Assets and Taxes - The COMPLETE Guide on College Planning

Episode Date: May 9, 2025

Planning for college can be overwhelming; we break everything down so you know what to expect. From choosing a college, applying, financial aid, and more! Whether you're a high school student or parent, this information will guide you in establishing a well-thought-out plan for college!(0:00) Intro(1:03) How Does Campus Bound Help With The College Planning Process(2:16) When Should You Think About Planning For College(4:47) What Should Be Prioritized When Choosing A College(10:10) Common Mistakes When Selecting A College(12:20) Dream Schools vs Reality Schools(14:50) When To Start Applying To Colleges(17:16) What Do Colleges Prioritize When Deciding To Accept A Student(20:26) Tips For Writing A College Essay(23:16) How To Stand Out In The College Application Pool(24:56) What Can Hurt Your College Application(27:19) Need Based vs Merit Based Financial Aid(34:00) What Is FAFSA and How To Fill It Out(38:50) How To Improve Chances of Financial Aid(43:50) Appealing For More Financial Aid(47:27) Are There Instances Where Someone May Not Receive Financial Aid?(49:40) Recent Trends From The Class of 2025(51:23) ConclusionVisit Campus Bound: https://campusbound.com/Our Financial Wellness Tool: https://assetstrategy.com/myblocks/Our Financial Guides: https://assetstrategy.com/financial-guides/Once you're ready, we can offer you some professional guidanceBook a FREE discovery call today to explore how we can help you: https://assetstrategy.com/contact/Call the Asset Strategy Team: 781-235-4426Connect:Website: https://assetstrategy.com/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/asset-strategy-advisorsFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/people/Asset-Strategy-Advisors/61573136047425/Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/asset_strategy/ia-sb-r-a-431-5-2025

You're about to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on college potentially. Because so many students, they're not quite sure about what they want. They don't even know what a college is. There's multiple parts to the selection, how the schools decide who's getting in or not. It's complicated. They say, congratulations, you won a $120,000 scholarship over four years, $30,000 a year. I have had students lose it over the years and the parents are like, I'm gonna kill my kid.

Right? Every step should be done with thought and care Welcome back to assets and taxes. I'm Sean Whalen with asset strategy I'm the director of private wealth management here at the. And today we're going to be talking about college planning, which I know many families out there listening want to know how to navigate this complex landscape. I thought no better to bring in my friend, Greg Cohen from Campus Bound.

Greg, why don't you introduce yourself and explain to our audience who Campus Bound is and how you can help with college planning. Sure, so my name is Greg Cohen. I'm the President of Campus Bound. We've you can help with college planning. Sure. So my name is Greg Cohen. I'm the president of Campus Bound. We've been around since the early 2000s helping families with the college admissions process, the college application process, finding colleges that are great fits.

We help a lot with financial aid and try to make the college less expensive. And so we have a team of about 40 team members, both college admissions officers, former financial aid officers, folks that are essay experts, and a few other people to really help students step by step to make it through this process, which has become increasingly complicated and challenging for families. And by taking it step by step, it helps to reduce a lot of the stress

and makes this process that's really important, such a big investment, to make sure every step of the way is done in a methodical manner, and it helps achieve the best outcome for the student, however that looks. Great, great. And today we're going to cover the college selection process,

the application process, and some of the financial aid process. So Greg has been a great resource for a lot of our clients, as well as some of our advisors in our firm, including myself. He's been great to help navigate the landscape, which is always a positive and helpful tool. So, why don't we get started?

Is there an average age or grade that you would recommend people start thinking about college process, where they want to go, the actual selection of where they should be heading? Yeah, I mean the process has definitely moved up. The timeline has moved up over the years. It used to be that years ago we would say, oh after you get your PSATs back in the winter of your junior year, because life is so busy, because students are willing to look at places all over the country, and I think to be more thoughtful about it, you just have to give it time.

So end of sophomore year, second half of sophomore year, first part of junior year is an ideal time to really start to dig into it and so that you can map out a game plan to make it less stressful along the way. I think earlier freshman, sophomore year, there's some things to think about too, just in terms of what's important to you, what your budget is, what can you do to maximize the amount of savings you have to be able to leverage for college. Some of the financial aid system is the process there, income in the freshman and sophomore year doesn't get looked at. So is there some timing of income that you can do? So to start to think about freshman and sophomore year,

but certainly in terms of the college selection and identification process, yes, second half of sophomore year. Yeah, that's great advice. And I think what we did based on your kind of advice was my junior, we started looking last summer when he was ending sophomore into junior. But just on family trips, you know, if we were going somewhere or whatnot, we just started getting in the process of looking at camp.

Even if it was just a drive-through just to get acclimated with the process. And then we started ramping it up more this year, which has been helpful to really start getting into that process. Yeah I mean for so many students they're not quite sure about what they want. They don't even know what a college is right. They've never been on a college campus. Maybe they've gone to a ball game or a show or something like that. Or older sibling or cousin or something. But they don't really have a feel for it and so by getting that initial exploration it helps them to set the criteria that are important to them, which is the only thing.

