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Module 3 of College Afforability Project: A Tutori ...
Video #4: How to Shop for Schools in CAP
Video #4: How to Shop for Schools in CAP
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All right, now we're, we're cooking with gas, we're in the schools tab here was where we're going to spend our time in this, this module, that's probably going to be one of the longer ones because we're going to go through some of the, the items we talked about in the PowerPoints in the slides but just how that now applies in real time with the schools. So, we have over 3800 schools in the system, every scholarship for every school is in there. We have. And we're going to give you a predict what the scholarship may be from that institution from a merit scholarship standpoint, and then from a need based side, we're going to go through and, you know, understand you ultimately what are the net costs of these schools. So, I put together a list of schools so we've got a combination of. And this is an important element to if people don't have their list of schools. You can actually create a default list of schools that go into every profile. If you would like to, from your profile, based on your geographics you're probably going to have some very common ones if we're able to provide you with people that are in your neck of the woods. So the important elements are, if people don't know what you want to have in there is one state school, one out of state state school, a small private, and then an elite private. So, you know, for my list here. These are listed you'll see an order of cost of. If we go, you know, by alphabetical right now. We've got, this is an Ohio based family so we've got Ohio State that's their state school. We've got Penn State that's an out of state state school. We've got schools like Colorado School of Mines and Denison, those are small privates. And then Harvey Mudd's a pretty elite school as well and then obviously MIT and Stanford, you've probably heard of those. And then RIT is another school that's a very good technology school, remember it's a computer science school. And we'll walk you through how to find these schools as well. But, you know, if this was the initial list, helping people understand the different types of schools that are out there. Right, so understanding if we go look at our state school, and we look at Ohio State we start there, this is a just kind of the marquee state school, one of them in Ohio. We see that there's admissions, financial aid, and outcomes. Okay, so every every school is going to have this. What does it take to get in. So what we show here is the middle 50% of last year's class. So this is the, you know, kind of the average GPA, kind of, if you're in the middle there and then the ACT and SAT range. So what this represents is the middle 50%. 50% of kids fell between 26 and 32. So, at a school like Ohio State these days, it is kind of a marquee state school, those that get scholarship probably have a 32 or better on their standardized test on their ACT, because that's just what it takes right so you'll see some other things over here. They have become a test optional, meaning that you don't have to submit test scores. It can give you a leg up certainly from an admission standpoint, if you have a good test score. That's not something you need to get into with families but you know being the college nerd that I am those are the kind of things I can say look, you have a 33, I will go ahead and submit that test score Ohio State. If you had a 21 and you had like a 4.3 weighted GPA. No, we're not submitting test scores. We want them just to look at your body of work from from your education so those are the kind of things when they say test optional to understand the Common App, I want to point out to people, Common App has I think over 1000 schools on it now where you know one application opens up August 1, you can apply that that Common App, then basically shoot your application to all the schools simultaneously. So that's Common App. There's links in here right up to the school's website so you know we can click here it'll go right up to their admissions criteria. You know how to apply when to apply all their deadlines all that stuff right inside the system. And then we put the rankings in here for the kind of the big ones, I don't put a ton of stake in these because because they're kind of easily manipulated. Honestly, but you know we've got, we put them in there, it's important to some people so we have the data so we added it to the system. We have how big is the school, obviously Ohio State's a big one for undergrad enrollment over 47,000, admit rate, just over half the kids that apply get in. And then our graduation rate, this has become an important one, because we show a four year graduation rate. And as you look at some schools that may have abysmal graduation rates, some of the other, honestly the college scorecard.gov which is their kind of what they want it to be kind of a college search hub for people from the federal government, we're showing six and eight year graduation rates. So, you know, we need to show our families that are working with us, we're going to get you to and through school in four years. And that's, that's an important element, you know, adding that fifth year. That's 20%, 25% of the cost right so