tonight it's a senior parent future planning night and our objective is just for you to get the same information that your students are getting so we're about halfway through our senior groups where the senior classes come down with their english class and we go through the college process to make sure that they know the logistics and so we want to make sure that we're on the same page my name's emily taylor stacey ross we're both friends counsellors she's at the beginning of the alphabet at the end so we'll take questions as we go and we're hoping to lot of requirements so each of your students met with their guidance counselor last year during the course election process and we went over their transcript to make sure that the classes that they're taking this year will fulfill their graduation requirements however it's really critical for your student also to look through their transcript to make sure there's something missing but just to review the student see forty years of english which is twenty one credits because of the sixth credit for the thesis so there are english class this year six credits not five social studies you need three years math you need four years science you need four years to find the performing arts you need one year foreign language you need two years two credits every year and is the one that you want to make sure that your students are keeping very close tabs so if they're if your student has said they're going to take do a spring the sport and that's their credit they have to do that spring sport or they will not graduate you need to have those eight credits to graduate if your student is up in the air between doing that spring and not highly suggest having them register for a course in school for the second semester and that's a guarantee of third meeting all the requirements for that class that will get credit classes meet twice a week  for two months each so they'll still have plenty of free months cast which at this point if there's any questions just speak with the guidance counselor and the forty hours of community service again similar to t even acquirement students cannot walk across the stage at graduation with thirty nine point seven five hours you have to have forty hours of community service we've seen a lot of kids do forty hours over april vacation we want to try to prevent that or the last week of school so i think check in with your student now to make sure that they have those forty hours and start planning that for you if if that's not the case so today we're mostly going to talk about the college process but there's also many other choices that your student has after high school prep schools one of them which is oftentimes for students who maybe are pursuing a sport in well so we can get an idea in the sense of what your students planning on doing next year so we will just take a few minutes to kind of go through some of the different options and ideas that students have so there's no sailor said prep school is one thing that some students will do  a lot of times it is athletic pace but some students will just choose to do it if they feel they just need that extra year for academics so that they put themselves in a better academics place to apply to colleges the following year  usually recommendations for that you would need to acquire one from your students english teacher and math teacher usually they're pretty specific forms visits are always good interviews are usually a part of that process as another trend that students are looking out a lot more lately is a gap year and some students think that might just be taking the year off and not doing much but our recommendation for gap years is that students find something that's very structured something of interest there's a ton of different ideas out there we have we have a graduate from belmont from two thousand and six who last year did a lot of  help students try to identify different things that they could do she has another full time job which is kind of getting busy this year but if anybody's interested she would still like to serve as a resource for people so e mail your guidance counselor and we can pass along her information there also gap year fairs that occur i think there's one in boston at some point so hold we'll try to collect all that information so that is something that your student is interested and we can help them start doing some research for that and you know the good thing with the gap year says it is a way for students to gain some perspective thanks a lot you know just get some experience before they go to college you know it's you know we have these students go through  high school all the same time and not everybody is ready for college at the same time different experiences it may be more appropriate for one student to the next a lot of admissions counselors who come through our doors have reflected that they hear from a lot of faculty and staff and schools that they notice very often when a student has done a gap year you know sometimes they've done some kind of an experience by thinking trying to contribute real world experience to the classroom again not for everybody but if it's something that your students thinking about you know be in touch with us and we can discuss it a little bit further so definitely have your student see your guidance counselor you can check in with them and ask if they have made that appointment and we have been getting into their english classes to deliver a lot of the similar information that we're giving you tonight a lot of what we're giving them is kind of like the nuts and bolts of college application process because a lot of pieces and components that go along with it so students who are planning on applying to college early action or early decision should be in touch with the guidance office as soon as possible most of those deadlines are nov first or nov fifteenth and it's crucial that we are aware that there are different elements of their application on our side that we have to put together including a letter of recommendation which includes the re we highly use the student questionnaires so most of the kids have turned those in at this point if they haven't you know we still collect those and along with that if your student hasn't been late and you want it there's a she called the parent brag sheet we really like to get insight from parents into into certain things i mean you can think you can know a student really well for four years and you read something in