The debates on AP courses. Yes, No, Maybe, and How Many?

Every year the Higher Ed newsfeed fills with debates about AP courses, and this year is no different.

AP US History, decade notes.

It’s up to each family to understand the issues involved and figure out the appropriate number for each student to take (if any). For background:

• Last year the College Board administered more than 3.2 million AP exams. See College Board’s Who We Serve. This year the AP exam costs $89 per. (College Board is a non-profit organization, but more than half of their revenue comes from AP exam fees.) Factor that exam cost against the cost of taking a three or four credit hour course at a college.
• Thanks to APs, many students now begin their first year of college with a semester or two of credits already earned. Yet, some colleges require a major to be declared when a certain number of credits have been achieved, sometimes leading to a first year student needing to declare prior to his or her second year.

Much of the recent debate includes discussion of a recent report from the Stanford University Education Grad School program, Challenge Success. Start with that fifteen page report, The Advanced Placement Program: Living Up To Its Promise? The authors set up a few claims and tackle a lot of issues as they pull them apart. Don’t miss the recommendations for students on page ten.

Here’s the thing: every student will have reasons to take — or not take — APs. Do not take them because everyone else is.

• Do take them if your are interested in the subject and willing and able to put in the extra time and effort.
• Do not compete to take the most APs of everyone you know.
• Do focus on learning how to take an AP. Many high schools use the AP Euro class, typically taken by sophomores, as an intro to taking APs, spending time on the prccess as well as the content.
• Consider starting slow and building through high school. Starting with one sophomore year, two junior, and three senior year shows increased effort and rigor and makes a lot more sense for most students than jumping in with two or three sophomore year.

ChallengeSuccess.org

More to read on APs:

Two perspectives from the Chronicle of Higher Education.

NO:  Stop Letting High-School Courses Count for College Credit, by Michael Mendillo.

The end result is that in many introductory college courses, the top students are simply not in the classrooms. For them, faculty-student interactions are not possible and the overall value of a university education is diminished. All of these aspects of educational disservice are due to the existence of the AP system.

The solution is simple: All the things a student accomplishes in high school—grades, extracurricular activities, sports, volunteering—are application credentials for college. There should be no carry-over of high-school accomplishments into the collegiate transcript.

YES:  Give AP credit where credit is due, by Mark Bauerlein.

We may ask, though, about the impact of refusing to give AP credit upon enrollments and test scores in high-school AP courses­—or other advanced offerings­. What’s the incentive for 16-year-olds to take a course with a stiffer workload, competitive fellow students, and the chance of a lower grade?

College credit means savings in time and money once they matriculate. Take it away, and students may wonder about the advantages. Yes, AP courses accustom them to college-level labor, and admissions offices favor AP as a sign that an applicant seeks a school’s best resources (this is Dartmouth’s policy). But those are somewhat fuzzy promises to a high-school junior.

NO:  AP classes are a scam, by John Tierney, writing in The Atlantic.

Many critics lay the blame on the College Board itself, a huge “non-profit” organization that operates like a big business. The College Board earns over half of all its revenues from its Advanced Placement program — more than all its other revenue streams (SATs, SAT subject tests, PSATs) combined. The College Board’s profits for 2009, the most recent year for which records were available, were 8.6 percent of revenue, which would be respectable even for a for-profit corporation. “When a non-profit company is earning those profits, something is wrong,” says Americans for Educational Testing Reform. (The AETR’s “report card” on the College Board awards a grade of D and cites numerous “areas of misconduct” by the College Board.)

Finally, here’s one high school teacher’s response to the Stanford report.

YES:  The Oft Understated Truth of AP Coursework, by John Blase, on his blog, Striving for Better.

Having taught an AP course for several years in the classroom (AP English Language & Composition, to be exact) I find that most of the arguments in this article and others purporting to say that AP coursework isn’t worth its weight miss one key important piece: Many students who are enrolled in AP courses are bored out of their skulls in regular classes.

. . .

As department lead, I made many observations of the teachers and students in their English coursework.  Every spring, I would ask the seniors in AP English Literature and Composition (the senior level AP English course at our school) one question:

“Now that you have taken the test, what could we, as an English department, have done better from day one of your freshman year to better prepare you for this course?”

The answers always came back the same: more of the stuff that made AP English what it is.  These students weren’t concerned with the college credit or the scores on the AP test.  They were concerned with not being bored out of their minds in their other classes.

