in the book.

Um, so some of you are probably familiar with this. This is, this is called the figure ground perception phenomena in gestalt psychology. So some, some of you look at this picture and you see two faces looking at each other, right? And, uh, other people look at this picture and they see the cellis. Now if I tell you that if you focus on the, on the white space, you’ll see the faces.

And if you focus on the black space, you’ll see the cellis. Um, you see the whole picture. And that’s what we want students and families to [00:10:00] do when they’re going through this, this college planning process is we want students to see students and families to see the whole picture instead of the part of the picture that is easily perceivable to them.

Right? So, um. The way that we do that and, and, or at least one way that you can do that in college Un maed. Uh, the way that we accomplished that going through the student workbook is by having, having students and families really pay attention to each of the six keys of college fit. Um, so, uh, and, and this is a central theme that goes along with the leads strategy throughout the, the College on Maed process, if you will.

Um. A lot of students and families are kind of, uh, usually good at paying attention to the academic match, which is what are my chances of getting admitted and um, do they have the program in major that is going to help me reach my academic goals? Right. So that’s the academic match. People are typically paying attention to that.

People are also paying, also paying, often paying attention to the financial match. Can I afford it? What’s, what’s the actual cost [00:11:00] to attend that college? And they’re also often attending to, to things related to personal match. Um, which is in addition to, uh, you know, do I like the dorms? Is it, um, close enough to my home or far enough for my home, as the case may be depending on the student and family that you’re working with.

Um, so those three keys are often. People are paying attention to those anyway, the other three keys are the ones that often, um, students and families benefit from paying a little bit more attention to, and they become things that help distinguish good fit colleges from less good fit colleges. Right? And so the other three keys are the career match, which the career match doesn’t necessarily get at.

Do they have the right major? For me, it gets more at, are they providing career development opportunities that are gonna, that are gonna help you succeed in that transition from college into the workforce, right? So that’s what the career match gets at. So an example of this is, um, you know, uh, at Northeastern, uh, a key feature of their learning model is their co-op program, right?

So, um. That’s very different [00:12:00] than the way that a lot of other universities approach internships where they say, oh, we have a career services office and we, we’ll help you find an internship if you want one that’s very different than how Northeastern approaches it. Right? So that’s just a very different way of looking at how they support the career development of their students.

So that’s one thing to pay attention to. Um, the other two are student support and student outcomes. Um, student support is, do they have the kinds of, uh, support services on campus that I’ll need? Um, and we’ll show you one. Uh. Statistic, if you will, to, to look at, um, and evaluate student support services for students that have a 5 0 4 and IEP is what percentage of the student population actually accesses those support services on a college campus?

Right? So, um. Obviously we know students with a 5 0 4, 5 0 4 on IEP have needs that could benefit from, uh, services and accommodations on a college campus. Um, but is that gonna be an explicit part of that student and family’s, uh, college search process, maybe or maybe not. So by paying attention to the six keys of college fit, [00:13:00] this can be a focus for them.

Um, and then student outcomes. Uh, this is one where, um, once you get out of the highly selective colleges, um. Colleges tend to vary or they can vary greatly in terms of their student outcomes. And the ones that I like to pay attention to in particular are things like the graduation rate. So how many students are graduating in four years.

Um, and then the retention rate, which if you’re not familiar with what the retention rate is, uh, this. Data is publicly available about, uh, a college’s graduation rates and, um, retention rates. To me, I like to think of a, a college’s retention rate as the fresh, as the college’s freshman satisfaction score, because the retention rate is the number of students.

Who were supported and satisfied enough with their experience during their freshman year to return as sophomores. So, um, and you’ll find once you get out in the highly selective colleges, the Harvards, the Yales, the Northeasterns, right? Um, they all have retention rates that are typically at least, if not well above 90% or so, um, which is [00:14:00] says that nine out of 10 of the students come back.

But then once you get into the, into the colleges that are less selective than that, there tends to be more variability. So it’s a statistic worth looking at and, um, not necessarily to, not to rule colleges out based on their graduation rate or their retention rate, but to, to go in kind of eyes wide open to find out why.

Might students not be, um, staying past their freshman year or graduating in four years, for example. So, um, so those are the six keys of college fit that we like to pay attention to. And, and the first free resource that I’ll point you to is a tool that we’ve developed at college on MAs. It’s actually kind of my baby.

