All right, welcome to College Coffee Talk. Pearl and Andy Lockwood joining you on April 1st, April Fool's Day, Monday morning. Good morning, Pearl. Good morning, Andy. Please join us in a simultaneous, synchronized coffee sip because we're watching. We can tell. Delicious. Fabulous. Cappuccino? Yep. Extra shot whole. Whoa. All in. Fat milk. Fully leaded. Yeah. No virtue signaling. Sugar in the raw. No coffee virtue signaling for Pearl. Not here. Not in these parts. Gotta admire that. So good morning. This is a show about all things college. It's advice on getting into college, on paying for college, on the latest college news and trends that we think are important enough to keep an eye on. And there just seems to be, uh, just loads of stuff to talk about every week. So if you're joining us and you're here with us live, let us know that we're coming in loud and clear and that you can see and hear us and pop in your questions. This is an opportunity to get free advice. Um, I was telling a friend of mine who, uh, from, from high school, uh, over the weekend from she's now living in the Brookline Massachusetts area. She asked me a question, and she said, on behalf of the Cuban Jewish community, thank you very much for your help. And I said, that is my most tight, booming, pro bono demographic, the Jubans. Nice. And she was happy. So this is another opportunity to get some advice. So if you have specific questions, this is where you pop them in here. Hello to Demetra, to TW. I have three others. And Cecilia, good morning. So Demetria has a question about safety schools. That is a good question. So I'm definitely going to be talking about that. So today's topics are updates on the FAFSApocalypse. Pearl seems to be a little cautiously optimistic. And I have a little something else to tell you. She always does. Also, that I can share with you in production meetings. That just keeps things fresh with us. I really appreciate that. I'm always trying to keep the mystery alive. Yeah. You don't have to try to do that anyway, just inherently. So the FAFSA apocalypse updates, we're going to talk about is Harvard now a safety school? And it seems like a cruel, sick April 1st joke, but there was news about the first $100,000 per year college pending. Or should I say impending or foreboding? That came out last week. So a lot of stuff to talk about. Go ahead, Pearl. What's the latest on the delays and the repercussions of this year's FAFSA Simplification Act-fueled overhaul of the FAFSA? Not so simple after all. Well, the delays are still there. However, we have seen some movement. in the FAFSA transmission of information to the schools. At this point, I would say if the FAFSA was submitted in January, you will be able to log back in. Those FAFSAs have been transmitted to the schools that were on those FAFSAs. The substantive information at this point is probably being transmitted. However, there is still no capability to make changes to the submitted FAFSA, to add any additional schools to the FAFSA. And it's been like a trickle effect in terms of the transmission of information from the schools, I'm sorry, from the Department of Education to the schools. To that end, what we have seen in the way of practice Schools that require the CSS profile, it seems those schools have relied primarily, if not entirely, on the CSS profile and the submitted tax documents that were requested by that school in making a financial aid offer. So we are seeing, in fact, financial aid offers that are being administered in some cases. And not just for new 2024 students, for returning students, which is early. That's right. We have, oddly enough, started to see some returning students' financial aid packages being released. For schools that are FAFSA-only... There have been some schools because there's, again, no FAFSA substantive information for the most part that's been transmitted to the schools, enabling them to issue a financial aid award. Some of those schools uniquely are requesting tax returns. These are typically not schools that request your tax documents when they are FAFSA only, but we are finding that in a triage way to deal with the cluster that the FAFSA rollout for 24-25 is. This is, I guess, a workaround so that in the hopes of being able to, again, beat this train that doesn't stop, meaning the time train, there has to be an end to this financial aid back and forth where an award is issued so that a family can actually reasonably make a decision about whether their student should attend there or not. One other thing that I've noticed in my recent FAFSA submissions that... Is this the thing you didn't tell me before? Yes, it is. While one of the biggest unfortunate changes to this year's FAFSA in terms of the rules... is that they have eliminated the multiple sibling or the sibling discount. In other words, if you had multiple students' kids in college at the same time, you would have an expected family contribution that was divided by however many children you had in school at the same time. They did away with that starting this year in the FAFSA, and we are not sure yet just how they're going to treat that. Recently, there was a non-need eligible FAFSA submitted, meaning the family had income of well over $200,000. However, not well over, but over $200,000. But they had multiple kids in college. And their student aid index is actually in a need eligible range purely because they are counting that second sibling in this case. So in this instance where let's say the income was around two something, their SAI was $45,000 a piece. So to me, either this whole FAFSA this year has completely gotten it wrong and whatever they said they were going to do and what the formula is actually