The Truth about Financial Aid with Jeff Levy – College Bound Mentor Podcast #15

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This is Episode #15 and you’ll hear the truth about financial aid with Jeff Levy. Listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and your other favorite podcast spots – follow and leave a 5-star review if you’re enjoying the show!

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College Bound Mentor Podcast Episode #15: The Truth about Financial Aid with Jeff Levy

Financial aid can make a huge impact on your college potential & college experience. Want to find out all you need to know about financial aid? In this episode, we welcome on special guest Jeff Levy, Co-Founder of Big J Educational Consulting, who’s been an educational consultant since 2007. Hear some myths and truths about financial aid, how to fill out the FAFSA application and CSS Profile, how financial aid is decided, the best places to find college scholarships, and the biggest mistakes families make when applying for financial aid. This episode covers everything from financial aid to college scholarships. Here’s a small sample of what you will hear in this episode:

  • How did Jeff become the financial aid guru?
  • What are some myths & truths about financial aid?
  • How is financial aid determined?
  • Should wealthy families still fill out financial aid forms?
  • What are the expectations for the FAFSA this year?
  • How does Early Decision impact financial aid?
  • Will the college cost bubble ever burst?
  • What percentage of families pay full freight for college?

Check out Jeff’s resources at BigJEducationalConsulting.com and connect with him on LinkedIn, and subscribe to College Bound Mentor on your favorite podcast platform and learn more at CollegeBoundMentor.com.

Check out the episode and show notes below for much more detail.

Show Notes

  • The Truth about Financial Aid with Jeff Levy

What is the College Bound Mentor podcast?

Lisa, Abby, and Stefanie know college. They also know students. With over 30 years combined experience mentoring young people, they’ll show you why understanding yourself is the key to finding the right college. Each episode, hear trends, case studies, and interviews with students who have gone through it all – giving you valuable insight to survive the college application process and beyond. Hosted by Lisa Bleich, Abby Power, and Stefanie Forman, Partners of College Bound Mentor.

Transcript

Please note: this transcript is not 100% accurate.

Jeff Levy 0:00
Saving over time is the single best thing a family can do to afford college.

Lisa Bleich 0:08
Hey, CBMers, welcome back to College Bound Mentor, where we help you survive the college application process and beyond. We’re your co-hosts, Lisa, Abby, and Stefanie. On today’s episode, we are thrilled to have a rock star, celebrity guest from the independent educational consulting industry, Jeff Levy to discuss the truth about financial aid. This is an episode you don’t want to miss. Jeff is the co-owner of Big J Consulting, and has been an educational consultant since 2007 based in Los Angeles area. His students live in Southern California and throughout the United States, Europe, Asia and Australia. In his prior profession, he spent over 20 years in the film and television industry, where he worked on set with many of the industry’s most accomplished writers, directors, producers and actors, and was able to observe many paths to creative and professional success. He is also a financial aid expert and speaks and writes widely on the topic. In fact, when I told Stephanie that we would he would be our guest, she said, Oh my god, we’re meeting a celebrity, and we are delighted to have you on our podcast. So welcome, Jeff.

Jeff Levy 1:22
Thank you so much for having me and for making me blush at the beginning of

Lisa Bleich 1:26
the podcast. What we always try to do with our guests. So tell me, I mean, I know you come from a finance from a film background, so how did you get interested and become the guru on financial aid?

Jeff Levy 1:39
It’s kind of a funny story. I was probably in my 24th or 25th year as a gaffer, a chief lighting technician back in, I don’t know, oh seven or oh eight, when the Writers Guild went on strike back then. They had a recent one, they went on strike back then, and it seemed like they were out forever, and the whole industry shut down. And I was thinking, how is it that I could have gotten this good at what I do and not know where my next paycheck is going to be coming from simultaneously? My very bright and creative older daughter was in 11th grade, starting to think about where she was going to go to college, while I was in this panic about how I was going to pay for it, knowing nothing about college admissions or financial aid, and when I say nothing, I mean Nothing. So I tried, and we had drained our savings by that point. I mean, we really had very little. So I tried learning some of this stuff on my own, looking over her shoulder into the applications that she was doing, she would try to push me away, because she’s a I’ll do it myself,