Um. Is we, we developed a card sort activity. It’s a, it’s a set of physical cards, but there’s also, and, um, so you can buy the physical cards, but we also have a way to access this publicly and freely for, uh, through an online interface that I’ll show you here in just a second. So, um, so because we know, like we want.

Each student and family to at least pay a little bit of [00:15:00] attention to each of the six keys of college fits kind of, we know that some of those, one of those six keys or two of those six keys are gonna be more important than the others, right? So, um, the, uh, this card sort activity gives you a way to have that discussion in a way that’s not valuing, right?

So it’s, it’s a way to help students and, and their family, um, have a conversation about what’s important to them. In the college search process, and it can be really, really, uh, revealing and insightful in that regard. So, um, you can use, and I’ll show you, uh, you can use this, the, the, um. My college fit priorities card sort activity as a kind of structured card sort activity or an unstructured card sort activity.

Um, I like to think of, you know, if you, if you’re working with a student who comes in and says everything is important, and I’m having a hard time figuring out what’s more or less important to me, um, they could go through the structured card sort activity that kind of forces them to distinguish between what’s more and less important.

Um, but if you have students who [00:16:00] come in, like my son who is a senior this year. Um, going through this process, my daughter went through this process, uh, two years ago, and now my son is, is graduated from high school this year and, and they had very different experiences. Um. So, uh, my son is like, I don’t know what’s important.

Like I would use a less structured card sort activity with him. So where you can get these things. Um, oh, I just had it here, sorry. So this is on the college on Mays website. If you go to college on mas.com, we have the free resources section here. This is the My College Fit Priorities online. Um, and it’s got these two activities that you can do.

This is not gonna work well on a phone. It doesn’t work that well on small screens. Um, but it, it should work on a Chromebook. If students have Chromebooks, um, that size screen, I would say 12 inches or bigger is probably best. And, uh, it helps to, to go through and click on these two blue arrows and maximize it.

So the highly structured card sort activity, it’s labeled down here. Um, [00:17:00] geez, it used to be labeled. Um. I don’t know what happened to my label and oh, there it is, um, structured, right. So you click on the blue arrows and it goes into full screen, and then all you need students to do, you can read the instructions.

I’ll give you the cliff notes version, is they just read each card and place it into one of these, uh, six columns, right? At the ideal college. It’s important that professors are easy to access and classes are small. If you hover over the card, it gives you a little bit more information and a definition about what that is.

Um, so then you place these into. Each category. As you can see, you can only have, um, one card. You can only have four cards in each of these categories. So for the student who says everything’s important, it’s gonna force them to decide what’s more and less important to them by going through this activity.

Okay. I’m not gonna do all of them. Um, but most students and, and what works better for most students and families is actually the less structured, [00:18:00] um. Card sort activity. And that’s this one basically where you take the pile of cards if you’re doing it with the physical cards. So in this case it’s the, the pile of virtual cards.

And you just say, okay, sort them into, um, two piles, really with the third pile coming later, but sort them into two piles. Um, is it important or not important? And then once they’re done sorting them into the important and not important piles, then they go through the important pile and pick out the five that are the most important to them.

And then, um, you can rank order them if you’d like. But then, um, so let’s just say that they, um, select to, uh, they want to be able to work while they’re there. Their retention rate is important to them once they learn what that is, um, they want it to be, you know, appealing in terms of being close to home, and they want to be able to have an internship, right?

So they decided that going through all these cards, those were the five most important. And then now, you know, kind of. Where to focus and how to look at the six keys. [00:19:00] So these are color coded, um, and it says on the bottom, uh, actually they’re color coded to align with the six keys of college fit. Um, and in the book they are defined there.

But, um. The idea here is to help figure out with the student and the family, which of the six keys of college fit they should be paying more or less attention to. Um, and then if these five things are important, what kinds of information do we need to learn about each college on our list, essentially to, um, make an informed decision knowing that these things are the most important things to us.

Okay, so, and, uh, we have another free tool that actually helps, helps you do that for a lot of these, not everything, but for, for a lot of these. So, um, so that’s the, the, my College Fit Priorities card sort activity, again, freely available. The easiest way to get to it is to just go to college amazed.com and, and find that free resources link there.

Alright. Um, so that’s that. [00:20:00] Um, we’ll go quickly through the, the leads strategy, uh, with a little bit more background information about what that is. Um, so the lead strategy, as I mentioned earlier, um, starts off, it’s the initial part of the process where you’re trying to, to narrow down from all of the options that are available.

