Arlington High School Post Secondary Planning Night - September 23rd, 2026

Welcome everybody. Um my name is Scott O'Brien. I'm the director of counseling here at Arlington High School. Um I started at Arlington High School when your children were coming in as freshman. Um it was a very exciting time for me and at the end of this year they'll be graduating. Does that mean I get to retire? No. Few more years. But um we're I'm very happy to have been with your children the whole time they've been at Arlington High School. And um we're going to begin tonight is postsecary planning night. Um, this is a little bit of an introduction. It's kind of fast-paced. Try not to get too overwhelmed. There's a lot of information. We have already had this information shared with your children on Xlock yesterday. They came to the same place that you're at right now. And we shared very similar information, if not about the same. We will continue to share that information with your children um over and over again until the college process is done. Um, so if you miss anything tonight, don't you worry, we are recording it. Um, and we want to say a big thank you to ACMI for doing that for us. Um, they will post it on their YouTube channel and we will post it on our school counseling website. So, you'll have a chance to see it there. We'll post the slides on that website as well. I have our wonderful eight school counselors that we have um with us tonight. Each one of us has a different part to play. Um a few of us are a little under the weather um but we made it anyways for you. Um these are the breakdowns of the senior class and who your children are with by last name. Um and the emails that go along with that. These are going to be your resources, your contacts throughout the year and your children should be utilizing them throughout the year and throughout the whole college application process. The the key factors that we want you to take away tonight um is that this process is studentled and should be studentled. They should be working out the kinks. They should be fixing the problems. They should be finding out the answers. um this is a really important learning life lesson for them. Parents are great support. Counselors are also here to support and they're here for the whole process. Um we offer a lot of seminars that do require your children to come to them themselves. Um and we have lots of information, lots of one-on-one help, um lots of group help, whatever they need, however it helps them best. Um, so during Xlocks, we'll send out information to students. Say, come down whenever you can during those Xlocks, and all the counselors will sit out at the tables in our office and help students through the process. So, if they need someone to sit with them one-on-one, that's what we're here for. Also, as you know, our counselors are always happy and willing, now that the scheduling process is somewhat over and kids are settling into their schedules, um, to create one-on-one meetings with them, and that's some pretty important time that they get to go through the whole process, make sure they're checking for errors, submitting, working with the Common App, making sure they're applying to the right schools, um, and then dealing with the financial aid part, which we'll talk about a little bit later. For those of you who have individualized questions or something didn't get answered tonight, we or if you know somebody who couldn't make it tonight um and wants to ask questions in person, well, not in person, but over Zoom, we do have jerk digital coffee hour tomorrow at 9:00 a.m. We'll have that information on one of our slides that you can take a picture of. So, one thing that's important, we don't want anyone to stress too much. A little stress is good. motivation, but ultimately know you always have an answer on this side. Just send us an email, send us a a quick phone call, whatever you prefer to get in touch with us, and we're here to help. One thing I want to do before we actually get into the thick of things is just for our sense of uh how deep we go into things, can I have a show of hands if this is your first child applying to college? >> Okay, good. So, we are going to take our time tonight and go through this. It's a lot of people. Thank you. All right. I'm going to turn it over to Miss Ferrari. Thank you everybody. >> Hi everybody. I'm Miss Ferrari. I have last names R through S. Um, so this is a review. You've probably seen this every year at every seminar. Um, a review of the graduation requirements. So, we require 106 credits. Four years of English is the only four-year requirement. We only require three for math, science, and social studies. This is just for Arlington High School. Some colleges and universities will say that they encourage your student to take four years of math, four years of science. Kind of a combination of things across the board. So, it's important to check in with your colleges and universities. Usually, you can find it on their websites. Um, also talk to us. Uh, two years of a world language, one year of fine or performing art, your PE wellness requirement, and then the community service. What I've seen, I was new last year, so this is my second year here. But what I saw last year was students struggled senior year with the community service requirement. They usually push it off every year and then senior year they have to do their full 40. So just make sure you're communicating with them about that so they can get it done. Postsecary options. These are a list of post-secary options that we've seen students here go into. We have the two-year college, four-year college, um technical or trade, military, or going right into the workforce. Each child is going to do something different, and that's okay. We're here to support every student's unique journey and what they decide is going to be best for them. Um, but we can tailor our conversations with them to whatever path they decide. And then exploring your options. So, for colleges and universities, these are different options that students can take part in. um they can visit college campuses. You could have done this over the summer. You can do it over a three-day weekend if you want to go see something close by. Um a lot of colleges since COVID have really ramped up their virtual visits. So, if you can't get to a school, you can do the visit online, which is super helpful. We have college rep visits. So, we have a ton of college representatives that come. They're admissions officers at that college. So, they will come in, talk to students who sign up. Your student can sign up via Naviance for the rep visits. um we're going to hear about Nviance a little later and they can get all their information there and