With all the social media influences and peer influences that are out there, you can get lost in a name or something of a school, football teams or so forth, right? And so by giving them a chance to taste a little bit, it can help them to say, this is what I like, this is my flavors I like that will be important to me. Yeah.

And I think you touched upon this a little bit of the criteria, what to look for. Is it cost? Is it the majors? Is it the size? Is it the culture? Whatever it is, it's a fine balance because parents might have certain aspects that they want versus the child. So in terms of priority, costs, then culture,

is there any particular kind of ranking that you have for some of these items? I think it's very family specific. You know, I think that when we think about the fit, we think it's gonna be a good match for you from an academic standpoint, from a financial standpoint, and from a non-academic, we'll call it culture, size, distance from home kind of a standpoint. They're all important, but different people are going to lay different importance level

to any one of those buckets, and then within that, what are those most important criteria for you? So let's say under the academic bucket, it could be that as a particular major, it could be that you could get into that school. It could be internship programs. So what are those criteria that you put weight on? Not what your friends are or your uncles and aunts do. On the financial side of things, for a lot of people, the ultimate cost of

the college is an important factor. Sure. But what is that budget? And this is where you come in and you say, OK, let's really think about this and say, if I spend so much a year on my children's college education, what is the impact going to be on my retirement? What can I do to put more away in savings? What can I pay out of cash flow? What can I handle in debt or my student can handle in debt?

Taking the time to do that math because what your budget is going to be is different than your neighbor's budget. And the importance that you put on that. If you're very wealthy, then you may say, well, figure a way to make it work and it's not going to be a factor in my decision. And then you've got people that say, no, it's the main factor in my decision. And we can't really spend more than X amount a year. So I think that you want to think about those big buckets, but then with the criteria, what kind of weighting you put on that criteria, how you define what's your preferences, that's all part of the process. And going through this process for that longer period, that year, year and a half, it helps

you do a better job of it. Because you can do the math on your budget. You can do the identification of what you want to study in college and further exploration about that. And I think one of the things that people don't realize is that, what I wanna highlight is that students change so much during this period. This is a particular high period of growth

for these students and changing their minds. And so letting this sink in a little bit, letting them discover is a really good idea. Yeah, and I think it's really important too is that we're lucky to live in a really university college rich area so you can start that whole process without a lot of cost but you know within a two-hour drive you can probably hit 30 different schools just to start getting that flavor and then really seeing what what matches what doesn't match with the child. So I think that's

really helpful just to get out there and start exploring. Definitely yeah I definitely agree about that you know I think that one of the things that a lot of these days that a lot of students are more willing to go further from home. Right. And so that's going to mean to it's very valuable to visit the schools. Right. So if you're gonna begin in a flight take time off from work You know and have to get a hotel so all the expenses that come from at the time commitment Balancing other children and their activities and everything else So let's be smart about it before you get on a flight and say I'm gonna do a six-day tour of the south

Yeah, let's think about what by doing a little local Yeah, break the ice right first of all it gets a student acclimated it But it also says oh now I know what a city school feels like I don't like that Yeah, I'm not gonna school when I go to the south I'm not gonna look at any of those city landscape kind of schools or maybe it's a size or maybe it's a That's why you use the UMass or UConn big schools to small schools You get a little variation in the beginning and then you can kind of broaden out, so that's maybe a little less costly for the parents

traveling to multiple cities. Let's be smart about it. Let's be methodical about this search because otherwise there's thousands of great schools out there and you don't have time to really research them all. So let's be thoughtful about it so you're not spinning your wheels

and going in a zigzag with directions on it. That's one of the things that we really spend a lot of time on a campus bound is to really think about to pull out from the student and the family, what are your key criteria? How can you discover what your key criteria are so that you're not just scatter shot or doing it picking schools because of you know you see them on the on the Saturday football game with like a hundred thousand people in the stands. Let's be thoughtful about it before you just jump. Yeah, yeah but I think that's what I was gonna allude to too. You give your company gives guardrails is how I would just kind of put it so that you kind of have a better sense of

what you want to attack versus having this broad spectrum that it gets confusing out there. So you guys obviously have that expertise to kind of help. So in terms of actual common mistakes, I would think the most common mistakes when selecting or at least starting this process, not budgeting properly or overreaching in terms of schools or anything like that, is there any other common mistakes that you see in the college selection phase? I think, well, one is starting too late. Yeah.

You know, I think that the clock moves quickly once it gets going. You might feel as a fall term junior that you've got forever. Yeah. But you don't. Life goes on. Right.

And because the early deadlines for the applications that are out there now, you really want to give it this time, like I was saying, so that students can absorb and you can absorb as a parent. So you need to spend time in the fall, the senior year, to be working on it in summer, to work on applications. So starting late is a problem, is a mistake.

I think the self-reflection, if it doesn't happen in a really thoughtful way, you're about to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on college potentially. Take the time. A big investment. Take the time to think about what those important criteria are and then also being realistic about your... Sometimes we see students that they come to us in the spring or the junior year and they say, well, I went and visited this school, this school, and this school, and they're all like, and you don't have a chance of getting into those schools.

