If a Florida student applies for and/or receives a Bright Futures scholarship, he or she will be required to fill out the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA).

The change to the application for Bright Futures applies to incoming freshman, to students graduating from high school in 2012, and to students renewing their Bright Futures scholarships.

Even though the Bright futures program is a merit-based scholarship rather than a need-based one, if you don’t fill out the FAFSA, you will not receive any Bright Futures dollars.

The FAFSA is also required for students getting Florida Resident Access Grants and Access to Better Learning and Education Grants.

What is the FAFSA? It’s a federal financial form used to determine student eligibility for need-based federal student financial aid. Before this year, FAFSA was never required for Bright Futures. Lawmakers say they’ll use FAFSA to gather more demographic information about students who are attending college on taxpayer money.  Whether or not you think it’s more red tape, you have to submit it.  Students will surely need their parents’ help to complete the FAFSA, whose information requirements are quite detailed.

If you have a questions about the FAFSA requirement, contact a college or university financial aid counselor, or a college admissions expert.

Detailed information is also available at the FAFSA website: www.fafsa.ed.gov

But wait! That’s not all!

Bright Futures is also increasing the test score requirements (for high school graduates in 2013 and beyond), and the total number of community service hours completed. Here’s the breakdown:

We’ll bet that someone has shown you this strange paper-and-scissors phenomenon: a long, adhesive-taped strip that has only one edge and one surface. It’s “non-oriented” as a mathematician might say. And we think if we were specks navigating that paper, we’d get nowhere fast. Could produce a sinking feeling.

You might get a hint of the same sort of vertigo if you were to watch the film “The Race to Nowhere.”

In it students are stressed out, physically and mentally exhausted from homework and from the high expectation that they present themselves as teenage idols of academia. Every voice in the movie expresses the tension, the overload, the breaking-point strain of the high school balancing act between academics and everything else.

In the movie you’d hear students use the word “perfection” time and time again. Pressures come from any and every direction: school, family, peers, and the inner voice. A grade of “B” might as well stand for BAD, BUM, BEATEN. These kids think that only top schools could do. Sure enough, most high schoolers (yes, most, a majority) cheat to achieve the ideal. And the beat(-ing) goes on: eating disorders, depression—suicide. It’s not an easy screening, this movie.

The problem: “Prestigious school or nothing.” Only the name brands will secure a life worth living. Anything less would be…what? Let’s see.

Educational consultants like us confront this mindset almost daily. We work best at breaking down barriers of miscomprehension. With about 4,000 colleges and universities to select from, a knowledgeable, experienced and well-traveled consultant opens up the world to students and their families. There’s so much to consider when providing a student with appropriate choices. Our individualized guidance can’t be matched in most school settings. Check us out. Get off the Möbius strip and move into a comforting, 3-dimensional future teeming with choice and satisfaction.

Throughout your junior year you have been receiving fan mail from colleges and universities, many of whose names were completely new to you—and your parents. So, sooner than later (hopefully) you begin to ease yourself around the net, checking out the websites for these and other schools.

Urban environment. Exurbs. Cornfields. No matter what the location, college websites naturally paint the best possible pixel pictures of campus facilities. Be careful. All that glitters is not gold. Students over the years have been disappointed by the “final product” when they drive up to campus on that first day to unload at the gates of a freshman dorm.

To some observers, it appears that students glut the wires with a dozen applications or more, and accept admission to a school that they have never actually visited. How do you like the idea of a blind date that could last four years? No thanks.

Don’t procrastinate. As soon as you are down to your short list of undergraduate institutions that you’re considering, make plans to visit. A trip through a freshman dorm, combined with a visit to the student union, is worth its weight in gold.

While you can descend on a campus sight unseen and nose around to your heart’s content, expect neither to leave any lasting impression on the Admissions office nor gather specific information about the school (unless you are a real data miner in a hard hat!). Plan Ahead!