sometimes if not most of the time the person who comes to visit is reading your student's application so it's important to put a face to that person and get kind of that onetoone time with them. Um you can explore the different college websites. You can attend open houses or different college fairs. Um and you can also participate in the interview process which we can also talk about a little bit later. I'm gonna introduce Miss Benson now. >> Hi, my name is Ann Benson. I'm one of the school counselors here. We also have um the PSAT day which is October 22nd. Your students won't be taking the PSAT, but um it's a day that they can come in and get application support help or they can go to our college. Um I'm going to talk about how to kind of remain student centered. One of the biggest um kind of challenges of finding the right college is finding that right fit. Uh it's different for every student. What does that look like for your student? A couple suggestions that hopefully will be helpful. You want to make sure that it seems basic, but the academic offerings. Does that school in fact have the major your student is interested in? If not, it's important to look at that um and dis discern whether or not maybe that's a school you want to maybe put at the bottom of the list. What are the extracurriculars like there? Is your student really into something? Typically, you can find anything that you are interested in at a college campus, but for many, the extracurriculars are important. Campus life and size. Are is your kiddo a city person or do you think that they would thrive in a more um country small town setting? These are all factors that will help kind of contribute to what your student's college list looks like. Most every school has a study abroad program. Um does your student want to go and attend football games or sporting events? Is that important or does it not matter at all? These are all things that uh will help contribute to determining what that right fit could look like. It kind of the the next thing we want to talk about is creating a balanced list. This is um probably one of the most difficult things. How do you create a list that meets like um you have enough reaches? Do you have um enough uh colleges that you your student matches or meets the qualifications of the typically accepted student? And then are there any safeties ones where your students qualifications exceed the standard admissions um standards for that that school? We really think it's important to have a healthy mix of all of these. We recommend nothing north of 10 schools per student. When Mrs. and I were walking up the stairs. We were talking to a senior and he was saying he was applying to 20 schools. Um I think he was just like pulling our leg. But um if he isn't uh you know we would and did on the way up advise that that's too many that the time and energy it takes to apply to 10 schools is not uh insignificant and anything north of 10 you start to wonder like how much research and how much thought went into the list. So, it's really important and we work closely with the student on this to make sure that that list is balanced and not too large. So, the application process, we're here to support your student through that process. There's a lot of moving parts in the application process. One of the biggest things that we really hold the kids's feet to the fire is the application deadlines. It's not like a missing assignment that you can kind of get in late. The colleges expect their students to meet the application deadline. So, we really work on um helping them prioritize what's due when. There's two different ways to apply to colleges. It's one is called the common app and and then the rest is through like a school specific application. The Common App, we'll go over it a little bit later, is a very broad application that almost every college accepts. For smaller schools and especially schools in Canada and in Europe, they have Europe has something called the UKCAST and uh smaller schools in the states. I'm just thinking of Endicott because I was recently speaking about it in the hallway. Endicott has their own application because it's smaller. Um, so we'll help the students understand the difference between whether or not that college is actually using the common application or they have a different way in which to apply. We have important websites as part of our conversations with them. We have obviously the AHS school counseling website where we post information. We're going to post this video in the announcement section of our website. There's also plenty of information on there about things like scholarships and financial aid, etc. Naviance is this web-based portal tool that they've been using since freshman year. It really comes into play senior year because it it it plays a critical part of the application process. Uh we'll talk more about what that looks like, requesting transcripts and letters of recommendation, etc. Um and then of course what I just shared, the common app. Applying to colleges is expensive. Um, and so we have uh fee waiverss in our office. So if if you feel you your student would qualify for a fee waiver or have questions about what fee waiver qualifications look like, just reach out your to your school counselor. We'll totally walk you through that. Um, my last slide here, this is we tried to kind of encapsulate what the um application process looks like. The college admissions office is right in the center. So applications the the complete college application sent through the common app or the college own website that goes to the admissions office. We here I'm just going to go count corner clockwise. I'm sorry. We here at the um AHS school counseling department, we help make sure that they've request their transcript through Naviance and we send that transcript along with some other important required forms as well. So transcripts, those come from us. Test scores. This is really important. Many many schools are test optional, which means that um your kids may decide they don't want to send their standardized test scores. Fine, no problem. if they do in fact want to send their test scores. Oftentimes the colleges allow you to self-report. So they don't require an official score report. Some do. We don't own any um standardized test scores. We don't we don't have we can't send them for on your behalf, your student's behalf. So that has to come from SAT or ACT. We can't send those. And we'll remind your student of this. I think there's a common misperception that we have these scores in our file cabinet somewhere and we just don't. Um, so we'll keep reminding them of that. The WCK letters, the teachers wreck letters, the two teachers and then the school counselors, so