the parent brag sheet that you didn't know and it's you know great information and it's often very fun to learn a little bit more about these kids so that's one element for us is writing writing the letter of recommendation and we'll get into timelines in terms of when we need these different things collected depending on application timelines so also in these meetings of students are looking at applying to schools we ask and they come to these meetings with some ideas we have so many resources and tools available for the students for them to generate these ideas on their own not be outs is a great way with this point you students probably familiar with  really is an excellent way instead of you the parents saying when you look at this school are saying you know having somebody else suggest ideas to your kids which sometimes fall on deaf ears as you all know it is a good way for students to kind of go through and identify some schools that might be of interest you know and it's in terms of looking at schools academically it's a really good there is there are graphs that kind of show them where they are academically compared to the schools that they're looking at so it can be can make the conversations you know a little more approachable so that is certainly a useful tool and let's hear deadlines all right so that's what we're going to do next and so as i mentioned before to so november first november fifteenth are really the big ones for early action and early decision that lines some of this other schools have october deadlines usually students are where they wanted to apply to those but if not we can kind of work through  things the one thing that we do tell your students a lot though is these deadlines really matter you know there's a lot of deadlines that they've probably you know maybe got in the slide a little bit here and there but these ones are pretty hard and fast so you want to make sure that they're getting of their information in on time if they're it that they have they have a deadline that is november first we suggest them getting all of their information and you know at least a week prior for too often of stories especially for the january first deadlines i don't know why it happens in the middle of the winter at the start of the winter but kids who are trying to send their applications on december thirty first you know so a lot of times we've heard of systems failing and then the applications don't go through so just you know  things and it's kind of a big recommendation so i get regular deadlines tend to be january first february first into march there is also rolling rolling admissions and usually those schools you know they they know  that students are maybe taking some time to kind of decide on what they what they want to be doing and where they want to be applying but if it is a rolling deadline we would encourage your student to apply as soon as they know that they want to be applying  that school and as soon as they are prepared because with those schools a lot of times they'll start reading up locations as they come in and once they meet their quota they meet their quota and then they probably won't be looking you know the patients after  that talked about the student questionnaire or so transcript release form is something we will find to give you some information on here now so the transcript release form we have been giving the students all packet there and maybe below folders and they have different pieces of information that are important for them to be keeping track of so the deadlines are outlined in terms of deadlines if we have a november first seven we want everything in three weeks prior and we've got those deadlines written down for your student i get is just we have to process all of that actually mrs french is the morning who ends up going through not be onsen sending everything so it just takes a lot of time so we just need to make sure that we have everything on time so that we can get things in on a timely manner also so standardized tests i kind of process and for different parts the first is the actual application itself which the student is responsible for submitting on their own and then their pieces that the student needs to log in to the college board or the student work website and you have to send an official score a port to each of the schools the students applying to  some colleges that are test optional in which case you can decide whether or not a score would be a good thing to send it's entirely up to the student and you want to make sure that if you're going to send the scores that they're going to either be right in the target or if it's optional schools will not hold it against a student if they don't submit their scores yeah so the question is about sending in october scores if you're doing and early deadline so my recommendation is to always make sure that you're looking at the college's website to see what their policy is so typically  november first november fifteenth they'll accept october scores which will be past the deadline but some don't they want they'll say the window on the admissions website another piece to consider is  some students know they're sending their october scores were guarding this of the score or maybe they're sending their school full school report in which case you can always that you want those scores sent prior to actually taking the test you're in you're just saying that as soon as those scores are available they're going to be sent but that's at the risk of not knowing what the scores are but that's that's a way to guarantee that the scores will be there in time but most schools will accept october november it's going to be too late for early if you're doing a regular decision and you can go all the way up through december with a test the other thing that we learned last year at a conference was that there's an option for russia you pay extra money and they say that it'll go faster and it does get there faster but unless they've changed it in the last year they send it on paper and so schools then have a stack of paper scores that they don't actually get through so it ends up being faster to send it electronically but if there's any question about whether or not you should brush send a rose a score or wait and do that on line one please call the college itself that's kind of the trend in the our theme throughout if there are any questions about any requirements dates testing deadlines call the admissions office because they're going to