dad. But I

found that this is actually more fun than I thought it would be. On the financial aid side, it was impossible to make sense out of what the rules were. I dipped my toe in the water thinking, You know what, I need to change professions. I can’t be this insecure at this age. So I took a first class at UCLA Extension, and my very first teacher, the introduction to college consulting teacher, was a young at that time, 29 year old, Associate Director of Admissions at Pitzer College by the name of Angel Perez, who’s now quite famous as the CEO of NACAC, right? But he was transformative. And I decided immediately, this is the profession I want to transition into. And several years later, I was able to make a full time transition. And irony of ironies to end the story, my daughter is now a member of the screenwriters guild, the writer the Writers Guild in Hollywood. So

Lisa Bleich 4:10
that’s my story opening. If god forbid there’s another strike that goes on too long, because they just had one that she can come and join the business, right? So that’s always a good thing. You know, I did not know that story. So that’s really, really interesting. So now that you are a guru on financial aid, we usually end the podcast with this, but I’m going to start it just to twist things up a little bit. What are would you say? Are like, some myths about financial aid, and then what are the say, two myths and two truths about financial aid?

Jeff Levy 4:41
Well, one myth, and I hear this all the time, is that you have to apply for merit aid. You have to submit the FAFSA and CSS Profile at those schools that use it for merit aid. It just comes up over and over and over again. And I’ve made like a mini career of trying to uncover those schools where that is the case. And I have found two, there may be more for them, oddly, and I’ve confirmed this with with one of their financial aid, actually, with two of their financial aid people. For them has this very odd rule that they will award merit aid after the student, after the applicant has been accepted. They will award merit aid in the financial aid offer, but they won’t disperse it in August, when the student, when the enrolled, when the student enrolls without the FAFSA having been submitted. Interesting,

Lisa Bleich 5:45
okay, yeah, I know that that’s very interesting. Okay,

Jeff Levy 5:49
you know, it’s just, it’s another twist on. We don’t want to give any institutional aid if there’s any federal money that this student could possibly be be eligible for the other one, and their wording is hard to decipher. The Virginia Tech that seems to want the FAFSA for any made merit aid consideration. Let me say this, there are specific scholarships on college websites that do require the FAFSA or CSS Profile be submitted. But if you look closely at those scholarships, they’re really being focused at students with need, you know, not at all of the applicant pool, but to be eligible for general institutional merit aid the college application at 99.9% of schools is all that’s required. Maybe this is a truth and a myth. The truth is, don’t believe everything you hear about financial aid, because there’s a lot of misinformation out there. And I’ll give an example that a parent gave me several years ago, they went to their daughter’s college night at the high school, and the English teacher, who was the school’s financial aid expert, said, Little Known tip, this is how You go about getting financial aid, you have your child check the box on the application that says, I do not intend to apply for need based aid. And every, as you know, every, just about every application has that question, you wait until your child has been admitted, and then you turn around and apply for financial aid. Yeah, that information couldn’t be further from the truth, let alone being unethical. And this will lead me into another truth. If you expect to apply for financial aid, you must apply before the institution’s deadline, or you will seriously jeopardize your child’s chance of institutional aid. Well,

Stefanie Forman 8:12
thank you. It’s fun to start with that, so I guess let’s go back to the basics. And Jeff, you were actually when I started doing this. It was your resources that I went to, and I continue to go to for my education. But there are two types of financial aid forms, and you just referred to them, the FAFSA and the CSS Profile. So can you walk us through, just like a brief, you know, summary of both of them and why a family or student would fill out one versus the other or both. If

