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January News

January 17th, 2012 | by Peter Jenkins, Director

It is January, and the college process is nearing its completion for the class of 2012 even as it begins in earnest for the class of 2013.
2012 has submitted more than 2000 applications to more than 175 different colleges and universities. As of this writing, 87 students have already been admitted to more than 80 different colleges and universities. More than 3/4 of the class used some kind of early application with a large number opting for the non-binding, early action application. College counselors have been working on the last minute details of the academic schedules for the spring semester and helping all of the seniors and post-graduates remain focused and positive during the winter.
Most colleges and universities will begin to release admission decisions mid-March; the universal reply date by which all members of the class of 2012 must make a deposit to their new school is May 1.

Parents of 2012, we will host a breakfast conversation for you in Alumni Hall on the morning of Saturday, February 4th during the Family Days program in a few weeks.  Please join counselors to discuss the issues connected with the transition into college.  It is an informal and “unscripted” event- we hope to see you there!

Please refer to your Family Days calendar for the details of time and place.

Happy New Year.

Posted in Early Decision, General News, news, Office Programs | No Comments »

The last lap!

September 7th, 2011 | by Peter Jenkins, Director

Class of 2012, you are at the beginning of the end of your college process. Much has already been achieved, and you should celebrate your successes to this point. Of course, much remains to be done, as well.
A few bullet point reminders:
Make sure that you have made an appointment with your counselor. Before that meeting, you should review your Naviance list of “Colleges I am Thinking About” to make sure that it accurately reflects your current thinking. Summer visits and contacts you have made on college and university campuses could have easily colored your thinking about what it is that you want from the next four years of your education. Make sure that list is up to date.
Please review the new steps for asking for teacher recommendations. Mr. Neil has posted the instructions in our class folder (’12) on SWIS. In most cases, you will need two teacher recommendations- one from a person in the math/science disciplines and one from a person in the language/English/history disciplines. College admissions officers expect to hear from junior or senior teachers. If you have questions, please be in contact with your counselor.
Pay attention to deadlines! Our office routinely sends out reminders to you about signing up for standardized testing or the arrival on campus of a college representative. Read swis! Sign-up to meet with our college visitors. Make sure that your standardized testing meets or exceeds the expectations of the colleges on your own list.
More than two-thirds of you will likely chose some form of early action or early decision. That means all of your deadlines have to be moved up. As you review your own fall semester calendar, make sure that you have highlighted the particular dates for your particular application.
Another date for your calendar is SEPTEMBER 25. That Sunday is the NMH College Fair and we have more than 100 schools coming and many are coming early to offer on-campus interviews.
Do your very best in all areas of school life this fall.
Polish the hubcaps!
Best
Mr. J
For the office.

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Q & A: How do I expand upon my list?

August 2nd, 2011 | by Jeff Neill '97

Q: I have found a few colleges that I like, but I am having a hard time finding other colleges like them that also represent a range of admissions possibilities. Can you tell me how I can expand upon my list?

A: This is a very common question that we receive here in the College Counseling Office, particularly over the summer months. It is very typical for a student to find a school or two that he or she really loves and then to struggle to find many more to round out that 12-15 college list with which we hope for students to return to campus in the fall of their senior year. Also, it is common for students to produce a list of schools that do not represent a range of admissions possibilities where they are all “reach” or all “possible” or all “likely.” Given that we encourage students to apply to a list of 6-10 colleges that represent a range of possibilities and all of which would be places the student would be happy to attend, this question is a very important one.

The first and perhaps most important piece of advice is to communicate with your college counselor. It is important for students to have these sorts of conversations with us as we can be helpful. If you like school A for these reasons, our experience might suggest schools B, C, and D. So much of the support that we provide for our students depends upon effective, regular, and open communication, so be sure to reach out to your college counselor early and often! If you do not know who this is, give the office a call at 413-498-3434! We will point you in the right direction.

A second piece of advice, which might seem self-evident, is to take time to break down what it is that you like the most about these schools so that you can search for that quality in others. It seems quite obvious, but this is the question that I find myself asking of my counselees most regularly. It is sometimes demanding or even baffling to navigate these concerns — and your college counselor can help here! – but too frequently students tend to stop short of investigating the commonalities. If a student can identify the prevailing qualities that they liked about three schools, the chances are that there is a search engine out there that can help them find other schools with this same characteristic.