be your b college board has dates in there but if it were me i would go on the college's web site every single one and i would write down every single date and if there was any question i would call the school it's always fast or there's any inquiry for the student to call however you can also make a call and just say i'm inquiring you don't have to say who you are so i call a lawyer and you know i sometimes will introduce myself and others others will but that type of thing should be fine i think following up with things to say is my application complete which will get into a little bit later absolutely the student should  call if you have the admissions rep for that school so the question was about if you should email versus call it's up to you but in terms of checking statuses or checking to see if the application is complete i would probably call just you had that contact if it's just a simple or if it's following up that you're very interested in the school your student should find admissions reps e mail for our region and e mail them directly to but again it's another thing the college board is going to charge you for so some students will decide to wait until they decide which school they want to actually go to and then we'll send the official score part to get the college credit but so these are just the dates for this fall october third the deadlines past november third or sorry november seventh the deadline is october ninth i would definitely recommend if a student's going to take the test  morning score choice so students some schools allow your students to choose in the college board which scores are going to get sent so when you log in and there's a blue box that says send scores  which means take the highest score for each test state it's in their best interest because they want their numbers to be higher just as much as the students wants their numbers to be higher so definitely make sure again this is an instance where you really want to go on that college admissions website and see what they they require one more piece about reporting so if a student is going to tell and send their scores to some schools and not others in the common app when they ask for whether you're going to report your scores or self report the student should only say yes if they're going to then follow up in a with an official score port for each school so if they indicate and self report scores and then don't follow up with that official score port their application will look incomplete so if there's if you're sending your scores to every single school then you put in the com that yours in the you can put all the scores and that's just fine if there's some schools you're sending your scores to and some schools you're not you just don't want to put anything in the common app that's going to get sent to every single school if you're not actually going to follow up with an official questions about that that gets a little bit it's confusing the other piece that kind of has changed this a little bit is that the college the comment gives you an opportunity to submit your application alter it and then submit to a different school you can't change an application once it's submitted to a particular school in which case you could try to figure out what versions you're sending to which i think and it's easier just to keep it kind of straight forward  tab you have each school has a different tab with information underneath that and that is specific to each school so that coming up tab if you want to keep it like the common app personal essay you want to keep it's not specific you don't want to say this is why you want to go to mass amherst because it'll be the every school will get that however com map and i would definitely check their actual terms because there might be a limit to the number of times you can revise a used to be that you could not revise the common app tap at all and now they've added a little bit of revising possibilities but i would just want your student to make sure that they knew exactly what the terms were the question is about revising academic interest in the common law based on what school again i think it's entirely up to the student if they want to revise it as long as i would i would make sure that when you look at the comment that you know how many times you can do that because it used to be you could not revise ever and then last year i confused by once and so i just make sure that when you're looking at all the terms and agreements i think the most straightforward thing in the safest thing that you know that you wouldn't be making you know sending the wrong thing to the wrong school would be to keep that common app completely universal and then save any sort of specific information for the actual yes so the question is about if you can say no you're not going to send scores and then follow up and send scores self it's a self report question not ascending score question so in the common app and asked who do you want to sell for court scores question yes in the answer be yes or no you only want to say no if you're not going to send it to every single school otherwise you should sell for pork because all the information's right there for the college yes so any time you sell for port you have to send an official score report directly from the college board directly from easy to student or in addition to self reporting es will only be required officially if the student is then trying to get college credit once you know once they get accepted to the school some students decide to send everything and that's completely fine as well out you have if there it's not just optional you have to send your scores but if it's if you're applying to any school it's not that's test optional that's when you maybe wouldn't sell for part day three tests can be a lot for students because it's three completely different subjects sometimes so it's up to the student but you can do it some of the subjects are listed up there there are more you can find all that information on the college board website you can't take the x eighty eight and subject tests on the same day and you want to just make sure i get on with your student keeping track of all of those pieces that are quire they want you want to make sure that often just to chill and you just again want to check each and every college admissions website to see what those requirements are some schools will specify what subjects that they want to see and one thing to know in this doesn't affect the