Jeff Levy 8:43
a student is applying for need based financial aid from any institution that they are applying to, the FAFSA is required. The FAFSA is the federal form, and FAFSA stands for Free Application for Federal Student Aid that will be required by every institution the student is applying to if they want need based financial aid, about 170 schools out of the two or 3000 accredited four year institutions, maybe more about 170 of those schools require a second form called the CSS Profile, owned and administered by our favorite nonprofit, the College Board you may know About from their SAT program and AP program and hopeful English language test program. They also run the CSS Profile. That’s an institutional form that these 170 schools use. And these schools tend to be private rather than public institutions. They tend to be highly. Selective, and it’s a much more invasive, intimidating form, but I kind of understand why institutions use it, because it’s not designed to encourage people to complete it easily and submit it easily. Which we want the FAFSA to be. You know, we want the FAFSA to be a form that anyone who might need financial aid can easily fill out and submit the CSS Profile. Is not that form, but it’s being used by a lot of institutions that are meeting, you know, a very high percentage of demonstrated need. These institutions have a history of giving large amounts of financial aid, so they the form looks at a family’s finances from many different directions. To give the institutions a much clearer snapshot. It’s like the difference between an MRI and a kind of crappy, crappy X ray. To

Lisa Bleich 11:06
that point, like a lot of people, find it really confusing about how it gets decided. You know, how much is based on income, how much of it is based on student asset, parent asset, what’s the what’s the percentage that’s assessed for each of those things? Can you just walk us through that? By

Jeff Levy 11:22
far, the biggest single factor in determining a student’s need or a family’s ability to pay is adjusted gross income, which you will find on line 11 of your 1040 form in your tax returns, in your federal tax returns, income is the biggest driver of need eligibility. Secondarily, it’s assets. But assets are really apparent. It’s parent and student assets. Parent assets are actually penalized at a very small amount, and that’s another thing that a lot of parents don’t understand. Should I save for college? Because they’re just going to take it away when I apply for financial aid. Yes, parent assets are assessed at around five cents on the dollar, if you have $100,000 in total savings and investments, 5% of that, or five that your the family’s expected family contribution will go up by $5,000 as a result of having saved $100,000 in my view, better to have $95,000 in the bank to help pay for college than to have zero in the bank. Saving over time is the single best thing a family can do to afford college, whether they have a lot of need or no need. Those are the two big factors. There are others like, how many dependent children? But those are the two biggies,

Lisa Bleich 13:08
right? And students are assessed at 20% is that right? Whether,

Jeff Levy 13:12
depending on if it’s a FAFSA only school or a CSS Profile school, student assets are assessed at between 20 and 25% which I think is too much. I mean, don’t we want students to save? And even worse than that, student income after a student income allowance, the certain allowance that’s protected from the formula after they’ve exceeded that amount, student income is penalized at 50 cents on the dollar, which I think is criminal. It’s like, don’t we want, particularly students would need, you know, to go out and work. And it doesn’t make sense to me.

Stefanie Forman 13:59
Well, thank you for that. That really helpful explanation. Another question that we get a lot from our families who are fortunate enough to not need financial aid, should they still fill out either or both of these forms? What do you recommend and why? This

Jeff Levy 14:16
is the perennial question. Let me start by saying there’s no clear yes or no to this. As a college consultant, I lay out the pros and cons to my family, and I leave it up to them to make the decision. Here are the pros and cons, because there are some schools that if you are not submitting the required financial aid forms as an incoming freshman, and then experience an unexpected, catastrophic event of financially, loss of job because of a weather event, loss of your home. Home, a grandparent has to come and live with you because they can no longer live by themselves, and one of the parents has to give up their job to care for the grandparent. All of those things that we may not be able to predict. There is a portion of schools, and I can’t tell you if it’s 20% or 30% but it’s somewhere in there who will penalize a student who did not submit the form as an incoming freshman and then turns around in their second year or third year requesting need based aid. The college’s rationale is, we gave you a bump as a full pay applicant when you are coming in as a freshman, because we need full pay families to help underride families with need, and now you’re turning around asking for need based aid. We’re going to impose a one year waiting period on giving you any institutional aid. Other colleges will say we will not be able to give you any institutional aid for all the subsequent years you’re here. It’s not the majority of schools, but it’s a it’s enough of a minority that parents need to be aware if they’re trying to game it, because they know that not applying for financial aid as an incoming freshman may advantage the applicant, and we can, if you want. We can go into some of the details on that, but because it may advantage the applicant, a lot of parents think, well, I won’t apply as an incoming freshman and we’ll then we’ll just do it in year two. Not so fast, because the institution your child is at may not recognize or may not be able to award institutional aid in that second or third year.

