List and building that college list and getting ready for senior year whatever grade you may be in this is um a presentation by cusd futurology more on us in a little bit so before we get started as always well there are some housekeeping items that I wanted to go over with you um
First of all if you see this hyperlink icon on the screen that means that there is a link resource for you so that when you get the copy of tonight’s presentation email to you you’ll be able to click on any of the links that we share with you any of the resources that
We share with you tonight secondly if you have any questions we welcome you to use the Q&A function on the zoom uh platform instead of using the chats the Q&A allows us to see your questions clearly and to make sure that we’re answering your questions in a timely
Manner and then thirdly this webinar will be recorded a lot of you have already asked they’re always recorded um and it will be uploaded onto our futurology YouTube channel for later viewing so if you have to leave early um or if you want to review this at a later
Time just know that it will be uploaded and uh available for you to review and of course if you need Spanish interpretation at any time please put that in the chat to let us know and we will begin the interpretation at that time so a little bit about the
Futurology team before we get into tonight’s content uh my name is be and I’m a cusd futurology counselor I’m at Alisa Nigel high school and this is our team that you see in front of us there are seven of us counselors in total with a coordinator at the district and we are
Fortunate enough to have a futurology college and career counselor at every single high school in our district um including a counsel dedicated to Cal Prep Academy and Union High School so we’re very fortunate to have this kind of support at every site and we are credentialed school counselors so when
You’re meeting with us you are meeting with a credentialed school counselor and we all have experience in School counseling right but what’s unique about our team is that we also have an expertise in college admissions and we bring that to our work with our students and we bring that experience to the
Table when we’re working with you and your students um as we’re you know guiding you through the process of planning for After High School whether that’s college or career um or military whatever it may be um we are totally data driven so everything we do is based
On the needs of the students in the district so we take that very seriously and we want to make sure that everything we do is done with a purpose and it’s fulfilling a need that’s actually there right um so we support students with webinars workshops one-on-one counseling appointments in school events right
We’re on school campuses every single day providing support to students uh during tutorial periods before during after school um and we support families in uh just a variety of ways to make sure that you’re getting the College and Career support that you need and there is bilingual support we have three
Bilingual counselors who speak Spanish and I speak Vietnamese so that makes four bilingual counselors um but so excited to be with you tonight with me tonight is um some other counselors from our team we have Nicole rifo at Dana Hills High School we have Miss Linda Kang who’s at Cal pre and
Union and we have Miss Angela Gatlin who’s at Torro High School joining us tonight to help out with the Q&A okay so let’s jump into tonight’s agenda um so that you know what you’re getting into okay and what you have to look forward to for the rest of the
Evening um I’m going to try to get us done by 6:30 just to give you a heads up okay but again if you have to leave this will be recorded um so tonight we’re going to talk about the College Planning timeline so that all of you have an idea of what
You should be focusing on between 9th 10th 11th and 12th grade so that you have an idea of where you should be um we’re going to go into a college system overview so that you have a sense of what your options are as you’re thinking about applying to college we’ll talk
About college admissions 101 so that you have a sense of who’s getting admitted where you know how does this whole thing work because I think that information is important for you to understand before you start adding schools to your list we’ll talk about college fit factors and
What to consider as you’re building your college list and preparing for application season um and then we’re going to go over some search tools and tips and I’m going to demo um for you what it might look like to search for a college so that you can see it um with
Your own eyes right what it might look like for you to do a little bit of investigating on your own as a student okay my objectives for us tonight is that you’re going to leave here with a better understanding of how to begin your search okay if you’re if you’re in
That appropriate kind of um time frame for searching for colleges which which would be for juniors essentially um we’re going to hopefully leave with the ability to identify specific criteria for determining your best fit so I’m hoping that you leave tonight with um an understanding of how to find colleges
That meet your personal fit factors and what those fit factors should be and then I’m hoping that you leave tonight with some tools to use right some concrete tools Reliable Tools that you can use to actually begin your search so that’s our objective for tonight okay so before we move forward
I’d love to know who’s in here tonight let me see if I can ask you I would love to know what school you attend and also what grade you’re in because I want to get a sense of um who’s in here so what school do you attend and also what grade you
In thank you so much for responding um love to get a sense of where you’re all at with this thank you for putting it in the chat there’s a poll if you want to respond to that but we have students from all over the district we have representation from all
Of our high schools which is great to see I’ll give you a couple more seconds to respond um and it looks like the majority of you are Juniors with some 10th and nth graders in here as well so this will be good for all of of you um
But especially good for my juniors in here I think this is going to be very relevant to you um tonight as you start working on that college list if you haven’t started already okay thank you for sharing that with me so let’s start off with your planning timelin so first
Of all nth and 10th graders we have a bunch of nth and 10th graders in here you comprise probably 50% of the group in here tonight okay combined so these are the things that you should be focusing on as nth and 10th graders okay first and foremost do you know what the
A through G requirements are show me in the chat can can you say yes I know what a through G requirements are do you know what a through G requirements are I hope you do and if you don’t that’s okay you have time to learn okay um and you can visit your
Counselor or your college and career counselor to learn more about them but it’s very important that you know what a through G requirements are those are the subject requirements that you have to fulfill in order to apply to a cal state or a UC in the state of California and
Of course by meeting these minimum requirements and hopefully surpassing them you’re going to make yourself competitive for college admissions at pretty much all the universities out there right so it’s really important that you know what they are and that you’re meeting those requirements it’s important that you understand what
College admissions looks like so we’re talking awareness right that’s about the extent of your college admissions work for a nth and tth grader is simply having an understanding of what goes into the college admissions decision and what it looks like to be a competitive applicant other than that you don’t
Necessarily have to start building a college list or doing any of that but having that awareness is really important which is why you’re here tonight that’s perfect um you want to explore your interests right this is the time to start taking electives that are interesting to you exploring clubs that
Are interesting to you thinking about what you’re good at what you love and pursuing those things right this is a time for you to really develop that part of yourself so that you’re growing and understanding how you function in this world and starting to learn more about
What you’re good at and what you want to be better at right and that’s can be done again in the form of joining clubs taking assessments and we’ll talk a little bit more of that in a second um but self- exloration exploration of interest is something that you’re going
To want to do career exploration it all falls under that exploration um umbrella right and then study skills and self- advocacy time management these are things that we have to develop as ninth graders really right is the ability to communicate to teachers the ability to manage your time and to find time to