and oftentimes if there's scholarships those go away. So, you know, this is a, you know, we have a really talented student here that had a, you know, high test scoring and 31. So, but I don't have state, they're pretty stingy. It's an in state so probably get maybe $2,000 in scholarship. That's probably what they're going to be able to offer. They just don't have, you know, very few people get up into these, these type of scholarships that are full tuition. So, but you might. So understand you know that that's kind of it from an admission standpoint and then scholarships are driven, you know, we've got the requirements for each and the deadlines listed over here. If you want to go learn more about these particular scholarships, it should click and give you some more information on it. So, a ton of information in there again on every school. And then if you want to override the scholarship you can, you know, you can override it here and click it off and take off the old one but our estimates usually are pretty darn good. So we have here scholarship projection totals or estimates only algorithms include award amounts of the student meets minimum requirements for the highlight awards on test scores scholarship requirements and state residency. So all that stuff's kind of factored into our algorithms to project what you're going to get. We find those are pretty accurate for those. So admissions and scholarship projections are driven based on the merit student as we talked about some of the trainings and then financial aid is obviously based on the school's business model. So what we have here is the information that they've submitted. So we've got the use what method do they use federal method they use the FAFSA. Here's the total cost for the 24 school year. We inflate by 3% per year. So that's probably, that's kind of about what we've been seeing in school increases so you know if you have a freshman or sophomore we're going to project that it's going to go up a little bit each year. Then we have you know what's going to cost to go here's tuition room board, they're all in cost you know getting us 30,000. And then we have okay so if you have need how much they need about 70% is what they need, but only 85% of that 70% is in grants. So that's important because we kind of break through the noise and just show here's your actual discount from college that we think you'll get from grants. So instead of, you know, so the other piece of this that means that part of it's met with work study and subsidized loans. Right, so which we've covered in some of the other materials but so just understand that's where we try to just break through the noise and get to what's the net cost for this family, you know, they're going to get a discount from scholarships you're going to get a discount from from need based aid and just we just want to show what the actual cost cutting is. So as you'll hear me say again and again, work study subsidized loans are great. They're a way to help pay for college, they do not reduce the cost of college. Right, so, so here and then you'll see in here we've got a merit transparency score. So for 800 schools are in the merit transparency study so if they offer scholarships. We're trying to give folks an A through an F on how transparent, are you, do we know what it takes to get the scholarships that you offer. Right, so comparing it to net price calculators. So C is kind of in the middle, they've got them on the website but you know it's not really always clear what it is. So, the A's are ones that have automatics they say if you have this GPA and this ACT you'll get this amount of money. Those are the A's, they're loud and proud about. And then we've got how many kids get a non need merit scholarship, so particular families that aren't financial aid candidates, this is where we focus our efforts finding schools that will give them scholarships. What's that average, just over six to 700 bucks, and downward per student. It's not as important, but this piece here. We talked about need for a lot of the families coming through the college affordability project. We're going to be looking at, you know, schools, trying to find schools that meet at or near 100% of need, and as you'll see when we get down to the net cost of the school side by side, schools that have a much higher sticker price are actually going to be much cheaper for the types of families, we may see. So, the rule, the thing is, don't rule any schools out based on the sticker price, it's all about what you pay. Right, so that's the thing we'll hear that we repeat that again and again. And then outcomes. So, we've got, here's your major, and from Ohio State, this is the average starting salary from those that provided information, and they were trying to give it a profile of kind of four different pieces here. So, every family would love to have no loans, that's ideal. If you can have just the federal direct student loan, the $27,000 over four years, that's actually a great outcome. So, you know, for clients just making sure, educating, informing them on what that federal direct student loan is, why they're probably want to use it, and then also help them understand that they may qualify for even more than $27,000, some of our high need families may get even more on top. But that $27,000, use it or lose it each year. So, don't be tempted to just, you