Lisa Bleich 16:50
So let’s talk about the FAFSA last year was a disaster, right? With it being so late and not being available. Do you think that they’ve gotten their act together? Do you think we’re going to see a smoother transition this year.

Jeff Levy 17:03
Yes, if I had a bet, I would say it’s definitely going to be smoother this year. The FAFSA this year is also being its release is also being delayed as it was last year. This year, they’re saying it will be released on December 1. Last year, it was the end of December, and when it was released, just loaded with issues, it was a disaster. Last year. I don’t think this year will be a disaster. They have been running a pilot program, starting with a small group of students, expanding it to a larger group of students, between October 1 and December 1, just to iron out all the kinks. And the reports I’m getting are that this pilot program is doing quite well. Okay, it’s working better than anyone thought. I can’t guarantee it’s going to all be good on December 1, but I’m hopeful.

Lisa Bleich 18:00
Yes, same, same. You know another thing going back to scholarships, a lot of families will say, you know, we’ll worry about scholarships. Once they get in, we’ll apply for outside scholarships. And our figure is that it’s maybe 5% of the money that goes to pay for college comes from outside scholarships, and the the lion’s share of it comes directly from the institutions. So why is this a bad strategy for families to do that?

Jeff Levy 18:28
It may be 5% I don’t know what that is. What I do know is that the average award for an outside scholarship is roughly $1,500 the student has to put in a lot of work, often applying for scholarships where there’s a very low chance of getting it, and the amount that’s that they win is actually quite small. There’s a further problem, and that’s called scholarship displacement. There are variations on how that works, but the worst of it, and there are institutions that are still practicing this. California last year prohibited. It passed a law prohibiting scholarship displacement. It’s if you win a $1,500 scholarship, let’s say, and usually those scholarships are going straight to the institution. They’re not going to the family, they’re going to the institution. The institution will subtract, dollar for dollar, the amount of that outside scholarship from the amount of the of the grants or scholarships that they are giving the students, so there is absolutely no gain. There, more frequently, slightly less troubling practice of reducing dollar for dollar, what’s called the self help portion of the financial aid award, which consists of. Of federal undergraduate student loans and or work study. And work study is not a gift, it’s an estimate. It’s an estimate of what the student will earn if they work on campus. Yeah, right, of course, a federal student loan is not a gift, it’s money that’s got to be repaid with interest later on. Yet these are two line items in most financial aid awards. It’s not terrible if your $1,500 outside scholarship replaces $1,500 of the federal student loan, because you can still, you can still get up to the maximum amount, which is $5,500 for a freshman. So it’s not the worst thing in the world. But I think, generally speaking, if a full pay kid, if a kid whose parents are not, you know, eligible for any aid, gets an outside scholarship of $1,500 it’s reducing that family’s payment to the college by $1,500 if a student with need gets a $1,500 scholarship, it’s replacing another part of their financial aid award. So I just think it’s, it’s it’s inequitable. I just think, I think it’s

Lisa Bleich 21:21
no that is true. But I guess to that, to the other point is if, if a family doesn’t qualify for need based aid, but they still don’t have the means to pay for it out of their pocket, then doing scholarships, even if you add them up, it could help. You know, $1,500 can help every year.

Jeff Levy 21:40
No question. And I just, I should say now that even though the five of us here might know individual students who have won big national scholarships like the Coca-Cola scholarship or things like that, it’s pretty rare, and the best place to look for these outside scholarships is, in my opinion, is local Exactly, yeah, it can be both of my daughters won scholarships from the entertainment union that I was a member of that happens to have a scholarship program for the children of members There a number of my students who live in a city near me. There’s a Ford dealership that has a community service scholarship that a number of my students have won. The Rotary Club has scholarship programs. Sometimes churches and synagogues have these kinds. So look local. Do your research. At the local Chamber of Commerce, at the local high school, they may have a database of local scholarships. That’s the first place to look.

Lisa Bleich 22:51
Yeah, I think that’s very true. We actually, on our website, one of our blog posts, if listeners want to look, they we have a list of of scholarships that that you can get, that are outside scholarships, that are or able for students to get?

