Hey Guys,
So I really miss my old counselor now. I’ve literally spent the last two weeks getting my new counselor up to speed and it just really missed how my old counselor would just take care of things so seemlessly. She’s a volunteer at our school, now that’s she retired, so I’m probably just going to try and talk with her more because she’s been more helpful.
Also, to my low-income, high-achieving guys and gals, a reminder that you SHOULD NOT let application fees, or other fees associated with applying to college, kill your college application season. For those of you that have the option of fee waivers, USE THEM! My motto throughout the entire application process is: every dollar counts! I would imagine that most everyone on CC knows about College Board/ACT fee waivers. A great thing my counselor said is to make sure to CHECK the requirements to see whether or not you’re eligible. There are a lot of kids out there who don’t even know half the things us CCers know. One of the potential class valedictorians literally knows nothing of flyins and he applied to Questbridge. There are also a lot of low-income, high-achieving kids at my school who, like me, commute miles away from their zoned schools in order to get an education at a school they feel would be a more conducive learning environment than the school they were zoned. There is actually a trend in my county where some of the kids who are zoned to go to the more “problematic (a friend used that word)” schools (which tend to be in the southern part of the county) are applying to speciality programs at schools in the northern to mainly get away from the environment of the southern county schools. Anyway, I would encourage telling any senior you know that isn’t very wealthy about these opportunities. Tell them about opportunities that wouldn’t normally be found on some guidance counselor bulletin board. Especially first-gen students, similar to my situation, who are getting little to no help throughout all of this.
Also, the biggest word of advice from my old counselor that I’ve recently learned and have witnessed in terms of fee waivers: THE VERY LEAST YOU CAN DO IS EMAIL A SCHOOL, EXPLAIN YOUR SITUATION, AND ASK FOR ONE. So far, I’ve emailed around 30-40 schools and while most of them want my counselor to write on my behalf, some schools (Northwestern, UPitt, Bowdoin, and Williams) have outright given me a fee waiver with just one email. Just by emailing them, I’ve saved my family about $300+ on college apps and SAT reports. I would especially look into the Questbridge partner schools (mainly the non-Ivies) even if you don’t qualify for Questbridge because they seem to generally give some waivers if you simply ask (Northwestern, Bowdoin, and Williams) and, at least for some of the schools, can give pretty good financial aid packages.
Lastly, I would highly consider looking up “schools with no application fees”. Try and see if you can find some schools with know fees on here that you might want to apply for.
And, for those who are still in the College Board Student Search (and are constantly being bombarded by emails from random with an urge to put them all in the junk mail folder) look at those emails VERY CAREFULLY. Some emails might a couple fee waivers and personalized apps that you can finish in minutes, send in everything, and get a decision within a few weeks. If you actually kind of like those schools, it could be a really big morale booster knowing you at least got in somewhere.
Anyway, that’s what I’ve got to say. I apologize that most of it was geared to low-income kids, but I really think this needed to be said. Please correct me if any of the information I’ve talked about is inaccurate. Remember, EVERY DOLLAR COUNTS!