going to emit are two different worlds. That's very possible and probable in some instances. Or they're going to give some credit for the multiple siblings, unlike they said they would. So we'll see. I can't believe you didn't tell me that. I know. Isn't that crazy? So, yeah, you know, that is very interesting because just back of the napkin calculations, that student aid index, which is the child of the EFC, the contribution, should be somewhere around, 80 or 90,000. Right. You know, because it's roughly 47%, but you exclude a little bit of, of, of income. So it should be surprising. Yeah. That is surprising. Yeah. Interesting. Yes. I'm glad that makes it more confusing. Yeah. So, all right. So maybe there is some light at the end of the tunnel. Right. Or more evidence that they really didn't get it right this year either. My other question is, don't you think the plural of FAFSA should be FAFSAI? Yeah. Like, it's not exactly like alumna and alumni. A little. Sure it is. The plural of alumna or alumnus is alumni. So it is like that. Yep. Okay. Stand corrected. God, we have so much to cover in a half hour. So, all right. So hello to Maria, who's encouraging me to make more stupid jokes. We all need to get out more. Clearly, that's what we're learning here. It's Monday morning. Happy Easter. Happy April 1st Lori Carolyn dawn Cecilia from the Cleveland area very cool Sending in her results, which looks pretty good good schools Jennifer John Fazia Hope that's right Kareem Tammy Heather Scott has a question. Okay, good. I and Kajin. So anyone who has questions pop in, we will leave some time to, uh, to go over them for sure. All right. So my, uh, second story is Harvard now safety school. The reason I'm, I'm asking that is because applications plummeted by 5%. Yeah. Um, no, it's a spoiler alert. Their, their admissions rate is still like three point something percent. Um, The various people who are writing articles about that are attributing maybe the drop-off in early applications to the whole Israeli, Hamas, Palestine issue. I guess that's the obvious answer, but I can pretty much guarantee you that if anyone gets into Harvard, there's a 98% chance they're going to attend Harvard. It is not a safety school. even though they saw a slight decrease in applications. It's arguably very unsafe these days. Well, so from the other Ivies, you have applications up at Penn, Yale, that doesn't make sense, right? Dartmouth, and Columbia. Whereas Brown, as well as Harvard, had a slight drop in applications. But I don't really think that this is going to change anything at all in the landscape. I still think these schools still represent this brand for right or for wrong. I personally don't take as much stock in these brands as I think a lot of parents and other college advisors, frankly, do. Because Pearl and I, and I'm sure you are the same way, we know all sorts of people who went to elite schools, who are like the biggest losers. I'm not even saying that in a judgy way. Present company excluded. Because Pearl went to an Ivy. And we all know people who barely even went to college or maybe didn't go to college or went to regular colleges who are fantastically successful financially or otherwise. And everything in between. Yeah. And what gets so often overlooked in all of these discussions, which I understand because we all have limited bandwidth and some stuff's more interesting than others, is that so much of your success in your life has nothing to do with where you go. It's more about your efforts, your inputs that you put in. There's been all these studies that disprove any type of correlation between where you go and how successful you are. And so we say the same thing over and over again. But that still is not going to change in any foreseeable future, as far as I can tell, what people are going to do in terms of their behaviors and what they're going to value in terms of what school. Because even though I'm saying all this stuff, if one of our kids got into Harvard, even though they're all past the college application phase, there's no way I'd say, like, don't go. Right. I mean, because it's still Harvard and you carry that with you the rest of your life. But like Pearl says a lot, sometimes the people who graduated 30 years ago are still twirling their college beanies and that's the only thing they ever accomplished. It doesn't end when you get into college. That's where it really starts in many cases. Right. And it actually intrinsically doesn't actually matter, but it is helpful. It gives you an edge of credibility. But after that, it's really up to, What do you produce? How do you show, how do you relate to other people? How do you get along with other people? Well, what value are you bringing into the world? Right. Right. Are you a producer? Like Pearl said, are you a consumer? Right. You need to produce more than you consume. Yeah. Yeah. We, we don't, I mean, again, I'm sure anyone watching this knows all sorts of people who fall into different categories of, you know, either went to an elite school and didn't make it or whatever. Right. But it's not just us talking about this. There are numerous, and I would say this is like a widespread thing. There are numerous employers who now, on Wall Street and other top earning areas, who actually refuse to recruit out of Ivy League schools because they find those kids to be more entitled and not necessarily able to- Not coachable, not trainable. Yeah, not think on their feet. They're not willing to start in the equivalent of the mailroom and all that. And instead- they turn their back on those schools and they recruit kids from big state universities or schools like Baruch instead of Wharton and all these things. So