Stefanie Forman 23:02
Yeah, Jeff, you actually, you answered my question that I was going to ask as a follow up about outside resources. But on average, these the rotary or the Ford dealership, like, what? What’s the average amount of these scholarships?

Jeff Levy 23:16
You know, in my experience, and I think in a little bit of research I’ve done into this, it’s about $1,500 and they’re not, they’re often, sometimes they’re four year awards, some, but more often, they’re just a one time one year award. It can be a little more than that, but in general, it’s, it’s pretty low.

Stefanie Forman 23:37
So another question about some common mistakes. So what do you see as some of the biggest mistakes that families make when they think about financial aid so? So what do you see when they’re filling out the forms? One

Jeff Levy 23:51
big mistake which I mentioned earlier is not understanding what the institutional deadlines are, and how critical it is to complete these forms and submit them by the institution’s deadline, and what that means in reality, since both the FAFSA and CSS profile are, for the most part, online digital forms where you’re listing all of your Colleges, you need to submit that FAFSA or that CSS Profile by the college with the earliest deadline. So for right now, I mean, we know the CSS Profile opened on October 1, and for any of our students who are applying early decision or early action, some of those colleges are going to have a November 1 financial aid deadline. And so I think the first big mistake is parents don’t realize that that it can be so soon. So one of the things I do as a college consultant, I send out a blast to all of our families, all of our senior families, letting them know. So usually, September 1, hey, these deadlines are coming up. It’s not my job to tell you what those deadlines are. It’s your job to keep track of them. My job is what I just did to let you know to keep track of them.

Lisa Bleich 25:15
And we appreciate that, because we piggyback off of your email and we send it to our families as well, so we thank you for doing that job and for keeping us on track on that

Jeff Levy 25:26
so that’s the first big mistake. Another mistake I see frequently is counting a 529, college savings plan, entering it as a student asset. And it isn’t, it’s it’s treated much more favorably in the financial aid forms as a parent asset. I’ve had parents enter, they get nervous, you know, when they’re filling out the forms, and they submit it as a parent asset and a student, they report it as both. It’s not the it’s not the right thing to do. I think another mistake that I see is, and I see this a lot on some of the social media forums, is this, and it’s another myth colleges require the submission of the FAFSA. You know, it’s just not true, but it’s out there. I saw it in a post on on a list serve of one of the professional organizations yesterday,

Lisa Bleich 26:30
and I’m sure you corrected them, right, Jeff,

Jeff Levy 26:31
I’m too I’m too busy. I would have but I’m too busy. So there’s just a lot of misinformation about that sort of thing. I’ve got to say that the FAFSA has become easier to navigate now the new FAFSA, it’s just it’s a more intuitive. It’s not what it promised to be, which was reducing the number of questions. There are at least as many questions, but it’s easier to get from question to question now, and they’re they’re more simply explained. I think that covers most of my concerns with FAFSA completion. Okay,

Lisa Bleich 27:12
cool. You know another I guess myth that I think is a myth, is that a lot of families are worried about applying early decision if they have a need, if they if they qualify for need based aid. And we recommend actually opposite, particularly for families who have a need, but they’re applying to a school that meets full demonstrated need. We recommend that if they’ve done the net price calculator and they’ve identified what their student aid index is, and they see that the school will meet it, that they should apply early decision, and that actually doesn’t hurt them in the process, if it’s a need based financial aid award. Do you agree with that? Do you disagree with that? What do you think