What are the ones. That, um, you know, I guess deserve to be given serious consideration by me. Um, and as I said, I said earlier, 12 to 15, we say here, 10 to 15, somewhere in that range is good. Um. In California, they have 233 4 year colleges. Texas has 129 little old Massachusetts compared to those places has 91 4 year colleges.

Wyoming has three, four year colleges. So your list is gonna look different depending on the context that you’re living and working in. Um, so, uh, again, that’s, I just, I just say that to illustrate if you’re a student who’s, uh, who’s in Wyoming and, and wants to be within two hours of home, you’re probably gonna have two or three choices to choose from, right?

So, so that kind of thing [00:21:00] matters. So the 10 to 15 number is really, I don’t wanna say it’s completely arbitrary, but it’s not a number to fixate on. Um, but at the beginning and, and of the, uh. Informed decision making process. Notice here I said there’s six keys of college fit in the list phase. We’re only really paying attention to three of them because, for example, we don’t look at cost here yet because sometimes students and families rule out colleges too early based on their perceptions of cost.

Um, and cost is not as transparent as most of you likely know. Cost is not as transparent as it could or should be. So, um, so we don’t include costs in this initial phase because that’s one place where students and families sometimes rule out affordable options. Um, for example, if, if a student says, I’m only going to consider public schools, public colleges, they might miss out on a really good private school option.

That offers a lot of, um, a lot of merit scholarship money, for example. So in this list phase, we’re not going to use costs as a way to filter [00:22:00] our list of colleges, so to speak. We’re gonna focus on the personal match, does it meet our personal needs? Um, career match, uh, in terms of the programs and majors offered and academic match.

Okay? So, um. Then, um, a tool that we like to use, you can use Mefa Pathways to do this. Um, I like the college Navigator because I know no matter where I go in the country and talk about this, everybody has access to the College Navigator. It’s, uh, sponsored by the federal government, remains sponsored by the federal government, I might add.

Um, so this is a tool and resource that is still available and, and updated. So, um, I like to use the College Navigator, but Naviance does this. Mefa Pathways does this, all of the college search tools score does this. All of them do this. They provide a way to, to essentially go through and, um. Filter that initial list of colleges and, and whittle the list down using these criteria.

So, um, the ones that we like to focus on are, you know, do they have the majors available? Um, [00:23:00] if living on campus is important, do they have a way to filter by that? How far is it from home? Um, big school versus small school kinds of things. Um, et cetera. So, um, again, I don’t wanna get too caught up in the details there.

So, so we come up with our list of colleges. Again, 10 to 15 is the number, but that number can vary. So we’ve got our initial list of colleges. Now we’re gonna explore those colleges a little bit more deeply, and now we’re gonna look at each of the six keys of college fit. So we’re gonna look at different aspects of academic match, career match and personal match.

Then we’re gonna bring in information now about cost. With financial match, and we’re going to look at, um, aspects of student support and student outcomes. So there’s a lot. This is, uh, there’s a lot of information gathering that happens here on the explore phase. This corresponds with students going out and visiting college campuses.

Um, this lasts in terms of a timeline. This explore phase usually lasts. Um, and as you know, probably better than I do, this varies given student and family dynamics, but if they’re following a traditional [00:24:00] kind of college search. Um, timeline. Um, this starts, um, at least starts no later than the spring of their junior year and goes through right up until the fall of their senior year where they’re gathering information and learning more to figure out, um, which colleges are worth the time and money for them to apply to.

Um, something else that we like to focus on that, um, I think many counselors are familiar with, but not every coun, not every counselor is familiar with, but I’ll say this, it’s the Common Data set. Um, the common data set is not a single um, resource. Uh, the common data set initiative it’s called, actually describes a voluntary program that some colleges and uni universities participate in.

And if they choose to participate, they provide a lot of information that can help students and families make an informed decision. Um, one of the things they talk about. To help you estimate chance of admission is they actually go through in section C seven of that common dataset report. Um, in section C seven, they break down the academic and non-academic factors and how [00:25:00] important they are when they review first time full-time freshman applications.

Right? So, um, they say here that academic is, um, oops, sorry. Academic is. Sorry, I don’t have my thing highlighted here. Um, you know that the rigor of secondary school record, um, and their GPA are very important. They’re the most important academic things that they look at. Um, those are things reflected on a high school transcript, right.