students and the senior class this year but if you have younger students coming up there are changes being made to the s a t so if you have a current junior you're probably quite aware of  those at those meetings all right so recommendations are other elements of your students application so as i mentioned before the guidance counselor application recommendation is one component what we do with our letters is we try to focus on the whole student so if there's something and that's why that student questionnaires are quite important the student the parent brag sheet if you know there's some kind of event something that happened that affected grades we can talk about that  there's all sorts of different ways that we can sort of you know angle i suppose are our recommendation but we try to look at them holistically where is the teacher recommendations the teachers will be talking about your student  and their academic approach to the classroom so right now students should have identified at least two teachers general rule of thumb as we recommend that they try to find a stem teacher so a science technology ma and then maybe someone from humanities the biggest component about it though if they can kind of find that balance is that they find teachers that they feel they have some sort of a connection with doesn't have to be the class that they get the highest grades but maybe a teacher who you know that they feel they've they've they've proven and shown that you know the way that they can work in the classroom improvement and things like that so you know we're checking in with the students to make sure that they've got that  and we have a little bit of a procedural thing with that as well and that's another component maybe blue collar that is probably sitting at your kitchen table that your students are just going through this evening but that's there's some yellow there like i was like a butter colored sheep and that's the way they communicate the teachers in terms of sending the teacher recommendations and so the way the teachers are doing that primarily is through not be on it's we have finally evolved into the year two thousand and doing things like trying to play with that so teachers have not be out to count and so they can go into your students not answer count and that's how they will be sending the letters of recommendation it's really important we've been trying to explain this to the kids because some students will end up asking maybe two or three teachers depending you know if they've they've got a lot of stuff that they did maybe with like fine or performing r s thirty to something like that where they sort of have a teacher who's sort of a supplemental recommender you know maybe they're playing to specific programs where they need to sort of pick and choose which person will be sending in their lot or they need to pay close attention to that because they can only send t through not be and so it's very important and we've been explaining this in the teachers as well that when they go into a student's not answer perhaps the student has you know twelve colleges listed but they've only indicated eight on the sheet we're being pretty out of it with the teachers and you know kind of pointing them in the direction of a should only send to the schools and the student has listed just in case the student is sort of doing some strategizing in terms of which recommendations get done so that's kind of an important know that we're trying to and trying to emphasize a little  and again too they should be getting those sheets to teachers pretty far in advance i've been telling my students if they have an early death lines just it shouldn't email to the teachers that they asked last year to serve reminder you know thanks so much for offering to write my letter i am doing some november first up lines i'll be getting you my sheet you know as soon as i have it already question deadlines the student can see when the recommendations been sent in the common app so you don't use the common app to request recommenders if there are teachers but it'll show up that it's been the teachers will all have very good systems for checking them so they're going to send them by the deadline does it hurt to send a reminder no probably not but they i mean for the most part it's been pretty yes so i think what happens when the issue that we've had in the past is that if a student has three recommenders and maybe the school only accept one or only accept two and then maybe your art recommenders record says the recommendation before the recommender that you actually wanted then that set of recommendation can't go through so it's on the school's side the college side it has it has a certain number of recommendations will accept some accept one some accept to some accept you know five so it's just important that the student is very very clear on their yellow sheets which schools they'd like each teacher to send to and as long as they do that will be just fine and as long as they match the number of recommendations required and accepted to their yellow sheets it should work out last year it was an issue with that and we asked you to all bear with us because every year at these systems get changed so last year that wasn't an issue the issue was that you know one  be they should be inviting teachers through common app the people that they could potentially invite through common app would be like if they have a coach or the supplemental recommender and that way that's another way that it could that it could feed in the old fashion and the little boy is also another way to get things  right and then they would need to indicate that that's an additional recommender another primary correct yes so it is kind of confusing so in the common app that you know and again not every school uses the common app our portal for getting everything out electronically is not beyond to any school that does any form of electronic teachers that you have in school because those teachers will just automatically going to not be us and use that system but if they have a supplemental recommender they can do it that way i think it probably depends on the particular situation one thing and i we haven't gotten to it yet but just sort of the missing information piece so that's something that we are going over with the students in english classes and it's you know we really highly  recommend that they follow up on the responsibility of ensuring that all the materials ever arrived safely in the schools