Jeff Levy 27:54
for the most part, I disagree. You disagree. Okay, good. Tell me why. Imagine this scenario a student has done everything right, and finds out from Columbia University that they’ve gotten in and the parent sees the financial aid award, and it turns out to be significantly less than even what the net price calculator told them it would be. So the student gets their acceptance on December 20. The parent says, Well, this can’t be right. I’m going to appeal. Let’s say it’s the dad. He calls the financial aid office and gets a recording. We’re closed until January 3 for the holidays. So you’ve got this student who wants to celebrate, who can’t really celebrate, and the dad gets through on january 3 and is told, I’m sorry. You know you can submit an appeal, but we meet full need, and it’s unlikely we’re going to change this. What does the family do in that situation? They have no other award, probably, or possibly to compare it to, do you ask your daughter to turn down her acceptance to Columbia? I just think, for a family with moderate to substantial need, they are always in a better place if they can compare awards, and they’re in a better place to negotiate if they tell Columbia, well, Princeton offered her 20,000 more a year. And that can happen. In fact, I just had an appeal recently. Last cycle, I had an appeal with Columbia who was not honoring the two kids in college, the two siblings in college, and as soon as the parent appealed, they coughed up another $35,000 so there’s just. So much that we don’t know even a school that meets 100% of need, like Columbia and Princeton, we just there can be significant differences due to a number of factors in that award. And I just think that families with need, who, for whom, the financial aid award is a determining factor in where they’re going to go. I just think they’re in a stronger position to sit back, wait for all the awards to come in and then to make the decision or the appeal or whatever that makes the most sense for them.

Lisa Bleich 30:35
Yeah, no. I mean, I definitely hear what you’re saying. I mean, we’ve had instances where I had twins that applied, one applied to WashU and St Louis, and one applied to BU, and they had similar need, and wash met the full need. Bu did not, but then they just said, we can’t go because you didn’t meet my full need. And then they applied, and they went to a different school, the second choice school. So I think that I totally hear what you’re saying, but I’ve also had instances where students have applied early decision and have had their full need met, but they have all of their applications ready to roll in case it doesn’t work out, so that they’re not stuck. You know, at that 100% 100%

Jeff Levy 31:19
you know, you’re a very seasoned college consultant. You know which schools to gamble on and which schools maybe not to gamble on. One of my two daughters did apply ed to to a school that I felt was a safe gamble many years ago when I was just learning this stuff, and it turned out fine. So I don’t think there’s a hard and fast rule. I wouldn’t say never, yeah, for a family with need to never apply Ed, but it worries me a little bit when they do,

Lisa Bleich 31:54
yeah, no. I mean, I could, I could definitely see both sides of it, and I think that it just shows that you really need to be aware and maybe even have a conversation with financial aid before you make that decision to apply early decision and see if, I mean,

Jeff Levy 32:06
sometimes they’ll do an early read. But these days, the Financial Aid Office offices are just slammed because of the FAFSA problems, and they, you know, they don’t have any extra time at all. And plus, people, people have been leaving the profession, you know, the financial they’re losing, yeah, so

Lisa Bleich 32:24
we’re leaving academia a lot. I mean, I mean, we see so many ads for people that want to do admissions and things like that coming over to our side. Well, speaking of, okay, so paying for college, I remember, you know, I’ve read a bunch of things about it, but there’s sort of like a, is there, like a framework or a rule of thumb that you give to families. I’ve heard things like a third should come from savings, a third should come from ordinary income, and then maybe a third from loans, depending on the situation or that you should only take two thirds of your first year anticipated salary total in loans for a student so that they can service those loans correctly. Do you have any rule of thumb or any framework that you provide for families to think about it?

Jeff Levy 33:10
I don’t, and I’m not, and I should, but it’s I’m terrible with my own budgeting. There’s a lot of stuff I know a lot about. This is one sliver of my job that I think I’m terrible at. I mean, I do have a rule of thumb about how much undergraduate debt a student should go into, which I’m happy to talk about, but in terms of how big a slice of the family budget, you know, I don’t, you know, I run across families some have saved hundreds of 1000s of dollars for college. Some, shockingly, with an income of, say, you know, three quarters of a million a year for many years, have very little in savings. And it’s like, how did you not think ahead? So I just find that I’m meeting families wherever they at in the moment. You know, I wish I worked with them for many years earlier, but when I’m starting to work with them, I’m just helping them deal with their particular circumstances in the moment. Yeah,

Lisa Bleich 34:20
and which of those families do you think is the hardest category to help? When

