What are Parent PLUS loans?

     After families of graduating seniors complete their FAFSA, hopefully soon after October 1 when the FAFSA opens, a financial aid package from the colleges the student has been accepted to should follow. In theory, these packages should cover the student’s cost of attendance at the school the student chooses to attend. In theory. So, what happens when it doesn’t? How can a family put together the money they will actually need to send their senior to college?

For most, the answer to this question will be a Parent PLUS loan. Parents can apply for this through the federal government after the student receives their financial aid package and if they calculate a shortage of needed funds there. As you might expect, there are some key differences between the Parent PLUS loan and the Stafford loan which is the more common type of loan that will likely already be a part of the financial aid package. Perhaps the biggest difference is that the Stafford loan is tied to the student, the Parent PLUS loan is tied to the parent. So, at the end of the day, those are different people on the hook for repayment.

Students don’t have to pass a credit check to be eligible for a Stafford Loan but Parent PLUS applicants do. If the parent fails that check, the student can talk to their financial aid office about increasing the amount of their loan. That request is usually granted. It is important to note too that Parent PLUS loans come with a fixed interest rate and a few options for repayment terms ranging from 10 years to 25 years as well as an income-based option. The repayment starts immediately though, whereas students don’t have to begin repayment of their Stafford loan until six months following their graduation. Stafford loans may or may not be subsidized as well. If they are, the loan won’t accrue interest while the student is in school which can significantly reduce the overall cost of the loan. A Parent PLUS loan is never subsidized. Lastly, Parent PLUS loans carry a 4% origination fee. That’s something Stafford loans don’t have.

In short, the Stafford loan is a better deal than the Parent PLUS loan. The terms are always going to be better and cheaper. Also, Parent PLUS loans are where the amount of loan debt can spiral out of control. Remember, what’s in the financial aid package ought to cover the cost of attendance. If it doesn’t, a family would do well to examine their budget and see if there are changes or cuts that can be made. As a college recruiter once told me, sending your child to college shouldn’t come without some expectation of sacrifice or change to lifestyle. If you can’t find a way to do that, you may well need to borrow money to better your child’s future. As those repayments come due, what will that mean to your future lifestyle? Parent PLUS loans can be the bridge between a financial aid package and a college education for your child. That’s a good thing, but be careful with them. 

The Common App

 Over the past several years or so, the college admissions process has seen a revolution. Paper applications have essentially been extinct for some time, and it now appears that unique applications or applications that only serve one institution are headed in the same direction. At the forefront of this revolution is the Common App which now serves over 900 institutions. According to Forbes Magazine, Common App applications increased 11% between the 19-20 and 20-21 school year. This number is expected to grow which is likely to increase the number of participating schools which should increase applications in turn. The cycle is likely to continue. 

The prevalence and growth of Common App is a good thing for high school seniors. Its beauty lies in its efficiency. As the name implies, it is a generic college admissions application that is accepted at many colleges. So, students can complete one application and simply check off which subscribing institutions they want their application sent to. 

This is one of the initial steps of the College App, students should have an idea of which colleges they intend to apply to before they get to. They will have to pay an application fee to each college they send the Common App to, so this step should be approached with some discrimination. 

Next, you’ll get into the meat of the application. Here, you’ll include some academic information but also your activities and awards. You should think of activities as anything you’ve participated in like clubs and sports, including ones outside of school. You can think of awards as anything you might have won as a result of those activities. This is your chance to demonstrate a lot about your personality and the kinds of things you’re into which is very important to the colleges. Spend some time prior to completing the application dwelling on this. You don’t want to leave things out that might not come to mind in the moment you’re working on your application.

Following that, students will need to write their essay. The Common App provides six prompts from which to choose. This is where students can express their voice to the colleges and tell their story. Numbers and grades are just data. This is where students become humans and my advice here is to be honest. Don’t try to say something you think the colleges want to hear or come up with some off-the-wall gimmicky essay you hope will make you stand out. Admission reps have to read thousands of these essays and they’ll sniff these things out in a heartbeat. Instead, use the essay to express who you are with substance and conviction, perhaps by sharing what important things led to the development of You.

Finally, there are recommendation letters. Not every school will require these and if you can’t figure out how to add them to your application, the colleges you’re applying to don’t want them. Ultimately, when rec letters can be submitted, you’ll just add an email address of the people you’ve chosen as a recommender and they’ll get an email directing them to log-in to the Common App themselves and add their recommendation.

Once you get all that done, you should be close to hitting submit. There could be some other caveats and requirements from individual colleges so be sure to monitor your Common App and emails from colleges closely.

College Homesickness

 

                    So maybe this is more properly a post for a college student than a high school one, but it’s not too soon to be thinking about these things for students in high school. By now, colleges are in full swing and freshmen there are settled into their dorm rooms or apartments. However, many of those students are unsettled emotionally.

            Despite the excitement of moving out of the nest and the anticipation of freedom a young person often has during their senior year of high school, the first couple of months of college can be a pretty challenging time. Most college-bound high school students are incredibly busy people--up early for study sessions, school, practice and extracurriculars, work, homework and social time with family (a little) and friends (lots) before it’s time for bed again. That makes for a pretty full schedule.