Finding the delicate balance between enough challenge and too much, providing an overload of stress, is where an excellent guidance counselor or independent college counselor can truly help families. And the mix of courses, including how many APs, to reach that balance will be different for every student.

Related articles

• It’s testing season: AP Exam weeks.
• New study challenges popular perceptions of AP
• What Happens When? The College Admissions Calendar.

Sending emails to strangers. At colleges. Asking for appointments.

Here’s one more reason why the college admissions process is so complicated for high school students:  at some point, after years of only emailing friends, family, and familiar teachers, your parents may insist that you sit down right now and send an email to strangers.

Right now, because this has likely been discussed a number of times over the past few weeks.

Mod Squad Mia, glad she doesn’t have to write emails.

Right now, because you need to request an appointment with someone in the department of interest while you’re visiting the college.

Right now, because the college visit is next week.

Yes, I know it would have been better if you had written last week, but it will be better if you write tonight instead of putting it off any longer.

No, you don’t know the specific person to ask — you need to look up the department and make your best guess.

Yes, it may be a different title in each department.

Yes, you may send a similar email to any number of people, but each needs to be sent to an individual, not to a group list.

Yes, it may happen that you don’t end up with any meetings.

Yes, you may end up meeting with someone in a department that ends up not being of interest to you.

Yes, you do need to write a few good things about yourself and what sort of student you are.

Yes, I do think you can figure out a way to say those good things without sounding like a braggart.

No, we will not write these for you, but we will read your drafts.

Yes, you can copy these and edit them to use again.

Yes, you do need also to write the Dean of Admissions who has sent you multiple emails, even though she has sent those emails to thousands of students. You can let her know you will be visiting and ask her advice about how best to spend your time while on campus.

Yes, you will have to do this again.

Yes, it gets easier with every email you write.

Just like this college thing gets a bit easier the second time around.

Why are college and scholarship applications so complicated?

 

It’s testing season: AP Exam weeks.

All high school students in the US taking an Advanced Placement [AP] course will be taking the College Board AP Exam for that course sometime this week or next. Right now, when this is scheduled to post, thousands of students across the country are working their way through the AP Chem exam.

The 2013 AP Exam schedule.

In our household, AP exams mean the past few weeks have been filled with drills (notes painstakingly detailed by Mod Squad Julie, drilled by M.S. Dad*), mock exams, and study sessions with classmates.

Many of the AP teachers have offered review sessions on Saturdays, giving away their own weekend time to help their students.

High school students and their parents tend to have a love-hate (or even hate-hate) relationship with APs. For students aiming for a selective college, if their high school offers AP courses, they’re a necessity. Most admissions officers will cite the importance of students taking the toughest course load available to them.

Students and their parents may stress about how well the student will do.  Students and their parents may stress about how many AP courses the student needs to take.

• See College Connection’s Escape from the Planet of the APs for a Q&A on how many to take.
• See the UNC University Gazette’s Study finds that more AP classes may not be better, which suggests that UNC says five is enough.

This year, for the first time, our high school’s guidance department offered an introductory session on APs for parents, providing an opportunity for questions prior to next year’s course registrations. Kudos to the counselors for that.

There’s much more to be said about APs, the cost, the opportunity cost, whether credit should be provided — more on all of that to come.

For now, good luck to the students taking APs this week and next. M.S. Julie has two exams this week and one next Wednesday. And with that, the highest stress points of her junior year will be behind her. I think.

* Note added to clarify:  any and all drilling for these and other exams is instigated by M.S. Julie, not either of her parents! We have been known to recommend reviewing to her brothers, but Julie is the one, so far, who takes advantage of the opportunity.

Related articles

• AP Exams are Here – Time to Bust a Move!
• AP Exam Distractions
• What Happens When? The College Admissions Calendar.

May 1st = National College Decision Day

If you (or your student) is a senior, you don’t need any help identifying the import of May 1st — the day most colleges across the country require a decision and a deposit from accepted students. From the other side of the desk, it’s also the day admission officers take a deep breath and look at their reports to see how well their offers yielded acceptances.

A few students will have made their commitment a long time ago. Early Decision applicants sign a commitment to accept an early offer. Recruited athletes operate on their own timetable.