total of three, those come from us too. And then the financial aid forms, those come from you all. And we're having a financial night in October, which is really a great um place to come here and listen to Mr. Fudge as a member of the community. But those deadlines um th those are all driven by the federal government and the CSS profile. Um so be mindful. We often say like for the kids when they're applying to the schools, you're like of course supporting them, but you can also be working in the fall on the financial aid applications. Okay, that's it. Okay, I'm going to kick it to KJ. Thank you. >> Good evening. I'm Matthew Ruain. I'm the I'm sorry. I'm KJ Jo. I'm Matthew Rain's long-term sub. I get confused sometimes. All right. So, I'm going to discuss admissions plans first. Um there's a lot of different deadlines coming up regarding applications. So, regular decision is the most common one I think that people know about. There's EA for early action, REA, restrictive early action, ED, early decision, which is a binding decision. Um, PRI, priority rolling. Um, those applications are reviewed as they received, but we encourage students to apply earlier for a rolling deadline because there's typically less availability as time goes on at a college. and then the enrollment deposit deadline May 1st. All right, transcript information. So, we're going to break down all the factors considered by colleges in the admissions process. Um, we're starting with the transcript, which includes GPA, and GPA on current senior transcripts include through the end of junior year. GPA are weighted and unweed and colleges do see both. Many colleges recalculate GPA based on their own system. Um my understanding is UMass is one of the colleges that does that. And then if a student transferred into AHS, the classes from where they transferred do appear on the transcript, but the grades are not calculated into their Arlington GPA. and and student transcripts are available on Naviance now. All right. So, when colleges are reviewing their applicant transcripts, they consider did the student build self-awareness around their academic abilities and interests while in high school. And that can look a lot of different ways. Did they take a lot of classes in a particular discipline, science, math, arts? um what happened with the level of difficulty with their courses? Was it a mix? Was there progress um or progression shown throughout their years? And then upward trends or consistent trends in student grades is something else that they're paying attention to. Um transcripts for early applicants will consist of final grades from junior year and counselors send the first term senior grades when they become available. All right. So, this is an important one. Three weeks prior to an application deadline, all college transcript requests from students are due to their school counselor in Navian. Um, this allows sufficient time to process everything that we process. So counselor letters, the transcript, um the school report, lots of lots of information to send to all those colleges. So we really need those three weeks. Some students are even doing it sooner. We have some students with October 15th deadlines and they're already coming in making sure that's done. Um and we're so proud of them. Great job. >> All right. And so these are just outlined for you to reference. Um, these are the deadlines for transcript requests, right? So on the right there, you can see the Naviance transcript request deadlines and then on the left the application deadlines that correspond to that Nvian transcript request. All right. And Miss Carolyn Russ. >> Hi everyone. Um, so a student's demonstrated interest is a factor that colleges can't consider when they're reviewing applicants. I'm actually going to take this out. Okay. Um so for example, selected admissions plans like what we were just speaking about um if a student applies early or by a priority deadline for example um can show motivation and interest in the college. Um if a student applies early decision if that's appropriate for them then that would show commitment. So that is something that can come into play when um when students are being evaluated. Also supplemental college essays. So as a part of the application when students have to answer the questions such as why UMass, why BEu, when they can really express their interest um within their application and then some colleges do consider the level of student engagement that the student has with the school. So they can track information including if the student visited if they were able to, if they went to the campus, if they went to an info session, if they met with the rep who came here to AHS, um if they went to a college fair, and also sometimes if they open emails that the college sends, they can track that as well, surprisingly. Um and also if a if a school offers interviews and if a student was able to do that. So these are all things that can be included when colleges are you know reviewing their applicants. So it's really important that students are researching their program um because many schools have different you know different um deadlines within certain majors um also some majors are more competitive typically than others. So for example, nursing, computer science, some of the STEM or health fields. We see engineering and business as an example. Um it can be tough to sometimes discern with the data that we see in NVAC, which is just an average of the full school as a whole versus specific programs. So, it's really important that students are, you know, talking to reps um when they visit or asking admissions these questions and doing their research about the specific program that they might be interested in. And um also, it's important to ask about the ability to transfer within departments or majors because sometimes this is very difficult once a student is in one major to transfer or sometimes they may not be able to. So, for example, some of the nursing schools, um, most of them, I would say at the Massachusetts state colleges, if they don't start initially in the nursing program, they can't then transfer into it. Um, also business in some schools. So, it's just important to to really research that and see, you know, in regards to the program that they're looking at. Um, and like I mentioned just in Navviance, the data that you see on those graphs, that really is for the whole college, like the general averages, not specific programs. Um, when possible, if students are open to it, they should and can put um a second choice major. Some colleges within the supplemental sections do allow them to put an alternate choice or a second choice. So, if they're open to that, then that allows them to then be considered