all righty good morning welcome to another edition of college coffee talks with your hosts andy lockwood and pearl lockwood hi everybody nailed it super bowl mvp runner-up pearl awkward hello hello and vivi andy lockwood okay that's the same joke yeah I know all right uh if you are equipped with an adult or non-adult beverage please join us in a synchronized sip. Good morning. Good morning. Pearl made the coffee today. Like she usually does. It's delicious. Thank you. Okay. So Kyle's coffee talk is all about sort of, you know, let's review the week that was and get it off our chest, update you on, on trends and news and things that we see in the world of college admissions, college financial aid, Particularly lately, there's been a lot of news about the FAFSA and delays. Today, we're also going to cover a couple of topics that we think are important. One of which is parent mistakes. We're not judging, but we want to help you avoid these mistakes should you be in a similar situation as the scenario that we're going to be covering. And I am also going to be sharing a negotiation case study. for a small business owner client that we have uh out on the west coast uh so I think that'll be helpful too if you are a business owner um even if you're not actually I think it might be helpful too to talk about this stuff so say hi in the chat let us know that we're coming in loud and clear good morning michelle yes who's joining us one of our non-shy listeners yeah well you can you can see like who's actually watching Hi, Royce. Wow, you're up early. Out on the West Coast. Yeah, where's Royce? She's in L.A. or California. L.A. or California. Well, in California. L.A. is not right. Hello, Sue. Hello, Carol. Hello to Michelle and Royce. Good morning. Yeah, I see a bunch of people coming on here. All right, cool. So this is also an opportunity to get your questions answered and get some free coaching. um whatever you want or anything goes for the next uh 28 minutes so uh pearl talk a little bit about the um the fafsa stuff that delays the latest and the and the greatest okay so as as you all probably are aware at this point uh there was a new iteration of the fafsa this year And instead of it being released, in addition to substantive changes throughout FAFSA, et cetera, in addition to it not being released October 1st, as it is every year, it was not released until December 31st. And even then, in the beginning, it didn't really work so well. They're still having lots of trouble. At this point, this is where we are at. no school it was just announced on the 31st of january that no school is going to get any of the substantive fafsa information or an awareness that you have filed or anything about your fafsa nor will you have the ability to go into an already you're already submitted fafsa to make any corrections for mistakes you may have made or add additional schools should you have more to add to your list or you initially had more than 20 schools because you're not able to submit to more than 20 schools at a time. You're not going to be able to do that until mid-March at the earliest. Wow. So we're getting a bunch of calls in from our current clients and prospective clients about, you know, my child is going to be a junior in college next year. I need to get their FAFSA in. And the reality is that you don't yet. I mean, Pearl's been slaving away and pumping out CSS profiles and other financial aid applications, including the FAFSA. They're not going to see it until March anyway. So there's broader repercussions here. And it's not only for people who are filing The FAFSA is going to push back the whole timeline in general. Exactly. So you have some language here, right? Yeah, that's right. So I pick two different schools. One school is Villanova. And the reason I picked these two particular schools, Villanova requires both the CSS profile and the FAFSA. So Villanova is going to be slightly armed with some ability to provide a financial aid package. They'll probably do what they used to do. years back, I won't sidetrack too much, but what they used to do is issue a financial aid package shortly after an admissions decision, and that award would be called a provisional award, waiting for the ultimate finalized FAFSA information, should there be anything they need to square between the initial award and the ultimate FAFSA that comes in. So because Villanova takes the CSS profile, there's going to be an emphasis on the results of that CSS profile and will largely be the basis of that financial aid package, you know, lest anything seriously contradicts it with the FAFSA that ultimately gets submitted. Can I do a quick timeout here? So just take a step back. Every college in the country requires the FAFSA. That's delayed. They're not getting the information as we record this another month from now, at least. At least, is what they say, at the earliest. Then many schools like Villanova, 300 or 400 colleges, require an additional application, which is about 10 times as long in some cases, at least five times as long as the FAFSA, and that is called the CSS profile. Then there's also a few schools that take their own financial aid applications. But let's stick to the funnel here. So there were no delays with the CSS profile. It's really for colleges to have their own money, their own endowments. This is not pertaining to federal funds. It's pertaining to schools like Ivy Leagues and private schools like Villanova and Boston College and whatever. They already have a lot of this information. So what Pearl's saying is they're going to be issuing preliminary awards and then subject to, you know, verify them. Provisional awards. Provisional awards, right. Subject to later