A third suggestion comes to us from Naviance. Naviance is a powerful tool and can help students with all sorts of challenges, including these identified here, if they know how to use it properly. In this case, one way to expand a list is to use Naviance’s “Overlap” function. What this does is to show what other colleges NMH students most frequently apply to if they have applied to a particular college. For example, if a student were to identify Fordham as their favorite school and then were want to figure out what other places might be like Fordham, he or she could access the Overlap function and see what other schools NMH students who have applied to Fordham have also applied to. The basic understanding here is that there are likely to be some common characteristics and qualities between these schools that have high numbers of overlaps.

Here Joe Hogger has clicked the link for Fordham University, a school that he really likes. This brings him to this page where he can learn more about the school.

 So how does the Overlap function work? First, log into Family Connection (Naviance) and select “Colleges I’m Thinking About” to reveal your list. (If you have lost or do not know your password, check with your college counselor or call Patty Kostanski at 413-498-3434 to get more information.) Make sure that you have inserted any prospective colleges into this list. It is a point worth mentioning as frequently as possible that this list can be seen by your college counselor, and so it is the real “list” that we are always ask students to update. The more updated it is, the better information we all have, and the better, therefore, the communcation is!    Here Joe Hogger has clicked the link for Fordham University, a school that he really likes. This brings him to this page where he can learn more about the school.

 
The next step is to click on the college in the list for which you would like to find more similar colleges for your search. Once you have clicked onto the school, you will be brought to a page that contains all sorts of information about the college. Sometimes there are admissions videos here as well, but this page contains everything from the most basic to the most detailed information. It also provides a link to the school’s website, always a fundamentally essential resource for exploring a college.
 

Though censored for privacy reasons, here is the list of colleges to which NMH students who have applied to Fordham over the past five years have also applied.

After the initial information (and possibly video), there is a bar of menu options, including the link to the school’s website, in which there is an option entitled “Overlaps.” If you click on that, you will be brought to a page that shows all of the other colleges over the past five years that NMH students who applied to this college also applied to. The list provides the ten (if available) colleges with the greatest number of overlaps in descending order from top to bottom. In addition to the overlaps, this list provides the total number of applicants to each school, the number accepted, the percent accepted, the average SAT scores, the average ACT scores, and the average GPA. All of this information comes from the past five years of NMH students only, but this is a great way to be able to look to see what schools others have found to be similar to a particular school. The data should be able to provide enough information to be able to diversify the list in terms of admissibilty concerns (e.g. providing more ”likelies,” “possibles,” or “reaches”). The next step is to investigate these other schools to see if they might also be interesting and exciting. It is not enough to assume that the similarities that others have found are enough; now it is time to dig around and find the similarities!

Posted in College Search, Naviance, Q&A, Resources | No Comments »

On Transcripts…

June 24th, 2011 | by jburstein

There are many questions about the how a grade point average (GPA) is calculated and how colleges and universities use the Northfield Mount Hermon GPA in the application process.  The following will help to explain this somewhat complex and confusing topic.

When you look at your Northfield Mount Hermon Transcript, you will see the listing of your courses by subject area and the academic years’ corresponding grades.  On the bottom of each year’s column you will see  the Annual GPA and Cumulative GPA listed.  The NMH GPA is based solely on the courses taken while at NMH (it does not include summer school course grades or previous school grades).  For example, a senior at NMH who came to NMH as a sophomore will have sophomore and junior NMH grades calculated into their GPA.  The NMH GPA is based on of a 4.0 scale and is un-weighted.  This means that we do not weight grades based on honors or AP level coursework.

If you attended a previous high school, the NMH College Counseling Office will attach your previous school’s transcript.  Once again, the previous school’s courses and their corresponding grades will not be entered into the NMH GPA.  Colleges will most often recalculate your NMH GPA into a common GPA for their college.  They may or may not weight your GPA and may remove certain courses from their GPA.