for another option if they didn't get their first choice. And many colleges also do allow students to apply as undecided, which um a lot of schools have even seminars or classes and special academic advising that can help these students who are undecided. So, that is an option and it it varies by college. And um just another factor that colleges do look at is special circumstances. So most colleges in this country anyway do take a really holistic approach to students when they review their applications. So they're going to consider different circumstances um you know on a case- by case basis. Students can add information within the application. counselors in our counselor letters for students. We can talk about specific um experiences or things that students want to share. And also at some schools um students can schedule interviews so that they can share their story more. So these are all things that colleges can um review when they're looking. So now I will pass it to Danielle Rowski to talk about standardized testing. Hi everyone. He goes awake. Okay. Um All right. So, um I have a lot of heavy stuff to talk about. Um but I'll try to get through it as easy as possible. Um so, first thing, standardized tests, holistic process. Not every school requires this SAT or ACT. All right? It's could be optional or you know um blind which I'll talk about in a couple of seconds here but it's really a whole process. So if a college is looking for SAT requirement then obviously it's part of the review. If not then it's a holistic situation right so it's everything in addition to the scores. It's not all about the scores. So it's only one part of the process. There is a fee to registration for SAT and ACT. If any of your students need a fee waver, please have them see their school counselor. We have some fee wavers we can give out. Um, so no pressure there, obviously. And there's no pressure to even take the SAT or ACT. If students don't want to take it, if their college list doesn't require it, then no pressure. So, colleges either accept the SAT or ACT. it is um one test isn't better than the other. Okay? It's one or the other. It's not both. Some students may prefer the SAT over ACT. Example is SAT is really just English and math where ACT has English, math, reading, science. So, there's a few extra sections. It's also a longer test than the SAT. So, mythwise, people are like, "Oh, if you apply to schools in the Midwest, you have to take the ACT." That's not true. Okay. If you apply to schools in New England, you have to take the SAT. It's not true. Okay? So, it's always either SAT or ACT. We have the October test, which unfortunately is too late for students to register for. Um, but in case your student excuse me, in case your student is signed up, October 3rd is the test day here. If they haven't signed up for an SAT yet, I would say November and December are two other test dates that students can take an SAT. Unfortunately, just not at AHS, but those do meet the regular decision deadlines, which are typically around January. So, if your student needs more time to either take a retest or to take their first test, there are a few other dates for seniors to take this fall. SAT is out of 1600, so it's 800 and 800 each section. and the ACT is out of 36. There is an additional writing section that students can pay for if they take the SAT. If they really ACT, if they really want to highlight their writing, that's definitely an option. SAT has no additional testing like no writing or no subject test or anything like that. It's strictly just English and math. The AP exams are in May. All right? And it's very important to understand that each college has their own policy on how and what they use the AP scores for. All right? So my advice is always look specifically at the specific school or university. Look on their website. You could just look up AP policy at that school and students can see whether or not they accept their AP for either credit or wave out of a class. Some don't even accept threes. Some may only accept fours and fives for scores. So it really varies by specific school. Okay? Uh so definitely pay attention to that. The other piece about AP exams is do not waste your money and send those AP scores to all of the colleges your students are applying to. Okay? Do not pay College Board any more than you already have. All right? The scores get self-reported. If the student chooses to disclose, the scores get self-reported in the applications themselves. The only time I tell a student to pay for an AP exam score to get sent to the college is only to the school that they are attending if that particular college accepts AP scores. Okay? So that's a next May or June conversation. It's not something that you need to do now. So please save your money. Okay? Um, and definitely look at the AP policy by college so you know whether or not those need to be reported. Uh, TOEFL, Dualingo, LTS or any kind of equivalent for students where English is their second language. Every school has a policy for students that apply to their college whether or not they have to take a test to show their literacy. Okay? So that depends. to every school. Some schools might say the student needs to be here seven years, others five years or maybe they'll they'll need to take a test to prove their um their skills. Okay, so just to kind of break down standardized tests because I know you all want to know this information. Uh test optional schools, like I said before, optional. It does not hurt a student if they do not send their scores. All right. So, my advice is for students to look at once again the specific colleges and what their accepted ranges are. Okay. If they fall within an accepted range, then yeah, you'll want to poss well they'll want to possibly send their SAT scores or ACT scores. The average accepted range. So, there's a low, a mid, a high. Um, it in that range is really what we need to look at. It's by specific school. So just because a student sends scores to one school doesn't mean they have to send to all schools. Okay? It's school specific and the applications allow students to choose pick and choose which schools to send their scores to. Okay. Um test blind. That means a college does not even look at the scores. Don't waste your money. Don't waste your time sending SAT scores. They will not factor it at all into their review process. Okay. Test flexible. You know, students, they'll look at it whether or not it will make a difference in the admissions decision or not. Um, you know, it's really up to everyone. It's a holistic process. Again, like I said, um, colleges will decide whether or not they want to use that in their criteria when they're making their decisions. score choice. Students