On the, the non-academic side of things. I like to look at this. I believe this is UMass Amherst’s Common Dataset report. Um. But you see here, um, one of the things I’d like to hone in on here is this the level of applicant interest, which is the last thing on here. So, um, it’s not considered, and it is not considered this year at UMass Amherst, but if you have a student and family that is looking at a college that considers a.

Level of applicant interest and they’re not able to go and do the traditional campus tour, they’re gonna need to demonstrate interest in other ways to that college. Because what this [00:26:00] means here is that the college considers demonstr, they, it considers the level of applicant interest when they make an admissions decision.

And this is a, something that a lot of students and families aren’t aware of, um, is the, is sometimes the emphasis on these non-academic factors, right? So, um, there’s a lot of emphasis. We know that colleges are paying attention to the academic qualifications of applicants, if you will, but they also have other quote unquote non-academic considerations as well.

Um, as you know, this is not news. Um. A lot, some colleges are actually targeting, um, they’re trying to expand their reach and expand their recruitment area. So sometimes they’ll, uh, use zip code, uh, uh, and um, have slightly different admission criteria, if you will, um, if a student is applying from a geographic area that they want more applicants from.

So this can give you some significant insight. What I’ll say is, again, I mentioned earlier, uh, let me share a couple of things. Number one, not every college participates in this. So if a college does not participate in the [00:27:00] Common Data Set Initiative, and you have, and you have a question about whether or not they consider level of applicant interest, for example, you can ask the admissions counselor.

So that’s the first thing I’ll say. The second thing I’ll say is, where do you find this information? You, you find this through a Google search. Um, that’s the easiest way to find this. There is no central repository of these common data set reports. Unfortunately, at least there isn’t one to my knowledge.

Um. So you just need to do a Google search for UMass Amherst Common Dataset. And if you do that, it will bring you to the page on UMass Amherst’s website, um, where this information is available. And so I say here that there’s, you know. Section C seven. It goes section A through section I. There’s a lot of information in there that’s worth looking at.

Um, they also provide information, um, if you’re working with, uh, right now with seniors who are getting back decision leaders, the, the decisions and they’re placed on the wait list. It actually gives you insight into how many students are admitted to the wait list and how many students actually are admitted off the [00:28:00] wait list.

I’ll tell you at Boston University, your chance of getting admitted off the wait list is about one in 10,000. You can find that information right here in the, uh, it might be more like three in 10,000. Sorry, I might be exaggerating, but it’s not very good. Um, and you can find that information right here, uh, in the common data set.

If the college reports and if, uh, if the college participates and provides the report publicly, if they don’t participate, um, you can often ask, ask the admissions counselor and, uh, they’re not trying to hide the information, but they’re also often not advertising it. So, all right, so that’s the common data set.

Um, now we’ll talk about a, a little bit about cost, right? Which is a very important consideration. A lot of students and families, um, go into the process, not recognizing that there are colleges like this one. Um, you can see here this is available in the college navigator, um, in the financial aid section.

Um, and you’ll see here that at this college, um, this is describing the number [00:29:00] of students awarded aid. Um. And it says they have 481 students, or 97% of the students were or were awarded about a 20, a 19,300. Or, sorry, I got that wrong. That’s the total amount of aid. Um, 97% of the students are offered about a $40,000 discount.

Now the tuition at this college is $60,000. Room and board is, uh, 14,800. So that’s about a $75,000 bill. But 97% of the students get an average discount. Of $40,000, which translates into 67%. That makes it a heck of a lot more affordable. If you know that nearly every student is getting a, um, um, a merit scholarship.

Um, in admission circles, they actually call this the discount because that’s more what it is. But, um, when you get the letter as a student or a family in the mail, they’re gonna call it a scholarship of some sort. So to me, the question here isn’t. How do students qualify for that merit scholarship? It’s how do they not qualify?

And the answer typically is when you see [00:30:00] it at 97% here. Uh, if I went to this college’s enrollment statistics, I’ll bet that about 3% of their students are international students and that’s why they’re not getting that discount. So they do have about 3%. It’s often the international students who are the full pay students.

So you’ll find this profile. At a lot of moderately and less selective private colleges where they’re giving, they’re, they’re using merit money essentially as a way to make it more affordable. Uh, but instead of knocking the, knocking their tuition rate, um, being more transparent in their pricing, they’re giving students scholarships.

