New Face- New Place!

Over the weekend, MyCCA.net launched a new website with a new face, and a new blog integrated into the website.

Check out the new look of the website at:  www.mycca.net

Check out the new blog at : http://mycca.net/_blog/MyCCA_News

The content we have here will stay.  All new posts will be made on our new website.  Come join us on that page.

View upcoming seminars :  http://mycca.net/seminars-events

What a HECA of a List- and More!

Doing research on colleges with ABET Computer Science programs?  Or looking for schools with a sizable Jewish population (besides through the Hillel website)?  Would you like to view the latest news from a college?   Or search for test optional choices for your upcoming seniors?  All of these collections of college lists are available on MyCCA.net.  If you take a look at tagged college lists, you will find a rich resource right at your fingertips. Tagged College Lists are groups of colleges that share a common characteristic.  Choose from the available tagged lists of colleges on MyCCA.net to add to your account.  Use tagged lists for doing research, creating lists for your students, and adding value to the service you provide.  Let MyCCA.net do the research, and you reap the benefits. Some our our newest Tagged lists are:

--HECA College Reports:  A group of 12 colleges with updated college reports provided by Higher Education Consultants Association (HECA).  These reports provide details about admissions, financial aid, future plans and other information of benefit to college advisors.  Lists grows quarterly.  Special- College NOTES are included with the HECA College Reports.

--High Merit Scholarship:  Provided by a fellow college consultant, this list identifies colleges that offer merit scholarships to 20% or more of their students.

-- Engineering Schools with 2,000-5,000 students:  Offers good options for students interested in engineering and a smaller school.

Check out these and many more tagged lists on MyCCA.net - under Purchase Tagged lists.

March Madness

March madness has a different meaning in the life of a high school senior. This month students are anxiously waiting to receive notices of admissions or rejections from their colleges.  Students are in for a roller coaster ride of emotions as they learn their fate. Parents are along for the ride, too.  College advisors become coaches and confidants at this time of year.

In previous times, Joannie or Johnnie would fixate on the time of day the mail came. They would calculate how and when to catch the mail. Anxiously, they would wonder, "When will my letter from the college come?"  Now,the anxious student fixates on the computer, or their cell phone. Admissions notices are now sent to students electronically. The internet brings their fate to the palm of their hands.

The joy of learning at midnight you are accepted to your first choice school is exquisite. The build up can be intense. Schools often notify students of the exact day of their admissions notices. My Berkeley applicants know the exact dates to expect a decision.  Needless to say, there is a lot of build up to this date.  Once the decision is read, a quick text is sent to me, "I got in".  Hallelujah! Those are the texts we look forward to receiving.

The other side of the decision process does not go as well electronically. It is impersonal to learn you have been rejected at your first choice university via email, or worse, yet, logging into the college portal.  It is not an easy way to let a student down.

This year, my students were introduced to an electronic, but personal way to be notified of admissions.  Now, videos are being sent to students to inform them of their acceptance. Imagine receiving a video of the president of the college congratulating you on admissions to their very competitive university. Your own video- wow, that is impressive.

What are the best ways your students have been notified of admissons?  What about rejections? Waitlist?  Post a comment about the most creative forms of notification you have seen.

March Madness gives way to April Decisions.  Now, what about that financial aid or merit scholarship offer?  When do I get that notice?

Celebrating 500!

Note:  Mycca.net has been made the premier online tool through the support of individual independent educational consultants.  This week we are highlighting the 500th organization to join mycca.net: Shelly Levine and Jodi Seigel of College Bound Maryland.

College Bound is an educational consulting practice in Potomac, MD that offers a broad range of personalized services.  Shelley Levine and Jodi Siegel work closely with students and their parents to help address the needs and interests of high school sophomores, juniors and seniors.  Throughout the year, College Bound helps students, including athletes, artists, actors, engineers, and students with learning differences to achieve educational and career success through specialized counseling.

 As independent educational consultants, we strive to identify colleges and universities that will provide the best fit for our clients.  We have successfully guided hundreds of high school students and their parents through the college admissions process.

 We began using mycca in 2011, and are impressed with how great it is at improving our communication with clients, developing college lists, managing appointments, accounting, and tracking client contacts.  Our students are excited to log on to their student portals to explore colleges and track their progress.

 As we look further into 2012, we plan to implement more of the mycca.net capabilities into our practice, and are excited to see how it enables us to provide even better service to our clients.

Enhance your business using technology

Note: Our guest blogger today is Jo-Ann Beserra.  She is an independent consultant in Boulder, Colorado. Operating an office is no easy task. Jo-Ann gives you tips on managing your office.