Balance School and your personal life uh understanding what your study schedule looks like and how it works best for you maybe you study better in the mornings or at night or right after school um so that’s something that you’re going to want to think about because those are
The skills that you want to develop to maximize your ability to succeed um going into 11th and 12th grade and then in college so for my juniors in here because you comprise basically the rest of the group in here tonight and that’s more than half of you it’s a little bit
More of the same so we’re still Exploring Careers we’re still exploring our major options understanding that you do not have to choose a career by the time you finish High School you don’t even have to necessarily choose a major by the time you finish high school and I
Know that there might be a lot of pressure for some of you in here to do that but just know that the expiration process alone is a great start and if you don’t have a final decision by the time you graduate that’s no problem at all okay uh more than 50% of applicants
To the uc’s alone are undecided when they apply so you would not be alone and not knowing what you want to do as a 17-year-old so don’t feel bad about that but we want to start exploring um again this is when that college component comes in if you’re looking at the screen
Right now College College college right this is when that really kind of um comes to the Forefront is we’re beginning to explore our college options we’re beginning to build that college list we’re beginning to even prep for our College essayes towards the summer okay so for my juniors in here we’re
We’re kind of switching into to you know a higher gear as far as College goes and it’s going to start with building your college list it all kind of starts with this this process is having a list before you can go into essays and application prep and then finally for my
12th graders right um this is something that you can look forward to as a junior for my juniors in here application season starts as early as August when you return to school you’ll be working on your college essays you’ll be applying for financial aid and scholarships uh in the fall uh of senior
Year and then you’ll be submitting your intent to register by May 1st typically of senior year and submitting an intent to register means to commit to your college of choice so this is kind of what you have to look forward to as a senior but for my juniors in here it’s
All about searching for the right fit college and for my ninth and tth graders you’re here to kind of learn about the things that you have to look forward to and to get an understanding of college admissions so let’s talk about college systems and what you have
Um as far as options go what you can apply to once you graduate from high school right so we’re going to start with the UC system because I’m sure most of you in here are familiar with at least one or two uc’s UCLA is probably the one that everbody thinks of when I
Ask them to name a UC so one of the college systems that you can apply to as a senior will be the uc’s uh some basic information for you is that there are nine UC campuses and the application will open in August so for my juniors in
Here once again come August you can create your UC account the submission window which means the time period that you can actually submit your application is actually o October through November so even though you can start your application early you won’t be submitting it until October through
November 30th which is the deadline uh there’s one application for all nine campuses which is really nice uh you just pay per campus though so it’s $80 per campus if you were to apply to all nine campuses where we looking at $720 keeping in mind that they do offer
Fee waivers based on household income so that’s something that might be a possibility for you uh it’s a testree system so there’s no sat or act required for the UC so you don’t have to take an SAT or act if you’re only applying to the uc’s for example but I do recommend
That you diversify your list beond the uc’s and within the application you’re going to have to answer personal Insight questions which are like college essays mini ones you’re going to have to provide um a list of your extracurricular activities honors and awards and you will self-report all of
The grades that you’ve earned in high school up until that point as well as self-reporting your senior year schedule on your application now the minimum GPA to apply to a UC is a 3.0 so keep that in mind and this is a 3.0 in those a through G courses I was talking about
And they want you to earn a grade of C or higher in the a through G courses okay so that’s something that you want to keep in mind and the uc’s calculate your GPA by looking at your 10th and 11th grade grades they will see n9th
Grade when they evaluate you but the GPA is calculated um using 10th and 11th grade grades now the other system that is very popular in our district and in the state is the Cal State system so we’re lucky enough to have two Public University Systems in California we have the uc’s
There’s nine of those and they’re kind of our Flagship research institutions and then we have the CAL States and there are 23 of those and they’re really good at strong bachelor’s programs they’re very good at experiential learning and um that kind of practical Hands-On learning right that’ll get you
Ready to graduate and enter into the workforce so there are 23 campuses the application opens in October so there’s a bit of this uh kind of lag between the UC application opening and the Cal State application opening but it’ll open in October and you can submit between
October and November um there’s one app once again for the CAL States for all 23 campuses so they try to make it easy for you and you’ll be paying $70 per campus unless they raise the prices next year we don’t know yet if they’ll do that but
Right now the price is $7 per campus fee waivers do apply and for uc’s and CAL States you can qualify for up to four fee waivers if your household income qualifies and you’ll know that after you respond to that income question on the application it’s Test free like the uc’s
No sat act the app is different it includes Only You reporting your grades um essentially and answering a very brief question about how much time you dedicated to extracurriculars uh but that’s it no essays for the CAL States just reporting your grades and your schedule for senior
Year and the minimum GPA for CAL States is a 2.5 to apply okay when I say minimum GPA I’m not saying minimum GPA and you’re going to get in I’m saying minimum GPA to apply to be um eligible for admission right and so 2.5 is the minimum for Cal State and they do
Require a through G coursework as well and a grade of C or higher So Cal seates and uc’s are similar in that way another system that we have in California we have three Public School Systems in California we have the two University Systems calstate uc’s and then we have the community college
System um and those are our community college systems help us feed into the Cates in uc’s and other universities and they also Grant Associates degrees if you want a two-year college degree we have 116 of them in California uh and they were designed to create a pathway
For you to get into the uc’s and CAL States so if for some reason you want to go to a UC um but maybe you don’t get in uh on that first attempt you can apply again as a transfer student after attending a community college for two years and obtaining the 60 units
Required um to transfer okay but the application typically opens in October you should be adding a community college to your list so for all of my juniors in here one of the colleges on your list should be a community college that you might consider going to okay and should
Be applying in October when the app opens the submission window is rolling so you can apply um even into spring of senior year but again you should apply in the fall of senior year it’s free to apply no cost the promise program would allow you to go to school for two years
For free at the community college level no matter what your household income is it’s testree so no sat or act required to apply they offer certificate programs like I said if you just want specific training for a job they offer a transfer pathway into the uc’s CAL States and
Universities that are private and out of state as well um and everybody gets in so no minimum requirements B18 graduate from high school and or graduate from high school and you can attend a community college okay and then finally we have the private and out ofate schools so these are your college
Options uc’s CAL States community colleges and then the private or out ofate options so instate in California we have over 85 private colleges some examples would be USC Chapman right for instate sooka University Stanford is a private instate University um and then out of state we have private out of