They’re saying, sorry, my bias is showing through a little bit there. Um. Alright. Lasell University did this a couple years ago. I need to look at their updated statistics. Where, again, long story short, just in the interest of time, um, Lasell, if you don’t know, they actually said we actually, we have first generation students who, uh, don’t apply to our college.

Um, so we’re gonna be more transparent and we’re gonna cut our tuition by 33%. It says right [00:31:00] here. Right? Um, so that. Basically, instead of giving all their money away, giving a hundred percent of their students a discount, they’re gonna say, you know what, we’re gonna give everybody the discount by lowering our tuition.

So they’re being more transparent about it. So I applaud LaSalle University for, for doing this and being more transparent. They lowered their tuition from $59,000 to $39,000 in, uh, in 2024. So, um, and they did that. For the benefit of students and families and to be more transparent. So I do applaud their efforts when we look here.

As you can see, um, they used to give a hundred percent of the students $31,000. So, um, they’re really not losing money per se, they’re just being more transparent in their pricing processes. Alright. Um, again, just in the interest of time going forward a little bit, um, the other way to cut through all of that information, instead of looking at the amount of scholarship dollars and subtracting that [00:32:00] from the, um, from the sticker price, if you will, the listed tuition price.

The, the, a good way to do that is to go in and, um, look at the net price information that’s provided in the College Navigator where they say, I forget which co Oh, this is UMass Amherst, where they break down by income level. How much students and families actually pay after all scholarships, after Pell Grants, et cetera.

This doesn’t include loans. This is just all financial aid. Um, and as you can see at UMass Amherst, for the lowest income families, it’s about $11,000. Um, for the highest income families, it’s about $32,000. Right. So, um, and this is again the net price. In the net price section of the college navigator. It gives you, um, one place to go look instead of needing to do the math and figure that out, um, this is the actual prices that people paid, given these family income ranges.

Okay? Alright. So encourage students and families to go there, um, at College on Maze. That’s an ugly picture at [00:33:00] College On Maze. The other resource that I’ll share with you, um. If you go to our downloads page, again, this is linked to from the free resources and you go to the college data organizer. We have a college data organizer that’s available as an Excel sheet or a Google sheet.

I actually recommend you use the Google sheet. It just works better. Um, I’m a huge fan of Excel, but in this case, the college data organizer works better in Google than it does in, um, in Excel. So this is an overview. Of it. Basically, it tells you what to do if you’re a student or a family using this, but, um, it gives you access to a lot of publicly and freely available in information.

And this is aligned with the six keys of college fit. So if you go through the card sort activity and a student knows what their priorities are, you’ll find those color codes matching each of these here. Okay? So, uh, the way it works, and this is the part that works better in Google than Excel, is you just start typing the name.

[00:34:00] Of the college and you can find it if you use the Excel version, you have to go through the whole list, which is kind of annoying. So this, that’s the main difference between the Excel and the Google versions. So, sorry, we’ll pull up the um,

uh, UMass Boston where I work, et cetera. So basically I’m not gonna go through, we’ll pull in a private just to. For comparison purposes, and what it does is it pulls in all the publicly available information it related to each, each of the six keys of college fit. Um, when. Each of these indicators has a number.

That makes sense. Alright. So in the academic match, a lot of the information is, um, is numeric, uh, in terms of what’s the admission rate, what’s the percent of students admitted who enroll, known as the yield rate. Gives you all that information here. Uh, and then it’s color coded just in the sense in terms of [00:35:00] what’s favorable for the students.

So, uh, this is showing, this is green because these SAT scores are the lowest, um. Of all the colleges on the list and the color codes change as you add and subtract colleges from the list. So this is just relative to the colleges that are on that student’s list. So that’s the academic match provides all that information about SAT and a CT scores, which again, it tells you, uh, perhaps importantly, what percent of students.

Submitted test scores, um, which can be helpful. And if they chose to submit test scores, here’s what those test scores actually were. Uh, in terms of the, um, 25th and 75th percentiles, Merrimack College does not consider test scores, so no test scores are reported there. All right. Um, we go down into the student outcomes.

We’ve got UMass Amherst has a 91%. Um. Graduation, or, sorry, 91% retention rate. Whereas UMass Boston has 73%, and Merrimack has an 84% retention rate. All right? Again, these are color coded in ways that are favorable, [00:36:00] favorable for the students. So as you can see, UMass Amherst has stronger student outcomes than any other college on this list at the moment.