Jeff Levy 34:25
you say categories, when we spoke earlier, you kind of told me what your categories were, and I think they’re good ones, families who need, who with very high need, families with zero need, families with zero need, who still can’t afford the sticker price of college. You know, those are three of the categories. There are more, of course, families with moderate need, I would say among the easiest to work with are students with. Very high need, who are also very high achievers. So we know that there are lots of schools to choose from that are highly selective, that are meeting full need. So that’s not such a hard category to work with, students families with very high need, and the student is not a high achiever, that can be very difficult, because, yeah, you know, the schools that they can get into are not going to be schools that are meeting close to full need. They’re probably not in line to get much of any merit aid. That can be difficult. Families with no need, but who can’t afford the sticker price of college. And just to clarify by as we’re talking about this, what we mean by the sticker price of college, that is the entire annual cost of college that consists of tuition, fees, room and board books, personal expenses. A lot of families are thinking, are talking about tuition, but I urge you to be thinking about this as more than just tuition, but the entire cost of college. That’s what’s expressed on every College’s website, and that’s how financial aid is determined. It’s based on the total annual cost of college. So those families who find 8085, $90,000 a year, the sticker price to be a financial burden, and who wouldn’t the hard part about working with them, I can certainly direct them to schools that are very generous with non need based aid, and there are lots of them, and lots of great schools that are very generous with merit aid. The hard part is getting them to realize that, because it’s not an IV, it isn’t also a great school, it isn’t also a great school to go to where you know your kid may have an amazing experience. That’s the hard part. They feel like they’re settling for some of those schools, when, in my opinion, it could be an opportunity to have an amazing four year experience.

Lisa Bleich 37:20
No. So true. So true. Yeah. And the one thing we just didn’t mention is that also for that that hard to find, so the student who hasn’t maybe peaked in high school hasn’t done as well in high school and doesn’t and has a high need the community college, and then the transfer is a really good option for those families, and I often will recommend that to them. And in California, I know it’s very common. I grew up in California, so it was like so many of my friends, you know, started a community college and then transferred to UCLA or Berkeley, and that’s a very popular path. The

Jeff Levy 37:48
newest consultant we brought on to Big J educational consulting, Michael Trevino, in his very, very broad experience in admissions had been for five years the head of system wide undergraduate admissions for the entire UC system. Oh, wow. Michael started out as a community college student. Did two years in a community college, transferred to UC Berkeley. You know, that’s how his story began. It is, I mean, as you mentioned, Lisa, the UC system is set up for community college transfers. It’s a lot easier getting into a Berkeley or UCLA from community college than it is getting in as a first year applicant. So it is certainly one way to make college more affordable and to get into a great to graduate with a degree from a terrific four year institution.

Stefanie Forman 38:53
Yeah, so talking about price. I mean, this whole thing is about talking about price. But if you could look in your crystal ball. I mean, so many of my friends who are their kids are not in college yet, but they’re the anxiety that they’re having is like, how are we going to afford college, if prices of college are this now, what’s going to happen in the future? And like, How is this all going to be sustainable? Like, do you think the the bubble is going to burst at all. Like, what are your predictions for this? Because it, it just seems so unattainable for so many people. And I just love to hear your insights about that. Stephanie

Lisa Bleich 39:31
has a kindergartner, so, you know, she’s like, you know, right in the pipeline, and it’s, it’s, it’s going to come before she knows it. So

Jeff Levy 39:39
I think there’s so much uncertainty in the world and in the country right now, it’s hard to predict what’s going to happen a month from now, let alone a few years from now, but I see a few things happening simultaneously that are kind of we getting to rip the seams apart from different. Different directions. I’m seeing a denigration of the importance of a college degree as one way of dealing, oh, yeah, you don’t really need a college degree as one way of dealing with the fact that fewer and fewer people can afford it. I see more of our students thinking about Europe and Canada as possible options, because they are less expensive. For sure, I’m seeing you know, a lot of us in the profession whose reach is not that great, but who’ve been trying really hard to educate our colleagues and the public at large about how to shop intelligently for affordable colleges. I think there is a better understanding of how now than there was 15 years ago, about how to find affordable colleges. So I think people are beginning to enroll at colleges that are more affordable. I think that’s putting some pressure on those other schools. I don’t see the bubble bursting. I agree with you. It’s not sustainable. I don’t know what happens. I don’t know what happens. It’s let’s do, let’s do another one of these in five years, and see and compare, compare it to today. I wish I could be more predictive about what might happen. I don’t know,

