It's way too early to worry about FAFSA, but I found a great article in "Kiplinger's" on the pitfalls of the application. I've included the link here on the right under "Financial Aid." One thing I learned is that we need to get our taxes done as soon as possible in February as you need the information for the FAFSA application. Apparently the funds (not that we'll get anything except loans) are distributed first come, first served; and if you wait until April there won't be any left.
In the article are links to other interesting articles about college. One is a list of 100 public universities in the country that provide the best value (based on academic and cost factors). University of Washington is #7. UCSD is #11. Most of the UC's are in the top 70, but no CSU's made the list.
Did you know that UC covers your fees if the household income is under $70,000? I didn't know that. CSU doesn't do that, do they? That really makes the UC's a good value for low income families.
Thursday, July 22, 2010
Roadtrip!
In “Junior Year Redux,” I forgot to mention one of the most important things: college visits! This has to be one of the most fun parts of the whole process, and one of the most motivating, as well. I don’t care if your kids don’t think they want to leave home, or if they’re set on a particular school. Visit as many campuses as you can! It changes the mindset, and seems to make it more real.
During spring break of Emily’s junior year, I took both girls on a trip to tour various campuses, especially the frontrunners. Going in, Emily thought she wanted to go to UC Irvine because of its dance program and proximity to home. By the end of the trip, Irvine was off the table (too focused on science with only a nod to the arts); UC Santa Cruz and UC Santa Barbara (even though we didn’t even go to UCSB) were at the top of the list, and she had identified a major for the first time (art history). Not only, that, but it hooked Hannah as well.
To schedule a tour, go to each school’s admissions site. Shoot for a time when school is in session. If there’s a particular program or aspect of the school you’d like to see, find out how to get a special tour of that. In a couple cases, we had friends/family members provide the tours. That was great! We felt like we were getting the inside scoop on college life.
Remember, though, you don’t have to see everything before senior year, unless your child is dismissing something out of hand that you think he or she needs to see. We still have several visits we want to do this year.
If nothing else, it’s a great excuse for a roadtrip!
During spring break of Emily’s junior year, I took both girls on a trip to tour various campuses, especially the frontrunners. Going in, Emily thought she wanted to go to UC Irvine because of its dance program and proximity to home. By the end of the trip, Irvine was off the table (too focused on science with only a nod to the arts); UC Santa Cruz and UC Santa Barbara (even though we didn’t even go to UCSB) were at the top of the list, and she had identified a major for the first time (art history). Not only, that, but it hooked Hannah as well.
To schedule a tour, go to each school’s admissions site. Shoot for a time when school is in session. If there’s a particular program or aspect of the school you’d like to see, find out how to get a special tour of that. In a couple cases, we had friends/family members provide the tours. That was great! We felt like we were getting the inside scoop on college life.
Remember, though, you don’t have to see everything before senior year, unless your child is dismissing something out of hand that you think he or she needs to see. We still have several visits we want to do this year.
If nothing else, it’s a great excuse for a roadtrip!
Wednesday, July 21, 2010
Junior Year Redux
Since junior year is the big one, I thought a brief re-cap would be helpful. Colleges and universities use the grade point average of the sophomore and junior years for admission purposes. So here are some important considerations for sophomores and juniors hoping to compete in the UC or CSU systems:
1. Make sure your child is taking the required AND recommended A-G courses. This is what the UC and CSU systems call their entrance requirements, and they are usually a bit different from the district high school graduation requirements. Make sure your child is doing both. Here’s a brief summary (for a detailed explanation, see my links to the UC/CSU admissions requirements):
a l History/Social Science – 2 YEARS REQUIRED
b l English – 4 YEARS REQUIRED
c l Mathematics – 3 YEARS REQUIRED, 4 YEARS RECOMMENDED
d l Laboratory Science – 2 YEARS REQUIRED, 3 YEARS RECOMMENDED
e l Language Other than English – 2 YEARS REQUIRED, 3 YEARS RECOMMENDED
f l Visual and Performing Arts (VPA) – 1 YEAR REQUIRED
g l College-Preparatory Electives – 1 YEAR REQUIRED
2. Your sophomore or junior should be taking the highest level courses he or she can handle. Honors and AP classes are important because they are usually based on a 5.0 grading scale instead of a 4.0. This is where those high GPA’s come from that get students into the schools they want.
3. Good grades are REALLY important! Your child’s class rank is REALLY important! Insist on extra help if necessary. Current juniors who are in the top 9% of their class (top 4% for class of 2011) will be guaranteed admission to the UC system. This is called “Eligibility in the Local Context,” or ELC. Not all campuses admit these students automatically. Lately it has been UC Riverside and UC Merced, but check the individual campus websites to read their policies.
4. If your high school doesn’t administer the PSAT test in the fall of the sophomore and junior year, you should make that happen. An important indicator of SAT success is familiarity with the test. More is better. You can find the dates and locations on the College Board website (see my links).
5. Sometime between January and June, your junior should take his or her first SAT Reasoning test. Apply on the College Board website. Students may re-take the test up through December of their senior year.
6. SAT subject tests won’t be required for 2012 admissions (woo-hoo!). For the class of 2011, however, the UC system requires two. Many students took those at the end of the school year when they were preparing for AP exams in the same content areas.