As an educational consultant, the technology options available to enhance my business are numerous. To simplify, I look at my business from two perspectives and keep one key center stone product as home base for each view.

My first perspective is my front office, or the customer view.  The center stone for my front office is my website. A website can be much more than an online brochure. I use my website for marketing campaigns, announcements, blogs or newsletters, and I track who is reading them. I maintain contact with prospective and current clients through my website. I share resources and provide information. My website also links in other tools that I select to use, such as Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn.

My second perspective is my back office, and the tool I use to run my business, is Mycca, which offers such a large breadth of functions that play nicely with other pieces of technology. Here are the top 7 ways that Mycca integrates other tools:

1.      Scheduled student meetings are added to my personal iCal calendar so I have both my work and personal calendars in one view.

2.      Emails sent to students are stored on the student’s record and can be recorded as a session for payment.

3.      Branded reports are created instantly for print, storage or email. The professional look of these reports is very impressive.

4.      Students can view videos of colleges, which is often their preferred method of research.

5.      Links to other outside college resources such as test registration, reviews, college websites and tools are readily available in the right place.

6.      Special tools for organizing essays and scholarships can be accessed from within Mycca, without separate accounts.

7.      And my very favorite is that MyCCA is accessed from my website, so clients pass through my website and prospects see that I have special tool.  This links my back office to my front office.

 Comment:  See information about different features of mycca.net Jo-Ann mentions on the mycca website under Features.  You can also check in the HELP section for details about these and other features of mycca.

Marketing- IEC Style

Last week, first semester report cards came out.  When report cards come out, our phone starts ringing.  Why?  I am not sure, but I think parents are jerked back to reality and realize they may need educational assistance with their child. As I closed the door after meeting with one of those 9^th grade students and parents, I wondered, “How could I have planned for this increase in interest, and made it better?”  I should have timed communication with families with the end of the semester to connect with more parents at an opportune time. I should have used this as a marketing opportunity.

Whether you are a new or experienced IEC, your key to accomplishing many of your goals for the next year lie in your marketing goals. Often it is the simple things that bring the greatest return for you in marketing.

Here are marketing goals for you to consider.  Each of these marketing goals can be supported through mycca.net; either in the counselor portal or within the student portal.

Four Key Marketing Goals for IEC’s for 2012:

1. Increase Communication- Make your communication to current and potential clients ongoing and consistent.  Send out broadcast emails through mycca.net on a regular basis, targeted to each group of students in your practice. Include prospects in broadcast emails. We send regular emails out to seniors, juniors, underclassman (9^th-10^th graders) and all students on mycca.net.  For example, before the holidays we send out an email announcing our holiday schedule. This went to every active and inactive student and their parents on our mycca.net account.  After it went out, we received emails immediately from 3 past clients, requesting appointments with younger siblings.  Communication reminds people (in a good way) that you are a valuable resource.  Sending out a newsletter, links to articles, college news and tips, and financial and scholarship information, are all good ways to communicate with past and potential clients.  Using the prospect tool on mycca.net allows you to send emails out to prospects in addition to current and past clients, and record it as a session note.
   
2. Tell your story.  Let potential clients know what you have to offer. Explain what your services are on your website. Putting the student portal link on your website is key to telling your story.  It intrigues people. One consultant reports how people see the “client login” she has on her website.  They want to know what they are missing.  She tells them, “become my client and you will find out”.  The student portal link on your website is an enticing marketing tool. Use Amy Awesome as your “sample student”.  Demonstrating what is in the student portal, the CSQ gauges and the multiple other benefits of the student portal can be a powerful marketing tool for you.  Click here for directions on linking your student portal to your website.
   
3.  Make it happen.  Have a schedule of what, when , where and why. Create a marketing schedule with a calendar and your own “action” list. Then stick to it.  You won’t be caught unprepared like I was this January.  One of the new features mycca.net is working on is the ability to schedule emails for sending the future. This feature will make it easier to meet this important goal.
   
4. Build visibility.  Build your brand, your identity in your community and professionally as well.  Adding your logo to your account is an important first step. This will display your logo on the student portal as well. Click here for directions to uploading or changing your logo in mycca.net.  Having your logo displayed on the student portal account and having it appear on every document you send out is key to building your brand. (In mycca any report you generate will include your logo.)  Any handout, document you create or article you write should have your brand included. You can download your logo into your mycca.net account.     One of our affiliates, Wendie Lubic, offers IEC forms that can be branded with your name and logo, making it easier to build your visibility.