Or maybe you ruled out a school that you thought because you didn't think it was gonna be affordable when in fact, with financial aid, it could be. So being thoughtful about what your criteria are, setting expectations, understanding your chances. The sooner the better, you'll do a better job. Sometimes people just, a lot of peer influence out there. A lot of noise on the internet,

a lot of noise among, in a school setting. Were you gonna go to those schools? Oh, my friend applied to Providence College or BC or wherever, I'm gonna go there. They had a great time there, but that might not be the right school for you. So the peer, peer pressure is a big thing in 17, and for the parents too. The parents have their own biases. Yep, yep, that's very true, very true. So the last question in this college selection phase, which you touched upon, the dream schools versus reality schools. How do

you balance that from a parent, from a counselor in your world? Is there an easy way to do it or do you balance it and have one reach school and then the rest more reality? How do you kind of play that? Yeah, I mean it's an art. The data that you have available to you to evaluate your chances for admission is a little bit hard to decipher. There's a lack of transparency. Remember, the colleges want you to apply to their school. They like getting applications.

And fees. And the fees associated with that. And it builds up their numbers to say, well, we only accept 7% of our students. So, there's an understanding on their mind, so they're going to market to you. The marketing's going to be really good. So, I think that it's, in the evaluation process, is complicated.

It's not just, my SAT scores are over this, so I have a chance of getting in there, or I don't have a chance of getting in there. There's multiple parts to the selection, how the schools decide who's getting in or not. So, it's complicated. Now we usually recommend a few reach schools, a few likely schools, and a few in the middle.

A few 50-50, your target is the term. But there is nuance to determining what fits into those buckets. Early action, early decision, financial strength of the family. Different majors may be more competitive than others. So there's a little bit more to the story than just saying, here's my number, here's where I fall. So you wanna take the time to really think about it because you don't wanna have eight reach schools that are too expensive.

And then you're gonna have limited choices later on. No, that makes a lot of sense. So I mean, as you can tell, the college process is complicated, but you know, with Greg's help and his team, it doesn't have to be that complicated. But it's also a good idea to get going earlier rather than later and just get some general sense of what's out there. I think that's helpful. Again, I'm going through some of this right now.

So his advice has definitely helped kind of guide me through this process. So the next part we're going to talk about is the application phase. So obviously that's a whole other piece once you decide what kind of colleges you're going to apply to. Is there a general timeline? I think November 1st is maybe when things start happening with the application phase. You can know That's what it ends or could end good end. So there's two main dead sets of deadlines There's early. Yeah, either early action or early decision, correct? And those deadlines tend to be about November of the senior year. Sometimes it's a little bit earlier There's some schools that have right up and we're seeing students getting their application

in late summer, early fall. So it could be October 15th, November 15th, depending on the school. And the regular decision pool is around the end of the year. So in order to do this in a smart fashion, you wanna start early. So summer is, before the senior year is a great time to really start to work on it. Maybe even in the late spring of the junior year there

are steps that you can do because the application one of the changes that's that's happened in the college admissions processes especially in the last five to ten years is schools have extra questions called supplemental essays. So a school might ask a school specific question like why do you want to come to our school? Or why do you want to major in what you want to major in? My daughter, I have two daughters that are just finishing up college and one of my daughters had a question about if you had a genie what would be your three wishes?

So really off the wall kind of question. Those questions don't come out until middle of August or first of August. So you need to write those. And so if you can get more things done before that. Especially before school starts up again. Before school starts up and if you have a fall activity like a sport. Right? You get busy once school starts to happen. So I think that to start to do what you can in the early summer, late spring, which there are some steps that you can do,

it allows that August, September to be, October to be focusing on the extra stuff, like the supplements, and finishing everything up as opposed to cramming everything in, because like anything else in life, when you cram things in, you're going to not do as good of a job. And so we suggest getting started late spring, definitely over the summer to make good progress on it.

Yeah, no, that's great advice. And now what I've even seen from others in terms of SATs and things like that, you know, test scores, test scores versus GPA versus extracurriculars. There seems like most of the colleges are optional on the test scores, but in terms of ranking, GPA more important, SAT scores if they do accept. Sounds like everybody accepts them only if they can help you. They won't, they don't need to accept them if they don't, you know, it's not a good score or whatnot. But is there any ranking of those?

So there are a lot of parts when it goes into an evaluation of an application. When for an admissions officer, you're looking at a number of different factors. The biggest one, generally speaking, is the transcript. Is the grades that you received in the rigor of the courses that you took So if you're taking a lot of honors level courses or AP level courses and getting good grades in that that's better than just getting good

Grades and standard level courses. So the rigor of the transcript That's the first hurdle that a college is going to look at but what else goes in there and different colleges really vary Sure in how much weight they put into these things We keep a lot of data on this and there's this publicly available information as well about it But different colleges what they consider to be important consider or not consider and Other things that come into play are the essays that can be important Demonstrating interest. So did you go and visit the school? Did you come to an event?