have the ability to pick and choose which test dates they want to send to colleges. Okay, so for example, if the student in May, I'm sorry I'm using the SAT as the example, but that's what we're using here. Um, if the student in May scored an,00 combined on both sections, okay, like a 550 in math and a 550 in English, and then took the test this October and scored a lower score on both sections, a student can opt out to not send the October score and only send the May score. Okay? They could send the May score and self-report only the May score. Score, supercore. If a student gets a 550 on the English in May and maybe a 700 on the math in October, they can supererscore. They report both scores from College Board, both test dates from College Board, and then they super they supercore in their application. They pick which test score they want to report. Okay? There are very few colleges out there that require you to send all of your scores and that's not often at all. Um, but if any of your student is thinking about applying to MIT, they do require all scores, but there are very few schools out there that require all to be sent. Um, the big thing about self-reporting that I just want to say is that once again, you have to pay College Board to send your scores to the colleges or send their scores to the colleges. Some schools accept self-report only. So, you can also save money there by not paying College Board to send those SAT scores officially through them. But the general rule is self-report on the applications and pay college board or ACT to send those official scores. So to say this one more time, scores are not official for the most part unless they come directly from the College Board or ACT. Okay. essay and writing. So, this is a very important part of the college process. And I'm just going to stress this a little more because, you know, many of our students don't report their standardized testing. Okay? So, there's a piece of the process that's not in the review. So, colleges when they look at the whole package, they look at their essay. Very important piece. So, junior year, end of last year, their se their junior English class should have started their college essay. Some students scrap it over the summer and start over. Some write one, some write a hundred. Um, it just depends. Senior English class, they should be working on those hopefully final, near drafts. Um, there's plenty of opportunity to get extra help in school by teachers um to review those essays. We have a resource guide on our website. The common app itself, if students use non-ommon app, some if you see some schools out there that don't require essays, there are some schools that don't require essays. Some have optional essays and the ones that are required on the common app are 650 words. Um, in addition to that, there are supplemental essays. Okay? If you are looking at your students applications and you see that there are no supplemental essays, that could be okay. All right, there are schools that do not require an additional essay. And then there are the schools that might have seven little small supplemental essays or two small supplemental essays. All right, that's a piece of the common app or or the private apps. All right, that has to be done. A rule of thumb for me, if a if a college says essay recommended, I kind of look at that word as required. All right, I kind of look at that as something additional to highlight yourself or for the college to get to know you more on paper. All right, so definitely the word required some do it, recommended, do it, optional, do it. I'd say anything additional on top of the um what's required is very helpful. Um the why us question super common. Why UMass? Um why UVM? It's really like not about visiting the college. It's not about the ice cream. It's not about the food in the dining hall. It's really about what is it that the college has to offer? Why is the school the right fit? It's a very short response. Could be like a hundred words, which is really little. Um, but it's really like go on the school specific website, find something that interests you, find a professor, find a club, find something that you know the student really connect with on campus, more than just the pretty trees. Okay. Um, additional writing I talked about and special circumstances. So, that was mentioned earlier with Miss Rest. Um, but I just wanted to mention a couple of quick things. uh COVID uh don't write about that stuff anymore. Um move on. I know some of us had some real hardships and some things that happened. Um but genuinely the only time I would use CO and write about it is there's something very significant that affected you know your student or your family. That's really the only reason I would answer the COVID question. Um and then anything missed in the application. So, there's an additional writing section where if there's some reflection or some qualification that your student feels that they can't get across in like 150 characters, which is like nothing, it's like two lines. Um, it's a good place to write about something. If they have too many activities, okay, it's also a place to put stuff left over that hasn't been reflected in the application. And if there's anything that they want to dig a little deeper about, okay? Anything that they want to write about that's not reflected anywhere else should be put in the additional information section. Okay? Shouldn't be repetitive. Students shouldn't talk about the same thing in every section. Okay? But it's just something good to have in addition to whatever the colleges see on paper. Okay? And uh I am going to pass along to Mr. Ali, Eric Ali. Hey everybody, my name is Eric Ali. Congratulations to you and your students on making it to this point in the high school journey. I'm going to talk a little bit about teacher recommendations. So, your students will be asking two of their academic teachers to write recommendations for them. So, we we generally would stay away from like elective teachers. um we're really going for those core academics. If your student is applying into a STEM field or really interested in a college focused on that, it could be useful to go to some of those teachers that they've they've had for those specific courses as well. I think probably a lot of your students as juniors already checked in with teachers. Um but now would be a good time to circle back with those teachers, make sure that you're in their queue. Um we do have some students still going to them asking if they can if they can use that teacher as a reference and generally our teachers do have it can be different for each of them but do have a number in mind for how many students they will write for. So I would say the theme of my