            Fast forward to college. You’ve got class for just two or three hours a day, a little bit of homework here and there, but the extracurriculars are probably gone, there’s often not a job early on in college, and the number of friends you now have has decreased dramatically. One of those friends, a dorm roommate, is almost a stranger and you’re stuck with them in this tiny dorm room. Learning to do so much on your own that mom and dad used to help with (like so much of your meal planning) complicates matters. This abrupt change in lifestyle is the perfect recipe for a good case of homesickness.

            The cure is assurance and patience. As that first semester (or sometimes second) stretches on, the student adjusts to their new lifestyle. Their new friendships grow some roots, they get to know their new community better, and they find ways to fill the extra time they have on their hands. These things don’t happen overnight though, and so it is a parent’s job to help their child through this period. Be accepting of their visits home on weekends, but encourage them to stick it out and stay at school some weekends too. Encourage them to reach outside of their comfort zone and go to events and functions happening around campus. Remind them that many other students are experiencing the same emotions they are. Ultimately, be aware that homesickness is extraordinarily common in college freshmen. Prepare for it by talking about it before the student moves away to college and instilling a mindset that things aren’t going to be picture perfect in early going, but they will get better if the student has a positive attitude and is willing to work at acquiescing to the college lifestyle that can encompass some of the best years of a young person’s life if they give it a chance. 

            Going off to college is often the biggest change that has happened to a person in their life to that point. Change often comes with a learning curve, so it only makes sense to be open and honest about what to expect with this change. Talk to your child seriously about homesickness and make sure you both know it will get better in time. 

What is Class Rank

 There are many numbers or metrics that colleges use as they evaluate students for admissions. Among those is class rank. Most people are familiar with this and have an idea of what it means, but let's dig a little deeper into how it is calculated and how colleges use it.

Class rank is simply where a student’s GPA ranks compared to the other students in their graduation class. The student with the highest GPA is ranked first, second highest is second and so on. However, as I’ve written about before, students really have more than one GPA. They might have an unweighted and weighted GPA (and others depending on who is looking at it) so they really have more than one rank. Weighted and unweighted rank are the most common. Some schools report a student’s exact rank while others only report rank in deciles. Students can also be tied with the same rank.

From the collegiate standpoint, the purpose of rank is to give a college some perspective on how a student performs within their school and among their peers. High schools are different from one another. Some are very large, some are very small, some schools offer a very rigorous curriculum, some schools are weaker. So, rank gives some insight into a student’s performance in a way that GPA alone cannot. Let’s say a student has a 3.85 GPA. That sounds like a great GPA, but what if there are only 22 kids in the graduating class and I learn that ten of them actually have a GPA higher than that. Maybe this student is just average. On the other hand, what if I find that this 3.85 student is ranked tenth in a class 750. Now I think this is an elite student in a challenging school. Rank gives me the backdrop to compare the student against.

It’s important to make sure that you accurately report your rank. Colleges usually ask for weighted or unweighted rank or let you choose which one to report. If you have a choice, my advice is to always report the one that sounds most impressive. At my school, we typically end up with 8-10 students by senior year who have a perfect 4.0 unweighted GPA. They usually have varying weighted GPAs, but from the unweighted standpoint, they are all tied for first. So, they can all list their rank as first, though if they listed their weighted, one of those people might be tenth.

I encourage my students not to lose sleep about that or anything related to rank though. It does matter, but it’s not the end-all. A college or university is going to see your grades and course history. They’re going to know that you might have taken some pretty hard classes and done well in them, if you indeed have. Most colleges also request a profile from the high school which provides additional perspective, and the colleges that are in the same state or region with a given high school are usually already versed in what students from that high school are capable of at a certain level.

529 Plan Withdrawals

     A 529 plan can be a great way to save for college. These work a little like Roth IRAs in that they are investment vehicles in which you won’t have to pay taxes on your investment’s growth. So, when it comes time to pay for college you can pull all that money out without having to worry about the tax implications.

Well, that’s actually only true to a point. Perhaps the biggest downside to 529 plans is that their monies can only be spent on what the federal government deems as “qualified expenses.” To paint a broad stroke, qualified expenses include tuition, room, board, books, as well as some necessary supplies including technological ones like computers, but it’s a little more complicated than that.

    You can’t just pull however much money you want from your 529 and say “We have a really nice off campus apartment, and the rent is really expensive. All this money is for that.” Every college publishes a detailed cost of attendance. I like to describe this as an all-inclusive price to attend a college and stay alive for a given year as it includes tuition, room and board, supplies, transportation, clothing, personal expenses, and computer and phone. Again, note that not all of these are considered “qualified expenses” for the purposes of 529 plans. For those that are, the amount the individual colleges assign to each category is significant because that is the maximum you are allowed to withdraw from a 529 plan to spend on that category. 

    For example, the University of Florida lists $5,800 as the average annual cost of housing for the upcoming school year. So, even if you’re paying $6,800 a year for your apartment at UF, you won’t be able to withdraw more than $5,800 from your 529 plan to pay for it. Again these numbers are specific to each university. So, at Emory University which is located in a nice area of Atlanta and where you would expect housing costs to be higher, the housing allowance is $9,254.