The testing can be. And what we're seeing is while there are about 1,500 schools now that are test optional, when COVID happened, a lot of schools went test optional. A lot of those have not come back, but we're starting to see them come back, especially at the highly selective schools. They felt they needed to get that data point. So that, for those schools, that's come back. There are schools though that are,

the California schools are test blind. They don't wanna look at them. They're just taking them right off the thing. You don't have to submit them. They don't want you to submit them. It's not gonna be looked at at all. With those test optional schools, yeah, they can help you if they're good. But how do you know if they're good?

It's not a 1300 is going to be good at one school, but not another. So there's some strategy about when do you submit those on a school by school basis. So there's a lot to think about from that perspective, but, you know, legacy may be happening early, going early decision can really help a lot of schools. Majors, certain schools, if you go to UMass Amherst, the computer science major is very selective, very competitive. They're looking for stronger, you know, math and science kind of skills versus a general, you know general liberal arts kind of thing. They may be looking at your humanities or your social sciences majors more.

So it really gets very specific when they're evaluating you on a school by school basis, on a major by major basis. But there's generally about eight or nine things that tend to come in play, some of which I mentioned. Yeah, and each school is weighted differently, like I said. So in terms of, you touched upon college essays, obviously a critical part.

Is there any kind of recommendations or thought process of how to, the student to kind of write those, from, obviously from the heart, not using AI, things like that. Right, right. Yeah, so for all of you, I'll speak to the camera, if all of you thinking about using AI don't, the colleges are going to pick it up. The colleges are getting sophisticated about it, so it could bury your application.

So take the time to do it right. I think that the, it's an opportunity for the college to get to know you, right? So that's the most important thing. It's not opportunity for the callers to get to know you, right? So that's the most important thing. There's not a special topic. You don't have to save the world. You don't have to have solved cancer or done anything heroic to have a good essay to write about. They wanna get to know you.

Who are you as a character? What are your priorities? What are your strengths? What do you care about? And as long as the essay does that, then that will be a good essay. Now, it's going to be well-written, but that's something. The other questions, especially those, I mentioned those supplemental essays, is those are school-specific questions, and they want to know that you've you understand what this

college is all about. I think it's a Boston College has a school about the fact that it's a Jesuit based education and they want to know they want you to explain why that fits you and what that means to them. So it's a way of that matching process so you really need to be thoughtful. They really care about these because they say this is a fit for our school and what's been exploding in this. So last year we had the average student, our averages, had to write 17 different pieces from 50 words to 500 words. So this school school has one extra essay this school is there's two extra essays you end up applying to eight nine schools Next thing you know, you're looking at you've written 17 essays of different sizes and complexities Some students get lucky million of a handful some

Particular ones that are planning a more selective schools 30 35 essays forget about scholarship. All right, so You want to be thoughtful you want to prioritize them, you want to manage those well because it can get pretty intense and you want to go through multiple drafts because this is who they're...well some schools interview now, it's your one opportunity to get them to know you. And you're more than just a number on a transcript. You're more than a transcript. You're more than a GPA. You're more than an SAT score or an ACT score. So let's show your best. And it

really matters. They read them. Sure. So I was going to ask next about any tips to kind of stand out from the crowd in the busy and large application pool. Obviously essays are probably top or high on the list of how you can stand out, but is there anything else that you can think of that extracurricular activities? Yeah, I think the biggest things are around, like I said, the transcripts the king. Of course. So make sure you're challenging yourself. That goes all four years of high school. I think that demonstrating interest in some schools is really big. If you live an hour and a half from the college and you haven't visited that college, that's just going to be a strike

against you. The other thing that's coming to play a lot lately and it's growing is early decision. So early decision is a binding application. If I decide I want, that's my first choice school, if I'm accepted I'm going to go. They like that. And some schools are accepting two-thirds of their class, giving a three to four times greater acceptance rate early decision versus early action or regular decision. That's a competitive advantage. The challenge with that is that you only, from a cost standpoint, you have to be sure that you can afford it. That you don't wanna be able to, and we'll talk about the financial part,

but I think that you don't want to limit yourself from a financial choice standpoint with that, which you may if you go down that. So it's a thing that a family really has to wrestle with. You wanna take advantage of that competitive advantage or just know that you have to play the field. Yeah you have to be really really sure that's the direction from all aspects absolutely. So our last question before we kind of move on to the financial aid. Red flags. I know we were joking about AI

but obviously that's a serious topic but are there any other types of red, not visiting a school if you're an hour and a half away, kind of thing that could hurt the application for the student? I think it comes down to really making sure you've done a thoughtful job and spent the time on it. You know, there's these examples where, you know, Boston University has a question about why do you want to go to BU and you say, well, I want to go to BU and Boston because I like Boston. Well, that doesn't really tell them. Go to Suffolk then, go to BC, go to Northeastern.