But the majority of HS senior households have spent a good part of the past month looking at a variety of financial aid offers, revisiting schools during admitted day programs (aka “yield events”), and thinking through the choices the senior faces.

If you’re in that position, and the decision is going down to the wire, here’s counsel from a few different sources.

If you’re reading this to prepare for a decision to be made in the future, it may be useful to think about what you or your student will face.

Old Main, Augustana College. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

1.  Questions that really matter when making a final college choice, by W. Kent Barnds, Augustana College. Barnds is VP of Enrollment, Communication, and Planning for a small liberal arts college in the Midwest. He provides a number of questions related to the college experience; here are a few:

Will smaller classes benefit me in the field I wish to study?
Do faculty member in every major fieldwork one-on-one with students? What are some examples that the college I am considering can provide?
Will faculty members make time to talk with students about their future goals and career plans? Who advises students to make sure they take all of the required courses to ensure on-time graduation?

2.  Tip Sheet: Making the Final College Decision, is by Brennan Barnard, director of college counseling at the Derryfield School in New Hampshire, writing for the NYT’s The Choice blog. He wrote, “For many students, the college choice represents the first time that they have had to make a weighty decision.” Here are a couple of his considerations:

After the Facts, Go With Your Gut

The balance between critical analysis and gut instinct is a tricky one. Thoughtful decision-making involves an assessment of the facts and outcomes, while allowing for knowledge of self to guide your final choice.

Yes, it may be necessary to consider cost of attendance and distance from home. After these, considerations, however, quiet your mind from overanalyzing and fixating on the external. This will allow you to truly listen to what you know to be the right decision.

3.  Seeking Your Questions on Making the Final College Decision offers five posts of Q&As, including comparing financial offers, with answers by Mark Kantrowitz and Marie Bigham writing for the NYT’s The Choice. Here’s one of the questions facing many families:

Private University vs. State Institution

Q. My son’s top choice happens to be the most expensive (private) school. Even though it has the best offer of aid, the out-of-pocket cost would still be $40,000 to $45,000 a year. As a middle-class mother (not rich, not poor), how do we compare that with a state school where the overall cost would be $25,000 a year? I think the experience, education and connections would be superior at the expensive private school, and my son would be more likely to graduate in four years. But is it worth $80,000 more over four years?  — CA mom

I am a big fan of Kantrowitz’s clear and sometimes blunt reports on colleges and financial aid. You can learn a lot at his FinAid website. The response to the above question is lengthy and nuanced; I recommend reading it in full at the link. However, this brief calculus from the answer is worth remembering:

Total student loan debt at graduation should be less than the borrower’s expected annual starting salary, and ideally a lot less. If total debt is less than annual income, the borrower will be able to repay the student loans in 10 years or less.

Last year MS Pete made his commitment a day before the deadline. Once the decision was made, he could focus on enjoying the rest of his senior year. As Brennan Barnard wrote:

Send the check, buy the sweatshirt and celebrate the future

Even if it was not your first choice when you applied, invest yourself in your college as though you mean it. Try to remain open and trust that the universe will take care of the rest.

As always, good luck to the HS senior students and their families!

Related articles

• Students ‘baffled’ and ‘dumbfounded’ by 2013 college admissions decisions
• More colleges are putting college applicants on mid-year acceptance for enrollment

How to send poor kids to top colleges? 2 Suggestions

Last week, in the New York Times, David Leonhardt wrote about an analysis of SAT takers, which indicated that more low-income, high-achieving students,

• do not apply to selective colleges for which they have the aptitude, and
• often do not graduate from the less selective colleges they do attend.

I wrote about his report and two others here. I really hadn’t planned to write about this again, but I must admit to a weakness for studies followed-on promptly by possible solutions. This week, these articles presented ideas on how to help change this.

1.  Tell them:  Make better efforts to inform. 

Leonhardt returned to the topic with How to Send Poor Kids to Top Colleges. He presents the results from an effort to identify whether high-scoring, low-income students didn’t want to apply to selective colleges or they didn’t know about the opportunities available to them.

THE packages arrived by mail in October of the students’ senior year of high school. They consisted of brightly colored accordion folders containing about 75 sheets of paper. The sheets were filed with information about colleges: their admissions standards, graduation rates and financial aid policies.