There’s also provided here in terms of financial match, it’s got the sticker price, the list price. This is usually a year old. So if you’re looking at actual dollars, um, this is the latest information available through the College Navigator. But you see it’s also got the net price information here, um, by income level.

And it also tells you here, without going to the college navigator, uh, what percent of students are receiving institutional aid. Uh, what the average amount of that aid is. So again, this is that information that’s available on the college navigator is publicly available. So what we’ve done essentially is we’ve taken that information, we’ve brought it here into the college data data organizer and linked it to each of the six keys of college fit.

Um, so, so that’s what we’ve done. And this is, again, pre-populated with all this information as long as you type in the college name. Um. And you can do that for up to 12 colleges at a time to compare. The only [00:37:00] reason we don’t have more than 12 is just because it’s, it’s hard to, hard to actually visually compare all of that together.

Um, so as you’ll see, as you get a little bit further down on the list, a lot of the things in personal match can’t be represented with a number that’s publicly available. Um, so in these cases, you might have the student go through and just rate from one to five, how well does it meet their needs? Um, so they can input information here.

Um. That they can refer to later based on, and it saves that information. So this is something that’s downloaded. Each individual student or family could have this and it becomes their own, so to speak. Uh, when you download this as a, as a Google sheet, um, you make a copy of it and that copy of it becomes yours or your students, et cetera.

Um. Disability services. This is one where this, this shows you the percent of students that are formally registered with the DIS disability Services office. Um, just let me show you. Brown University, I don’t know what theirs is this year, but Brown University has seven. They have [00:38:00] historically, brown universities has a large percentage of their student population formally registered with disability services.

What that tells me is that for whatever reason, I don’t know the why, but. This just says that this tells me as somebody advising students that Brown University, um. Their accessibility services office, their disability services office, whatever they might call it, um, they make it more accessible to students perhaps than some of these other places.

I don’t know the reason why. Um, Merrimack College only has 8% of their student population registered with disability services, um, and 17% at Brown. But this does say that almost one in five students at Brown are, um, affiliated with the disability services office and. Less than one in 10 at Merrimac car. So that’s, um, if you’re working with a student that has a 5 0 4 or an IEP, it just means if, if they’re considering merrimac, that they’re gonna need to, to spend a little bit more time talking with somebody, uh, a representative from that office to make sure it’s a good fit for them.

Um, because it seems like other [00:39:00] students aren’t availing themselves of that opportunity. Like, like, um, they are at Brown. So, okay. All publicly available information, giving you the clip notes version. Um, you can download this for free at college un maed uh.com and, um, you know, you’ll find it under the free downloads area.

All right, so, um. So this is just in the apply phase. Nobody actually does it. This is a, a, a thing from the workbook I found. Even when I do advising with students and families, I don’t, I don’t actually do this part if I’m being totally transparent, but this is a way you can go through and basically evaluate.

Um, it actually does it here in the college data organizer. If you go to the charts, you can see down here, that chart is basically here. If you go through the college data organizer and you input the information for all the colleges. Um, these self ratings, they get populated into there, but I don’t find that to be the most useful part, to be honest.

But if you have a student, um, who’s struggling to figure out what, you know, figure [00:40:00] out this process going through this might be good, um, to help them whittle that number down to, to the more reasonable five to eight. Because at the end of the day, you can only attend one college, right? You can’t attend five to eight colleges.

So, um, so there is a process that we talk about in the workbook that can help students go through and, and narrow that down. Um. The other thing we’re doing in the apply phase is, is really we’re looking at trying to help students see, um. What colleges are a good fit for them in terms of their fit and aspects of fit, primarily in terms of those six keys of college fit.

And then, um, basically, what are their chances of admissions in terms of the academic and non-academic factors and the selectivity of the college? Right. So at college on Mays, and me personally, I don’t like the safety target reach language. I know now that language has changed, sometimes likely, et cetera, but.

Um, we really like to talk about chance of admissions as chance of admissions, and then focus also on, on, um, how well a college fits you, aside from what your chances of [00:41:00] admission are. So we developed this three by three table that really, uh, encourages people to look at both fit and chance of admission when they’re considering.

Which colleges to apply to. And, and, uh, long story short, what we’re looking for is for not all of the colleges to kind of be on the same side of the chart. We’re looking for some diversity here. We don’t want, for example, we don’t want, uh, a student to have every college on their list, be a low chance of admission college.