Stefanie Forman 41:25
no, but that’s still helpful. Yeah. Well, one

Lisa Bleich 41:29
of the resources that we will put on, if it’s okay, with your permission, we’ll put on the website you have, you and your partner, Jenny, can’t publish this super helpful chart on financial aid. It’s both need and merit aid, and it’s really, really helpful. So Is that alright if we put a link to it on our website, on our podcast,

Jeff Levy 41:44
it’s 100% alright. We We do these charts and we share them broadly for free, because we don’t know how to do our job properly without them, and we want to see everyone become more informed about how to find schools that are affordable, whether that’s need based aid or merit aid, affordability, as we’ve talked about, is going to mean something different for different families. Absolutely. Put it on your your your website, and we’re happy to share them.

Lisa Bleich 42:19
Great. Do you have any idea what percentage of families pay full freight?

Jeff Levy 42:23
So I think the most recent figure that I’ve come across from a couple of years ago, 86% of undergraduates are paying less than this pickle price in terms of grants and scholarships. So 14% are paying full freight. Those grants are both need based and merit based, and also outside scholarships, as we’ve discussed. But that’s the figure I’m aware of, right? And I think

Lisa Bleich 42:54
at the IVs, it’s higher, probably, I think when we were looking at that, it was like, between like, the lowest is Princeton, which is maybe like 29% that don’t get any need based aid. And then up to maybe like 50% was about what we saw when we were looking at because they don’t get merit. So it’s all need based aid, like, what percentage get financial aid?

Jeff Levy 43:15
So when we do our charts, we start from this. We’re inputting data in this master spreadsheet that literally goes through the alphabet like into a third time. So it’s like 50 or 60 columns wide, and one of the things we’re able to see from our inputting is the percentage of students at any institution with need and without need. What I found very surprising. And if this is what you were saying, I totally agree with you. Of the Ivies Princeton has the largest number of students with need,

Lisa Bleich 43:55
with need, yeah.

Jeff Levy 43:56
And I was so surprised at that, because that’s not the way it used to be. But for the most part, the IVs are hovering around 50% of their of their students, have need, and 50% have no need, which is pretty shocking to me, considering that no need at an IV means that the parents are paying 90,000 a year per child to send them to the ivy so they may be quote, need blind, but they’re figuring out ways to year after year, build a freshman class, and it’s very consistent year to year. Build a freshman class, where half of their students have no need whatsoever, right?

Lisa Bleich 44:44
Yeah, well, it’ll be interesting to see if me, right now legacy is still on the table. I don’t know how much of that is factored into that, but that, I think, is a topic for another podcast, another episode. So is there anything else, any closing remarks you want to share with our. Listeners,

Jeff Levy 45:00
this is a data point that also shocked me. There are a lot of our families who feel, Oh, my God, my daughter is not going to get into an IV. Her life is ruined, her career, you know, she’s never going to be able to achieve what we as her parents were able to achieve, I think that is, it’s misguided and it’s ill informed. And the data point that I share with those families, you guys may be aware of this, I pull out Harvard Law Schools first year demographics, yeah, demographics for their their first year class, their one at one else this past year. They have an 11% admit rate, so it’s like very, very hard to get in. They have 561 else who have come from how many different undergraduate institutions? 2030, 20, 3050, they come from 146 different undergraduate institutions. So what these 1l and Harvard Law have in common is not where they went to college, but it’s what they did at the college that they went to. They were superstars at the colleges that they went to. There is life after not going to a US, News and World Report, top 10 or top 20 College. In fact, life might be better if you don’t go

Lisa Bleich 46:43
Yes, for sure, you could really rise to the top. No, I think that’s very, very true and really, really good advice. So all of you listeners out there really take that in. So thank you so much, CBMers, for tuning in, and thank you, Jeff, for an epic episode. To catch more episodes of College Bound Mentor. Make sure to Follow or Subscribe on your favorite podcast platform and tell a fellow parent or student about the podcast. To learn more, visit CollegeBoundMentor.com Until next time, you got this!

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