and they're applying to and there are various ways of doing them and often depends on the school a lot of schools now have web portals where the student will receive like a painter a log and where they can go in and see what's been received and so then you know if everything's there that's excellent if it's not if it's a teacher recommendation you know they could go into the common app and see if it was done if there is some kind of this now who sometimes this happens where it appears on all and that we can look at that things have been signed so we don't have to strategize and troubleshoot and you know have the students come down to guidance talk where if there is a teacher recommendation comes in a little bit later i mean i wouldn't you know that's not of the goal but there's a little bit of art of safety but that's why it's important to have all when it's the only time that a student would get penalize for like a teacher recommendation would be if it goes a long time and they get been receiving reminders that it's missing or if they hadn't called to see if there's a full application so it would be a prolonged process it's not you know that day question know it's when you when you use the common app that does it but if it's a school that does not use the common app and has its own electronic application process you know that school just has a different system and there are some schools as still do snail mail applications too so you just need to be aware of the different modes of getting everything there yeah so they when they start receiving information on a student they'll just start a file or whatever system it is if they have if it's electronic if it's you know physical folder that's kind of how they do it and then they start reading up locations when everything is complete that they need a question invite right yes so they can do it that way or they can just physically mail in a recommendation go into if you click the tab of the school it'll say recommenders and for you click on recommenders and and then it says manager recommenders so i would imagine if it's a pure and it's something that they've really formalized it would be there or there might be instructions for the p just and mail it yeah and again too i mean as ms taylor said and this is one thing that we tell the students all the time is you know all this stuff is so fluid and things change each year for every school to some degree so definitely use the school itself as a resource and you know call them and find out and so just for an example to show you what the transcript so this is actually that's more of the model for the teacher recommendation form so simple just write down the name of the college and then the deadline for the teachers so it's you know our first deadline just wait on november first we have the postmarked indicator on there in case it  something that's you know something that they actually have to physically snail mail and in that case the student should provide the teacher with an address to the local to the school the return address should be belmont high school and then student to put an indicator release form looks like it is a blue sheet so the student will fill out the name of the school if it's an early action in this and early decision and that prompts mrs french to then alert the counselor that we should be preparing the material so she doesn't things on her and in terms of getting the transcripts also but your students have also had the chance to review their transcripts in the english classes and they've signed off just indicating that everything looked correct and then what we do also is the students are also when they sign this they're indicating that they give us permission to send first term grades and second term grades and then final year and grades and we do that yes i'm sorry it's well there's they've been they've had their say they can do a list on it and say yeah so they just do when we go back to that so they'll just but the name of the college at that point just have the kids put down the schools that they know they're going to there's a ten dollars processing fee that takes care of every application but you know if a student just knows at this point the schools that they want to buy too early they can just do that  give it to mrs french that prompts that prompts a process for us to get materials ready but then if they decide to add colleges they just come in get a new blue sheen give it to mrs french you know it's just a one time one time processing going on there yeah we do have an updated form this year will send me your grades and we will send final grades the first quarter grades a lot of kids come down and ask you know my first quarter grades if i'm applying early get to the school and it just depends on that school sometimes they'll read an application and look at the transcript that they've received and say ok this will accept the student sometimes they will be waiting for those first term grades and we do process those as soon as we can after the term ends which this the first term ends november fourth so that is after deadlines but we get those done is soon as we can we are telling the students that they have three days to check their grades and if there is an error for them to first talk to their teacher to figure out what what needs to be rectified and  them to be in touch with us in the guidance office so we can get this changed and updated like a school profile type of thing from the old school we could we could we could get that if that's something that you can provide for us from that school then we can we can work a way to get that information included as well so that's another piece that gets s question it's frequently asked also is on applications as brink we do not range of students in terms of class number but we do on that sheet indicate a percentage of where they stand in the class so that's that and that we have that information available we don't have print outs quite yet of the school profile but if that's information you students looking for haven't come and see us and we can provide them with that information date that it's listed on the chart so if they put november thirtieth we'll send it by november thirtieth yes and just so you're not leaving with any incorrect information so this chart has a old official transcript release form we have a new one on line so please disregard that because it has misinformation apology all right so we've covered some of this but applying to college there's