that's not universal, but that is a common practice too. So we had a client in human resources a few years back who the company was owned by Europeans. And she said that they valued the Ivy pedigree You know, the HR people were like, eh, those people never work out. They hire from those schools. And there's this tension between them. So they would have a certain amount of hires to please the owners, the absentee owners. And then the people who actually did the work, who have better careers, tended to not be the ones who went to those elite colleges and universities. So food for thought. Yep. Your comments are welcome. Sure is. Okay, so the last story I wanted to cover today is about – Again, not a cruel April 1st joke, but there was reports last week that Vanderbilt was approaching, a few dollars short, but approaching being the first official $100,000 per year college, which is a sick, nauseating joke. But it's been heading this way. When we first started doing this, I think $40,000 was expensive for a college. So things have been heading that way. Couple comments here. Number one, it's always interesting to me that there are schools like in Tennessee or in rural New Hampshire, like Dartmouth, that are more expensive than schools, elite schools in New York City, like Columbia, or I think the cost of tenants of Harvard is lower than all of these schools. I think it costs more to go to Boston University than Harvard, or at least it did for a while. So a lot of this stuff is just kind of people, you get what you pay for in the perception of parents somehow. I don't really understand the rhyme or reason to it, but what I want to point out is If there is a glimmer of good news, as the costs of attendance and tuition go up at every college, so too do the discounts, do the financial aid packages for the most part. So I think Vanderbilt's increase was something like 8%. which is, I guess, double the rate of inflation, the CPI increases, but they also tend to give money to, I think it's 65 plus percent of the families that go there. Some schools are skewed much more toward need-based aid, so they're recruiting people with basically low incomes. But many schools will also give out a lot of merit aid, and those tend to be the schools below the top 30% of the top 30 colleges in the country, not the IVs and so forth. So all hope is not lost because the discounting is increasing also. But it's nuts. And the things that drive college costs, I think, have to be, number one, the easy availability of student loans that may or may not have to be repaid. We still need to do that webinar, by the way, on, okay. Pearl's an expert on all the student loan repayment programs, which seems to be in the news like every other week. And loan forgiveness. Yeah, yeah. So we're going to do, if you guys are interested in that, put that in the chat because we actually have a separate, I guess we soft launched a separate consulting service where we're helping people, Pearl is helping people slash their, you know, their monthly payments from like $4,000 to like $750 or something ridiculous like that. At least the first few. So the prices go up, but It's due to the easy availability of money. So what incentive does a school have to cut its administrative float, which is really the second thing. You look at all these huge state universities, not only them, but they're all constructing great new living facilities. They're all on a spending spree for diversity, equity, and inclusion officers, even though the big state schools tend to be really diverse to begin with, at least the ones that we see that our kids of going to and go to and all sorts of other stuff. It's not hiring higher quality or better professors and smaller classes. That's way down on the death chart. It's really much more about all these amenities and all the admin. If you look at the growth in admin in the last 30 years as a percentage of students, it's off the charts. It's ridiculous. It is ridiculous. So that's where your tuition dollars are going. No joke. Yep. All right, so let's see what kind of questions are filtering in here. Let me scroll back up. Demetra, there seem to be no safety schools anymore. Will this change? So I want to tell you something that I mentioned to, I think it was two people this weekend, to my clients this weekend. There are safety schools, but most safety schools know that they're being treated as safety schools. So they will not admit. either by waitlisting or sometimes denying, but usually waitlisting or deferring, kids who were clearly above them in their academic areas, I should say, GPA and rigor and test scores. So you get all these crazy things like, I don't know, Sammy, our youngest, got into Cornell, but was she, she applied to Brandeis or was that Lizzie? I can't remember. She didn't, one didn't get in. They both got into Cornell, but one didn't get into Brandeis. which is a much higher percentage or Northeastern, which is now pretty low, but those, these things don't make sense to the lay person. But so, so my advice is when, and this is something I'm going to say in my bootcamp this summer, we are still enrolling people for our bootcamp. Can I ask you to put in lockwoodcollegecraft.com slash bootcamp, just as long as it's on my mind. Cause it'll be out of my mind in a minute. Is that you need to? you know fake fall in love with your or actually but Actually show the love to your safety schools because what they want to see is that you're actually genuinely interested in according to the stuff that they track, which is visiting campus, showing up at their online sessions after you log in, following them on social, perhaps interacting with the admissions officer, going out of your