Call ahead. Get the schedule and sign up for an info session and campus tour. Try your hardest to visit classes during the academic year. On larger campuses, there are sessions in progress year round, but summer has a different feel from the traditional school year.

When you get there:

1. Sign in!

2. Attend that information session; take that tour… and take notes & photos!

3. Ask an intelligent question at the info session. Get the name of the admissions officer presenting. Send her or him a thank-you note when you return home.

4. Chow down in the student union or wherever students hang out (ask your tour guide). Mix with students there, and ask about the pro’s and con’s of academic and non-academic life. You’ll find that undergrads love to share their insights.

5. Attend a class, meet a professor, ask intelligent questions.

6. Check out the extracurricular possibilities. Are they what you want?

7. Hand out your “business card” (prepared before your visit) to every admissions person with whom you come into contact.

8. Check out the course catalogue with a view toward your possible major (if you know what that will be). Don’t have a major in mind? Ask about the core or distribution requirements (but look that up in advance so you can ask a specific question!)

9. Where’s the school located? No rolling campus, only busses and tall, anonymous looking buildings? Or are you surrounded in every direction by wheat and sorghum? Do you (and your parents) feel safe?

10. Take digital pictures and notes the whole time you’re in the area (campus and city or town). When it comes time to respond in your application to the question of “Why have you chosen to apply to Oberlin College?” you can respond with first-hand aplomb! “When I walked across Tappan Square toward Finney Chapel…”. Nothing beats this kind of immediacy in your short essays!

Arrange your trips so that you can visit a number of schools within reasonable travel distance. Do NOT visit more than two schools on any one day.

Don’t be surprised. Plan now to get well acquainted soon with the schools of your dreams.

Ironically, several trends in high school English composition work against one another when a student confronts the college application essay. Often, high school students have experienced three years during which their teachers usually told them to write analytically, in the third person, about literature, science, and history. In practically every instance, students assume that it’s important to leave egos behind in order to find an objectifying voice for their writing. Then, just when you thought it was safe to wade into the water of essay writing…a student comes face to face with the college essay prompt, which in one way or another asks that student to toot his or her own horn with clarity and precision, all the while maintaining a balance between bragging on the one hand, and honest portrayal of facts on the other. No wonder students eschew college application essay trials! Coming from a peer-group society where standing out from the crowd can elicit the ire of others, students find it hard to swim upstream against the flow, so to speak. That spells trouble for college application completion.

According to a 2009 survey by the National Association for College Admission Counseling, 26 percent of admissions offices deemed the essay to be of “considerable importance” in deciding who is admitted. By contrast, in 1993, only 14 percent gave the essay such priority. We can only assume that this percentage has inched upward over the past two admissions cycles, and that the glut of applications from otherwise “comparable,” statistically similar students more than every before makes the well-written essay an essential piece of the application. What’s a kid to do?

Adult admonitions to the teen writer, like “Be yourself!” or “Let it all out” are of minimal help. In the end, the high school writer learns that the most effective essay tells a personal story that conveys sense and sensibility, engagement in life and ideas, and a developing maturity which recognizes how the boundaries of learning can and will expand almost exponentially. The famous “hook” that is meant to intrigue the admissions officer who is reading your application comes in the form of an easy-to-read narrative, one that may flow as smoothly as a personal conversation in which the student comfortably conveys personal engagement and passion.

In the years that I have been assisting college-bound students with their essays, my principal tool is an interview-style dialogue with the applicant. From it we both glean the very facts, details, and emotion that will make that essay read well–a cut above the rest. Are you ready?