State and state schools that are out of state right um University or Oregon State University is Oregon’s State University um University of Utah as I have here is an atate school so the thing about these schools is that um the application requirements will vary okay so there’s not a blanket requirement for
All of them so keep that in mind um you will be applying on either the Common App or that University’s application and you’ll find that out when you you find out what school you want to apply to you’ll know what application you have to complete the testing policies vary and what they
Asked for you to report on the application may vary so it’s going to depend on the school um and the minimum GPA and academic requirements also vary so keep that in mind okay um a big difference between the private schools and out ofate schools and the calat uc’s
And community colleges is price okay um a lot of private and out ofate schools will end up costing more money um because they’re not supplemented they’re not supported by you know taxpayer dollars and so you’re paying more out of pocket for that experience but keep in mind that these schools oftentimes have
More scholarships to give out to students and so sometimes that price point between a private school and maybe going to UC and living on campus it might even out to be quite similar so I wouldn’t rule out private schools entirely it could still be an option okay so that’s something for you to
Think about wonderful so let’s keep moving on there’s a lot to share with you so College admissions 101 okay who is getting in so some things I want you to know is that there are a lot of options for you 3,000 plus colleges in universities in this country do not
Limit yourself to the uc’s and CAL States alone know that you have options outside of Simply the uc’s for example okay you have a lot of options and I’m going to show you some tools to learn those options keep in mind as well that the average acceptance rate at most colleges in the
Country and universities is 72% that means that the majority of colleges in this country are accepting the majority of applicants who apply so you also have really good odds we just happen to be obsessed with maybe the top 40 schools in the country that have a very low
Acceptance rate UCLA has gosh like a 9% acceptance rate right um but that’s all we know so from this point moving forward now that I’m going to give you the tools to search for schools I hope that you’ll expand your list to include some more interesting diverse and widely accepting
Schools these are the three things that colleges care about the most okay academic rigor grades and character they care about the courses you’re taking are you taking higher level courses are you getting good grades in those courses trying your best right and character what comes across on your application
Through college essays maybe through interviews letters of recommendation these are the three most important things um that colleges are looking at for the most part when they’re considering you for acceptance okay and then finally just to give you some context an average institution in the US a university or college receives about
7,466 applications a year let’s compare that to UCLA who got 121,000 applications last year and UC I’m sorry that was UCI got 121,000 UCLA received 145,000 appliations okay for last year so on average most institutions don’t receive that many applicants that’s why they’re able to accept a lot of people
Who apply but when we’re talking about the uc’s they’re a different breed they’re a different animal right as you can see here we’re talking over a 100K applicants so they can’t possibly accept all of the very qualified applicants who apply um so I want you to keep that in
Mind just to understand that if you apply maybe if you don’t get in that it’s not necessarily you it’s a bandwidth issue it’s a space issue which is why we really want to diversify your list to include other schools as well so couple more things before we go
Into the fit factors right is I also want you to have an understanding of how colleges evaluate students because this can really help you choose the types of colleges that you’re going to apply to and there are two different ways that colleges will evaluate a student for
Admission generally so the first way is something that we can refer to as academic index okay and these schools are evaluating students based on the numbers alone they’re looking at their grades their standardized test scores if they have them if they require them right um and they’re looking at the
Course rigor and course sequence of a student’s uh overall transcript so this is very num Bas it’s what’s your GPA what classes did you take did you challenge yourself awesome um they look at those and they will make a decision based off of that alone no extracurriculars no nothing right just
What are the numbers an example of this is the CAL States all of our 23 CAL States use an academic index review process where they’re evaluating you based on your grades okay and your academic performance now another way that you might be evaluated is holistic review and this is where yes they look
At the grades they look at the rigor that’s still very important but in addition to that they’re going to want to understand you from uh all directions from you know all avenues they want to understand what you have done as a student inside of school and outside of
School so this is where extracurriculars will be important this is where your college essays become really important maybe letters of recommendation if they require them a lot of private schools do and so holistic review schools want to understand you all around holistically right a whole person to see if you’re a
Good fit for their campus and an example of this are the uc’s so you can see within California alone we have two different types of evaluation methods between our two University Systems we have the CAL States with academic index and then we have the uc’s who want to
Know everything about you keep in mind though I list here letters of wreck and interview just know that the uc’s don’t require letters of wck and interview but they do require extracurricular activity descriptions if you have them and responses to personal Insight questions okay but the reason I bring this up is
Very specific um and this is for my students out here who have really good grades um let’s say you have like just straight A’s all throughout High School AP honors everything really good grades and you have done nothing else but try really hard in school and get these amazing grades but you’re
Like man I didn’t have time for extracurriculars I didn’t join any clubs I don’t play sports um no passion projects right I was just hustling in school and doing really good you might want to consider academic index schools um they might be a really good fit for
You in addition to some holistic review schools like the uc’s you might want to focus on schools that are more like CAL States or the out ofate State schools who want to choose academically strong students and who care very much about that right so this might help kind of um
It might help inform the types of colleges that you add to your list so for those of you out here who don’t have a lot of extracurriculars do not despair you have options as well and of course I wouldn’t dissuade you or you know tell
You not to apply to a UC just because you don’t have extracurriculars okay but I’m just saying that it might be a good way for you to strategize um other schools you might apply to so for the college search process it’s really important for you to start with understanding yourself so that starts
With self-exploration right understanding what makes you tick in this world understanding the things that give you energy and um how your personality might align with the world around you um some assessments that you can take and there is a platform that I’m going to share with you that you can
Take all of these assessments on which is why I’m naming them specifically but these are two assessments you can take to assess your personality on California colleges which is something that you all have access to but I wanted to link this idea of Exploration with actual assessments that you can take to begin
Understanding these parts of yourself so self- expiration is important career expiration is important right um after you kind of get a sense of who you are and and What Makes You tick it’s also important to get a sense of what is out there in the world and gaining the
Vocabulary and the um the ability to uh identify different Pathways that might align with your interest and these are some assessments that you can take to find those things out the interest profiler and the work values profiler or assessment in California colleges but this is a great way for you just to get
A sense of what career pathways are out there um and this is not to say that you have to choose your career but it might help you kind of identify themes that are showing up to you as you’re taking these assessments and getting these results um because what you’ll do is