So I think that you want to be really thoughtful about those questions and not just spin them off on a Friday night before the deadline on Saturday, because you can get sloppy with that. So really be thoughtful about every step. As I mentioned a moment ago, they're evaluating eight or nine things, and every step should be done with thought and care, because they're reading it. Are you really a fit for their college? Are you, have you done your homework about them? You know, are the classes and

the extracurriculars you're doing aligned with your intended major? Right? You know, if you say, I really want to be an engineer, but you haven't taken higher level physics or a higher level math, or all your extracurriculars are something about foreign studies. It's not going to align. So there isn't one extracurricular that means more than another one. You know, whether you have a job, whether you have started a business, whether you do a sport, it's what you do a sport, is what you do

within those. But you want to be even thoughtful about that. Right, no, that's that's great advice. So from the application process, I think you know to summarize that sounds like by you know the spring of junior year to you know summer of junior year is the ideal time to start tinkering around and starting that process and kind of narrowing down your selection. And obviously, Greg and his team are super helpful with, like I said, setting up the guardrails, helping with the essays, helping with the application.

So obviously, a great, great resource. So the last part of this is going to be talking about the financial aid process and the cost of college and whatnot. So I know need-based versus merit-based, maybe you can just kind of expand upon that a little bit of what that means and how that can be helpful to our audience. Sure, so there were two main avenues for making the tuition bill lower, right? In a big way. One is need-based aid, and one is merit scholarships. So need-based aid is a complicated formula where they will figure out a number called your student aid index, and it looks at your income from starting two years back.

So if your student is going to school in the fall of 2026, your 2024 income is the base year. That's what they're going to school in the fall of 2026, your 2024 income is the base year. That's what they're going to be looking at. And that tends to be a bigger piece of the puzzle for a lot of families. They're going to look at non-retirement savings. They may look at your house. If you're divorced, they may look at a non-custodial parent. But it's a complicated formula. Size of the family, where you live, get some part of the math. That number is subtracted from the cost of the school and the difference is your eligibility for need-based aid. And when I say need-based

aid, I'm thinking about three different buckets. Hopefully grants. Free money you don't have to pay back. Government loans is the second one. Usually as a freshman it's $5,500 is a federal direct loan program that really anybody can get. And then maybe a work study for anywhere from $1,500 to I saw one as high as $3,500, $4,000 recently. So that makes up your bucket and college will, if you're eligible, are going to give you a package that will hopefully, depending on the size of the difference between your student aid index and the cost, will be your eligibility.

So what does that mean? That is, is it a highly expensive school? If your family does qualify, let's say your SAI is $50,000. Well at a $90,000 a year school, you're eligible for $40,000 of financial aid. They may not give you all that $40,000, but you're eligible for it and a big chunk of it might be grants. so you have to pay back but if the school costs $50,000 you're not eligible right because it's the same as 50,000 minus 50,000, right so

I highly encourage that people does online calculators this is something we do for no charge is people, there's online calculators, there's something we do for no charge, is figure out early on, is this in the cards for you? At the colleges that your student is thinking about. You can't build a list of schools, I shouldn't say you can't.

Most people can't build a list of schools blind to the cost. You don't just go and look at the, oh, I wanna buy a new car, and you just start going to all the, then you go to the Ferrari dealership and you say wow I like this Ferrari right and you can't afford it right so understand is need-based aid going to be in your future because for a lot of people it can really

bring down the cost of the school sure now maybe you're not eligible for need-based aid or not enough need-based aid because the formula is not exactly realistic. It's a harsh formula. So what do you do if you're an upper middle income family or middle income family for that matter and you're not going to get a lot of need-based aid or you're going to meet up and you still want to pay it? Many, many colleges, not the highly selected schools, not the Ivy League schools or schools in what's called the Nescat conference like Middlebury or Tufts give merit scholarships, but the vast majority of schools do.

And what are they doing? They're looking at schools where you're at the top of their applicant pool, and we're just going to discount the tuition. Four years, your GPA is, as long as you maintain a 3.0, you're going to get $25,000 a year, regardless of your eligibility for need-based aid. So anybody can get it. So it's a great way, if you're going to be in that pool and you can target schools that are going to be looking at you as a top student or even as above average student at some places,

and they'll knock off $20,000, $30,000 because they know that a school, a student that is a, they won't, they're not going to be able to find as many rich kids as they need to fill their class. They need the middle class. They need the people that can pay 80% of what they are hoping to get. Otherwise, they're going to have empty beds. So some of these schools are really discounted this tuition to attract the student population that they want.

By anywhere from 1,000 or a couple thousand, a half off. Right. Wow, that's amazing. And every year it gets reevaluated. So on the need-based side, you reapply for financial aid every year. So if your finances change much year to year, it could affect your finances. Some schools still, not the majority of schools, but there was about 200 private colleges that will still give consideration for having multiple children in college.

So let's say you have your oldest goes, they don't get need-based aid, but now year three, sibling that's two years younger goes, that could help a student get more eligibility. At a lot of schools, the federal government changed the formula, they don't do it anymore on the federal formula, but on the institutional formula at these private colleges they do. On the merit scholarships, as long as you maintain

a certain GPA, and usually it's not that hard, That's set for the four years? That's set for four years. They say to you, congratulations, you get accepted. They say congratulations, you won $120,000 scholarship over four years, 30,000 a year. As long as you maintain a GPA of, and they'll set the number. Right.