. . .
Among a control group of low-income students with SAT scores good enough to attend top colleges — but who did not receive the information packets — only 30 percent gained admission to a college matching their academic qualifications. Among a similar group of students who did receive a packet, 54 percent gained admission, according to the researchers, Caroline M. Hoxby of Stanford and Sarah E. Turner of the University of Virginia.

. . .

Perhaps most important, the packets presented a series of tables making clear that college is often not as expensive as many students and parents fear. Selective colleges frequently cost less for low-income students than local colleges, because the selective ones have the resources to offer bigger scholarships.

At the less-selective campuses in the University of Wisconsin system, for example, the average net annual cost for a year of tuition, room, board and fees in 2010-11 was almost $10,000 for families making less than $30,000, Ms. Turner said. At the flagship campus in Madison, by contrast, the equivalent net cost was $6,000. And at Harvard, such students paid only $1,300 a year.

That last bit — about understanding the different net costs for colleges — shouldn’t be surprising. Even those parents and students who study the process closely can have a difficult time predicting what the net costs at a variety of schools might be, since much depends upon the interest/value a particular student in a particular cohort holds for that college. College pricing is closer to the multiple prices-per-seat-on-a-plane model than one might imagine.

Illustration by Ted McGrath, for the New York Times.

2.  Sell them:  Follow recruiting methods used by the military.

Responding to this same topic in an op-ed piece, Elite Colleges are as Foreign as Mars, published in the New York Times, Claire Vaye Watkins, a writer and English professor at Bucknell, wrote

For deans of admissions brainstorming what they can do to remedy this, might I suggest: anything.

By the time they’re ready to apply to colleges, most kids from families like mine — poor, rural, no college grads in sight — know of and apply to only those few universities to which they’ve incidentally been exposed. Your J.V. basketball team goes to a clinic at University of Nevada, Las Vegas; you apply to U.N.L.V. Your Amtrak train rolls through San Luis Obispo, Calif.; you go to Cal Poly. I took a Greyhound bus to visit high school friends at the University of Nevada, Reno, and ended up at U.N.R. a year later, in 2003.

Ms. Watkins provides a role model:  the military recruited very well by sending uniformed alumni back to the high school and by providing guidance on how to enlist, while the school provided classroom time to take the Armed Services aptitude test.

Granted, there’s a good reason top colleges aren’t sending recruiters around the country to woo kids like me and Ryan… The Army needs every qualified candidate it can get, while competitive colleges have far more applicants than they can handle. But if these colleges are truly committed to diversity, they have to start paying attention to the rural poor.

Until then, is it any wonder that students in Pahrump and throughout rural America are more likely to end up in Afghanistan than at N.Y.U.?

No wonder, indeed.

Related articles

• On Recruiting Underprivileged Students
• College rejection letters, how colleges boost their rankings, and funny math.
• Q&A: Son is a HS freshman – Where to begin?

Why are college and scholarship applications so complicated?

I wrote recently about a number of deadlines our household faced this winter. (You can read about it here.) While these were not (yet) college deadlines, they were similar to the Common Application and other admission applications in their make-up, each requiring student information, essays, transcripts, and teacher recommendations.

Via xkcd.com

On deadline day for a summer lab internship, Mod Squad Julie asked why the application needed to be so complicated. I’m not sure it needed to be — but it certainly was. I’ve been thinking about that since, especially since she will be working on college applications later this year.

1.  Every application is different. The actual interface for each admission, financial aid, and scholarship application is determined by the individual colleges and other entities. The Common App provides some streamlining, but most colleges offering the Common App also require their own supplementary forms. Some are available via the Common App; some are only available via the college website. Like it or not, each interface requires its own learning curve.

2.  Deadlines and requirements are not always clear. Some colleges do this well, providing a complete timeline for applicants. On other websites, the admission deadlines are separate from the financial aid deadlines, which are also separate from the supplementary submission deadlines for arts or other specialty programs.

3.  Most applications have multiple, moving parts. M.S. Julie’s summer program application is a great example of this. A new program offered through UVa required the following:

• Fillable pdf application form to be downloaded, completed, saved, and emailed back.
• Teacher recommendation letter to be downloaded by the teacher, completed, saved, and emailed back.
• UVa application for visiting HS students, part I, to be completed online via the University’s SIS.
• UVa application for visiting HS students, part II, to be printed, completed by parents and mailed in paper form.
• UVa application for visiting HS students, part II, to be printed, completed by HS guidance or Principal and mailed with transcript in paper form.