You’ll take an assessment and it’ll actually show you what careers align with your personality with your strengths your values and I invite you to look for themes as you’re looking at these results not specific careers necessarily but is it architecture and engineering that they keep pointing you
Towards is it health sciences is it public service is it arts media and entertainment right like what is showing up for you time and time again because that will lead you to Major exploration that kind of understanding of what your assessments keep pointing you towards will help you kind of decide on maybe
What you want to major in college based on those results and again some assessments that you’ll be able to take in California colleges the intelligences assessment and the skills assessment to match with Majors okay um and this is all just for exploration and if you
Don’t um you know if you don’t figure it all out the end of the day that’s okay that’s not what we want for you we want you to begin that process to be under begin understanding how to explore these things because again it can inform that major decision which can inform the
College list building decision so step two is to have a fit over rankings mentality okay um 64% of full-time undergraduate students graduated from college within six years this was in 2020 um so that means that the graduation rate um at that time was 64% Across the Nation uh whenever I see this
Number I think about the remaining 36% of students right that aren’t graduating and what happened to them and for those students it came down to fit right fit is very important when we’re looking for colleges and building our list if we don’t find a school that fits everything
That we need there’s a higher chance that we won’t finish college and we don’t want that for you we want you to find a school that fits you well right and so we want you to adopt this fit to over rankings mentality I’m sure so many
Of you in here have looked at us news right for their top 100 colleges in the nation you’ve probably Googled top nursing programs in the country or top engineering programs in the country and this obsession over rankings has been proven to be completely not useful basically and and
Not productive in finding a good fit for students so this summary came from a white paper that was produced by a program challenge uh success out of Stanford out of their college graduate school of education and what they found was that rankings are really problematic number one okay when we look at rankings
Those numbers that are gathered are completely arbitrary and they’re not a good identifier um or indicator of positive student outcom so rankings can be really problematic in that way number two the selectivity of a college does not mean that it’s a better college for you or for anybody in that in um for
That matter right so just because a college is highly selective does not mean that it’s going to be a good fit for you um it just means that they can’t accept a lot of students that’s pretty much it right that means that a lot of students are applying to that college um
But College selectivity it’s not a reliable indicator of student outcomes and number three what is most important to make sure that students are having good college experiences is that they’re taking advantage of what is offered to them on campus when they’re there so engagement getting involved I want you
To think about your life in high school right now for my students in here and how involved you are in school and think about how connected you feel to your high school right now right so for those of you who are really involved maybe you’re in ASB or in a sport you might
Feel more connected to the school and that might make your experience here a lot better okay the same thing kind of applies for college you have to be engaged and take advantage of what they have to offer you to really reap those benefits and to see that success come
From that experience after you graduate and these are the types of experiences I want you to think about as you’re looking for your best college fit now for college search we want to identify your fit factors so number one academic fit is really important okay we need to
Know that you’re going to learn well so as you are looking for your schools for my juniors in here especially I want you to think first and foremost academically how am I going to match to this school first of all does it offer majors in programs that I’m interested interested
In um maybe does it offer research opportunities maybe you want to get into science or pursue a graduate degree or a PhD afterwards and you want research opportunities does the school offer that to you the UC certainly offer undergraduate research opportunities right does it provide internships and a
Way for me to learn Hands-On and to get actual experience so that I can graduate and get a job um does it have Cooperative learning opportunities where I can get credit for getting paid work right that aligns with my field of study study of broad um programs that allow me
To learn outside of the country what’s the acceptance rate of the school more on this to come okay do I have a good chance of getting in what’s the graduation rate of the school um are students graduating at a good rate and like you saw the average grad rate is
About 60 something percent so does the school kind of align with that what’s the retention rate of the school are students coming back for sophomore year the national average is about 80% so I would want a school that I’m applying to to have a retention rate of around 80%
Or more right um and maybe what the student to faculty ratio is is it a small school where the professors are going to know me is it a bigger school where I’ll be in a lecture hall how much attention am I going to get from the
Faculty and the staff and does that even matter to me and these are just a couple examples to start thinking right now socially it’s a matter of feeling comfortable you might be living on this campus for four years and you want to make sure that it’s somewhere that you
Want to be so we need to make sure that it’s the environment that’s going to help help you thrive is it the right size do you feel like you’re drowning in a school with 25,000 students would you rather be on a campus that’s about the size of your high school where you know
Everybody right um what’s the weather like do I want snow do I want ocean do I want mountains desert you get to decide that and you get to be very picky so I want you to start thinking about these things as you’re building this dream list of schools and this set of dream
Criteria for schools um other social fit factors is it a resident campus this means are students living on campus you can actually find this data on one of the search tools I’m going to show you um but this means that students are living on campus you’re going to be on
Campus with a bunch of other freshmen together it’s not a commuter campus if that’s something you don’t want um so something for you to consider what are the clubs and activities sports right does it have D1 football for my people here who want to go to football games and
Tailgate um do they have sororities and fraternities for Greek life um um does it have a special mission is it historically black college or university if that’s something you’re into is it you know Hispanic serving institution think about the things that matter to you okay um and housing right what kind
Of housing is available and what does that look like for me and then finally Financial fit we can’t forget this so as we’re kind of coming up with a list of schools that are going to be good for us we have to think academically does it match my needs for learning socially am
I going to be happy there and then finally Financial fit right can we afford it that’s the big question and this is a conversation that all of you can have as a family immediately no matter what grade you’re in because this will really deci help you decide what
Kind of schools to apply to I encourage you to use a net price calculator I link it here so you’ll get access to this but you can look up um the net price for pretty much any school in the country okay you’ll be asked to punch in some of
Your information and it’ll show you um an estimated cost of attendance and this is not a guarantee it’s not a promise it’s just a tool to start with to get an understanding of maybe what the cost would be and this is a really good tool to use to determine kind of what your
Limits are as a family um we want to think about this percentage of students who are receiving aid at that campus so as you’re looking at schools you can look up this data on schools to see if you’ll likely get financial aid there right um keep in mind that good grades
