so usually a start i guess where they went to college so where do you go to school sure i want to say the right number see in fairfield connecticut oh ok great so let's go back in time before we get into what your how did you end up picking the school and just start thinking about college is it freshman year senior year when did it all begin for me i really did start thinking about college probably into my junior year i was a student athlete in high school i was also a member of the band and how outside curricular activity is i wasn't really thinking yet about college planning but once i started to i started looking at different schools at that point i was getting recruited by some different colleges and universities in the local area in connecticut so that open my doors to some places i wasn't even thinking about in the local area i started making college was it's probably some time at the end of the summer of my junior year heading into my senior year i had coaches come in and watch of my games so my recruiting process was a little bit different than a traditional student but it it's good and i started making visits during that senior year and then pick my my choice probably in the winter time of my senior year so now you want to go play heard sacred heart was very small we had a bottle i want to say about one thousand students at the time it's definitely grown since then but that's the school i liked i like having that small atmosphere getting to know my professors knowing the curriculum around it really was you got to know everyone it was a family type community i had my football friends i also had my friends outside in the community at school it was really that small atmosphere when you are a football coach specially collegiate level is you do a lot recruiting so i was on the road trip hurting talking to students talking to family members parents talking about the institution i was at but they're also hey what are you looking for  talking to students the whole well over the whole range of what they're looking for in school it's not just football boy looking for academically size of school location all these kind of things so really counseling students as well as we were recruiting them so then i that was during that process and i had the opportunity at that point to interview at wagner college that was in the i was a december of two thousand or one thousand nine hundred nine actually and interviewed for what hammond director of athletics the head football coach at wagner college i got the job in january of two thousand and spent eleven seasons coaching for what law hamline bell a legendary football coach there and also athletic director  and just a great experience lag near to me was that small community it was under two thousand students it's one of the the seventh division one seventh smallest division once to sion in the u s where there's a lot of things going on on campus but having that division one opportunity was phenomenal so i spent seven years coaching there and then went on to assist math electric there for academics and compliance where i was still very competitive so we tried to get the high g p a which we won the award in the northeast conference for high g p a and also community service in the northeast conference where wagner colleges all the institutions compete for trying to do the most community service and outreach in the community and we always try to work that way whether college and then i had the opportunity to move on to as assistant socio ethnic director for rules education at hofstra university under jeff hathaway also was able to sit on a and c level a legislative committee so all those things were going great for me but my heart was still at wagner college so i was able to talk to some my my colleagues at wagner college and i spoke to our our senior vice president for enrollment angelo ramo things were opening up for a director admissions position at wagner and we spoke a little bit a few times on the phone and all of a sudden one thing led to another in may of two thousand and fourteen i came back to wagner college as director of admissions well so you're almost been there almost four years the been there four years as a director but almost eighteen years overall yeah which is really exciting  der has a really deep place in my heart great so now tell us a little bit about the college itself it's in staten island yes we are located in staten island new york our campus is about  manhattan is phenomenal and some of the other buildings you actually see the verizon bridge and all the waterways around it so it's a really beautiful campus actually the princeton review a few years back but as a number one most beautiful college in the u s for a few years running so it's a very it's a warm place it's a place where it's very family oriented we have about two thousand students so it's now place you're going to get lost in the crowd but still big enough and using the resources that new york has to offer i think is phenomenal because we're we're a little campus we're a little school but we won the biggest cities in the world so being able to use all the resources from an educational standpoint professional standpoint  cultural standpoint and also social standpoint our students use all the resource new york has to offer great so let's go into admissions how does all all work at macarthur and share a start that with who we are so we talk about those three things that draw people to wagner and then what we're looking for from a mission side the first thing is our location which we talked about new york city is a great software it's the second thing is the wagner plan we call it the wagner plan for the practical liberal arts where we do a lot of learning by doing it's really a hands on approach and very comprehensive that's not just for freshman where we have a freshman learning community in those kind of things we really have a from a freshman year your engineer we really do some more of this and then a really ends with your senior capstone and internships and how we're sort of real rounding out your educational experience at wagner college and a lot of the always talk mother outcomes because of all the practical and professional things that we do at wagner i think our students are really leading a great have a great success rate after graduation so those are some of the things that i really want to talk about so location will put aside that wagner plan  our students come in and every one of our students from their freshman year are involved the learning community where they spend thirty hours of experimental learning outside of this community it could be hands on experience it could be research it could be  community service it could be a lot different things in and around not just staten island but around the new york community even new jersey in some mamas county