With the budget cuts happening all over the state of California, as well as in other states, the worry that students have now appears to be escalating as we are getting several calls each day on how we can help the families of students who are applying to or have just been accepted into colleges.
The key to the process is PLANING! We can not stress this enough. It is important to start ahead. When you wait till the last minute, mistakes happen. We just received a call from a hysterical father explaining that the financial aid award must be wrong that he just received.( It probably is not-- he just made errors in the app) He wants to know now how his son is going to survive his freshman year.Je wamts to hire us to FIX it. I can feel his pain, but he is not leaving any room for errors, an errors happen. I can't fix it and I am not going to take his hard earned dollars to just take it.
While we have a couple of tricks up our selves to help us perhaps assist him, we have no guarantees. Once you cross the threshold of submitting the material, you are kind of at the mercy of others. The most probable outcome is that there is almost nothing we can do at this point-- but we know that they way they calculated the FAFSA is probably where the mistake happened, and it is in those errs that the sumes are calculated. This family waited too long.
High School and Community College Counselors are very well trained but they are so busy with the volume of students they have to attend to that with all that they have to do that they don't always have enough time to assist those who really need help. Consequently, the student then falls through the cracks believing that they have to follow a prescribed program when in fact there may be better options for them to deal with their goals and for less money.
Another boy who has been accepted to the college of his choice is just learning the financial aid forms may have been filled out wrong. His family may have to pay the full tuition, when in fact on the surface of it all they really qualify for full aid. It is too late for us to change things, but had we worked with them earlier, we could have gotten a better outcome on things. We have to wait for next year now.
A girl is still in the local Community College and is of the belief that she has to graduate from the college in order to transfer to a 4 year school.... and is at her breaking point. She would love a BA, but thinks she needs to quit to go to work. She is now willing to settle for far less because she has not been properly guided. She has spent 4 years in a community college, and now is about 2-3 years behind her peers.
Worse I meet two boys who have an impressive list of schools to apply to in the fall, but they dont have SAT or ACT scores, and if they mess up on the last try.. they might lost their chance to get into the school.. It is these mistakes that can cost a student and their family.
These are all true stories, and we hear the same things EVERY year Most people when we tell them what we do, don't feel it is important to work with someone at the time, and feel that they can do it. However, this is a myth, unless the studentis overly bright. It is when the college says NO, or some other
High School and Community College Counselors are well trained, but that training is often over taken by heavy work loads they can not keep up with through no fault of their own. With heavy budget cuts and demand of their time, they are not allowed to keep up with the newest developments by attending national events, so they are completely out of touch with what new approaches the colleges will be taking for the coming year.
It is heartbreaking to see people at this point realize Mistake # 1 has been made, and now it is going to cost "x" # of thousands of dollars.... and then we hear, "should of, would of, could of" and it is just too late!
Don't be left out. Contact us to see how we can assist you. We offer a FREE 1/2 hour consultation, and we work ahead so that you are ready for the BIG year so that you can enjoy this transitional year, keep your sanity, and transition as easily as possible.
Many people think that hiring a college consultant will be expensive. Well, we are not cheap, but we can save you thousands more than what we would charged. By assisting you in avoiding all your mistakes will be higher than our fees. We are parents ourselves, and we really understand what you are going through and some of the understated pit falls not publicized.
We will offer you a FREE 1/2 hour consultation so that you can test drive our services and see if they are right for you. The response we get is "OH WOW, you can do that?"
Learn how we can save you money, how we can steer you to college success, and how we can turn your lives around for the better, and still keep it all in tack.
We care about what and how we do what we do. We will work with you from wherever your "start point" is not some perceived idea of where it should be! Check us out. We are signing up Junior ( class of 2013) now! We are working with Community College transfers or those who are seeking direction, and to those who are considering graduate school and need a sounding board. What ever you need, we probably have a program for you.
check out our website: THE COLLEGE ADMISSIONS CONSULTANT, Inc.
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