Can equal scholarship so for those of you in here who are trying really hard in school that can pay off if you’re applying to school especially private schools smaller schools um they might have more money to give and they could probably give more by way of Merit Scholarships which are based on your
Grades but it could equal money so it pays to get A’s in that regard okay so keep that in mind um and then something else for you to consider for my students in here who want to go to school out of state but cost might be a factor there
Is something called the Western undergraduate exchange which would allow you to attend an outof state school at a discount and it’s an agreement between 160 plus institutions Colorado and west of you can think of it that way that basically incentivizes students to go to state universities outside of their own
State within the region for a discount and you would pay no more than 150% of their instate tuition and it would be a great opportunity for you to go out of state but pay close to instate tuition and for some of these schools it costs
As much as going to a UC or a Cal State you know and you could be in Colorado or you could be in Washington and taking advantage of that so I encourage you to look at the Western undergraduate exchange otherwise known as wooie if you’re interested in going out of state
But saving some money okay there’s some really good schools on that list uh it is based on major it can be based on minimum GPA as well so just keep in mind that every College will be different and might have different parameters for that wooey discount so you’ll have to find
That on the website and then finally transfer pathway is an option for those of you who really want to save on money because going to community college is free for two years in the state of California through the promise program and if you know you want to go to med
School or law school or pursue graduate school and you know you’re going to pay more money you might want to save some money upfront for your undergraduate degree by going to a community college first transferring as a junior and paying you know only two years worth of tuition at the University and then
Moving on to whatever you’re going to pursue so just know that you have a lot of options and some things to consider financially as you’re building this kind of wish list of dream schools a tip is to use the college scorecard which is through the US Department of Education this is a great
Way for you to compare schools and their outcomes and just to get a sense of how these schools are serving students okay so one thing I want to talk to you about before we kind of go into demo stuff um so credential matching is very important for you as you’re building your list
This goes back to academic fit and for my juniors in here I need you to hear me loud and clear when I say this credential matching will really help you come up with a well balanced list and help you have positive outcomes for your college acceptances come spring of
Senior year and this is the process of aligning your stats your GPA maybe your test scores and comparing it to schools and the average freshman profile at that school and the average acceptance rate of that school so there are three categories right likely schools are schools where you have a higher chance
Of getting in typically their acceptance rate is over 70% and your GPA and your test scores if you have them kind of surpass that average student getting in we have then Target schools right where your GPA and test scores are maybe in line with the average freshman getting
In or maybe even a little higher um but what we see here is that the acceptance rate is a little bit more selective so these acceptance rate fall typically into the category of maybe 50 to 70% acceptance okay and this is very Broad in general so every student’s going to
Be a little different your numbers will look a little different but this is just a foundation to start from and then finally we have reach schools and as you can imagine these are schools that are going to be harder to get into with an acceptance rate of under 40% typically
Um so keep that in mind that even if your GPA and your stats far exceed the average student um when that acceptance rate is under 40% it becomes a battle for all of us to get in and I want you to be aware of that as you’re building
Your list and making sure that your list isn’t too reach heavy um also know that for competitive schools it’s not just acceptance rate and test scores it’s also everything else it’s leadership it’s Community involvement it’s you know what you’ve done outside of school so it’s this whole mish mash of things but
If you can credential match just using that GPA test score formula and the acceptance rate I think it’s a really good start for you to begin understanding if your list is currently balanced or not okay so step four is to make a big list so now that you know
What to look out for then now is when you’re going to start making your big wish list and this is the time Juniors this is now like March through June you are making your wish list of schools I link here to a spreadsheet that you can
Use where you can list all of the schools on your big wish list we’re talking 20 to 30 schools that you’re like this sounds good this sounds good I’m adding you to my list right so how do we make that list we’re going to use different search tools and I’m going to
List here four resources that I absolutely love for students the first is California colleges you all have access to this we have paid for you to have access to this the best part about this is that connects to your transcript so when you create your account your transcript will upload and you’ll see
What your UC GPA is or your calate GPA is you can track your a through G tracking um or status right you can search for schools inside of California and outside of California you can filter by different fit factors like major and sports um and this type of setting
Suburban Urban rule that kind of a thing and the Beautiful part about this is that you can launch your UC Cal State Community College and financial aid applications from this platform because it’s connected to you personally Ally through our district and through our Aries and transcript you’ll be able to
Launch these applications senior year and it’ll automatically import your grades for you so that you are not manually entering in your grade senior year which takes a lot of time so that’s the best part about California colleges I love big future for college searching and I recommend it to students all the
Time so you can use many of these search platforms but I love big future for its filtering tool and I’m going to demo this for you in a second so that you see what it looks like but this connects to board so um this will allow you to see
Things like how many credits am I going to get at this University for taking this AP class and passing it with this score right um you’ll be able to see more schools like the ones that you have harded so let’s say you like a school it’ll be like oh there are more schools
Like this like check these schools out of you like this school so that opens up your um kind of view and and your scope of what is out there as far as colleges go it shares graduation and retention rate with you and it tells you what what
Division sport is offered um which is important for a lot of my athletes because they want to look for like Division One lacrosse for example so it’ll tell you specifically the division of sport that’s offered at that school college Express is another tool that I
Love and you’ll see here that I link to all of them so when you get this if you click on it it’ll take you right to the website but College Express will allow you to search for the same kinds of things as the other platforms but I think it’s great for social fit
Searching they have this really fun area for list and rankings which I know I said rankings were problematic these are fund rankings these are not to be taken too seriously but these rankings and lists are a great way for you to find schools that have the best vegan
Cafeterias uh schools that have a quiddit team schools that are known for political engagement whatever it is you can kind of find these Niche schools based on what they’re known for and I think it’s a really good tool to use for social fit factors okay and they also
Give you really good transfer statistics as well so that you understand what the transfer Outlook is for these universities and they also provide a very in-depth list of institutional scholarships so for every College you look at it’ll show you all the scholarships that are offered at that
University which can be very helpful for financial fit and then finally College raptor is another great site that I love it does a really good job at credential matching um um I don’t know how like I wouldn’t say it’s 100% accurate but it does credential match for you so if you
Put in all of your information it will help you kind of determine if a school is a likely Target or a reach it has this great feature called schools in the area where if you choose a school in Boston it’ll show you all the other schools in Boston so that you can find