This combination of online form submission, pdfs to be emailed, and paper forms to be mailed makes my head spin. I understand how this happened — a new program requests information specific to it and additional to the standard summer application the University already requires. The administrators were very helpful when we contacted them with questions. I’m just saying, this was complicated.

4.  Deadlines.  Julie has fine-tuned her ability to perform triage on a multitude of school and extracurricular schedule demands. Adding essay-writing and the many steps required to build an application makes the deadline dance even more interesting. Or, complicated.

5.  High stakes raise the stress level. A high level of interest in gaining entrance — to a college or summer program — raises the stakes for providing every bit of information the application requires and writing the best responses to the essay prompts or questions.

We’ve had a lovely break since M.S. Pete wrote applications in the fall of 2011. It’s time to get back into the game and this was good practice for both Julie and me.

Related articles

• Senior Year is Approaching – Time to Step It Up!

Q&A: Does a college look at what type of diploma my student earned?

January and February are prime time for high school guidance counselors, parents, and students to meet and discuss course selections for registration. A number of friends wrote with questions about courses and choices. Here’s one.

Q.  Do you know if universities pay attention to whether a high school student is going for the regular Virginia diploma vs. the advanced one? Would having almost all, but not quite all, of the required credits for the advanced diploma be sufficient?

For non-Virginia readers:  rising 9th graders are asked to select which diploma they hope to achieve. The advanced diploma requires four years of Math, Lab Science, History/Social Science (rather than three), and three years of a Foreign Language (rather than two). There are other smaller differences (and you can read all about them here if you wish; heaven help you), but those are the key factors.

A.  The short answer:  I doubt they pay specific attention to whether or not the student hit every target on the Advanced Studies diploma, but they probably pay close attention to whether or not the student hit every target on their own list — which, for selective schools, will be very similar to the Advanced Studies list.

For the second question, about having almost all of the requirements — that would likely not be sufficient for a super-selective school, but would be sufficient for other schools. That’s where the standard disclaimer, “it depends,” comes into play. A student who did not get accepted to a school that only takes 15% of applicants could be a star at a school that accepts 45%.

Now, a few thoughts and questions for you as further information (which may or may not be useful).

1.  Does your high school include which type of diploma the student achieved — or attempted — on their HS transcript? Our high school’s transcript changes in response to changes in policy, so it has the potential to be different for almost every graduating class.

Western’s profile is online in the Counseling Dept. files.

Mod Squad Pete’s and M.S. Julie’s transcripts have a note at the top that says, “Student has completed the Early College Scholar Program agreement.” I think that refers to their signing off with the guidance counselor that they were going after the Advanced Diploma.

Also, find your school profile. This accompanies the student’s transcript when it’s sent to colleges. I would assume it is similar to our HS profile, which provides the context for the student’s experience, listing the grading scale, size of school, National Merit and SAT results for the school, class ranks, AP Exam results, and graduation requirements (both standard and advanced). You should be able to pull a copy of this from your school’s website. Your HS counselors should be able to give you a copy of a sample transcript. Admission staff certainly looks at each student within the context of his or her own school and how the course list compares to courses taken by other students in the school.

This is all so you can see, ahead of time, exactly how the colleges would see the information you’re asking about.

2.  Next, look at colleges to which your daughter may wish to apply. Every college must make reams of admission data public when they submit it to the government. Many, many websites provide that data in easily-searchable formats for students and parents to see. (This is also the source for the college guidebooks.) One of my favorites is CollegeData (owned by a bank, but offering an excellent format of search results) but there are loads to choose from.

Take UVa for example. They specify the courses they look for on the HS transcript, as in how many math, science, English, foreign language, etc. You can see that here, broken down by “required” and “recommended.” They also publish the priority of student data — which is most important to them and which is less so — lower on that same page. See Selection of Students and Factors: top on UVa’s list is rigor of HS record.

***

Now, a question for readers of this blog:  Do students in others states have to choose a type of diploma or state a college-oriented goal in some way? Please let me know in comments.

Related articles

• Iowa’s high school grads not always ready for next step
• Bill would require college credit in high school
• Improving the state of education

Got your FAFSA done yet? Here’s why you need to hurry.

There’s one very big reason guidance and financial aid counselors advise students and their families to file the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) as early as possible: The money runs out.