a couple different options there's a paper on line common app over six hundred schools use the common app it is all on the college's website how you should be applying and make sure you're checking to see if the school has any supplemental information that's required if it's a common application school again i keep talking about the tabs but there's a tab for each school and underneath the tab it's a great a great area with much bunch of boxes and all have questions that are specific to that school and that's what they mean by a supplement that should all be in common up if it's not tonic application then that should be built in if you there's any questions if there's anything extra that you're supposed to do please check the colleges admissions  website so applications include a lot of different information basic information and this is just so you're hearing the same things that your students are the actual applications themselves are very straightforward there's no tricky questions there's nothing that you know they're going to have to figure out it's the process is challenging because of all the organizational pieces it's challenging because it's a lot to keep track of but all of the information that you're putting in the actual application is all stuff that you already have and you know i that's great i think any time anytime a school asks for anything as an option i like an optional short answer optional resume if you're confident in the resume are confident in the short answer then that's a great opportunity to provide additional information so as you can see a lot of this information is stuff that's going to be very similar from student to student so the idea is how do we make the students stand out how does that student unique if a resume is that there are some students with some really incredible resumes that's a great opportunity if they're allowing you to do that other schools just have too much data to go through but absolutely if there's an optional short yeah and there's anything that you feel is not represented in the common app that you feel like is as important part about your student that's a great opportunity to put that information there you don't want to replicate anything that's already been said but it's a great opportunity to add something that maybe you haven't been able to fit in all those boxes because you're right it's very very formulaic and so it's sometimes hard to paint the whole picture  this is going this is right in all of the recommendations so in the common app you can the student should write genevieve that's in all of her information and we know this we know how to you know figure out access and all that type of thing but your students recommendations will be written by  is talking about and then we can also send a special education information that you would like do that so we list all the a p classes all the honors classes national merit all the extracurriculars schools that students have gotten into so kind of paints a picture so that the college knows that the students especially in this area and you know the high school so that's another thing to remember comparing apples to oranges they can kind of have some common you know common scale so for example schools might add a point five for an honors class and point for a p class it just depends on the school but  definitely at the very least they're taking into consideration the classes and the record of the classes so no hard work has been done in the again missing information so just to reiterate please please please please have your student follow up three to four weeks after their deadline we say three to four weeks because for example some schools are getting forty five thousand applications for early  and so for them to go through all of that data i don't i can't even wrap my mind around it but they have a lot to get through so it takes them some time to figure out how to get all the actual data moved from one place to another so three to four weeks is our recommendation if this is the student should always make sure that their e mail address is one that they're going to check frequently that's how schools are going to let them know perhaps if they have missing information they might also it doesn't come naturally necessarily but again if mr school sends you the portal don't call the school to what the missing information is i have done that before and they prefer that method that they've our recommendation is that they make contact with every school they apply to regardless of whether they've heard or not of course that they've heard in those missing then that's your answer if they've heard in that says it's complete that's your answer if you've not heard i would still recommend checking either by phone call or by portal to see if an application is complete just so you don't have to worry and again that question about the teacher recommendations if they come a little bit later we want to try to make any sort of delay as short as possible so that's why it's important that the student follows up financial aid so you can ask every question you can possibly imagine about how to fill out the fafsa the fafsa is the application for federal aid comes in a couple different ways they federally and from the federal government we have state we also have private private money so money that might come from the school itself might come from an outside scholarship but the fast says the application for federal federal money and it can start to be submitted january first but you can request your pin earlier and we will talk more about this if you have questions about that but just as a heads up you probably are going to have to file your taxes a little bit earlier than in previous years because it's really it's first come first serve for money so you just want to have all your stuff ready so yes us profile that's the one that's really essential for your student to see is the c s s profile of acquirement for aid for your school it's used by a lot of private schools and those deadlines are going to be before january typically especially if they're applying early early decision so just go on the financial aid website the c s s profile is another i would check the school's website i was on a website today and it said december first but that was just one school so i would go and you know some students have spreadsheets with all the different requirements but it doesn't matter how you keep track but make sure that you're going on every single school's