slides is communication between between students and teachers and again on the earliest deadline too um which could be as early as October 15th for some schools down south and other schools around here November 1st. So, just make sure your um your students are communicating. Uh the the teacher wreck questionnaire is in Naviance. If any of your students don't know where to find that, they can absolutely stop by our office and all the counselors know where to direct them to that. Uh a lot of teachers do prefer that as as some of the background information that they maybe didn't learn about your student in their actual class. Of course, they'll be using their experience with your student to to really provide the meat of their recommendation. Um, but some teachers also have their own subjective questionnaires that they like answered and that might not be reflected in the general Naviance one. So again, important for for your senior to communicate with the teacher. Teachers will send the letter uh to the colleges via Naviance. So when a teacher submits the letter to Naviance based on the colleges that your student is applying to that have been selected that we'll make sure is accurate alongside your your senior. Um those letters of recommendation will then automatically go to those schools. Some schools only take one recommendation. Um some schools will take two. I have seen a couple that say send as many as you want, but that's um pretty rare for the most part. Uh, and do not, please, uh, we reiterate this, don't don't invite AHS teachers to write the letters of recommendation via the common app. I'll get to that in a slide or two, but that's actually for outside recommenders and wouldn't be for anyone with an Arlington email address and can mess with the process a little bit. Another letter of recommendation that will be written is by um by your students counselor. So um counselors will write a confidential uh letter of recommendation. Same with the teachers. Your your student will not see these letters and that's um really important for the integrity of what comes over to the colleges and universities that they know that the students haven't haven't read it. Um there's a counselor recommendation questionnaire in Naviance uh for we we encourage your students to do this. Um some students have had their counselors for four years. I'm a first year counselor here, so I'm getting to know some of my seniors um for the first time. So, I'm I'm also asking them some questions, some more detailed questions when they come in. And each counselor does have an individual process they use too to get to know your student. But the best practice that we would want all students to do is completing um the the counselor recommendation questionnaire in Naviance. And again, we can show them where that is if they have any trouble finding it. There is also um a a resume like thing that they can uh complete in Nviance that they could share with their counselor. Again, this is a bit repetitive. Um and there's a parent parent guardian response form that's in Navviance in the about me section. That's an opportunity for you all who know these kids best to tell us your perspective on what their life has been like to this point. Um, believe it or not, sometimes when we're meeting with them, they will leave out something significant and then I hear about it and I'm like, "Oh, that's that's really relevant for my recommendation letter." Sometimes it's that I'm not asking the right question or sometimes they just, you know, are used to being humble and not bragging. But this is like you can brag for them. This is your time, too. So, enjoy that. They've you and they have earned it. Um, outside recommenders, this is what would be done via the common app. So, if there was someone from like um community service, a volunteer organization, a place of employment, somebody that you felt was significant in your student's life that you wanted to have input and write a recommendation letter. Um that's where you would invite them via the common app. Again, this is pretty school specific on whether they'll even look at it. Some won't. So, um, before your before your senior goes through that process, I would just check with your counselor on that specific college list of if it will even be relevant for that application. There's also an extracurriculars um, extracurricular activities section in the common app. This is where again your your student really gets the chance to to brag. I think sometimes we see students just trying to rush through the common app and and not fill out some of these sections. So, um I would encourage as I'm reading this, I would encourage uh your senior also to make sure they've had their counselor look over the common app once at least once with them to to make sure everything's entered correctly. Um and again, time to brag. Um but don't be too repetitive. And some colleges do allow students to upload a formal resume via the common app. um from from an interviews perspective, some colleges do offer an opportunity to interview there and uh as Miss Ras was talking about demonstrated interest, this can be a really good way for your student to show that they're serious about the school. Um and I think Miss Ferrari had mentioned that when the admissions officers come in here, those aren't form formal interviews. Your student is there to learn more about the school, but it is the person that will be reading most likely your applicant's application. um I would say 80 80 to 90% of the time it is they cover this territory they come to meet the students they're doing other schools in the area and they will be the ones reading it. Um there's also alumni interviews. Sometimes schools will send out alumni to interview your student. There's some there's some local universities around here that do that. So sometimes we conduct those interviews here at Arlington and that's a great time for your student to find out more about the school from somebody who went there. Again, evaluate informational verse, you know, um verse a formal interview. And what I would say there is, you know, when your student is in the room with these people that are coming to the school to give information, uh they're not in a formal interview, but of course, these people will remember who they talked to. So, it's always great to put your best foot forward there. And then there are a certain uh certain schools like NYU um performing arts. There's some Emerson around here that may ask for uh portfolio or evidence of your work, your film making, an audition, something like that. Thanks everybody for your time. I'll turn it over to Miss Hersh. I'll just hold it. Hi everyone. I'm Kathy Hirs and I am here to talk to you about a whole another application