There are often questions regarding the discrepancy between previous school’s grades and the grades earned at NMH.  Will the college understand that I am now attending a much more rigorous school at NMH and my grades may be slightly lower?  The answer is almost always “yes.”  College admissions offices know NMH, and we are always spending time informing and educating new admission counselors who may be reading and evaluating our students in the admissions process.

We will never send out the class rank of our students to the colleges.  We reference the grade distribution sheet in our school profile and will send it to our NMH families.

Posted in General News, GPA/Transcripts | No Comments »

Time to make a deposit!

April 26th, 2011 | by Peter Jenkins, Director

 

May 1st is the universal reply date for colleges and universities, and you should make sure you reserve your spot in the class of 2015 by sending in a deposit to your school. It is important to review the “fine print” in your acceptance letter, as some schools want the check in hand by May 1st, while others will accept a post-mark of May 1. Given that May 1 is on Sunday, your check may need to arrive by Friday, which means that today is a good day to put the check in the mail.

Please make only one deposit to one school. Colleges and universities are often in contact with each other about their incoming classes, and if they discover you have “double-deposited” (trying to get a little more time to decide on your choice) they can pull your acceptance letter. This office knows of cases where that has happened!

 If you are on a waiting list, you will need to continue to wait. As these deposits come in, the enrollment managers at the schools will begin to assess their yield numbers, and, shortly thereafter, make offers to students who have been actively “waiting.” If you are taken off the wait list and want to matriculate at your “new” school, you will most likely lose your May 1 deposit. In some unusual circumstances, you can contact the admission office (s) at the schools you are considering and get an extension on your reply date or some modification to your deposit dollar amount. That is on a case-by-case basis.

 Congratulations!

And graduation is only five weeks away!

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Wait? Still?

April 5th, 2011 | by Peter Jenkins, Director

 

After months of waiting for college results, many NMH seniors and post graduates have learned that they still must wait, as they have been put on a waitlist at one of their favorite colleges. 

The wait list is a kind of insurance policy for colleges and universities as they try to calculate their yield, which is the number of accepted students who will, in fact, matriculate.  The wait list is there as a kind of “holding tank” of acceptable and interesting students who have the credentials and the talents to make a difference at the school.

Students have the month of April to decide where to deposit.  As the deposits roll in (or don’t) for each school, the admissions staff begins to look more closely at the wait list pool and decides when to “go” to the wait list.

Very few institutions actually have a hierarchical list; you don’t usually have a “number” on this list.  What they do, in fact, is analyze their yield and use the wait list to fill-out the incoming class.  If they are not getting enough women to deposit, they take women off the waitlist.  If their tuba player chose a different school, the take a tuba player off the wait list.

None of this movement will happen for a couple of weeks, so what is a waitlisted student to do?

First, reply to the college with the form they have provided  and note that you are  interested in remaining active on the waitlist.  Then, about the middle of the month, send an email to the college  saying that their school remains your number one choice and that you would matriculate if accepted.  You might also ask if there is further supporting evidence that you might supply- your most up-to-date grades, for example, or an additional letter from a current teacher.  

The college office follows up with phone calls to each college to continue to advocate for each student as well as get a sense of how the yield is looking. 

Some schools stick to the May 1 universal reply date before they  make the decision to go to the wait list.  Other schools move to the wait list earlier, maybe even a week or ten days earlier.

By May 1st, you need to send in a deposit to a school, regardless of how many wait lists you are still on.  Please check the details of this carefully, as some places accept deposits with a May 1 postmark, whereas others need to have the check in hand by May 1.  In the case that you find you have been taken off a waitlist after you have deposited elsewhere, in most cases you will forfeit the deposit. 

We strongly encourage all our students who know that they will not attend school A, B or C, to write and let them know as soon as possible.  This helps all students who are still waiting to move the process along, including NMH peers, of course.

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March News and Notes

March 30th, 2011 | by Peter Jenkins, Director

 As we gear up for the spring term and all of the events that lie ahead, I wanted to give you a quick overview from the office.

We made more than 100 calls to colleges and universities, checking on our students’ applications and offering last-minute support to each of them.  Results should be coming in pretty quickly at this point, as most admission offices try to share their decisions this week or next.