but some in hudson county and some other areas which is really  nice a learning community is comprised of about twenty four students taught by two different professors including three classes so in those classes tomorrow off majored at this point so we have one in the in the past which was a economics class and one that was a science so was more environmental science class was an economics class and you think of how these two classes would go together but the professors talked about going to a part of actually new jersey that had higher levels of pediatric cancers so the economic side went down is that ok with these higher levels of cancers what happened to the economics of that area then housing prices go up or go down as we know probably went down a little bit what happened with some of the businesses and local government and those kind of things how were they dealing with the problems of higher rates of pediatric cancers the environmental science said ok why are these cancers happening so they did water research and land research and why are these things happening through that and they met with the e p a and they met with all the state and local governments agencies that really could form these students experiences that third class you had economics you had science that third class we call in r s t reflective to tory a class and that class or pulls those ideas above those classes together so say there's twenty four year economics there's twenty four students in your science class there's only twelve students in your  that professor one of those two professors is also your advisor throughout your freshman year so it really helps that transition the college so they're really trying to enhance that and tell them how you know the right where's the writing center  although the from the resources that wagner has to offer but then also pulling those topics together and natural go out and do the research and all that so that's sort of their first experience so you think about trying to effect change in a community when you're seventeen or eighteen years old right off the bat learning what's happening in the classroom reading the book and taking your notes but then going to a place and actually seeing it's how it's affecting real life people can really make it impact for a student  during their software engineer we have an intermediate learning community almost the same summer team taught courses and we also allow students to study abroad which is great because we want to give them those experiences so about twenty five percent of our students at wagner study abroad some point throughout their career which is really nice all they do is hear me learning community and then during the senior year every student one hundred percent of our students have an internship for the graduate well so using that practical experience is is phenomenal most of our students are doing two or three before for graduation so they're getting that kind of really good network educational and hands on learning that's really needed to be successful shows graduation so now upstate new york long island new jersey a lot who is coming from and connecticut area but new england is a very good hotbed for us right now on the eastern coast to california we have right now in our student body we have forty five different states represented and thirty two different countries so we have students from bangladesh we have students from we have a last two cents from which is kind of funny new zealand in australia which  team do a lot of recruiting down there those students do come to us very regularly but so we'll go through the process of talking to students we like to get students on campus so we do have major events throughout the year a major event and some a also a lot of smaller visit day struck the summer and throughout the year we try to get students to campus to take a look at what wagner can offer them and then we go through that recruiting process where they start getting increase we course we have all of our pamphlets and brochures and all that kind of stuff on line our website and social media we're trying to get people interested in wagner college and knowing where our offerings are and then moving on right through where we pushing for applications and we want to do is to apply so we can then look at how they can be successful at how how many students are usually an average amount of students at a coming in every year every year our incoming class about four hundred fifty know only one year under the new s a t s where it's or was a balancing act and we're trending more towards a twelve on twelve hundred we are test optional so a student who feels that their academic profile is a lot more  shows what do you are as a student we don't have the smith received the scores we do have a physician's assistant program which doesn't demand that you send your test scores in but other than that or other programs are test optional so now what are the requirements like for let's say early action or early decision for regular scheduling of applications so how does one start all our deadlines for our physician's assistant program our theater program our theater tech program and also our early action is that was december first so going to next year will be december first we'll notify i'd say ninety percent of those students before christmas before the holidays from early action standpoint that if they've gotten a decision if they have a complete application before december first r p a program is very often the system program is very selective so we'll know file students before the holidays if they can come in for an interview and our interview process is with our physician assistant staff and students come in january our theater we've been ranked by the princeton review for theater  i theater company i think we're four three this year in the country but for the past two or three decades we've been in the top five so phenomenal amount of students coming through our theater theater program and we'll let those students know if they come in to audition by the first week in january and now common application just are not over yet and they're coming up actually opens in august but a lot of our students are you know by the time they get back into school and get into the of things they're really starting to apply in late september because our deadline is a little bit later than some places a lot lot of schools institutions down more towards the middle and in the south will maybe have a november fifteenth deadline in those kind of things we had just one standard deadline for early action which is december first so we'll see a lot more activity with students applying at the end of september and through october or into november and then regular missions we want to write until february fifteenth when we stop acceptin applications at that point those