Um, but we also. Uh, don’t want students. If there’s a college on the list that is a low-fi college, you have to ask the question, well, why are you applying there? If it’s not a good fit college, is it just because they are a high chance of admission? And if that’s the case, uh, can we find another high chance of admit, uh, high chance of admission college that’s a better fit for you?

Alright. So looking at both dimensions is really helpful in the apply phase. Um. Then in the decide phase again, we do something similar. Um, rich, uh, developed this part, um, going through the college choice process really is a higher order, um, decision [00:42:00] making process. So if you’re familiar with that Bloom’s taxonomy kind of stuff, um.

That’s what’s over here on the left. Um, students are going through each of these steps as they’re going through the, the informed decision making process. But in terms of the actual decision, again, we like to use a different, a slightly different three by three table. So now they’ve got the, the decisions.

So chance of admission is kind of taking off the table, and this table will only be populated with those colleges. That they feel like they, that they’ve been admitted to. Right? So you’re gonna reevaluate fit because now you have, uh, concrete information about financial fit, for example, that you didn’t have before because you have an award letter.

At this time, right? So you’re gonna be able to more accurately evaluate, fit, um, and then desirability. So now, um, we’ve gone through this informed decision making process, kind of minimizing the role of feelings up to this point and emotions. Um, but finally, now that we’ve got decision letters back, we can let the emotional side of the decision making process come in and that’s what.

What we’ve called desirability, like how much [00:43:00] do I like that college and how much do I see myself on that college? And they can re rate each college on their list that they’ve been admitted to as a, a low desirability, moderate desirability or high desirability. And then rate, rate that, uh, look at that alongside the overall fit to help them visualize again on these two dimensions, um, which colleges fit them best.

So, um. And then the last part, succeed again. We have that webinar coming up. Julie did Did you get the webinar? Did you put that in the chat? Um, when we have that scheduled, um, whoops, sorry. Um, but this is what we’re gonna, we’re gonna go through with students and families. We’re gonna, these are the three areas that, that students and families can pay attention to.

It’s the financial integration. So how are you not only going to pay for the first year of college, but all four years of college? Um, for or more if, if it’s a place where, um, not very many students graduate in four years, like what’s the five year plan? Because there are colleges here in, uh, in Massachusetts where two outta three students don’t graduate in.[00:44:00]

Four years, but um, you know, two thirds of them graduate in in six years, for example. So what’s the plan for paying for college for the long haul? Um, what’s the plan for integrating into the campus life? That’s the social integration and then what’s the plan to make the most of the academic opportunities that are available?

Um. What are things that you need to pay attention to instead of, in terms of course, sequencing and being ready for that orientation day when, um, you come to the college campus and pick your classes, like you can be an active participant in that instead of a passive participant. So we do that webinar for students and families, um, in May.

So with that. I will leave some time for questions, comments, feedback. Um, again, you can contact Amanda at a Star College amazed.com. You can contact contact me at tim dot [email protected]. Um, again, um. Thanks for listening. Greatly appreciate your time and attention, and I have not been paying attention to the chat at all, so I don’t know if [00:45:00] there’s any,

Julie Shields Rutyna: so I don’t see, uh, any questions at the moment, but I’ll just share that for some reason, I, I don’t, I can’t get the exact date in front of me.

I believe it’s the first Tuesday in May, but pretty soon it will be on our website. Um, just because it’s a family webinar and for students and parents, um, right under webinars and it will be upcoming webinars and you’ll be able to find that. And so, I’m sorry I couldn’t produce the exact date at the moment.

Oh, let’s see. Okay. We do have a question. Uh, no, you know, it’s, uh, Tim, it’s just, uh, a, a compliment that this was really a great presentation and these are great resources, so thank you for that. Great.

Timothy Poynton: Thank you. Freely available. Uh, one of my mod mottos in life is that if it’s free, it’s for me. So when we put together College on Mays, we did try to have it not just be for pay resources, but also some free resources.

So thank you for that. Yeah, happy to do that.

Julie Shields Rutyna: Well, thank you so much Tim, and thank you to all of you for joining us. And, um, as, [00:46:00] as Tim mentioned at the beginning, um, please, you know, come back to, uh, MEFA often because there are all kinds of, you know, wonderful resources and webinars, uh, just like this one to help you in your practice.

So thank you.

Timothy Poynton: Have,

Julie Shields Rutyna: have a great day everyone.