Our Boca Raton Learning Center and school occupies one of the newest, LEED-certified buildings in town! But we do more than just occupy our energy-efficient space. We think green, too. In Boca—and in all our locations—we recycle our computers and peripherals through Florida E-Waste Recycling. Here’s a link that will tell you the locations of the recycling sites nearest you: www.floridaewaste.com

Essays/Personal Statements:

Although there are some universities that do not require essays, colleges on the Common Application as well as UF, UCF, and FSU require essays. NOW is the time to start thinking about potential topics. Seek your parents’ advice on essay topics since no one has known you better or longer than they have. The questions for this year’s Common Application are exactly the same as last year. Even though UF, UCF, and FSU have not yet announced their essay questions for this year, look at last year’s questions as they will likely be somewhat similar. Note that some colleges on the Common App have supplemental (additional) essays which will not become available until much later in the summer.

Applications – all done online!:

Common App (www.com;monApp.org): If you are applying to any of the 460 colleges on the Common Application, USE IT rather than the colleges’ own applications. In fact, some Common App colleges don’t even have their own applications. A list of these 460 colleges can be found at the end of the attached file: Common App & SUS Questions & Common App College List.PDF. (A few of these colleges may opt out of the Common App by the fall.)

Until July 1, you can play with the existing Common App Online to get a better feeling for it and to get the answers to application questions that you may not know (e.g., in what years did your parents graduate from college?). To get a jump-start on any required supplemental essay questions, review each of your college’s current Supplement to get the current essay questions as they may be the same next year. (Remember, next year’s Supplements may not be available until late summer.) Any data you enter into this year’s Common App will be destroyed on July 1 when the Common App website comes down and their staff builds the new application. But you can print it out to save the info you have entered.

State University System of Florida: The website www.facts.org contains a link to the applications for all the state universities in Florida (click on Applying for College, then College Applications, then Continue). The new applications for the state universities should be available by mid-summer. Note that New College is the only state school in Florida that uses the Common Application.

Other Colleges: Their applications become available on their websites throughout the summer. You should periodically check their websites for availability.

Regardless of which applications you’re using, please begin to work on them online as soon as they become available. You can work on your application over time as  almost all electronic applications allow you to return again and again to website to work on the application and save your work. Then, once an application is complete, do this: email the link to the application along with your username and password to your parents, or someone you trust so they can review same. NEVER SUBMIT AN APPLICATION WITHOUT HAVING IT REVIEWED!

Keeping track of your work: Create an EXCEL spreadsheet for keeping track of college application websites, usernames and passwords, deadlines, essay questions, etc. We recommending using two worksheets in the spreadsheet: one for colleges on the Common App and the other for all other applications. Add additional columns to the spreadsheet if you’d like to track other steps in the process (e.g., portfolio or audition requirements, SAT/ACT requirements).

When distance, time and money conspire against visiting distant schools, the next best thing is attending a local session. Here’s one really great opportunity!

Not only will you find out about these schools, but the admissions personnel who present will be able to put a face to your name—no small thing when you consider that these schools can receive upwards of 20 thousand applications for a freshman class!

Reps from these schools will provide information about their institutions, and offer you the chance to ask pertinent questions. Parents can ask questions, too, about a school’s admissions selection process, financial aid options, and more.

It makes no difference when you’ll graduate from high school. The sooner you begin the process (freshmen and sophomores!), the more wiser you’ll be when that time comes….

Here’s are the dates and times:

To register, go to this link: Exploring College Options website.

You may have been thinking in the back of your mind that colleges must be reacting in some way to the economic downturn of the last three years. Shrunken endowments that haven’t recovered, horrendous unemployment figures, fewer applicants whose families are able to pay $30,000 - $50,000 annually — factors that must be in play when it comes to admissions.

Recently, Christopher Hooker-Haring, Dean of Admission and Financial Aid at Muhlenberg College, offered his thoughts on the ‘business’ of college admissions. He put it this way:

“It’s not just a numbers game anymore. Increasingly colleges feel nobody is ‘owed’ admissions.”

That may mean admissions offices more than at any time in recent memory must be attentive to their institution’s need to survive financially. How does that play out for the family standing at the entrance to the college application maze? For one thing, it’s now harder to predict application outcomes.