know, use the money you have for year one, because you can't call back and get it. You know, just that's an important lesson to, you know, every family we meet with, understand, you know, to use it or lose it each year. So, that federal direct under $27,000, you're going to come out of school with a payment of, you know, $275 to $300 a month. You'll be able to make that and get it done with by the time you're 10 years out. If you go over your first year salary in total student loans, we're going to caution you because that's going to be difficult for you to repay. You're going to owe back more than 10% of your pay towards a student loan. So, those are kind of the rails we put up, and then comparing schools side by side, then we can say, okay, where do these fit in each of these buckets? So, that's Ohio State. That's a state school. What you'll typically see, because they serve so many students, you know, the endowment per student with these grants, you know, again, the way that process is going to work is they're going to go for federal money first, state money second, if there's any local grants, and then they're going to go into their own pocket for their grants and need-based scholarships. So, that's all kind of baked in into the grants, the percentages. So, that's all, you know, when we just show one number, we're just going to show here's your discount from grants, and it's all kind of baked in there. We don't break it out in the system. Because it really, again, it's just breaking through the noise to say, what's this actually going to cost us? Okay, so that's an Ohio State version. Then if we go to the other end of the spectrum, you know, you'll see the cost of attendance here. If we list out by that, highest to lowest, but you'll see when I flip the switch here with this caret and say go by net cost, that list becomes very different. The highest priced schools float to the top. And why is that? Well, that's because of how they do need-based aid, right? So, if we look at a school like MIT, obviously very difficult to get in, admit rate less than 5%, right? And so, obviously, it's one of the top schools in the country. But for our students that are coming through the Affordability Project, I think the goal for a lot of them will be talented students that are not thinking about these types of schools because they cost $83,000. Right, but what we know because of financial aid, they've got over a million dollars per student in endowment. And we know how they run their business. If you have need, they need 100% of it. Right, and most all of that is in grants. Merit Transparency score, not applicable because they don't have scholarships. And that's true of most of our elite privates. You know, they simply don't offer scholarships. But as we talked about, like with consensus schools, they've said we're going to award need-based aid, we're going to meet most of that, and the goal is to not have people have to take out student loans. So whatever your EFC is, we expect you to pay that, we'll pick up the rest. Right, so that conversation for our families is really important. This becomes an ideal scenario because of the budget, we actually are going to have no loans. So, you know, that's an MIT, you know, so that's that elite private. So putting something like that on the list, giving them something, a target to shoot for, hard part's getting in. I'm not trying to belittle that point, but, you know, we have diverse kids coming through our program and through the College Affordability Project, these schools are going to want them. So if they have, you know, if they can compete and at least get in, that's the kind of stuff they're looking for to add to their diversity of the education pool as well. So that's an MIT, right, so that's an important element to understand. They actually floated to our most affordable cost because of how they meet need-based aid. And then if we look at some other schools kind of in the middle, we look at a school like, let's do Colorado School of Mines. So Colorado School of Mines is a very good school out in Colorado. So, you know, pretty difficult to get in, admit rate, but when you look at how much they do with need-based, they only meet 65%, and only 29% of that isn't grants. So, you know, but a lot of kids get scholarships. So, you know, don't rule it out. You know, if you're a scholarship opportunity, we're projecting to get $9,000 off, but it's already, you know, pretty handsome price tag, $64,000. So for our families, you know, if this is a high-need family, this type of school is going to end up being quite a bit more expensive than what would be considered, I think, a better education at some of these other schools. So again, it's a great school, but our net price, you know, the scholarships are going to give us are great, but like it's still going to be cost us a pretty penny. And then to pick on my alma mater, when we look at a school like Penn State, the only really the grants you could get there, when we look at their business model, they only meet 61% of need. And this is true of a lot of our large state schools. So if you're coming from out of state, the other thing I'll tell you is you're not going to get any of their need-based financial aid, because that's reserved for in-state kids. So even though we project this, you'll see we don't actually put it on a projection. If you were