process that of applying for financial aid and scholarships. So, um I know everyone's kneedeep right now in deciding where the students will apply for admission, looking at deadlines. Someone in the family needs a job of doing that for financial aid and scholarships right now. We don't want to let that we don't want to let that go. So some themes to think about um when we talk about financial need for paying for college um colleges are going to be calculated a demonstrated need based on the completion of required applications. Um there's an application called the free application for federal student aid or FAFSA that will be required by every college or university in the United States that you apply to. um and they will test your eligibility for federal and state financial aid. Um some schools will require a second application called the CSS profile which takes a deeper dive into your financial strength into your assets. Um typically private schools that have more of their own institutional aid to allocate to students will require the CSS profile. Um, every school will have their own deadlines for applying for these things. So, you want to make sure you're taking a look on the admissions and financial aid website which forms are required and what are the preferred deadlines. When it comes to financial aid, you want to beat the deadlines. I'll talk more about deadlines on the next slide. Every school sets their cost. So, colleges come with a very wide range of cost of attendance. We have state universities within Massachusetts which your students will apply will um qualify for a reduced rate at the instate rate versus a student from Wisconsin who wants to come to Massachusetts and go to UMass, they're going to pay the outofstate tuition rate for that. So, you want to pay attention to the cost of schools um and consider balancing a list on the basis of college cost to keep your options open if college cost is something that's going to be a factor in deciding which school your student will attend. A school that is more expensive, college A is 80,000 a year, college B is 40,000. It's possible that college A can become more affordable than college B if you qualify for need and/or merit-based aid to bring the cost down. So, this is where it's important to keep the options open. Um, any of you know Jean Shotsky? We see her on TV. I probably pronounced her name wrong, but I saw something she said recently about u paying for college and she was recommending to families who are concerned about cost and um getting the cost to the best possible place they can. The phrase that she used is you should consider the school that wants you the most. That was a different way of of hearing it, I thought. So, um, when we're talking about need-based aid, that will be calculated through a formula. When we're talking about merit aid, that's where the school that wants you most might come into play. So, it could be on the basis of academic strength. Maybe your student is a very strong student. um they're applying to a school where they might be among the strongest applicants and then it could be possible for them to qualify for more merit aid than the school where they're right in the middle um of the group of students who are being admitted. Um keeping lines of communication open within your family is very important. It's very hard for a student in high school to really grasp what we're talking about here in terms of the cost of college and the amount of investment that it takes to make it happen. Um, so don't assume that they understand the difference, you know, between 40 and $80,000. I mean, yes, on paper, but ultimately it's hard for them to grasp. So, it's good to give students some idea of um where your family sits with planning for how to pay for college, what your expectations might be of them in terms of borrowing um rather than waiting until after the fact. So, now's the time to sort of keep the the net wide enough so that you have some options in the spring. And when you're visiting colleges, um don't don't be afraid to ask questions about um scholarships and financial aid while you're there. Um, some schools may have their own internal applications for financial aid for or for merit scholarships that they can talk to you about while you're visiting. You can find these things on the websites as well. So, very important up on the top left there, um, we are hosting a financial aid night here on October 5th at 6 o'clock in this location. We have our outside speaker come in who does a really nice job of trying to sort of um take the temperature down and also deliver a lot of really valuable information about the financial aid application process. Um the FAFSA, which is that federal form for applying for need-based financial aid, becomes available on October 1st um for the 2027 2028 academic year. Um, so start thinking about getting your um yourself ready to complete that form sometime soon after October 1st. The CSS profile for those private schools um that process opens up on October 1st as well. And if you go to collegeboard.com.org, you can see a list of schools that require the CSS profile. Again, it's important to check the college website for required applications and deadlines. um as well as looking for the college specific applications and scholarships um through the MCCAST process. While the MCCAST is no longer required for graduation in Massachusetts, students may still qualify for tuition waiverss at um Massachusetts State Colleges and Universities um through two scholarships, one called the Cople and one the Adams. Um, so if your student qualifies for one of those, we'll have more information coming out about the process to move forward with that. The Arlington community is very generous in terms of we have donors who are um committing funding to help students pay for college and we list some of those local scholarships um as well as scholarships from outside of the community in a database um that you can access through Naviance under scholarship search. In the winter we will have an Arlington community scholarship application open up. We'll publicize that through our office and through the newsletter. Um we encourage all students to complete that application. They are recognizing students for all types of things. Um it doesn't have to be just the top students in the class. So all students may um be eligible for something through that process. We'll also notify you um through the through the newsletter about um and on the database about other local scholarships that have separate applications that you can apply for and complete in the winter. And if you would like to really take a deeper dive and demystify the whole process, um NEFA, Mass Education Finance Authority, um has