7. Extracurricular activities are critical. Sports; clubs; leadership positions; work experience and focused, sustained community service make a huge difference. There are lots of kids out there with high GPA’s. How will your student stand out? These are activities that should be happening throughout high school. It’s easy to rationalize them away or put them off because kids have to work so hard just to get good grades. But these are things worth pushing. If your child wants to attend UCLA or UCB, it’s a must!!
I hope I remembered everything! I’ll be discussing some of these in more depths in future posts. Right now, though, it's time to get the girls off to school for their first day! I'll keep you posted!
1. Make sure your child is taking the required AND recommended A-G courses. This is what the UC and CSU systems call their entrance requirements, and they are usually a bit different from the district high school graduation requirements. Make sure your child is doing both. Here’s a brief summary (for a detailed explanation, see my links to the UC/CSU admissions requirements):
a l History/Social Science – 2 YEARS REQUIRED
b l English – 4 YEARS REQUIRED
c l Mathematics – 3 YEARS REQUIRED, 4 YEARS RECOMMENDED
d l Laboratory Science – 2 YEARS REQUIRED, 3 YEARS RECOMMENDED
e l Language Other than English – 2 YEARS REQUIRED, 3 YEARS RECOMMENDED
f l Visual and Performing Arts (VPA) – 1 YEAR REQUIRED
g l College-Preparatory Electives – 1 YEAR REQUIRED
2. Your sophomore or junior should be taking the highest level courses he or she can handle. Honors and AP classes are important because they are usually based on a 5.0 grading scale instead of a 4.0. This is where those high GPA’s come from that get students into the schools they want.
3. Good grades are REALLY important! Your child’s class rank is REALLY important! Insist on extra help if necessary. Current juniors who are in the top 9% of their class (top 4% for class of 2011) will be guaranteed admission to the UC system. This is called “Eligibility in the Local Context,” or ELC. Not all campuses admit these students automatically. Lately it has been UC Riverside and UC Merced, but check the individual campus websites to read their policies.
4. If your high school doesn’t administer the PSAT test in the fall of the sophomore and junior year, you should make that happen. An important indicator of SAT success is familiarity with the test. More is better. You can find the dates and locations on the College Board website (see my links).
5. Sometime between January and June, your junior should take his or her first SAT Reasoning test. Apply on the College Board website. Students may re-take the test up through December of their senior year.
6. SAT subject tests won’t be required for 2012 admissions (woo-hoo!). For the class of 2011, however, the UC system requires two. Many students took those at the end of the school year when they were preparing for AP exams in the same content areas.
7. Extracurricular activities are critical. Sports; clubs; leadership positions; work experience and focused, sustained community service make a huge difference. There are lots of kids out there with high GPA’s. How will your student stand out? These are activities that should be happening throughout high school. It’s easy to rationalize them away or put them off because kids have to work so hard just to get good grades. But these are things worth pushing. If your child wants to attend UCLA or UCB, it’s a must!!
I hope I remembered everything! I’ll be discussing some of these in more depths in future posts. Right now, though, it's time to get the girls off to school for their first day! I'll keep you posted!
Tuesday, July 20, 2010
All Aboard!
Tomorrow, my older daughter begins her senior year of high school, and her sister starts her freshman year. That puts us all on the college admission journey. Some may wonder why I’m on the journey when it's my child who wants to go to college. Kids have been getting themselves into college for years, right? Their counselors tell them the requirements, they take the classes and tests, then apply, right? Not anymore. It’s a whole new world. The admissions process, even in the California public university system, is complex and competitive. If students don’t get it right, they risk rejection, sometimes even by their local university. Public high school counselors have huge caseloads, so they have limited time to make sure that individual students are on track. Unless students are in academic support programs like AVID, they have to rely on parents to help navigate them through. That’s why I’m on it, and that’s why I’m here. My daughter and I have been muddling through this by calling on every resource we have. By creating a blog, I thought I might be able to both develop new resources and become a resource to families just starting the process.
So let me make a few things clear. We live in Southern California, and my daughter plans to apply, for the most part, to California public universities. We’re not concerning ourselves with elite private schools. That’s an entirely different level of preparation, and requires expertise WAY beyond mine. There are plenty of books and high-priced consultants you can employ if that’s your path. It’s not ours. And please keep in mind, I am NOT an expert! I’m learning as I go, and I hope that by making our process public, it will help lots of us. It’s funny, because I thought that having spent sixteen years as a high school educator, I knew something about all of this. Wrong! My learning curve has been steep. My best resources have been other parents and educators who have recently been down this path. With any luck, they’ll be following this blog and keeping us on track! I’d be lost without them!
So here we go! Welcome to the journey!
So let me make a few things clear. We live in Southern California, and my daughter plans to apply, for the most part, to California public universities. We’re not concerning ourselves with elite private schools. That’s an entirely different level of preparation, and requires expertise WAY beyond mine. There are plenty of books and high-priced consultants you can employ if that’s your path. It’s not ours. And please keep in mind, I am NOT an expert! I’m learning as I go, and I hope that by making our process public, it will help lots of us. It’s funny, because I thought that having spent sixteen years as a high school educator, I knew something about all of this. Wrong! My learning curve has been steep. My best resources have been other parents and educators who have recently been down this path. With any luck, they’ll be following this blog and keeping us on track! I’d be lost without them!
So here we go! Welcome to the journey!
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