way to actually act, hopefully truthfully, but I don't judge, that you are interested in attending that school so they don't waste the spot on you because the yield that they care about is the ratio of kids who attend. They admit versus who matriculate and lower that yield, which has been a big issue since COVID because all these schools became test optional. They got flooded with applications and they had no way of knowing, based on their past performance, whether if they admitted someone that they would have a decent shot of admitting them. So the cure for that, which is kind of too strong of a word to use, but the way you rebut that sort of assumption that you're using that school solely as a safety school is by acting interested. So you have to do that. That's your best shot. Okay. Yeah. Maria said you had me at Harvard as a safety, right? Just encouraging these stupid jokes. If you guys think my jokes are stupid, it's Maria's fault. Scott Woosley, what are you seeing as far as changes in importance in the AP capstone program with regard to admissions? I haven't seen any change, honestly. It's a great program. So I would continue to do it. I think the capstone is great. I think the IB diploma are both very valuable. uh julia hello from morris minnesota accepted to tulane brandeis minnesota duluth wisconsin stout weightless city columbia colby michigan what is the appeal process for financial aid award well each school has its own protocols and you should have a reasonable basis to have a reasonable chance of success and the reasonable basis might be better offers from other colleges that compete with your school, and it could also be a drop in income since you filed the financial aid application. So if you filed in 2024, well, if you filed in 23, if someone graduated in 24. If you have someone graduating in 24, then the 2022 tax return is what was used. If your 23 return, hopefully now just filed or soon to be filed, If it demonstrates a drop in income, you want to get your return filed so that you can also attach your new tax return to that appeal as well as better and solid evidence of the drop in income. And the third category is some unusually high expense. Not that you live in a particularly high income or high tax area, but something bad happened that you had to spend a lot of money on. A lot, not just, I could say, as our parents say, well, you know, we can send them to campus somewhere. We can't keep them home. No, it's gotta be more like your house, your roof caved in and it wasn't covered by insurance or you have these legal bills because of a divorce or a bankruptcy or something like that. Okay. Opinion from Cecilia on Northwestern versus ALAC. I don't know what that is, but same aid within $5,000. My guess is I would go with Northwestern, but I don't know. Just tell me. Since you don't know what that other school is. Yeah. I mean, is it LA County? I don't know what that is. Okay. People thrown in there. Their result, that's very good. No rejections for Caroline's kid. That's awesome. Eileen, Jennifer, Fazzini, Melissa, Cecilia. Appeal advice with decrease in income. Yeah, that is what Pearl and I just discussed. So if you've had a drop in income, tell the financial aid office that. They might have a form for you to fill out. They might just want an email. It really depends on the school, but they all have their own protocols. And like Pearl said, don't sit on your 23 return. Exactly. Because you don't get 20 times to explain this, appeal this. You've got to go forward with your best appeal. And so you need your best evidence. So talking about what may be on the 23 tax return is one thing. But having the actually filed tax return with the IRS in hand as evidence attached to that appeal is entirely different. state of affairs. Yeah, well, one's speculative and one's actual. Right. Emanuela, I visited Dartmouth last week and they said they're making college free for families with income lower than $125,000. They haven't officially announced it yet. That's a high threshold. Yeah, I mean, it is and it isn't. It really depends on where you live. It's very high for most parts of the country, but if you live in New York City, you're basically a pauper at $125,000 and they're trying to attract people from high-income areas and I don't know if that means and a lot of colleges are The elite colleges will say things like this. I don't think it includes room and board. I think it might be full tuition tuition only. Yeah Gabriella Kathy. Hello. Good morning Alyssa Pearl Chisner Lockwood. Yeah know her That's her. That's my pearl. That's the world's pearl Gloria Kimberly and Cynthia. Hello. Um, small liberal arts college oh generically but okay cecilia I thought it was a school um what's the difference between northwestern and a small liberal arts college well that's actually something we can talk about both both of us uh personally right so and we'll make this the last question because I think we're running out of time so I attended wesleyan which is a carbon copy of the ones that you listed in your uh your comments um which makes it even more ironic that I couldn't figure out what her abbreviation was ironic or just sad and um and you went to a large ivy um cornell which I would say is yeah probably has a similar feel to northwestern except yes northwest is in a suburb I guess and they're more remote so yeah I think they're both um great honestly um what do you think first and I'll chime in in terms of Differences between big and small between Northwestern and this the Kenyans and the Oberlin's and those types of places I think it completely in terms of financial aid or in terms of attending in school. I think that it So there's two entirely different