As always, there was a mix of good news and bad, some of it quite surprising.  The big universities and selective liberal arts colleges that attract lots of NMH applications all shared similar stories:  “We are up in applications this year, the pool is more competitive than ever and, because we over-enrolled last year, we are looking at a smaller incoming class.”    Boston University reported 45,000 applications this year!  University of Chicago is up nearly 40% in international applications.   Middlebury College reports that it will accept fewer than 10% of its applicant pool for the first time ever.  Just three years ago, it was news when Yale, Harvard and Stanford were all “under 10% admit rate.”  While statistics for this year are not complete at this writing, I believe that more than 25 schools will report such a statistic this year.

All of that said, our students were thoughtfully and carefully read by admissions officers around the country and around the world.  Often, our letters and documents were praised for their clarity and transparency.  Many students have heard good news;   some have been disappointed.  We stand ready to continue to counsel and offer suggestions as our students manage the news of their results and begin to plan in earnest for next year.

Tidbits:

Some of you will have read very positive reviews of Crazy U, One Dad’s Crash Course on Getting His Kid into College, by Andrew Ferguson, in The Boston Globe, The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal.  His book is reported to be “informative, funny and scary” all at once.  I have a copy on order for the office and will offer a synopsis and review in an upcoming post.  You can read an on-line interview with the author at the link below.

http://thechoice.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/03/21/crazy-u-q/?partner=rss&emc=rss

We continue to recommend Colleges that Change Lives by Loren Pope, now out in paperback and with their own website

http://www.ctcl.org/

We had some “required reading” of our own over the spring break- Blink, by Malcolm Gladwell.    He may be better known for his book The Tipping Point,  but the office read Blink to gain some insights into the psychology of decision-making.  He does not address college admissions, per se, but many of his examples and his central point, that most people make snap judgments and most of them are accurate, is quite relevant to the business of presenting students to college admissions offices in their most positive and compelling light. 

Even as we are finishing our work with our seniors and post-graduates, we dig into meetings with juniors and will introduce the college process to our sophomores this spring.

Posted in General News, Office Programs, Weekly Feature | No Comments »

Family Days Reflection

February 25th, 2011 | by Peter Jenkins, Director

If you were unable to attend our recent Family Days events, I write to give you a review of what the College Office had for parents and students that weekend.

On Friday, Matthew Hyde, the Associate Director of Admission at Tufts University and a former NMH Admission Officer offered a broad overview of the process in a session for the parents of freshman and sophomores. 

Matt’s focus was that there are more than 3,000 colleges and universities in the US alone, and many of these schools are places where your children could be very happy and very successful.  Indeed, the college where your son or daughter may matriculate could be a school you have never heard of today.

He was very complimentary to the breadth and strength of the NMH experience for your children, as it prepares them especially for college but also for life.

He reminded parents that the college process, which will begin in earnest in the junior year, is about the students, not about their parents. 

As a reader of applications at Tufts, Matt looks for those distinctive qualities in each applicant that suggest a good fit for student and the university.

He took questions at the end.  I will highlight only one of many:

Q:  “You say that our students should pursue their passions.  What if they have to work over the summer to pay for NMH and for college?  How does that show ‘passion’?”

A:  “We know well that there are many families out there where students must work during the summer.  If you have to flip burgers instead of counting turtles in Costa Rica, we respect that.  It shows a lot of maturity to keep the hours of a job and to work with customers and supervisors.”

 On Saturday morning, Director Peter Jenkins and counselor Jim Burstein hosted an informal session for parents of seniors on “preparing for the transition.”  It was a lively round table discussion format, with lots of parents sharing great stories of their kids and how watching them grow up is joy leavened with sorrow. 

I pointed out that most students will find some way of acting out as they begin to prepare to leave NMH, and it will take different forms.  They may get into trouble; some may break up long-term relationships.  Some will be sullen or even surly- others will be counting down the days to “freedom.”  College is an opportunity to reinvent themselves, and some may do it to your chagrin, arriving with tattoos or nose rings and a mohawk.  Nevertheless, all of the time, they need your ongoing support and kindness, but with less nagging attention to details.

Again, the preparation that NMH is for college is a big advantage for our students.  They have learned to balance academics and social life; they know how to compete in sports and still find time for homework; they are independent enough to thrive in any environment and savvy as to the advantages of working together with peers and adults alike for common goals.