once they get the FAFSA, which might not be, you know, they may not actually be able to review the FAFSA for a month after they get it. So then they'll, firm up the offer, I guess. Is that what you're saying? Yes, exactly. Just so you can hear the language, this went out from Villanova to all of its applicants and its students. The Department of Education has announced that there will be significant processing delays related to the delivery of the FAFSA data to the schools. As a result, we will not begin to receive FAFSA submissions until mid-March at the earliest. While this delay may present several challenges, we are pleased to inform you that we'll be providing estimated financial aid offers to admitted students based on the results of the CSS profile and required documents. So they're basically they're telling you that's how they're going to do things. OK, so now. OK, so let me let me jump in. So. In most traditional years, the housing deposit that Villanova and other schools was due May 1st. It doesn't seem like they are delaying their housing deposits because they're making financial aid awards based on the CSS profile. Right. That's correct. So whether or not, but their language is, we will do our best is what it says to give you an estimated package by our posted notification date. So they are, it's very noncommittal. Well, to be fair, I mean, a lot of this stuff is out of their control. It is. It certainly is. So I think that's good. That's smart of them. Yeah. But in many cases, and I guess you're going to read this other language from a different school that doesn't take the profile, no matter whether you filed for financial aid or not, you might have that housing deposit deadline pushed. And I think that has to happen. I would imagine so. And it's not new. They did this in 2020 during the COVID year. um the housing deposit deadline was pushed back from may 1st to june 1st I would not be at all surprised if that happens again this year dark times okay so now that's one solution for the schools that take the css profile a little they'll get it like almost right okay there's a solution however what about the schools that only take the fafsa They are getting no financial information. Basically, all the students are going to be indistinguishable from a financial standpoint when they are making admissions decisions. And then, of course, they have to wait to issue financial aid packages. What University of Connecticut, which only takes the FAFSA. says to all of its applicants and students recently, colleges and universities were informed that there will be a significant delay in the release of FAFSA data information that is required to make offers of financial aid. The Department of Education now estimates not until mid-March, making it impossible for UConn to release financial aid offers at the same time in which admissions decisions are made. and released on March 1st. So what UConn has decided to do about this is, for starters, they are extending their deadline from March 1st to March 15th. It's probably not going to make any difference. It's probably not going to hold either. It probably is not going to hold. I'm predicting a revised timeline. And that's exactly what they do. You know, originally this FAFSA data was getting to the colleges the end of January, January 31st. And what happened as it always happens this way on the 31st, they rolled out a new announcement, further delays, not till the end of March. Okay. That's how they talk. So UConn say, says that they are anticipating their offers of financial aid to be available in early April. Again, I think that could be wishful thinking. I think you can all expect to have some delay this year. And then please don't let the panic stoke from this. Everybody is under these same constraints. It'll get worked out. If you are admitted to a school and you have submitted financial aid forms, you will get a financial aid package. Are you going to have untold amounts of time to evaluate it and negotiate and make a decision? Probably not. But everybody will be. No, right. But everybody is under these same rules for better or for worse. Yeah, I mean, if the housing deposit deadline goes from May 1st to June 1st and then they push it again, that's getting closer to the time the kids show up for orientation. So it might be a little sloppy this year. Yeah. Anything else? Not on that, no. Nice. Okay. All right. I see some activity here. Our son Harry. A lot of action from our son Harry. Our son Harry is very active. That's great. Good morning, Gary. If anyone has any questions, this is an opportunity to pop them in here. Hello, Dawn, Lana, Carol, Louise, Yvonne, a client, Wendy, Chris, client. Hello, Chris. Jean, Penny, Harry. Come on, Harry. Yeah, I saw the game last night, Harry. Thanks. Kimberly, Deb, Dawn. Okay, Carlos. So, all right, I want to do a little case study now. So a lot of financial aid, as Pearl was kind of describing, is based on information that you put in the forms, of course. However, frequently there are considerations that don't fit in the boxes, so to speak, of the FAFSA and the CSS Profile, And if that's the case, then you should consider appealing your financial aid award if you get less than a full and what you consider fair amount extended to you. So we've got these clients whose son got an early decision to one of the small elite private colleges out in California, Claremont McKenna, I believe. And they are small business owners out in Oregon. And they have a very upscale business. pizza and Italian place, which was great every time I looked at their website. It was just National Pizza Day a couple days ago. Who knew? Was it early this year? I think every day is National Pizza