    Maybe it’s worth mentioning too that as with many other things on your tax return, the IRS doesn’t have an efficient system to verify what you’ve actually spent your 529 withdrawals on. It’s the honor system really. However, were you to be audited, the IRS would certainly want to see concrete documentation of what you spent your 529 withdrawals on and they might reach as far back as 6 years.

    To be sure, you can actually withdraw any amount of money from a 529 plan to spend on anything you want. It’s just that anything that doesn’t fall under the category of a qualified expense counts as income and is subject to a 10% penalty. This is true for the earnings portion of your investment and not the contribution portion. Some states like California, impose additional fees on unqualified withdrawals. So, do your research. Paying these taxes and penalties definitely diminishes the advantages of a 529 plan, therefore it’s best to plan ahead and avoid these when possible. 

High School Science Selection

 When it is time to select a new class for the upcoming school year, selecting a science can be a little tricky. What happens in different science classes is about as diverse and varied as any content area under the same umbrella. After all, in a regular freshman English class you’re reading text, discussing it, and writing a bit. The same is really true for an advanced-level senior English class, right?

However, the things a student is doing in an earth and space science class is completely different from what goes on in an anatomy class. Still, both classes are considered a science and in some places they might even be taught by the same person. There’s just a lot of variety within the curriculum of any school’s science department.

So, with such diversity how do you know which science course to take? To begin, it's obvious that students will need to take any specific science classes that are required of them. For example, in Florida where I counsel, students are required to have three science credits one of which must be biology. So, everyone takes biology, that’s a given, but those other two science credits are up in the air. Determining which ones to take can be easier for some students than for others. A student who is dead set on a career in medicine would do well to focus on courses like biology, chemistry, or anatomy. A future mechanical engineering student will likely benefit from physics.

What about the student who isn’t really going to touch science in the future though? How do they decide what science classes to take? My advice here is to just spend some time thinking about the curriculum offered and make a rational decision about which course has the most potential to be meaningful to you in the future, even if that means reaching for some connections,

For example, perhaps you have a budding writer on your hands. There’s generally not a ton of science involved in that. However, maybe a course like forensic science would be a good choice because there’s a lot of fodder there for storytelling. What about an artist? At some point they might want to draw a human figure, right? So maybe anatomy is a good choice. In fact, courses like anatomy or biology are always a good choice because a student is certainly always going to have a body and any knowledge that might come into play when they are sitting in a doctor’s office one day either to discuss themselves or a family member can be beneficial.

Making a decision about which science course to take can be a little challenging for a student without strong science inclinations. However, science is all around us in our everyday lives so making meaningful connections can be done by anyone. Sometimes, it just takes a little thinking.

How the Pandemic impacted college admissions

 

When the pandemic struck, it had a radical impact on college admissions. This bled into many areas. Potential students couldn’t tour schools. Many weren’t compelled to pay tuition at a school in another town when they were just going to be remoting in their classes anyways. Some students have been challenged to even finish high school while faced with quarantines and different educational formats than they are used to. However, one of the main effects COVID 19 has had on college admissions is seen in the old college admissions staple of standardized testing.

 

When the pandemic started in the spring of 2020, the SAT and ACT canceled all of their upcoming tests. Testing resumed in the fall but many students were not comfortable entering public settings to take a test and many test centers remained closed. Perhaps the testing services would have considered virtual options, but those can be tricky and the cheating scandal that happened the previous year did nothing to promote those. 

 

So, with many students cut off from the ability to take tests, how were so many colleges supposed to require them? The logical approach for many (but not all) colleges was to go test optional. 

 

Prior to the pandemic, this practice had been trending in college admissions. So, it wasn’t unheard of it. Still, there were many schools that previously relied on testing. The tests’ function is to provide a comparative basis for students who come from a variety of high school settings and backgrounds. The SAT and ACT are the national standard for high school students. 

 

Without this information, schools that do not require test scores have seen an uptick in applications. Students who may have felt their scores were a liability for admission are now emboldened to apply. This has proven to be a challenge for colleges. Those who made the switch were used to having test scores as an evaluation tool. They are now forced to evaluate an even larger application pool with less data.

 

I think that colleges are still trying to figure out the best approach to this. This isn’t the first time they’ve evaluated students and their experience is worth a lot, but I would imagine we’ll see college retention rates take small dips as some students struggle to keep up at colleges they might not have previously gotten into. From the student perspective, just because you might be able to get into a certain school, doesn’t necessarily mean you should go there. Success in college is all about finding the right fit. A student and their college are partners in education and if you don’t fit with that partner, the experience will lag. Going to a college that simply exceeds your aptitude could have disastrous life-long consequences, so be honest with yourself in this regard. 

 

I suspect that colleges are using this time to reevaluate their admissions process and the criteria they use for their decisions. Time will tell how their process evolves. In the meantime, students have the opportunity to consider some schools that have been out of reach for them before, but they would do well to keep in mind how the traditional demographics of that school align with their own skill set.