Tweeted 2/16/13 by UVa’s Student Financial Services.

Colleges use the FAFSA to determine a student’s eligibility for financial aid via “nine federal student-aid programs, 605 state aid programs, and most of the institutional aid available.”  [Via Wikipedia.] All of those programs have limited pools of funds; most allocate funding on a first-come, first-serve basis.

1.  The Deadline. The FAFSA becomes available online each January 1st for the following school year. FAFSA provides a deadline of June 1st, but some states set an earlier deadline, and most colleges will provide a recommended deadline of March 1st.

2.  The Tax Return. Completing the FAFSA requires at least a draft of the previous year’s tax return. So the Jan. 1, 2013 version of the FAFSA, required for the 2013-2014 academic year, needs data from your 2012 tax return. Some counselors will advise filing taxes first and linking the FAFSA to the IRS electronically for verification. Yet, most families will still be waiting for tax forms (1099s, W-2s, etc.) when they complete the FAFSA; hence, the draft return.

3.  The Paperwork. FAFSA’s Help link provides this list of the records you will need, in addition to the tax return. When dealing with the FAFSA, “you” always refers to the student.

Your Social Security card.
Your driver’s license (if any)
Your 2012 W-2 forms and other records of money earned
Your (and if married, your spouse’s) 2012 Federal Income Tax Return.
Your Parents’ 2012 Federal Income Tax Return (if you are a dependent student)
Your 2012 untaxed income records
Your current bank statements
Your current business and investment mortgage information, business and farm records, stock, bond and other investment records
Your alien registration or permanent resident card (if you are not a U.S. citizen)

1040/FAFSA Worksheet

4. Getting it right. I won’t start a list of all the things that are confusing about the FAFSA. This post would never end. I will try to provide some help.

When preparing our draft 2012 tax return, our accountant provided a worksheet which matched dollar amounts from our return with FAFSA question numbers. If you know the difference between American Opportunity education credits and tuition deductions and which benefits you the most, you may not need any help. If, like me, this sort of help comes in handy, download a pdf of the blank form.

Good luck!

Related articles

• NerdScholar’s FAFSA Checklist
• 5 Reasons You Should Complete the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA)
• What Do You Need On-Hand to Complete the FAFSA?

Three Quick Tips for College Financial Aid

It’s time for me to review financial aid files in preparation for filing our FAFSA next month. If you’re in the same position — or if you’ve never done this before — here are three quick tips to getting started with college financial aid.

1.  Be Strategic.

From the Wall Street Journal’s, How to Not Blow it with Financial Aid, understand the cost of assets being held in the wrong accounts. Money in the student’s account is allocated toward what your family can pay at a much higher rate than money in the parent’s account. This is logical, sure, as the parents have many more demands on their income and assets than the student. To follow on that logic, make strategic choices about where assets are held. The WSJ article quotes Mark Kantrowitz from finaid.org, an excellent resource.

For one thing, a child’s income and assets count heavily against their potential aid. Every dollar a child has in assets—that includes bank accounts or trust funds—cuts their possible award by 20 cents. Every dollar a child makes in income above $6,130 (the limit for 2013-14 aid) cuts their possible award by 50 cents.

Before the base income year starts, parents should transfer the child’s assets—that includes any money in checking and savings accounts—into a 529 plan, a tax-advantaged savings account for college, says Mr. Kantrowitz.

2.  Be Honest.

Any information families provide as part of their FAFSA will be verified by tax filings with the IRS. This can be done via the FAFSA/IRS direct interface or it will be done by the college requesting copies of past and current tax forms.

Take a look at this recent case, Attorney Disbarred for Submitting Falsified Tax Returns for Financial Aid, shared by Kelly Phillips Erb who blogs about tax at Forbes. The lawyer filed false financial aid forms, then submitted falsified tax returns to the private secondary school in support of the forms. Note:  he did not file the false returns with the IRS, he altered existing returns and give them to the school to back up the financial aid forms. No matter, “He sacrificed his career and his reputation for between $6,000 and $8,000 per year.” This from an attorney who had been a partner in a firm that shared $1.5 million in profits per partner last year.