Day for you or practically. Definitely. So they got a decent financial aid award to begin with, but they came to me and said, do you think we can do any better than this? I said, well, yes, because frequently people in the financial aid office don't really understand business owners, businesses and the value of the business because they're not CPAs in the financial aid office. They're not investment bankers. They're not business owners themselves, typically not business valuation experts. You get the point. So I said, well, you know, what do you think the business is actually worth? So they gave me a number. I said, and how much of that is, you know, equipment? And they gave me a number and I said, okay, well, that's kind of a lot. Do you have any loans against the equipment? And they said, oh, yeah, actually we do. So, you know, after I probed a little bit here, we were able to justify a much lower valuation of their business than they would have thought conventionally just from operating their business. You know, for example, if you had to sell your business in 30 days, right, you would probably, in a fire sale, you would probably get a lower price than if you marketed and had people bidding, you know, against each other, so to speak. So we went back to the financial aid office and said, look, thank you very much for the award. However, I want to bring your attention to circumstances that I don't think you considered because I'm not sure there was any opportunity to put this on the CSS profile. And then we walked them through the lower valuation of the business, assuming that they had a higher value. So I think there may have been one round of questions, but it happened pretty quickly. They ended up getting an extra $9,800 of free money grants that they don't have to pay back. And they got an additional $2,000 of an interest-free loan. And financially it is year by year. But my expectation is that they will receive the same aid, assuming their income stays in the same place. They will receive the same aid package next year and then going forward. That's what we're hoping at least and that's what I expect. So the point here is number one, if you get an offer, it's not final. You can still ask for more. They're not gonna rescind their offer or penalize you in any way. And number two, you have an opportunity to tell them the story behind the numbers. You can say, look, look, I know we look one way on paper, but the reality is a little bit different. And let me walk you through it. Here's some new information that you pro you couldn't have known about. So that was a nice negotiation and it worked out well. Yeah. And you show, you know, we don't always get more money for clients, but in this case they started out with a decent amount and then they got a much, you know, a nice improvement and now they're not sweating paying for college anymore. And they feel like it's more manageable. So it's great. It's great all the way around. All right. Now, are there any questions coming in before I go to the third and final topic for today? A couple of questions. Let's see. How is your service handling appeals this year, given the massive delays in the FAFSA and running impact on colleges sending out late financial aid packages? Matt wants to know. unchanged you know it's mostly appealing happens in the spring this this happened what the description I just gave that's that case study was earlier because the child got an early decision okay Michelle like to hold that so you're not hunched over sure Michelle show your you know you have so much to offer so much to give and you're blocking yourself here okay okay Show the world. Hey, guys. I recently filed my 23 taxes. My CPA files myself and husband is married and separate with kids under my husband's 1040. The salary is quite less than mine. He stated that I may not have to report myself as a contributor on the FAFSA. Is this true? Or since we are married, FAFSA needs both our income. Don't rely on your CPA for financial aid advice here. The answer is false. The answer is false. False. Wrong. If you're married and separate and married and jointly, even if you're separated and not fully divorced, both incomes are going to come into play on the FAFSA. Anyway, unequivocally married and filing separate, both incomes will be reported and it's just a matter of how it is reported. Alyssa, good morning. First time visiting. Thank you for your help. I own a small business and appreciate your assistance in how to handle that. Good. Generally. Yeah, if you're a small business owner, you may not qualify for need-based aid. That's a different discussion. But you probably have, almost every time, you have advantages that regular W-2 people do not have. And there's a bunch of strategies and techniques that our accountant, Rick, the legend, refers himself as a legend. He coined the term tax scholarships that pertain to high business owners, high income business owners that can't really qualify for need based aid. And, you know, honestly, we use them ourselves because because of Rick, it was a real game changer for us. Yeah. Alyssa, continuing, her daughter received a commitment letter to swim in a D3 school. It included a financial aid merit scholarship, a match. She decided not to apply to early decision. Do those financial aid offers usually stand? Well, yeah. I mean, I think legally, once they give you an offer, it's yours to accept or not. She's concerned they may lower it since she didn't apply early decision. Actually, the opposite, I would think. Yeah. I mean, you were fortunate. You're in a position of more strength because you now potentially can get other offers to leverage against that offer but they you know, I I