And so that's when you have to tell the student, I've had students lose it. I have had students lose it over the years and the parents are like, I'm gonna kill my kid. Right? He flaked out or he took all the hard courses first semester, freshman year. He took upper level calculus, you know,

and he got a C minus in it and he couldn't keep that three, oh, even if he got all these in the other courses and he lost his $10,000 a year scholarship, you know. So this is a strategy even if you're getting one of those, you want to be thoughtful, especially until your GPA can kind of get a little form that freshman year. There's not a lot of room for error when it's the first course, but if you've built up a good track record, taking the softer courses freshman year, then even if you get the C in that harder course, there's some thought process there processing about 90% of the students are able to maintain it

Yeah, but Yeah, we've had some students. Yeah, that's a hard discussion with a parent. Yeah, that's you know You just cost us you cause you son Knowledge by Freshman year exactly $50,000 by having too much fun that freshman year. Yeah, exactly. FAFSA, can you talk about that? I know there was, for our audience,

I know there was some troubles that kind of revamped some of the process the last year or two. I think it's starting to smooth out again. But can you just explain the importance and what's needed there? So every college in the country is gonna have you fill out a form called the FAFSA, the Free Application for Federal Student Aid.

This form is notorious. It is a form that opens up in the fall of the senior year, October, most years, I think they just passed a law that it had to. Because what happened, and the form's not that difficult once you get into it, but it's a lot right? It's well what they're going to they've made it They told last year. It was called the FAFSA simplification. It took him like three years to develop it. They rolled it out It was a disaster, right? Lot of bugs it was better last year There's still some problems with the workflow. I think the FAFSA completion rates gone down

with a workflow, the faster completion rate's gone down because of this cumbersome steps in it. But what they do is they take your income information right from the IRS, so that makes it a lot easier. It used to be you have to enter line by line on it, now it just automatically populates. That's great. And then you put in some questions about your assets and then the student does the same. You identify what colleges it needs to go to and it gets sent to it. So you'll want to do that by the deadlines, you don't wait to see if they got in, you

do that, the deadlines usually correspond pretty closely with the application deadline for the admissions part. So you want to be cognizant of those deadlines because if you miss those deadlines, you're at the back of the line. And that is what many colleges use to give out both the government's money, like the federal loans or for your low income, the Pell grants. But a lot of them also use it to give out their institutional money, to see if you qualify for the significant amount of money that's available from the college itself.

And that typically is the free money. So that's where middle income families can get some money. Now there's another set of schools. These 250-ish private colleges tend to be the ones that are more selective. There's this other form called the CSS profile form, and that was really involved. It's 13 pages when you print it out. And they ask about your home equity. They ask about if there's a non-custodial parent, the parent's divorced, they have their own form to fill

out. They ask line by line on your taxes that you're manually entering. A lot of room for error on those ones. And you know, it's just because sometimes it's gray in some of the questions. So you do want to make sure you get these steps done. At those schools that require that form, that CSS profile form, that's what those schools are using for their evaluation of what the money they're giving out.

So you really need to be cognizant of at the particular schools that your student's applying to, what are their financial aid application requirements, what are the deadlines? They require tax to be sent in. So it's a lot of steps. Usually it falls on the parents, but students have a step to do there too. Sure, sure. So in that application for the first year at least, the application process plus the financial aid for the school is done all at once. Is that how it works? Yeah, no, no. You don't wait till you find out if

you got it. So what you're going to be doing is, look at the deadlines. Usually the deadlines for the financial aid applications for maybe like a couple weeks later than the admissions deadline. So just take a look at the deadlines. Different colleges approach differently, have different requirements. We see a lot of times where people come to us

or we hear reports from the college and say, I didn't get any money from the college. And they say, well, you didn't fill out all the forms. Or we asked you for more supporting information and you didn't get it to us. We do an audit and we ask for your taxes, or we ask for your mortgage statement or something. Our own school-based form had fell out, and the person doesn't do it. And sometimes what happens is those emails goes to the student. Right. And students don't check their emails. Right. Or they

don't check what's called their portals. Right. A portal when you apply to the school you get a portal and it's a student specific thing. And so the parents aren't queued in. Right. And the student is not diligent in reporting it. Yeah. You could miss something. Yeah. And reporting it, you could miss something. And you don't wanna miss something. Because it could be literally tens of thousands of dollars. Yeah, that's a big deal. That's definitely a big deal.

Now, this has all been very helpful and hopefully for our audience as well. But what are the kind of steps in the terms of like pre-application process, pre-financial aid process, where they can kind of, you know, move a multifamily into a trust or, you know, this or that. Is there anything that they can do to help improve their chances of financial aid, you know, the years before application process? There are. And I think that it's really important.