The mix of exhilaration and exasperation that characterizes the beginning of the end of their time at NMH was the theme of the morning.

For the remainder of the morning, all of the counselors hosted the parents of juniors in a “nuts and bolts” session on what lies ahead in the college process. 

Sarah Kenyon explained the importance of the college visit and how to make it worthwhile and revealing.  In some cases, knowing that you would “never go” to one place or another is information that is equally important as the discovery of the “dream school.”  She told a very poignant (and true!) story of a student who took a classic “six colleges in three days” trip and fell in love with Union.  He applied early and got in, but when they drove up to campus the next spring for the revisit day for attending students, he turned to his mother and said “This isn’t Union.”  Well, it was, of course, but he had confused it with Skidmore.  He attended Union for four years and was a very happy and successful student there.  Two morals to her story:  take notes on visits!  More to the point, you can be very happy no matter where you go!

Jim Burstein talked about the role of artistic and athletic talent in the process.  This is an area where a clear-eyed assessment of your child’s talents is essential.  You may think they play piano like Victor Borge, but does the music teacher agree?  You may think that your daughter is an Olympic rower, but does the coach concur?  After you have made those clear analyses, then you should reach out to professors in the performing and visual arts at colleges and universities that interest you, and craft the best portfolio you can muster.   Similarly, you should prepare an “athletic  resume” with your background and performance highlights.  A game tape can be useful in certain sports as well.

Jeff Neill talked about the role of technology in all of this, with references to the NMH search engine Naviance, as well as the NMH College Counseling blog, and the fact that we send messages to our student’s cell phones via Twitter (say, to alert them to a date for signing up for standardized testing).  There were also some questions about Facebook pages and what is or is not appropriate.  Generally speaking, your son or daughter should be vigilant about what is posted on their page, as some college admission officers will visit Facebook to check out applicant’s profile.  Just as an aside, I would say that it is a Brave New World.

Peter finished with a quick review of the role of standardized testing in the process, and the various ways that students can show their best selves in this arena.  On one extreme, there are schools that are testing optional (look for a quick review of those places in my next posting)  On the other extreme, there are schools that require the SATs and three Subject tests.  NMH offers free on-line test prep through My Student Edge, a Peterson’s product.  We also have the Summit Test preparation group on campus on Sundays in a more typical classroom setting.  This is a reasonably priced option for students who need more focus and attention in their test prep. 

We opened the floor to a wide range of questions from the role of financial aid in the process to the already specialized student who knows they want to study nano-technology. 

The theme, again, is to let the students drive the process.  The more they invest in the research, visits and application, the more likely they are to own the outcome, regardless of what it might be.

And, for a little perspective on it all, a year from now, all of the class of 2012 will have finished the application process!

Posted in General News, Office Programs, Technology | No Comments »

Navigating Financial Aid

January 31st, 2011 | by Sarah Kenyon

For most families, paying for college is not easy and seeking financial assistance is a necessity.  We wish we could shake the money tree for you, but we cannot!  What we can do, however, is help you understand more fully what you’ll need to do to obtain financial support. If you are seeking financial assistance, the vast majority of colleges require that you submit your financial aid form(s) by early February, which is right around the corner.  Generally speaking, there are two forms that you will need to submit: the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) and the CSS Profile.  Financial aid packages are based solely on the information you provide, so providing the colleges with the information they are requesting, along with any additional information that they did not ask for but you feel is relevant, is key. Even if you believe your income will not qualify for financial aid, by filling out the forms, you will have baseline information on file in case your situation changes during the year. Moreover, many families are surprised to find they do qualify for at least some aid.  If you would like to receive an early estimate of student aid before officially applying for aid, visit www.fafsa4caster.ed.gov.

The FAFSA is required by ALL colleges, and filing electronically is best http://www.fafsa.ed.gov/.   As the instructions indicate, information can be estimated; the instructions recommend completing your income tax before filing the FAFSA, but it is not necessary to do this.  It is more important to file the FAFSA in a timely fashion rather than wait until you have completed your taxes.   In fact, if you haven’t even received your W-2 form(s) yet, don’t worry.  You can glean the information from your last pay stub(s) of 2010. The FAFSA requests roughly the same information as a 1040, so it actually can work as a dry run for filing an income tax return. If you submit the FAFSA with estimated information, you can easily update your form a few weeks later.