website to see when the c s s profile is due because it might very well be the same day of the deadline but others are there's a little bit  so scholarships people who are scholarship apply and scholarships starting now through the end of the year if you really really want the scholarship money but will also be posting scholarships there not we also that is it's a much smaller pool it's not a national pool and it's one application and it qualifies you for probably close to sixteen scholarships it's a lot of scholarships or awards depending on what own scholarship programs most of the time students are then qualified or put into the school just by applying to the school and checking off a box that you want to be considered for scholarships other schools might have specific applications for scholarships but that would all be on their financial aid website but november first doesn't i don't think that's like maybe there are some that are but it's not a drop day for all  so you just don't know sometimes if that's something that your students are going to be a good fit for there's a scholarship committee that sits down and read this and i know that you know very often they get into a position where they think of a student who eat excellent for that scholarship but that's never filled out that application and then they can't get it to them so you know it's not huge sums of money but you know i always tell students you know it's just one little application if it can pay you some money potentially and then go for it and if asked web site is really going to in terms of putting in just different criteria they could potentially match up with your interest you know just any kind of thing that you've you've got going on in just googling you know different scholarships is as a good idea said you know with like the fast the stuff if you have to pay money for any of these scholarship things you know that's sort of a red flag that it's probably not legitimate but there's a lot of money out there there's a lot of money out there that doesn't find maybe wait until they're done with all the applications you know get that stress out of the way and then and then maybe spend some time doing i know there's a lot there's a lot of things to juggle a lot of things to balance so you really feel free on that one but if they have some time when the fast one is you know it's it's a little more streamlined where they can put in some basic information and see if there's a you know some stuff that would come up  so after all the whole college process you know they have applications and they start hearing back from schools may first is the deadline for most colleges for your students to decide whether or not they're going to be  receiving visiting the schools again i think is always always a good idea you know it depends on some students strategize differently and if the schools are nearby they may be visited a few times some students will hear schools that are a little bit further away and you know then they get accepted and then they make the decision to go on their visit you know to to take the time and playing right to go and do that but the visits are excellent you know it really does give a student a feel for the next four years of their life and if that's a campus setting that they're going to feel good at and that's really what you yeah but that's a great way to for the students to get a sense of you know if that's a school that they want to be  college fair on wednesday october seventh next wednesday seven to nine in the field house and for seniors that's really an opportunity to plan to network so it's a lot of the exploration time but there might be some raps that will  be your students application similarly a first college visit so we have college reps coming in daily i think we have three or four today and again those are going to be the people probably are going to be looking at your students application so that's a great opportunity to make that connection and then when they go back to their admissions office and i look into applications they'll remember you know meeting a student and they really do say that they they remember  i think so when you go into not the onset says college visits and then there's probably three or four listed and then when you click on a blue link i think it's blue it then lists all of the college visits for the next all the ones that we have so probably for a couple months and so the student can register on that on the audience for that visit and you should call your student out of any class that they're going to miss and they should also talk to a teacher prior miss missing just to make sure that they know they will be there the college up isn't going to see who registered so if something comes up and the student actually can't attend that's ok we'll just say you know the student is taking the test so whatever the case secretary i think it's kind of similar so the question is about informational interviews how important are they see them some early to the additional information or any optional anything i think anytime you are given the opportunity to make contact with an admissions rapport with the school definitely take advantage of it it's not a value but it's still just another some schools again they're going to tens of thousands of applications and so some schools are actually a new category is student interest so it's the demonstrated interest that the student has in the school things like college visits of course if it's california they're not going to hold it against you but any opportunity if you live in a very close and you have a visit that they're going to kind of wonder does the student actually want to attend so we say six to ten six to eight six to ten as your total list students apply to many many more than that and we also have students who apply to just a couple but you want to be just always say you want the list to be balanced so if you have three you probably want at least that many and your target and or likely schools so you just as long as you have a balanced list that's going to be a good approach  more than ten gets to be a lot to handle so you know we're encouraging students to call every school keep track of all the materials logistically more than ten just seems like a lot just for the student kind of to  so some programs are going to the question is about different programs and the deadlines that they may or may not have so i think just keeping track of maybe the students applying to nursing