Pell Grant eligible, we would project that, you know, this year the max is $73.85 going into next year. So, you know, over $7,000 in Pell Grants, but other than that, they're not going to give you any need-based aid. We projected a small scholarship. They're stingy because they can't be. So, you know, out-of-state state schools are not all created equal. You know, the ones that are kind of these marquee state schools, they run a tight budget, but they got a lot of kids to serve, and the need-based aid for out-of-state kids typically is just not there. So that's an important element when you're helping families navigate this process. You know, just fundamentally, the way they operate their businesses are very different. Like they don't have a ton of scholarships. They don't have a ton of need-based aid. They serve, you know, majority of the students come are from in-state. So, you know, this fascination with crossing the state line to triple tuition, be very cautious of that. Particularly, you know, now we know, though, hey, that's actually the most expensive option. Certainly not the price tag, but the net cost, right? So when we're in the schools tab, you know, the next piece is kind of jumping through and saying, okay, what's driving all of this for us? And we go, you know, we start to get into the reports functions. So when we look at the first year, what we're going to show is where's the money coming from? So we're going to show here's the cost. Here's our EFC. Here's our need eligibility. And then here's our discount from grants. And if a scholarship, it would be there as well. So what happens is whichever number is higher, that's going to win out. So in this case of Colorado School of Mines, the scholarship is a better discount than we get in need-based. So we're going to say your net cost is $54,000. So that's called Colorado School of Mines. So now, again, if we sort things by net cost, MIT floats to the top. So here's our need. Here's the need eligibility. Here's the grants, right? The same at Stanford and Harvey Mudd, some of these great schools. You know, you got a $1,000 scholarship would be, you know, that we want the grants. So $8,400, right? And then a school like Denison floats in, small private, great school, good education. But it's going to cost more because they just don't quite have as much to give. Some of those more marquee schools. And again, here, you know, people get the temptation of, we got a great scholarship offer from this university at Rochester. I'm like, cool, it's $22,000, but this family's got need. But don't get persuaded by the fact you get a great scholarship, because if you get $22,000 off, you still got to come up with $50,000. So it's all about what we're going to pay out of pocket. And this really creates transparency to say, here's what this looks like on a one-year basis. Here's where the money's coming from, right? You'll see the slight differences in calculations and the EFCs. But that really gives people, gosh, okay, this is what that looks like. And then if you extrapolate that, you're going to go and you're going to say, okay, borrowing analysis says, if you went here, based on our budget, here's our net cost. Here's our budget. Here's our funding gap, right? So in this example that we're using here to show Colorado School of Mines, we have a funding gap of $164,000. You'd have a 10-year monthly payment, a payment of $1,800, right? Or you can stretch it out over 25 years, be in debt until you're 50, and pay three times as much in interest. Not a great solution. So if we say, let's flip that, we actually have schools based on our budget where we have a surplus, right? If you're a kid that's right enough to get into any of these schools, this is not going to be the end of the line. So again, you know, these are, I'm using some very high-end schools, I realize that, but just to illustrate, you know, that there is an affordable path to college, you know, a great small private school actually ends up being significantly less than our state school. You know, that's kind of the lesson when we look at, you know, a lot of kids, you know, one of the students I worked with a couple of years ago, they were looking at Ohio State. They got about exactly what we're illustrating here. They got a $3,000 scholarship, but Georgetown ended up costing them less than $12,000 a year to go. So, you know, these are the kinds of families we're going to see through the Affordability Project and just say, hey, what are your dream schools? Let's dream big. Let's put them on the board. You got to get in, you got to do the work, but hey, don't rule them out. So illustrating, hey, these are the types of programs. This is the money that's out there at some of these private schools. So don't rule out schools based on the sticker price. It's all about what your family is going to pay, right? And then, so while we're here to kind of go through the finish line of outcomes, you know, now we've got, here's our outcomes of what's the funding gap. We got a bunch of zeros and then ideals. We got some good, so we're not going to, we're going to have less student loans and we're going to make our first year out. But some of these, we're going to caution you because you're going to take out more student loans. You're going to make your first year out. So, you know, finding the options, understanding the differences