This goes to freshman parents, although even if you're a junior parent or senior parent, even if you're a kid in college, it's not too late. But you're gonna be able to maximize your opportunity to increase your eligibility for financial aid the earlier you look at it, because they're looking at your tax returns two years in advance. So let's say you have an income generating asset that you take a capital gain.

If you take the capital gain before the window opens up, that's going to help. If you say, oh, I'll sell those stocks to pay for college, and now you're doing it while they're looking at your finances, it's going to artificially inflate your finances. So what I recommend people do, and I think there's so much in terms of the pre-planning, it gets so, I think for freshmen parents, sophomore parents, like I said, it's not too late if you miss this window, is the first thing is you want to see are you going to be eligible for financial aid? Right. Do you have a chance? Are you in the in the in the possible zone for it? Then you're gonna want to look at How you gonna and set your budget?

Okay, you know, so I'm not looking for schools then the part third leg of that is Now that we identify the colleges you start to identify the colleges Understand based on their policies., you start to identify the colleges, understand based on their policies, are you going to get anything? And then to that end, what changes can you make to your financial picture to you at what your point is to maybe get a little bit more? So for example, there are schools that look at the house, there are schools that don't look at the house. that look at the house, there are schools that don't look at the house. Well, if you've got a home equity, it's a school that doesn't look at the house. Maybe I'm saying if it doesn't look at the house, maybe you pay it on your mortgage.

If they do look at the house, maybe you're taking a home equity loan and moving that money somewhere else. But first things first is see if it's gonna make a difference. I don't, you know, there's a lot of folks out there in our space that say, oh, take all your money and put it in one of these accounts that don't look at. There are certain accounts that don't look at. There are strategies that you can say, oh, take the money out of here and put it over here. But there may be taxes or penalties or fees or whatever, and it doesn't result in need-based financial aid. So first things first, get an understanding about what's your eligibility, what's your budget, start to do that planning freshman

sophomore years because you don't want your students to go to apply to schools you can't afford. Or miss out on money because you just said, oh I put the money in the wrong bucket. So there's a lot of strategies out there. This is one of the things that we do is we know the intricacies of the formula. We know the intricacies of the formula. We know the math behind the math at particular colleges. We know how they give out merit scholarships. We know how they give out need-based aid.

So you can strategize in a very specific way. And even put a list of schools together based on your finances that we think there's a better chance than not that you're going to get to a number that you can live with. Right. Because you know there are schools like that don't give any need-based data to non-residents. Your son decides to go I want to look at University of South Carolina and from Massachusetts. Yeah. I don't care if you're making $80,000 a year you're not getting need-based aid. Understand that. So this is the kind of advice that we can give and be really specific.

So you can build a list of schools that are going to be financial matches, but it's not transparent. So what we do with the data we have and the experience that we have and being financial aid officers and knowing how they do it, that's what we can help all. Because yes, there are strategies to move money around, but don't start chasing things because there's a lot of factors that go into it. Right, right, and all that data and expertise

that you have are so critical for this process. Because like you said, you do all this work to move it and then you apply to a college that never even mattered. It didn't matter. So that's why you always got to double check and you know have folks like you advocating for us and our children I think is critical. So I think one of the things at this point and this is where the combination of what we do is so valuable. I can look at something and say this doing this could help you get more financial aid

but then you could be saying, but there's going to be taxes on that, or there's going to be penalties on that. So sometimes, or it's like, no, this could be a win-win. No matter, even if you don't get more financial aid, this could help you to save on taxes. So I think that it's a thoughtful process. Just like I said before about the admissions process, you want to be methodical about it You want to be methodical about your financial significant considerations? Yeah and the other thing too that I know has maybe changed a little bit or at least trending now is

That even if you had a merit, you know award or less than you expected The appeals seem to be you know, I guess having a little more success than the normal. So that's something that you obviously help folks with to kind of maybe get a little more money out of the school through appeal. Yes, I saw a statistic earlier in the week. 33% of students appeal. Wow. One merit or need. All those that appeal, 80% get more nationally. Wow. On merit or need. Of those that appeal, 80% get more nationally. Wow.

And of those 70% of that, or 70% get more grants, free money. So highly encourage it. Now, different schools are going to be more generous, even year to year the generosity, the willingness to do more, highly selective. It tends to be a little bit harder to get out of them, maybe out of public's heart, but what we do is to look at, okay, let's look at your, let's make a case here. Let's look at, do we appeal on need? Do we appeal on merit? What's our best strategy?

We help ghostwrite letters for people so that you're putting your best foot forward. We don't want a two-page letter that the financial aid officer is really busy, you're not going to read about all how the student's a wonderful student and a wonderful kid, and he's got a heart of gold. No, let's be thoughtful, present the data in a way that the colleges can say, yeah, we should dig in a little bit more here. 33% that appeals, the other 67 just didn't think of it, or just they knew that it didn't matter, or who knows what the result is. I just would think that number. I think most of them didn't know that you could do it.