Stating Goals for 2012

Now it is time to state my New Year’s Resolutions for my consulting firm, McDonald & Associates.   By sharing them with you I am implementing #4 tip from last weeks blog. This week I am sharing the goals we have for the operations side of the practice.  Next week I will write about goals focusing on marketing.

Operations goals:

1. Empower Students more.
2. Move our office toward being paperless.
3. Incorporate college affordability into our practice more.

All of these goals can be accomplished easily using mycca.net.

1. We can empower students by using assignments better.  A IEC recently told me she uses the assignments feature in mycca.net to make action lists with her students as they are meeting.  I tried it recently with great success. I entered the action plan into the counselor Assignment section for the student record as we met. At the end of our session, together we set a due date for the assignment.  Click, click, click, and the assignment was saved, reminder emails were set for both student and parent, and I receive an email with the assignment to add to my calendar.  So much time saved and the student was a part of the process!
2. By uploading all of our company documents into mycca.net we can move toward being paperless.  We have a large number of documents to provide to parents and students in the college planning process.  The new document sharing feature on mycca.net, allows you to upload then assign documents to students as needed.  Our goal is to upload our student binder, making it an electronic binder. 
3. Using the Academic Scholarship Reports in the college planning process early on will help incorporate college affordability early.  Academic Scholarship reports gives you an idea of how many merit scholarships are available at colleges that are being considered, and the maximum level of scholarship for that school.  This can assist me as a consultant as I shape a list of colleges for students and parents to consider, and ultimately as they select the colleges for “My Colleges” list to apply to.  This will maximize the options a student or parent has as they enter this process.

Keeping the Promise of the New Year

Making resolutions is a tradition we all share as a New Year rolls around. Some people hate making resolutions. I embrace them. To me it is acting on the promise the New Year holds. I want to seize the opportunity of a new beginning and make it my own. It gives me a chance to stop, take stock of my past year, and make goals for the next year.  Although this is important to do in my personal life, it is crucial to do in my business life.  As a consultant, I want to work smarter, not harder. I want to be a better educational consultant as well as a better business person. The easy part is always making the goal.  The hard part is making the goal happen.  Here are some tips I have found beneficial in keeping goals.  Use these to guide you as well as you make your new year’s resolutions:

1. Bring Focus to your goals.  Don’t shoot for the moon, trying to set goals for everything you want to do.  Create a focus for your goals for the next year by selecting your top 5 goals or less.
2. Define your goals.  Compare the difference between a goal to “make more money” to “increase my income 10%”.  The first is hard to measure.  The second gives you definition and helps you concentrate your efforts.
3. Make a plan.  There is a saying that a goal is a wish unless it is written down.  Not only write down your goal, but create a plan to make it happen.  Otherwise it will stay a wish for the next year.  A plan helps you to track progress toward your goal.  This is much more motivating to you to achieve the goal.
4. Share your plan.  By sharing your goal with your office, your spouse or someone else, you bring that goal to a level of accountability and support.  Knowing someone else knows and shares your goals will help you maintain your momentum.
5. Celebrate along the way.  As you reach milestones in your plans, celebrate.  Rejoice in the progress. If there are setbacks in the progress, that is ok.  You can celebrate getting back on track too.

Using these tools will help me to make the most of the promise of 2012.  I hope they will help you too!

Early Action/Early Decision Deadlines: As Uncertain as the Forecast

Note: This week's blog is written by Renae Bowen, a student I worked with in high school. She is now preparing for graduate school. I asked her to assist us in checking, once again, published college application deadlines.  Her task was to compare published dates of the Common Application to the dates within mycca.net, and confirm both with the colleges. You will find her experience very revealing.  It is especially timely because so many colleges announced the pushing back of their Nov. 1 deadlines this week because of the storm.  For a list of the colleges with a pushed back date, click here.
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   In the event that the moist, cold air and your overwhelming desire for pumpkin-spice everything have not informed you – fall has arrived. The season for application deadlines came all too quickly, but the scariest news is that those impending dates have not acclimated yet either. “Ummm, ours is either November 15^th or December 1^st… I don’t know yet, you should call back on Monday, we’re still working it out,” said one secretary whom I contacted in my search for Early Action and Early Decision deadlines.

   During the summer, all Early Action and Early Decision deadlines were updated in the mycca.net database. Even so, I was assigned to verify that dates were still correct after the last few months. Using the Common Application website and a telephone, I researched 450 universities. Somehow I finished feeling more puzzled about which source to trust for my information than when I began.