Other schools in the area it has that more schools like this feature so you can find more schools like the one that you’re really into so that you can learn about other colleges it has a very in-depth credential um matching tool um and a very in-depth and insightful
Majors category that shows you the Outlook and the offerings for Majors throughout the country based on what you’re interested in I love all of these options and I encourage you to use as many of these as you want as you’re building that big wish list so after you have made that big old
Wish list right you’ve made your big wish list you have 30 schools that you’re like yes this sounds good I found it on big future I found it on College Rapture great wonderful we need to do a deep dive okay we need to do some research at this point because I want
You to apply to schools that you know about that you are an expert in by the time you apply right so we’re going to go to the school’s website and we’re going to look at the academics tab we’re going to understand what it looks like
To go to school there and to major in something specific or we’re going to look to see what majors they offer on the school’s website I’ll show you this in the demo to come we’re going to go to the campus or Student Life tab on the school website to learn about
Organizations on campus about housing we’re going to learn about that social fit right um the campus life or Student Life tab is the best place for you to go to understand what student life is like on campus and you should understand this because this falls under social fit
After that you’re going to look specifically at housing if you plan on living on campus to understand the cost of housing but also the options for housing I want you exploring again on the school’s website to get a sense of what living on campus is going to look
Like and whether or not you think you’ll feel comfortable there thirdly you’re going to follow them on social media or at least look them up on social media all of these universities have some kind of social media and they’re probably on the platforms that you’re using and by
Following them what happens is that you start getting this really good we call it like an ambient awareness of what they’re like because you keep getting updates from them every day and the more you get updates from at school the more you see them in your feed the more you
Understand them it’s the same way with your friends and family right seeing them in your feed and just and understanding what their life is like and so following them on social media can be very helpful YouTube videos day in the life of videos on YouTube can
Give you a real sense of what students think about that school as well so I want you to do these things because I want you to do the deepest dive that you can um within you know your your limits and these are all things you can do from
Home you don’t have to go anywhere to do these things and I recommend that you do do them so that you have the best sense of what these schools have to offer you and then finally campus tours are very important I understand that all of us
Can’t simply fly to you know a state another state and research a school and go toward it in person um so if you can’t do that I encourage you to take a virtual tour I link here to um a campus tour site that gives very indepth virtual campus tours and I did one
Recently with a student and a parent and we had a great time kind of looking at the campus and getting a sense of what it looked like and it was very helpful for the student very insightful for them um so I encourage you to tour campuses when you can either in person or
Virtually um so that you have a better understanding of Life there okay this is part of the Deep dive this is how we get from 30 schools to 10 schools right this is how we’re going to finalize your list is by you doing this kind of research
And there’s no way of getting out of it if you want to make a good decision we have to do some homework right to make that list happen so step six is finalizing your list and this should be done by June or July June would be great
And we want 12 or less schools this is kind of a random number um I think 10 or less is perfectly acceptable as well if you’re doing your research you’ll be able to find you know 10 quality schools that match everything you want whether that’s Sports environmental science is a major um
Greek life you know they have a student radio station that you can be a host on you need to be picky about that and identify schools aligned with that and we want it to be balanced so by balanced I mean we want you to have a couple
Reaches of course because all of us end up wanting to apply to some schools that are going to be really competitive but mostly targets and some likely so I want you to have a realistic well balanced list um that are going to give you positive outcomes and that are really
Going to align with your academic social and financial needs okay so with all of that being said I would love to do a demo for you because I want you to see this in action okay so give me a second to set up my screen and I’m going to
Show you what this looks like so you should be able to see my screen right now and I’m currently on big future okay I’m currently on big future and this is what it’s going to look like for you to search for a college so from here what I tend to do
With students is we filter out schools so this is what it’s going to be like for you in here as you’re looking for schools I’m going to start off let me do something really quick I’m going to start off by looking for schools with environmental science as a major let’s
Just say that I’m really into that and I want to make sure that the school I’m applying to has environmental science you can be very specific here too um but we’ll start with that so we went from 4,400 plus institutions community in four year and we’re down to 592 which is
A great start let’s talk about location more social fit let’s say that I want to be in California maybe I want to be in Washington I think I just want to stay on the East Coast so I’m going to do California Washington Oregon and maybe Hawaii as well because who doesn’t want
To live in Hawaii right so if I do that we’re going from 4,000 plus to 500 to 7 to3 colleges way more doable way less intimidating right I feel like I can start researching these schools without getting lost in the in the confusion of all the thousands of colleges type of
School I’m looking for a fouryear okay we’re not talking about community college right now I’m looking for a four-year campus life this is social fit okay so um for campus life I want oh gosh maybe a mediumsized school and a really big school so you know let’s say that I
Want to be at a school that is at least 9,000 students or more that’s what I’m going to choose um and let’s say that I want a school that’s Urban or Suburban I want to be in the city or I want to have access to a city so it maybe a small
City right but maybe not a rural area for me personally and also I want men’s football because I want to tailgate I want to have fun I want to have the opportunity to watch sports and men’s football teams schools tend to have that school spirit right so if I do that I’m
Down to 63 colleges which is way more manageable if I go over to let’s say admissions okay this is where we start doing that academic credential matching this is where I’m like okay well I’m not going to look for reach schools right now um I already have some on my list
Let me make it a little bit more um more broad let’s do less selective schools okay so let me kind of look at less selective schools to see what options I have and if I do that then I’m looking at 11 colleges gosh that’s very specific right
We have Oregon State we have University of Oregon and University of Hawaii at monoa so we went from 4,000 plus colleges to three based on everything that I wanted out of a college okay so this is the kind of thing that you can do so if I go to University of Oregon
For example I want you to see what it looks like to investigate a college so from here you get an overview of the school you see that it’s big it’s very large in a suburban area 74% graduation rate which is great because the national average remember was 60 something
Percent so they’re doing a good job at graduating students there’s a video of an actual lecture on campus if we go to admissions this is where we credential match this is where we see that the acceptance rate is what 86% that’s great good odds that is something that I can
Add to balance out my list right um you’ll see here that the average GPA for students getting accepted falls into this range and you’ll see that more than half generally have above a 3.75 GPA so that’s what I’m going to look at when I’m making my list I’m going to be like
Okay well where do I fall what does it look like for me right now this looks pretty good I have a 3.8 GPA they have a high acceptance rate I’m liking this so far you’ll see here that they require a minimum high school GPA but they’ll consider a test score if it’s submitted