don't know if I'm reading into the rules too much from our recovering attorney backgrounds I just admitted that we were former attorneys, but once true once someone makes an offer to you, then it's, it's legally, then you can either accept it or reject it. So I don't know if they could necessarily change it without any new information or, or something. If that offer was predicated on early decision, which I doubt, uh, then maybe, but I think you're in better shape. Like I agree. Yeah. I agree with Pearl. That was fortunate. Wait, I want to say hi to Frank. He joined us, saw Frank this weekend at the office. Last time he was at our office, we, um, he parked in the back and got blocked in. by one of the tenants upstairs. That was awkward, but I think it was pretty smooth this weekend. Okay, go ahead. Great. Okay, let's see if there are any other questions. Yeah, see, I'm coming in hot and fast. Is it correct, Louise, asking that if my income is less than $50,000 a year, I do not need to report assets, single parent status? The answer is once you put your income information and it internally establishes, just being very literal about this, because it's not, you don't have to report your assets. It's that the system is going to internally recognize that the income is in such a place where they're not requiring you to report assets. However, this does not hold true if the same school, I mean, it's true for the FAFSA, also requires the CSS profile. You cannot just... fail to report the assets on the css profile because you didn't have to on the cs on the on the fafsa so the the truth is can I ask you a question what so so just talking about the fafsa specifically because I think that's that's my hunch yes what the question's about Are you actually putting in income information or are you just porting it over? The very first thing you're doing is agreeing because if you fail to agree as a parent, dead on arrival, you get no financial aid. It says it now in black and white. It never did before. And that's what it says. So you don't have to provide your information. But if you don't, your kid will get nothing. So you have to agree to send your information from the IRS to the FAFSA. That's right. And when you do so, when you hit that I approve, it seamlessly gets your income information. And there's also a section that asks other questions about benefits that you may be receiving, which correspond with a lower income, like earned income credit, Medicaid, reduced or free lunch, amongst many other benefits. If you check off one of those, that will automatically default you into a place where you do not need to report the assets. Good point. Let's do one more question and then we'll get back to the parent mistake that I promised. Okay. Frank says, thanks for the parking advice. Yeah, we're full service. We don't have valet yet, but if we raise prices, we can afford that. All right, Dawn, do they include the student's income? My daughter works and does online school. They have just asked for her taxes from 2022. She made a substantial amount in 2023. She will not receive any grants based on income. What's 23? We don't know about 23. What's 23? May I? May I? Yeah. Don't report 23. Too much caffeine. What does college coffee talk? Okay. Made more than 23. She will not receive any grants based on our income. Hoping her income doesn't keep her from getting loans. Don't worry. The university she chose is pretty expensive, and she'll be offered the minimum $5,500. So we'll have to look for other loans. Shall I say a word on loans? Her income will make that harder, I think. Don't worry about that. Don't worry about it. And it's plus. She can be Taylor Swift and have her earnings. And as long as Taylor Swift still maintains a pulse, is enrolled in college, and wants a loan for college. Does Taylor have to be on our broadcast too? I'm going to try to fit her in every week. It was enough seeing her in every football game for the last six weeks. Just going with the theme, Taylor everywhere. Too much. Let's make this the last Taylor. Taylor mentioned. Taylor test. She gets engaged. All right. So I'm so happy for them. Okay. Let's move on to the parent mistake that I promised we would cover. And Pearl, you, this is really something that you observe frequently and there's some related sort of sub, if there's a branch and there's, you know, there's more branches coming off, you know, there's, there's sub mistakes. So the mistake has to do with the CSS profile. And we just had this with a client last week who had added some schools in January, including Boston College. And then she got in. And by the way, it's such a roller coaster. The day before the student got in, the mom and I had about a half hour talk where the mom was describing how depressed her child was because she didn't get into her Her decision won college. She didn't think she was going to get into any good schools. You know, what do you think she should do? And so most of my conversation was, look, it's not over. There's plenty of other good schools on her list. The one she applied to, she had roughly a 10% chance of getting into anyway. She took the shot. There are long shot schools. And then the next day she gets into Boston College. I'm like, oh, I guess things change a little bit. But they were rightfully concerned with the amount of money that they were going to potentially have to cough up. and there was a message or a bunch of information required by PC in their portal. that had to do with, okay, we need your CSS profile. We need you this, we need you that. So you investigated what was happening and described what you learned. Because here's the other two second backdrop on that is, unfortunately, lots of