Yeah, that's what I was thinking too, so I was just curious if that was. I think one of the things is, in having an advocate, not an advocate, we're not calling the college, but someone that's an ally to the student and the parents is that you don't want to miss opportunities. And the college knows what they're doing, but you're going through the first time. Your son right now is going through this thing the first time.

And he doesn't know what colleges have to offer. They're putting on this great marketing glitz. They're not giving you all the financial grants that they want. They're playing their game. They have a budget to protect. So you're disadvantaged. So we love giving those students all the tools, all the insights, from sitting on the other side of the desk and going through this process

hundreds of times a year, applying to thousands of different schools to give you a level playing field. Yeah, yeah, no, and I was smirking because of the marketing blitz, because every time I go on these tours, I always chuckle when they say, oh, this is free and that's free and this is free.

And I go, oh, okay, sure, sure, it's all free. Yeah, I get it, I get it. Even when you, you know, you'll, not only from the colleges, right? I mean, they don't take you to the lousy dorm where the freshmen have to live up campus on a building that was done in the 1940s. Out of order elevator, right?

Right, they know what they're doing. They are sophisticated. And same with like things like lenders. You know, lenders are out there and you know, maybe you'll get mail on that, you know, and it's, well, lenders have different rates. They're businesses too. Sure, sure.

So you need to be the sophisticated shopper. There's a lot of marketing that you're going to get in your students going to get. Yeah and this would be my last question just simply about the misnomer that I think a lot of people might think oh I'm not going to get financial aid I'm not going to apply or this or that merit and all that stuff needs base. Is that something that you always just say go for it I mean there's got to be rare circumstances that people aren't gonna get some sort of help through the colleges.

Is that true or not true? Yeah, I mean, so the majority of students get some kind of discount, whether it's need or merit. At some schools, it's like 90%. Wow. So mark it up to mark it down. So on the need-based side, I think that there are some times where it's just like there's no chance and the families, you know, they're just well off but

We tend to skew give it a shot. You might be pleasantly surprised You know don't assume anything the college will certainly promote you to apply and try If you want you to take any borrowing and this is up to something that's currently under negotiation in Washington right now, but at the moment, government loans, you can qualify for student government loans for $5,500 regardless of your eligibility for financial aid. So unsubsidized federal direct loans, and those are going to be better lending options than other lending options in most cases and It's a way for your student to get

some responsibility some skin in the game and so Yeah, but you have to fill out the FAFSA form that form that fight free application of federal student aid to be able to Access that yeah. Yeah. So generally speaking give it a shot. There are some situations saying, you know, you're going through an exercise and there are some schools, there are even some schools that will say, in order to be considered for merit scholarships, we want you to fill out the financial aid application. Yeah, that's, that's great. So, uh, in summary of our financial aid kind of process, it's,

it's obviously a complicated process. Each college has their own formulas, their own you know pieces that they look at. So obviously put a lot of work into it as well as your application. But you know obviously folks like Greg and his team can can certainly help. So the last thing before I wrap up is maybe just take a minute on recent trends. You know based off the class of 2025 is there anything that surprised you, doesn't surprise you in that is maybe just take a minute on recent trends, based off the class of 2025. Is there anything that surprised you,

doesn't surprise you in that space? I would say a few things that we were seeing is, as I mentioned before, those supplemental essays. Three years ago, I meant the average was nine. Extra questions. This year, it was 17. So more schools are adding more essays to it. I think there's been a more, another thing is I think schools are leaning more on merit

scholarships which is a good thing. So students that are not that qualified for much aid, need-based aid, we're not qualified at all. There's still hope that you can get something. I think the other big thing is early decision is Be getting more and more awake more schools are trying to lock up their class And give a greater competitive advantage to those students that are going to be willing to go through that binding situation

SATs are starting to come back at some of the schools to some of the highly selectives are starting to come back with SATs So the digital SAT is out. That's changed things a lot too. They revamped it. So there are some moving parts to this process that you need to keep an eye on. And I think for a lot of parents going through this, and you're going through it now, I went through it a few years ago, it's not your father's Old Mobile. It's not your father's application process., right? It's not your father's application process. You don't just wing this out in a week. You don't just, students are willing to go further,

the marketing's better, the analysis is more sophisticated. So those are general trends over the last decade, but in the last year, we're seeing more of those things I just mentioned. Right, no, that's great. And obviously, from our perspective, you know, 529 has been a powerful tool for a lot of our clients as well earlier starting earlier, the better, but it's never too late. So we can always discuss and talk

about all the different ways we can help you here at as a strategy in our wealth management division. So, Greg, thank you so much for coming in today. That was very, very helpful to myself and our audience. And you know, obviously we'll have your website up so people can feel free to reach out to you and set up time. And I know you're very generous, but you know, there's all different types of plans of ways to help out. So it doesn't have to be all or nothing. It can be different pieces or help throughout the process which is great. That's a it's a great

kind of menu that Greg offers which is great. So and again with us we can obviously help you with 529 planning, college planning, whatever it takes to kind of help navigate that through for your your children or soon-to-be college students. So thanks again for joining us for this episode of Assets and Taxes. We'll talk to you soon. Take care.