between, you know, our out-of-state state schools, what seems to be the affordable in-state state school, but don't rule out the private schools because they have so much need-based aid to offer. So that's really what we want to drive home. So, and sometimes, you know, the initial list of schools is not going to have everything. Maybe none of the schools are affordable. So advanced search, very powerful function inside of CollegeAid Pro. So basically this is built so that you can shop for college like you shop for an airline ticket on Travelocity or Orbitz, right? So there's 3,800 schools in the system. So if I shrink this down, the only, you know, here's all the schools in the system. Gosh, that's a lot of schools. How do we find ones that are good for us? Well, what's important to you? I want within a day's drive, right? I want to make sure there's just four-year schools. The state's not necessarily as important. We shrunk this down to 1,000. Well, can you just show me mid-size schools? 157. I think we did what, computer science, right? So now we've got 85 schools that are in there. Can you shrink them just a little bit? Just show me those that at least have a Forbes ranking. We're down to 44. And then we can go over here and say, by any of these criteria, what's important to us? Well, I want to see schools that are going to meet the highest percentage of need. And here we've got a list of schools that are going to meet the highest percentage of need that meet all of our criteria. So these are schools you might want to start looking at. So when you're working with families, going through those criteria and saying, hey, here's some schools that, all these schools that have 100%, they're going to be difficult to get into. But don't rule them out. The sticker prices, right? Because we know it's all about our net cost. What's our four-year estimated net cost? So that really becomes our key. And then what's our funding gap? So if we want to go and say, can you also make sure that, just show me schools that at least, I only take out the federal direct student loan. That shrinks our list down to 22. And so we still have an even better list where we say, gosh, we can get out of there with just a federal direct student loan or maybe no loans. And here's the type of schools we're looking at. So using this advanced search, as you go through the schools and then creating this, and you can email it, you can download it on the spot and send it to them. So it's pretty cool functionality that when we show people this type of functionality, what you'll hear is, gosh, I never knew a service like this existed. Because it didn't. And if you're working with other families that you're going, gosh, they're kind of on that border, they're giving us the most merit scholarship to meet all those criteria. And now you can pull that up. And that list is very different because these schools don't meet as much need, but they're giving you great merit scholarship. So just fundamentally, the way those schools run their business, that's kind of the whole point of what we're trying to break through. It's all about what you pay, but the way you shop for college is not predetermined. One family you work with may be very different than another. So finding the schools, understanding, meeting the criteria. If you're switching that search to large schools, it shrinks it to four. So those criteria, we think are a very important element in helping really wow people that come through the program. And again, as you're going through this, encourage them, this is where when you're shopping for schools, this is where it's at. So the next steps we're going to go through, how do we apply this once we actually apply and compare awards and get down to how to pay? So it was a powerful session. It's probably one of the longer, but happy shopping.
Video Summary
In this video, the speaker discusses the features and functionality of a college planning and financial aid management tool. They mention that the module they are focusing on is the Schools Tab, where they will explore different schools and their costs, scholarships, and financial aid options. The tool provides information on over 3800 schools, including scholarships available at each institution, the predicted cost of attendance, and estimated financial aid packages. The speaker emphasizes that it is important for users to create a list of schools they are interested in and the tool allows for customization based on the user's geographic location and preferences. They also mention that the tool includes information on admissions criteria, rankings, and outcomes such as average salaries after graduation. The video demonstrates how to search for schools based on specific criteria, such as location, size, and programs offered. The speaker also highlights the importance of considering net cost rather than just sticker price when comparing schools. They explain how the tool can help users determine their net cost after factoring in scholarships, grants, and other financial aid options. The video concludes by suggesting next steps, including the application process and comparing financial aid award offers. No credits were mentioned for this video.
Keywords
college planning
financial aid management
scholarships
admissions criteria
net cost
financial aid award offers
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