But they don’t require it so that’s good to know as well and then you’ll see some deadlines at the bottom and the cost of application so from there I want you researching academics right and on this site it’ll show you the retention rate is 86% amazing it’ll show you the
Credits that you’ll get on campus for passing these AP exams with these scores so this will help you determine if you can save money for passing a P exams at this school and then of course all the majors that are offered at that school this is part of the academic search for
You right cost is important and it’ll tell you the average um per year after Aid is about $118,000 out of pocket um and only about 43% receive financial aid though so not a lot of students are getting financial aid at that school and then finally campus life will
Tell you about social fit right 93% of first years are living College housing so you’re going to be busy with friends all right everybody’s on campus nobody’s really commuting you’re going to be there with a bunch of freshmen it’s going to be great um there is fraternity and sorority housing so there’s actually
Like sorority houses there and they of course have all of these Sports they have a great soccer team they have a lot of school spirit over at University of Oregon so this is step one this is you making your decision of adding it to your big list right so let’s say you see
This and you’re researching this and you’re like yes I like this college you can save it or you could add it to that spreadsheet that I shared with you earlier and you can add it to this spreadsheet where you can track everything senior year okay but going
Back to this this is where the Deep dive comes in okay so we go from Big searching to deep diving and then we go to the College website and this is where we’re going to research academics and student life they call it duck life because that’s their mascot right but
For academics what I want you to note is look for the majors that you might be interested in for this example right I put that I wanted to explore environmental science and so I would want to know what environmental science looks like at University of Oregon so
This is what I mean by Deep dive then I want you going to their site and exploring and look at here University of Oregon offers environmental science but they also offer Environmental Studies did you know that so these are the things you need to understand about colleges to see what your options are
And this is also another way to explore majors if I were to click on this it’s going to tell me about the major right it’s going to tell me about career opportunities for this major and then if I click on learn more it’s going to actually show me the requirements to
Graduate with a degree in this major so if I were to scroll down and look at a four-year degree plan for Environmental Studies okay if I did this you will literally see a breakdown of what they recommend that you take across four years to graduate with this major this
Is very valuable information for you as you’re comparing Majors across universities looking at this will give you a sense of what Environmental Studies or science looks like at one University right maybe it’s more math heavy or science heavy versus another University I’m going to give you an
Example right now we’re on University of Oregon’s site for environmental science right I’m over I just clicked over to Oregon State University’s requirements for environmental science and you’ll see here their requirements to graduate with this degree this is very specific but this is is literally the kind of
Research I want you doing to make sure that you’re making the best decision for yourself and then what you can do is compare the graduation requirements between majors at different universities to see what fits you best oh man like this school has way too much math but
This one has less math for this major I think this is a better fit for me right so these are some things that you can do to begin exploring that portion of the academic fit Factor now that was academic fit I want to show you duck life or Student Life every school has
This feature or this tab and it’s for you to explore and the pictures alone give you a sense of the vibe on campus but they will show you all about dining on campus living on campus right tuition and fees what does it cost right what are the activities that are available to
Me on campus these are all the things I want you to be able to explore they even have and explore the outdoor section so you know that University of Oregon is probably going to be good for outdoorsy people okay so these are the things that you’re going to pick up on as you’re
Investigating these colleges in even more depth um so I’m hoping that you’ll be able to take advantage of this to get a real sense of what a deep dive looks like so that you can make that final decision as far as what is going to be a
Good fit for you okay so that was my quick and um very quick demo for you but I needed you to see that um can hopefully you can all see my screen right now yes you can um but let’s talk about final steps before you wrap up
Tonight okay last slide so you’ve made your big wish list you have done a deep dive and you’ve come down to your top 12 schools and you’re like okay these are the ones I know it the Majors look good I’m all about the dorm life and the outdoors life at this one school
Whatever it is so what do you do now that you have your list so for my juniors in here okay essay drafting comes next you need to know where you’re applying before you start drafting essays because essays are unique to colleges okay so once you have that list hopefully finalized by June
You can start thinking about what essays you have to respond to um and generally you can look up the prompts for these schools by summer they’ll be available um the uc’s for example their prompts are not changing for next year so if you’re applying to uc’s you know we have
Those prompts available already but this is when you begin drafting your college essays and this is summer through fall for my juniors okay so summer through fall you’re drafting your essays now that you know what schools you’re applying to now that you know which schools even require essays in the first
Place after that we’re going to start drafting the descriptions of our activities and awards okay I link here to some webinars you can watch on these very topics but this is a summer activity as well you’re going to create a Google doc or a word doc and you’re
Going to list every extracurricular that you have done in high school high school only and you’re going to write descriptions for each of them because for the uc’s they’re going to want descriptions for this for the common application for those private schools at aate right they’re going to have you
Enter in this information information so it’s good to have a draft of it beforehand this is very important for your college application okay the way that you describe your extracurriculars can really help you color your application in a positive light so we want to spend time drafting the
Descriptions of this I encourage you to watch the webinar that I link to because I go into a lot of depth into what that looks like and what you have to do step three college application you can start opening up applications as early as August and this is when you’ll do it so
For those of you who are wondering August is when we begin creating those college application accounts and then we’ll be able to submit um from there going into late fall sometimes early winter depending on the college deadline but the college application process really kind of starts in August okay and
Then finally letters of wreck if you’re applying to private schools UCS and Cal states don’t require this but if you’re applying to private schools or maybe some out of state public schools they might ask you to submit one or two letters of r so fall of senior year you
Can begin brainstorming now I want you to think about one or two teachers who can speak highly of you one or two teachers who really like you and can speak to your character you don’t have to have an A in their class to ask them
For a letter of wreck you just have to like them and they have to like you that’s the secret of this because the teachers who like you will be able to write you a really rich letter of wck that speaks to your character and that’s what the colleges want to know okay so
Keep that in mind as I want you to start thinking about the teachers that you can cultivate relationships with right now that you can ask in the fall for a letter of recommendation and that will happen early on in the fall because you’ll have your list you know which
Schools require a letter of wreck because we want to give our teachers a lot of time to write these letters I’m talking four weeks notice minimally right we want them to have time because they’re so busy teaching you all day and they’re writing these letters for you at