You will notice that there is a June 30 deadline for processing the FAFSA, but be advised that Federal (and college) funds have largely dried up by then.  Most colleges list a February 15 deadline, if not earlier.  The FAFSA form goes to a computer data processing firm, which crunches the numbers and then the information is forwarded to the colleges listed on your form.  If you wish add additional colleges at a later date, your information can be forwarded to the additional schools later.   Please note, the information is read by an optical scanner.  Therefore, leave no blanks; give no answers that deviate from instructions (N/A is not acceptable in place of a number; -0- is more acceptable).

The CSS Profile is the other form that is commonly required, however it is not required by all colleges, and is not free.  You can register for the CSS Profile via the Internet: www.collegeboard.com.   Here, you will find a comprehensive list of college that requires the CSS Profile.  If your schools are listed, then you must complete the form by the required deadline(s) or you will not be considered for financial assistance.  Like the FAFSA, it is best to submit the form on time with estimated information rather than submitting it late.  You can make changes to the form after it has been submitted. In addition, colleges will verify the information with tax documents later in the spring.  Also, if you have any additional information to share about your personal financial situation, it is advisable that you use the space provided for this purpose.

There are some colleges have their own institutional application or data form for financial aid.  Usually, they will send the form directly to you if you have indicated that you will be applying for aid on your application.   However, sometimes it is up to you to access this form on-line.  Therefore, it is best to scour each college’s website for pertinent scholarship and financial aid information so that you can understand the individual nuances of each school.  Never assume that the financial aid requirements or procedures are the same for every school.

There are many schools that offer merit, talent, and academic scholarships.  At some colleges, you will automatically be considered for these monies simply by applying.  However, at most schools you will need to apply for these scholarships by completing an application, writing a specific essay, or by being nominated by a high school counselor or teacher.  If the college offers competitive scholarships, this information will be published on their websites.  If you are aware of a merit scholarship that you would like to be considered for, please let us know.

Outside scholarships are abundant, but finding them can be tricky.  For help in searching for outside scholarships, the best websites are www.fastweb.com, www.collegeboard.com, www.scholarships.com, www.college.gov and www.finaid.org. You have to register with them, but there is no cost to you.  There are other scholarship search engines out there; some are pretty good, but others are not, so be wary.  Our advice – if you have to pay money to either access the search engine or to apply for the scholarship, DON’T! It is also advisable to contact your town hall, library, community leaders and clergy to learn about scholarships in your community.  Even if you attend a private school located outside of your town, you might be eligible for local scholarships.

Special populations such as racial, gender, ethnic, LGBT, and religious groups are often underrepresented in American colleges and universities, and there are several private foundations geared specifically toward the needs and sensitivities of these groups.  For multicultural scholarships, grants and fellowships:  www.financialaidtips.org/minorities, www.gofinancialaid.com, www.multiculturaladvantage.com/scholarship.asp Hispanic students: www.hsf.net or www.hacu.net; Asian and Pacific Islander American students: www.apiasf.org; African American students: www.NAACP.org, www.uncf.org, www.financialaidfinder.com, www.littleafrica.com, or www.blackexcel.org/100minority.htm; Native American students: www.collegefund.org, www.aigc.com, or www.aises.org; Arab American students: www.aasiusa.org; Jewish students: www.hillel.org; Other Underrepresented students: www.possefoundation.org or www.questbridge.org; Naturalized citizens: www.pdsoros.org; Undocumented students: www.nilc.org; First Generation students: www.collegescholarships.org/scholarships/first0in-family.htm or www.nextgenerationpress.org.  LGBT students: http://lesbianlife.about.com/od/youth/tp/Scholarships.htm For religious scholarships, contact your church or synagogue.

There are also many state-specific financial aid opportunities.  For example, the Vermont Student Assistance Corporation (VSAC) has grant, scholarship and loan programs available for Vermonters; Massachusetts Educational Financing Authority (MEFA) also offers an array of programs for Massachusetts residents.  As with local scholarships, it’s best to research what might be available within your state as well. 