schools, all the schools use bots to communicate to you often, even just generally and responsive to that fact that you're an applicant. And we'll say something like maybe two months after you've submitted your financial aid forms, simply responsive to your application. Hey, do you know that you could apply for a financial aid? It's time to submit the CSS profile on the FAFSA. And then that will create alarm. What are you talking about? I did this two months ago. So often schools' portals are not updated in real time. They send you that they need things that you know unequivocally, that you have time and dates and receipts for filings that have occurred. Okay. So that's one mistake. She blew all that stuff up. Right. So now, you know, I searched. I went back into her already submitted CSS profile. I examined which schools were listed. I did not see Boston College and the few other schools she had added. And I said, what's going on? It was added, but they were not submitted. They were in. They were added because they're not submitted. So just to clarify. So Pearl added. Boston College and said, okay, you guys need to pay the $16 because you have to actually pay to apply for financial aid on the CSS profile so that they get the CSS profile information so they can give you a financial aid award. It does not work automatically. If you just add a school, on the FAFSA or the CSS profile, you have to send it. Take it all the way through and submit it. And in the case of the CSS profile, you have to pay for those submissions. So it's not enough to simply, you know, you go to your dashboard, shows that you haven't already submitted CSS profile. There's an opportunity to click add colleges. Fine. You go to the college section. You add them. You have to, at that point, scroll all the way through to the payment page. and then enter your credit card information or your check information and submit it and get a new confirmation receipt with that date's filing. So that is what failed to happen. And this happens anyway, not just in this CSS profile example. As you're learning, as you're living through it, as we're in mid-February, the financial aid process and the college application year is a very long and winding road. Especially this year. Especially this year. And where your mindset is and what schools are, the schools of your choice in the beginning of the process certainly can and often do change months later and we are kind of we're just past that months later spot where some people maybe hear from their early action schools not such great news or early decision and they have to spin and pivot and add other schools that's great that's fine but you cannot forget to treat them as seriously as the initial schools that were submitted they have to get added to the fafsa this to the css profile if that school is requiring it and you need to most importantly It's a matching exercise. If the school is asking you for A, B, C, you have to give that school A, B, C. If this school is asking you for A and B, you don't give them C, you give them A and B. That's it, respond in kind, but you can't forget to respond. Good. All right, so we're almost at the bottom of the hour. which was great. I hope you guys found this to be valuable and occasionally entertaining at least, but, but helpful. I have two sort of shameless promotional announcements to make that that are coming up actually. So one is we're doing a webinar this Thursday for 11th graders, late stage college planning for high school juniors. And this summer we are, I'll be announcing this formally in the next week or so. We are running another, I think it's our 10th annual college applications and essays, Get College Ready Boot Camp. And that starts in June and it wraps up in October. It's pretty comprehensive. It involves a lot of writing and rewriting and re-rewriting and editing and brainstorming, basically until kids' eyeballs and fingers bleed. It's a great way to stay and keep on track because of that. That concerns lots of families. The notion of this train coming by, not stopping, and you may or may not be on it. This forces you to that schedule. Yeah. I mean, you said this morning that it's really, it's not necessarily a bootcamp. It's really about peace of mind. It is between now and then just knowing it's happening, knowing that if you physically take yourself through that, you're going to get it done in the timely fashion that we're recommending. Yeah. So if you're on our email list, I'll be emailing that out. I will post that here eventually. Right now, it's free if you're a one-on-one college advisory student. So right now, we're going to be pre-registering people just to see exactly how many spots we have available for the rest of the world. But that's coming up. All right. So, Pearl? Sorry. I just feel the need to answer one more question. I saw a lot of them because it's probably a general question. Matt asking, can you add more than 20 schools on the FAFSA? Yes. How so? in March, the end of March, when they will undoubtedly announce that the FAFSA information is being transported over to the colleges. At that same time, you will have an opportunity to log into the already submitted FAFSA, go into the college section, remove however many schools you need or all the schools that you have already submitted. Don't worry, you're not taking away that submission. Those schools got it already. You remove the existing schools to free up space slots and add however many past 20 you were trying to add and submit it. Very cool. All right. Well, we went a little over, but that was important. Thanks for being with us this week. We will be back next Monday, 10 a.m. Eastern. Same time, same channel. Bye-bye. Bye.