Night in the evening right in their own free time so we want to give them plenty of notice so this is something you can start brainstorming now if you have teachers this year that you love um and keep them on your radar and be prepared
To ask them in the fall um I know that Al liso I hold a letter of recck workshop for my seniors so that they know what to do and how to ask for letter of wck um so if you have questions about that you can contact your futurology counselor and we can
Give you some feedback and then finally um this is the platform I was talking about for all of those assessments I was mentioning for exploration it’s California colleges you all have access to this and you all should have an account um every single one of you needs
To have an account because you’ll need it for college app season okay so if you don’t have one already please create one I’ll send you this link after today’s presentation so that you can create your account and start all of that fun exploration that was a lot we are five
Minutes over but I want to thank you so much for sticking through this with me um we’re going to pause for um some questions we’ll hang back for a little bit for some questions but I want to wish all of you the best of luck um my
Juniors in here I hope that you have a really fruitful and exciting College search process and for my nth and 10th graders um I hope this gives you some stuff to think about as you’re preparing to go into that next grade level right um but thank you so much everybody if
You don’t have any questions you’re welcome to log out and enjoy your Wednesday and we’ll go ahead and hang back for a few minutes to answer any remaining questions that you might have all right so let’s see if we have anything in the Q&A let’s see here thank you so much for
Joining us tonight yes we will oh the deck is not being shared here but we will email it to everybody who is registered for tonight if you want to hang tight I can generate the deck for you if you want I hate to make people
Wait so if you want to be patient I can actually make it for you right now if you want because why not excuse me let me go ahead and do that and I’m going to generate the deck for you if you’re still in here okay
Oh I see here that you’re I know Miss Kang is answering but you said why did I choose Environmental Studies as an example I just just random about it um no no specific reason okay it’s not like a super popular major per se um it’s just something that I wanted to
Choose I wanted to kind of break ourselves out of the engineering and nursing and compai bubble that’s so popular um so that’s what I wanted to do but other than that no specific reason I’m working on getting this these slides to you and they’re about ready so
I’m going to put the link in the chat box in just a second okay thank you for your patience anyone with the link than you all right let me copy the link here it is hot off the press for all of you I guess this is the reward for sticking it
Out with me this whole time huh there you go that’s the PDF for tonight’s presentation I guess we should do that moving forward that would make sense to do so that you all have it right away okay if you have a question feel free to put it in the
Q&A do you have to choose a major good question no you don’t um for the most part the majority of colleges will allow students to choose undecided sometimes they may ask you to be undecided within a college at the University maybe undecided in biological sciences or undecided in Humanities but they do
Allow for undecided right we’re talking about 17y olds here and I think that they recognize that most people won’t know what they want to pursue and the uc’s you know they that’s not going to hurt you you know they’re they have said that being undecided will not negatively impact a students’s admission prospects
Right um so that’s going to be okay if you don’t know what you want a major in that’s okay there is typically an undecided option there are some colleges that will ask you to choose a major right there are there are some but for the most part you’ll have that undecided
Option um I think you have a question about you said I thought I have to apply to a college for a use yeah so for uc’s depending on the campus right um like I said sometimes they’ll have you be undecided within the college so um it again it might be undecided in
Engineering or undecided in Humanities um but it will depend on the the it will depend on the University what their options are as far as choosing undecided goes or even if if that’s an option at all um benefits of private school and for my colleagues feel free to to weigh
In some of the benefits of private school is they tend to have higher graduation rates and higher retention rates um not all but a lot of private schools uh have higher retention and graduation rates um a lot of them have smaller class sizes not all but a lot of
Them tend to have that as well so you’re getting a little bit more attention um and a lot of private schools in the country are liberal arts colleges so they’re giving a different type of education to students that make them a little bit more well-rounded so it
Depends a lot on what your student is seeking as far as their education goes and what they want to pursue after they graduate um but private schools can be a great space for students to get a little bit more attention um and like I said private schools tend to have more money
To give and so there might be an opportunity to get more aid from some of these schools in fact if I can find it I’m going to share a resource with you that lists schools that um actually meet full Financial need for example let me see if I can actually
Find that resources if I can that would be great if I do I’ll put it in the chat for you so is it true that UCS are increasing their instate admissions will this trend continue yes to my knowledge uc’s are working on increasing their instate admissions oh miss K did you
Want to respond to that as well um or I think you were just doing that because I was answering it I see um they are working on that and the UCS accept a lot of instate um applicants right to my knowledge it’s well over um I don’t want to missp so I don’t
Want to give you a percentage of any of my colleagues know the percentage generally of UC admits but most of the students getting into uc’s are California residents right and they’re definitely making that a priority and I know that the state of California is focusing on making transfer admission a
Priority and so there’s this huge push right now at the legislative level in California to increase transfers from community colleges to the uc’s in Cal States there’s a lot of money going into that to encourage that so the transfer route is also going to be a really good
Option um and a very viable option for a lot of students so somebody asked if it’s okay to write a very analytical goal oriented personal statement for UC or do they need to be really personal um I think the student needs to write in their tone
And in their voice and if the student is very straightforward if the student is very analytical and that’s how they are that’s how they write and that’s how they should write their personal Insight question it really should sound like the student is kind of talking to us as
We’re reading the response it should sound like they’re responding to an interview question so that’s the tone that we look for in a personal Insight question um just to let you know our team will be holding a college essay brainstorm event events for juniors after the school year ends so in June
We’ll be holding um a one-day workshop for juniors free of charge of course as everything is with our district and futurology um but it will be for juniors to come and start working on their college essays and they’ll be getting the lowdown on uc’s versus Common App
Etc so that’ll be a great opportunity for our juniors in here to start brainstorming with the help of our counselors I think we have time for maybe one more question and then we’re going to go ahead and wrap up for tonight any other questions any other takers
Awesome okay my friends well thank you so much for being with us tonight um we wish you all the best of luck and can’t wait to support you at school so come see us in the College and Career Centers have a wonderful evening have a wonderful spring break and we will see
You when you get back okay um don’t forget to sign up for our next webinar mock admissions case study in April it’s going to be really fun because you will get to pretend to be an admissions reader and evaluate students so that you can learn what it is like through the
College admissions lens so I highly recommend that you sign up for that and that is on our website I’m going to put the website link in the uh chat even though I’m sure you all have it but please register for that as well all right everybody good night thank
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