To assist that family, Hooker-Haring provides these thoughts about coping with the process of admissions:

Real Interest In Attending

Individual students apply to more colleges than ever. Tens of thousands of applications must be sorted and sifted through at larger and/or more popular colleges and universities. Is the applicant really interested in attending a school? Admissions officers have a tougher time discerning the sincerely interested student from the “blanket” applier who sends out multiple apps almost at the click of mouse.

So, the admissions committee looks for that added extra, the scent, the small noise that separates the intention-filled applicant from the rest. Has the student visited? Has the student followed up on that visit with a thank you? What sorts of contacts has the applicant made with members of the campus community in order to make an insightful selection? All these threads weave themselves into an admissions picture that can be found in that manila folder on someone’s office desk (or on their computer!).

Early Admission

Behind the scenes, a growing number of schools are reneging on their pledge to make the admissions process somewhat more uniform throughout the application cycle. Highly selective institutions especially are reinstating early admissions plans in order to take control of the admissions numbers game. Chances of admission in this special category are about twice what they are in the regular admissions cycle. Economic exigencies overshadow the process.

Hook, Line and Sinker

When casting about for colleges, students need to put a sharp hook at the end of the line. What’s yours? A hook means that personal angle, that passion, that substantive interest that a student can demonstrate by means of the application essay, resume, transcript, etc. It may be commitment to a particular hobby, sport, or intense academic focus (complete with associated, follow-on summer programs). Violin, hospice care, Indian dance, DNA research, SCUBA, cake-decorating, debate, creative writing, human physiology. What’s your hook?

Hooker-Haring to juniors: “If you don’t have a passion, you have about six months to get one.”

The Great Divide

Just as the economic disparity among have’s and have-not’s has opened wider in the overall population, so, too, has the financial situation between the most and the least financially endowed colleges and universities. Will there be a shakeout? Will the same programs you sign up for this fall be available three falls from now?

Get ready to ask another set of questions about the schools you’re applying to: “Have there been any layoffs in the past 3 to 4 years” or “Has the college recently dropped any sports or academic programs.” Hooker-Haring indicates that poor levels of maintenance and upkeep could be symptomatic of financial problems. That may even have an effect on financial aid. Could that financial aid which seems cast in concrete actually be more like sand?

In the end, it’s not just a school’s fit for the student — one school among many to which a student applies. The word ‘fit’ may transform itself into commitment: responsiveness, willingness to commit early, potential contributions to campus life, and possibly the ability to pay.

It’s been four years since Harvard and Princeton decided to eliminate their early admissions program and now it’s back. Some argue that programs like early admissions limit the diversity of a college campus and that it places those who come from secure financial backgrounds a leg up. It seems that both schools realize that students who would prefer an Ivy, instead choose to apply early admissions to other universities. The prestigious schools are reinstating the program because they want to find out which applicants truly desire to attend and which are merely interested.

I think early admissions programs offer a great opportunity for students who know exactly what it is they want to do and where they want to go, but on the flip side I can also see how programs might hurt students without the means to apply immediately. Ultimately, the decision to apply for early admission is a decision that should be made on an individual basis – if you’ve always dreamed of going to Yale or MIT or even UF then apply.

http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/02/24/princeton-and-harvard-reinstate-early-admissions/

If you’ve missed any of our webinars/presentations in past few months, please feel free to watch the recorded version:

College Admissions Secrets — Revealed! Learn How to Develop an EDGE in College Admissions!

https://www3.gotomeeting.com/register/597813886

GPA Webinar — So you think you can dance?

https://www3.gotomeeting.com/register/815519366

Florida’s State University System: What Does It Take to Get In?

https://www3.gotomeeting.com/register/695212304

The PSAT & College Admissions

https://www3.gotomeeting.com/register/694869094

ADHD 101: What Is It, How Is It Treated and How Do I Get Help?

https://www3.gotomeeting.com/register/505358206