As the cost of education skyrockets, parents feel trapped to pay for school – and some of them consider lying in order to get financial aid. And yes, financial aid forms require that you submit supporting documentation, usually pay stubs or federal income tax returns. Here’s where folks get into trouble: they lie on their tax returns in order to skew the numbers for financial aid. Sometimes it’s overstating deductions (bad) or omitting income (really bad). Other times, it’s lying about dependents, exemptions and in some instances, marital status (really, really bad). In almost every instance, one lie leads to another because it’s hard to keep up. Just like with Golden.

3.  Be Careful.

This quick read, Ten Common FAFSA Errors Parents Make, can help all of us avoid simple mistakes that might cause disastrous consequences. [Hat tip to Susie Watts for the link.] See the article for a brief paragraph on each mistake, but here’s the list:

1. Failing to Submit Because of Income (High or Low)
2. Waiting Too Long to Submit
3. Submitting Incorrect Info for Divorced Parents
4. Understating Income
5. Overstating Assets
6. Misquoting Real Estate Assets
7. Misplacing Information
8. Choosing to File Paper Vs. Electronic
9. Failing to Consider Each Question Carefully
10. Forgetting to Save as You Go

Good luck to families working on their taxes and financial aid forms. Good luck to all the high school seniors still working on completing college applications. I can only wish this time next year you are as happy at your selected college as Mod Squad Pete has been at his.

Next up:  2013 brings Mod Squad Julie to the year of SATs, more college visits, and — finally — college applications. Happy New Year!

Related articles

• Is Financial Aid Worth the Hassle? (DrStrangeCollege)
  
• Who Should Complete the FAFSA? What About Parents of Newborns? (DrStrangeCollege)
  
• FAFSA Tips and Tricks for First Generation Students (nerdwallet.com)

3 reasons to apply to college early. Get one done.

I chatted with my brother last week. His older son — we’ll call him Starsky — is a senior in a small high school in the rural Midwest. Starsky is still working on his longish list of colleges, still visiting a few, and recently developed a plan for what he might like to study in college.

Mod Squad Pete and Starsky in August. Pretty sure they weren’t talking about college applications.

All this is great.

Then I asked, “Is he applying anywhere early? Not early decision, since he’s still working on where he wants to apply, but early action.” My brother said, “Not yet.”

I did not scream over the telephone, but I’m sure I strongly suggested that Starsky consider applying somewhere early.

(Both my brother and I would agree that I obsess about these things more than he does. I’m sure his approach is healthier. [Cue the emails from friends reminding me of this blog's tagline.])

Truth be told, Starsky is an excellent student, a superb athlete, and an all-around great kid — he’ll do well wherever he decides to go to college and the school will be fortunate to have him.

However — and Starsky, I’m talking to you now — here are three reasons why you should apply to at least one college via early action:

1.  Get one done now, so you have that great sense of accomplishment. Most students and parents have heard war stories from other families about missed deadlines, computers or websites crashing, lost recommendation letters, late night stressed-out arguments, and more. It’s not insurmountable, it’s just tough. There’s a huge difference in how it feels to be almost done with an application and how it feels after you’ve clicked on “submit.” That high can take you through however many more applications you plan to complete.

2.  Get one done now, so you’ve seen and completed the Common Application interface through to the end. The Common App has made it much easier to apply to a number of colleges, but no one working their way through it the first time would call it easy. It requires your full attention:

• Many colleges require supplementary applications and many of those require supplementary essays.
• Some elements need to be written separately, then cut-and-pasted into the interface. Other pieces need to be uploaded.
• Some colleges require the fee paid prior to submission, others vice versa.
• Printing the App for proofreading leads to confusion: not all colleges require every question the application provides. However, the printed App includes those questions, showing them unanswered.

Completing the Common App all the way through one time will make all the subsequent applications much easier. Plus, now’s the time to figure out how to submit different versions or how to correct something for another college.

3.  Get one done now, because early action provides early responses. It’s difficult to describe the feeling you will get when you receive that first acceptance. It doesn’t matter so much which college it is — that’s when you know you will go to college. Receiving an acceptance in December is worth busting your gut in October. Plus it makes the January 1st to April 1st wait for regular action responses that much easier to take.

If you think I’m being hard on you, Starsky, just text your cousin, Mod Squad Pete. He’ll tell you this is nothing compared to having to live with my “encouragements” day in, day out.

Related articles

• HS students: 4 questions about getting ready for college applications
• Applying for College: Choosing Early Decision vs Early Action
• The Uncommon Common App
• How to Know if You Should Apply to College Early