things after that and if you fortunate enough to have that choice congratulations and then you really got to dig deep and look in the mirror. A student needs to look in the mirror and say, well, what do I really, where do I really fit in? Where do I see myself in a big school? It may be a little harder to navigate. You may need to do a little initially, but there are systems and things in place at big schools that can make it smaller or give it, you know, various living environments, honors college, various things. Situations and clubs on campus that, because it's a big school, there is a lot of offerings. So that's, by contrast, a smaller school, there are fewer offerings because there are fewer students. altogether. But then that's how you make a bigger school smaller. And then the advantages, of course, to a small school, much more intimate contact with professors, and you could actually, you know, collaborate with professors and a TA and have an actual relationship, you know, which can help you potentially with next next steps, etc, and so forth, you will potentially, you'll have to do a lot more to get that experience in a big school. Your thoughts? I'm in agreement. My college, Wesleyan, was 3,000 kids. I played basketball, so I had a built-in social network, but there were plenty of other people that I ultimately ended up hanging out with. My friends, two of my best friends from high school went to University of Wisconsin, which is massive. I think it's much bigger than Northwestern, actually. What we all figured out were that we had the same basic number of friends, of core people that we hung out with. I think pretty quickly, maybe a year, less than a year into our respective college careers. So I don't think that's really as much of an issue. At least it wasn't for me. It could be for your kid or any other kids. I like the idea personally of Northwestern setting, the location. Not that you would go into, or your kid would go into, you know, the city of Chicago every weekend, you know, for fun. But the fact that it is a potential thing that they're, you know, for us, we were in Middletown, Connecticut. And I remember my freshman year, one of the other guys in the basketball team was like, hey, we're going to this, you know, going to the city this weekend, you want to come? And I'm like, Middletown? He goes, oh, New York City. Dude, of course I'm talking about New York City. I'm like, oh. put it in Boston and it's two hours away from Boston too. Um, my point is that, you know, people felt like they had to travel a couple of hours, you know, to do fun like that, fun things like that. But I think once you get involved, uh, like, like Pearl said, and you know, various activities and clubs and you meet people, then, uh, it's not necessarily stultifying or boring at a, at a small school, but you have to ask yourself, you know, what, what environment is better. But I think they're, they're both, it's just a matter of taste. There's no, there's no, um, I wouldn't go one way or the other without paying attention to some of these intangible things. But you've got to think about what the student's expectation is for a college experience too. Because if the expectation, even unuttered, but if the expectation is like, oh, campus and football games and tailgates and Greek life and that, and then you take that kid with that perception of college and campus and whatever, and put them in a small school that doesn't have any of that, that may be a real like, whoa, wait a minute. That's not what I thought college was supposed to be. This was not what was in my sights. And honestly, that seems like such a basic thing. And some of you might be listening to this and thinking, like, who would do that? But we see that all the time. That is not a dumb comment. That is a very unobvious thing because... A friend of mine who I used to work with, his kids started at, was it Swarthmore? And he was like, wow, it just seems really small. And so he transferred to Michigan. I'm like, now you're realizing it was small? I mean, 2,000 kids versus whatever. The shapes and sizes of schools are really what makes them a different experience. It really does. Again, it's not even so much, you know, that if you're at this academic tier or that academic tier, our point that we started out with today, again, it's about what you, the operator, the actor, the student does at this opportunity, this opportunity, this opportunity. All of these schools provide way more than any one student could even ever begin to take advantage of. So you have to just know that right off the bat. What that student is going to do at that school That remains to be seen, but that also completely remains within that student's power. So don't farm that power away to a name of a school. That's just not where it belongs. Yep. And that's another one of these comments that you might think, of course I'm not going to do that. But again, people do that. We hear about that all the time. You probably know people who do that. It might be. Who knows? A little guilty of doing that yourself. Don't be embarrassed, though. We all do that. All right. Cool. So thanks a lot for watching this week. All the other comments I see coming in, We'll try to get to them in the next few hours or in a day or so. We really appreciate that you're with us every week. And happy April Fool's. I didn't do a goofy email. I haven't done one in a couple years. I used to do these April Fool's jokes, and then people thought they were serious. That's true. So I kind of stopped. But there's so much that's just goofy and April Fool's joke prank worthy. Yeah. Yeah. But no. So far, no. Get someone good out there today. Okay, folks. All right. Have a good week.