in one program for one school and there's a certain deadline as long as you're giving us the information as soon as you have it we're going to do our very very best to get it in for the student i mean just to another piece just to consider if the students applying to a program like never seen or en engineering the admissions are quire mends and averages are going to be different than that of the regular missions so if a student is worried about getting into a nursing program or an engineering program then you know recommendation would be to not have all of your schools be specific so that major unless of course that is the only thing that the student wants to do but you just want to just keep in mind so that you're not setting yourself up for disappointment have the common app tab then you have the mycologist tab and i colleges tab has a bunch of different schools and you have to review and submit per school so your common app of the material that's going to every single school might be ready but maybe you're going to one that we're working with so last year we did a lot with colleges i'm thinking about this year it's colleges i'm applying to colleges i'm applying to list should be one hundred percent accurate one hundred percent up to date with your comment up schools electronic schools mail schools it should be a complete list so that we can keep track of where things are going if there's any question about you know you want to remove a school or you change their mind the student should talk to mrs french and she'll indicate that she shouldn't send th so the question is about if a student applies early and they get into the school they want to and it's awesome and you're so excited and you don't want to put any other ones that's of course a really wonderful scenario so you don't have to then applied all the rest of course if you would like to it's up to the student if they want to do the blue she and the yellow sheet just with those early applications and then follow up with another yellow she or another after they fear if it doesn't go the way they were hoping it's entirely up to the student if a school gets information and then you don't apply it doesn't matter they just they only are looking at applications that are complete and you might hear an e mail you know you might get an e mail saying you haven't completed application in which case it would be a good practice to call the school and say you're no longer appl  so the question is about early decision early action if the student should prepare all the materials for all the regular decision decision just in case because the window might be very small ideally yeah you want to have it all prepared and that's just to reduce stress later but sometimes kids like living on the edge and the weight and presumably you'll have most of the you'll have the common app already you should have you know if there's have it all done but my recommendation is it better to be better to be prepared so that at the you know worst case scenario you're completed everything and you can kind of relax the panic i think of trying to complete something in the short amount of time would be exacerbated by the reason why you had to do that which would be you didn't get it and so i would keep it as low stress as possible so want to be some so the question about the transcripts once we submit a transcript package once it's just a matter of clicking send so it's the preparation so we still want some time you know in case something happens but and mrs french is great she likes to get them in early so for a transcript if we've already done of the recommendation if everything's all uploaded it's really just a matter of clicking send so that can happen pretty quickly but we wouldn't want to we wouldn't be able to guarantee if we're being told like december twenty third so we would like couple a couple  yeah and some schools start just because of the volume of applications that a lot of these schools get now they've indicated that you know some some schools will if they get a complete application for a january first deadline sometime in november they'll just start reviewing it because they do have you know like fifty thousand applications to go through so that's fine to do you can you can send everything all at once just to make sure that you're done with  war or something and that's all stuff that you can submit if a student gets deferred which means that they get put from the early action or early decision pool to the regular pool and that's another opportunity to add any sort of information they don't want more information typically they want additional so they wouldn't lie maybe five more recommendations but maybe and it something they like the information if they're only asking for but they stopped more than one and two is fine the only issue would be if it says and some say that it says it only will accept one only look at that first recommendation that they receive you're still ok if you're sending more than what's required i just i caution sending too much because then it just seems it's excessive yes ideally you're only sending then you're sending the correct number to each school if you're in there or something that when they get an additional piece of information that should be ok but they are going to look at the first recommendation that they receive yeah my recommendation is to apply a week out that's american ideation i mean based on the the winter we had last year i had a week seems pretty safe you don't want to rush an application but if if  something crashes and you can't apply by the deadline it's really up to the school whether or not they're going to accept it there's not really anything we can do you know other than they can courage the student to call to and there is a very small percentage that are very selective the majority of colleges are looking for students like your students they want to accept them they want them to be there and so i think sometimes even just broadening the search broadening the perspective on what the goal is can be really helpful in a distress or because yeah there's just so many wonderful schools and they're competing with one another so their facilities are great so the more that i think you encourage your students to think in those terms the more the happier they'll be over there overall but i think you know just kind of reiterating that if you're going to find the place that's right for you and the reality is probably a thousand that would be wonderful for you