great webinars on their website at neifa.org. Um, you can watch webinars about the financial aid process, merit scholarships, um, the admissions process. So, that's a great resource. And we're happy um, to share that in Massachusetts, community college is now free for all. So, this is a major initiative that's taken place over the past couple of years. It's helping many families and students access college um when it may have not been out of reach um without it. So, it's tuition free for two years. Um full or part-time students can um earn an associates degree and then there is a process that I think the next person is going to talk about about um transferring those credits into four-year universities in Massachusetts. And next we have June Choy. Hi, my name is June Choy. I'm going to talk a little bit about a few um cost-saving um options that we have here in Massachusetts. One of them being mass transfer. So, this is the option where um your students can start out at a community college, save a lot of money, earn their associates, and then transfer to a UMass or a state university to then earn their bachelor's degree. Um it's a great way to save money again. And if your student's not quite ready for a 4-year commitment, this is one to definitely consider. Um and if you can do that with a 3.0 O GPA or above, you can see given more money through the Commonwealth commitment and we'll cover more um of that at the financial aid night October 5th. Tuition Break New England is that um another program um exclusive to New England. Um if the Massachusetts public schools don't have the major that your student is looking for, they can enroll in one of the other different state um schools here in New England for a reduced price. Okay, and we're almost at the end. Um, so we've covered a lot of information and I'm sure this can be a lot to take in, especially as many of you are going through this for the first time. Um, so we just want to go over some tips that uh we found helpful. Um this can be a really stressful process um for both you and for your students. And uh we find that in order to make that a little more manageable, these are um some things that we encourage that students keep in mind as they go through it. Um one being communicate with us, the counselors, and that goes for all of you as well. If you ever run into a question or um even you know really anything that you want a second opinion or want us to kind of help you navigate, please don't hesitate to reach out to us. That's what we're here for. Um and senior year is a lot. You got to keep up with your courses and also do the college process. And so we really try to keep our doors open for seniors to walk in um because we know that last minute questions come up especially when it comes to college applications. So please send that message as well to your students um as much as you know we're happy to schedule meetings in advance um to ensure that we're in our offices but also if they have a like a burning question urgent matter please just have them come stop by and see us. Um, building a balanced list. I won't go through all of these, but um, the big takeaways being stay on top of deadlines. Um, they might need some help with that. Um, attend college visits if possible. Even if it's not a college that you think they might go to or even apply to, it's nice to see what's out there and really helps them figure out what they're looking for and not looking for as well. Um, and don't wait until the last minute to hit that submit button because there's always a chance that technical errors and things like that come up. So, um, do leave some ample time for, um, those submissions. And to the extent possible, if you could continue to send positive messages, as I'm sure you're all doing, and we try to do as well as a department, but they can really kind of get stuck sometimes in like the weight of college applications and the future and there's just a lot happening at one senior year. So, if you can please send positive vibes, as they say, um that would be lovely. And next to wrap us up is Mr. O'Brien. >> All right. Hopefully everyone is still with us. There's a lot of information as I said here. Um and luckily the information is almost over tonight. Um, we have Xlock, which is a period that students have set in their schedule where they have time to go to clubs, activities, um, seek extra help. As you know, um, that is when we'll set up time during October for students to be able to come down and speak with the counseling department as a whole. We sit at the tables and we work with students um, whatever they need, if it's one-on-one or if it's a larger uh, upcoming deadline. We have our virtual coffee 9:00 a.m. Um, this is where you could ask some more individualized questions. We don't do a Q&A anymore on these nights because most of the questions that we get tend to be very very ind individualized and we want you to have that personal answer. Um, the school counseling website has lots of resources under the announcement page. As I said, the top right corner is going to be tonight's presentation. Thank you, ACMI. Um, and we will have the PowerPoint up there as well. Um, we also have important information about the whole college application process and financial aid. If your child is doing something non-traditional or if they're going to try to apply to colleges that are abroad, our counselors can handle that. Please reach out and ask for help. Um, if you're looking for an ROC program where a student can go to school while being in a military program and which ends up having their school paid for, another alternative option that students can go through, but ask for help. That's what the counselors are here for. As I said, reach out to your child's counselor. It's very important. Here are the links which we will have up on our website um for the virtual Zoom links at 9:00 a.m. Um I will email those out to all parents in the morning just to have a fresh copy in your inbox. If you didn't have a chance to sign in and you can that'd be really helpful to us. The point of that is so that we know we're doing these on the right nights and we're hitting the most people we can. Um, so that's really important that we track the number of attendants each year. And I want to thank you all so so much. I'll be sticking around for a little bit to answer any questions that people might have. Um, but I'm going to be sending my counselors home so they can get a good night's sleep and hopefully come back healthy in the morning. So, thank you counselors. Appreciate it. Great job. And thank you everybody here for coming. We appreciate it. This is a great community. I love working with your children and you. So, that's what I'm here for. Have a good night.