students will be no if i within x two weeks wow that fast that's right around we have since we blow out early action from early decision we have a lot more students who are applying early action they wan know if they have the ability to get that answer sooner with not having a binding contract like an early decision early action is a nonbinding where we let the students know if they've been admitted to the institution where early decision is college does that help students out what what are some of the things that they can look forward to get some help ninety five percent of our students gets kind of financially package why in that ninety five to ninety eight percent get some kind americans package so we range in merit based scholarships depending on the student's profile we don't just look at the numbers where it's not just about g p a class ranking and and test scores and all that because we are test optional sometimes that's not a factor we also wonder about the student so that will range of course the matrix of academics is a key component of this but we want to know about the student when the student comes in and when they interview us we want to know about them are they the right fit for wagner college and the other part of it is wagner college writes it for them so that's a balancing act through the admissions are we giving it where we're at the point of entry we're giving america a scholarship and that will range the nice thing is we work with a company also called raise me and raise me is a like a portal sort of that allows students to now find out how much merit based money they can possibly get on the front end so they can now track if they get so many asr their grades or this or their s a t s scores or this or if they're visiting campuses they can earn money towards a merit based scholarship at least know that at the front end i know i can get at least x amount going towards wagner college most institutions are andre's me will probably i hope at that point because they're applying all that may give a little bit more but you know he's going in hey it's just become possibly a four or four before me at the front even before i apply now are a lot of schools going in that direction where they use this service i'm not sure if everyone's doing you but i know we are because i think in this day and age where you have especially in new york where you have free educate you know possibility to  institutions are giving merit based there is that there's a three different criteria you can get you can get merit based money you can also get institutional need based money at wagner college rates on your family's needs and there's also state and federal money that goes and is you have to then spend as much time so if you get a scholarship for four years you also and then have to live in the eleven the state for four years and work in the state in four years or that becomes a loan and some other stipulations there  state school in new york and it's only for new york ready for new york residents yes only for new york residents the other thing within that is once you get selected then you had those simulations with for years you must graduate in a certain time period or that becomes a loan and also covers just tuitions does not cover room and board so if you're a staten island resident and you want to go to binghamton you're still be paying room and board for binghamton where if you're maybe going to a place like ladder college and getting a private education a place like one or college we might be just as affordable for one of those students if they're going somewhere else yeah interesting so the the process first students come in the wagner  really is the first step is to come visit the school yes right we want to visit the school or send a raise their hands we want them somehow the raise their hands says i don't want to get more information about wagner college so  with that is doing a line we have a question here say i really want to get more information about our theater theater department or psychology department and that information to us and then we could then respond and we'll send out more literature about the different departments or just about wagner college in general once we have that information we have a mission councils go around the country again we blanket the local area where we'll be maybe a college where we can for women's water polo so our student athletes are doing very well but all of our division one sports against the theater is a very selective program for us and very good program for us somewhere other majors too that are very engaged in the community and want to get back to the community they work with our port richmond partnership so whether college partners with port richmond parks that mountain had a little bit of economic downturn a lot of immigrants in that area  so a lot of our different departments and also the bond program works with them to help in a lot of different ways so we have a office in the school that we we send students over  it might be business students the help of business or or prospective teachers who are in the education program going down to help teach some of our p a in nursing programs go down there and talk about health and hygiene in those kind of things so it's really a great partnership of our students giving back to the community but also the community giving back to our students giving them great resources and practical experience so we're calling the end of our show those goes very quick so usually i ask my guests what advice you want to give to  parents out there and their sons and daughters that are interested in coming to wagner college sure i think the no matter what you're dealing with i'm always saying like the hair club for men guy because i had a my daughter is a sophomore at ladder college now but we looked at a lot different schools so i was just starting this journey as director of missions it also was an opportune for me to step on both sides the table so i was going around were looking for her for schools is talk to a lot of people do your research i look for is that the size of the institution you're looking for does it have what he or she wants academically is it is there some extra curricular where he has a tie to that institution and then talk about finances and be real realistic are some of these institutions are talking about are the in your preparation range and maybe not can i talk to them at the front end to say is it is your scholarships available or financial aid available so you know sort of going into it ok i have my group s of institutions i'm looking at ok here's my high and academically maybe here is my my high and affordability standpoint but there here's my low until very well thank you very much for coming on writing this is great thank you so you've been watching the secrets of college planning