For international students who need money, I have found the following link to be very helpful:  http://www.edupass.org/finaid/undergraduate.phtml  Most US colleges do not offer foreign nationals need-based financial assistance, and for the colleges that do offer assistance the competition for these funds can be super competitive.  To apply for aid, you may be asked to complete the FAFSA, but it is more likely that you will be asked to complete an institutional form used to assess your need, while other colleges are using The College Board financial aid form: https://finaidonline.collegeboard.com/fin/VignetteServlet/VignetteServlet.srv?relativePath=/profile/pdfs/1011_finaid_int_stu_fin_aid_app.pdf  

However, because most colleges do not offer financial assistance for international students, most international students will need to document their ability to pay before they are admitted to a college/university.  Students do this by submitting copies of their parents’ financial records (official bank statements) to prove their parents have sufficient funds available to cover the cost of their education.  Colleges requiring this kind of documentation usually have their own form, but some schools will accept the form created by The College Board: 

https://finaidonline.collegeboard.com/fin/VignetteServlet/VignetteServlet.srv?relativePath=/profile/pdfs/1011_finaid_int_stu_cert.pdf

There are a handful of schools that offer need-blind and full-need admission to international students- Amherst, Dartmouth, Harvard, MIT, Princeton, and Yale.  (Under a need-blind admissions policy, a college or university will admit students regardless of their ability to pay, and for any students that cannot afford the price tag, full-need means the university awards scholarships and other institutional aid to make up the difference.)

It is best to check with each college to understand their individual policy on funding for non-US citizens. In addition to asking broadly whether they offer funds for international students, you might ask about specific programs for students from your country.  For example, some colleges are interested in matriculating students from certain countries/regions and may have special funds set aside for these students.  If you happen to be from Canada or Mexico, and you are applying to a school in a boarder state – Vermont, New York, New Mexico, for example – you may be eligible for need-based aid.   Be sure to let your college counselor know if you will be seeking financial assistance so that we can help identify colleges for you. 

Although applying for aid as well as searching for outside scholarships can be laborious, stay positive.  With a bit of hard work and perseverance, you will most likely find the money you will need to defray the costs.

Posted in Financial Aid, Weekly Feature | No Comments »

Something for Everyone

January 24th, 2011 | by Peter Jenkins, Director

Matt Hyde of Tufts University will speak on Friday of Family Days

Family Days is just around the corner, and the college counseling office has designed several programs for parents.

On Friday, Matt Hyde, the Associate Director of Admission from Tufts University will speak to interested parents of underclass students to give an overview of the college process and a glimpse of what is to come.  He will offer his insight beginning at 10:30am, and we will save some time for questions.  The session is scheduled to finish at 11:10am.  Please refer to your Family Days schedule for location.

Matt has worked at Tufts for six years and managed more than 150 NMH applications during that time!  He has also had a front row seat watching the competition and selectivity at all colleges ramp up during his career in the business.

He knows NMH well, having served on our own admission staff for four years before heading to Tufts.

His talk will overlap with visits to classes and perhaps scheduled conferences with teachers;  rest assured that the substance of his remarks will be reported on our web site and here on the NMH College Counseling blog.

For parents of juniors, the college counseling office team will host a “nuts and bolts” session on Saturday from 10:00am to noon.  We will review the materials we are currently covering with our juniors in their college counseling classes, and look ahead to scheduling visits, interviews, and the testing calendar for the remainder of this year and this summer.  Again, if you have a conflict on your schedule, you can find all of the information from this session on our web page and in our blog.

At this point, juniors are in a college counseling class.  It is worth pointing out that the counselor who appears on their schedule is the teacher of that class and not necessarily their counselor.  Students will be picking their “top three” choices for counselors on February 14th, and we will notify them of their counselor shortly thereafter.  In the meantime, if you want to meet with one of us, please feel free to do so using Pickatime.

For parents of seniors and PGs, we have a session from 8:00 – 9:30am entitled “Making the transition.”  This is a session with college counselors to help families prepare for the new family dynamic when your son or daughter goes off to college.  We will have an extended question and answer session during this presentation.

Please refer to your Family Days schedule for last minute changes and for locations for these sessions.

We look forward to seeing you on Friday, February 4th and Saturday, February 5th.

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