   Yes, actual admissions staff and admission websites are unclear. Priority deadlines, scholarship deadlines, and deadlines for the opportunity to waive the admission fee all appear incorrectly on the Common Application as Early Action dates. My repeated phrasing of “So, how is that Early Action?” perplexed many university staff members. 

   Some deadlines I referred to confused college representatives further because they had never seen or heard of these random dates in the middle of March or June that appeared on the Common Application webpage. I cannot reiterate enough that even with my phone calls and web researching, no listed Early Action/Early Decision deadline should be taken as absolute truth.

   I blame neither the college staff nor the admission websites for the hazy date listing.  As that same secretary explained immediately afterwards, the flow of applications dictates these dates. Deadlines must change as a result, whether that means making a date later, removing a date or adding one on. (For more information on the instance of each of these types of changes in the 47 colleges who edited their deadlines, click here for a report.)

  My advice is simple: Call the college directly, and be ready to go over the terms and definition of their “Early Action” and “Early Decision” plans. Be sure that they really are! Websites are fast, but university staff is much closer to the accurate source.

It's all about the DATA

The update to data is now almost complete.  The current data for over 2000 colleges has been uploaded from Wintergreen into the Mycca.net database. If you have a question about when the data in a college record has been updated, just view the college record.

College Record: update date

NEW!  Adding EA 2 & ED 2 dates

This summer mycca.net did research on ED 1 & 2; EA 1 & 2 data.  These dates have now been added to mycca.net.  These dates will assist you as an advisor in managing deadlines for applications and other milestones related to college planning.  These deadlines are now visible on the App Plan page and the App Plan Details section of mycca.net. Learn about how to access EA 2 and ED 2 data by:

1. Viewing new help guide in Knowledge Base  Click here

2.  Viewing new tutorial in Tutorials section of the website  Click here

The information on EA 2 and ED 2 will be added to the student portal shortly.  We will keep you posted as the update process is completed.

College Essay Oganizer- FAQ

Guest Blog by Daniel Stern, President of College Essay Organizer

Dan agreed to do a blog posting for us while Cyndy is at NACAC.

Learning anything new takes motivation, risk, and patience. Learning new technology is notably challenging, especially for those who have spent decades hammering out a specific routine. 

During the webinars hosted by mycca.net and College Essay Organizer, we've fielded many questions from members. Below are some of the most frequently asked questions, along with our responses.

Also, be sure to check out these demo videos that you can share with your students to make the most of College Essay Organizer.

1. I’m not sure I can afford College Essay Organizer.

All MyCCA users who are new to College Essay Organzier receive one free trial student account, giving you the opportunity to try it out risk-free. Based on feedback from our members, the value of College Essay Organizer far exceeds the $34 you pay per account. You can save several hours per student, which means much less work required for the same number of billable hours. During the busy application season, this means your efficiency in managing clients and setting up new ones skyrockets.

In fact, many consultants have found that if they share a sample College Essay Organizer report with potential clients, it often convinces them that they could not possibly manage this process on their own without enduring excessive stress and confusion. In this sense, College Essay Organizer helps you generate additional revenue.

College Essay Organizer also finds program-specific essays that aren't included in schools' applications or on the Common App—questions that tend to get discovered late in the game or overlooked altogether. Rather than spending hours seeking these out or losing credibility when clients recognize that you've failed to address their particular needs, you can have all essay questions delivered instantly. You’ll also discover a multitude of scholarship essays that can mean thousands of dollars in additional money for applicants.

Moreover, with our new feature that allows you and your clients to upload, edit, and track the status of essay drafts directly within the College Essay Organizer accounts, you won't have to email multiple drafts back and forth for multiple clients.

The alternative to using College Essay Organizer is researching all the questions on your own or assigning this task to your clients, which may lead to incomplete or inaccurate results, not to mention frustrated students and parents. It also means resorting to the cumbersome process of emailing drafts back and forth dozens of times. Typically after two clients, College Essay Organizer pays itself off in time saved while increasing the professionalism of your practice.

2. I'm not sure how to purchase College Essay Organizer for my clients.

Once you are logged into your MyCCA account, you can click on the student you would like to use College Essay Organizer with, and you can then activate your account. If you would like your students to access College Essay Organizer, please make sure that you have activated that setting under My Account Tab under Student Portal.

3. I’m not sure whether to let my students access their accounts or to use College Essay Organizer simply as a resource on my end.

Your choice depends on how you run your practice and on each individual client.

You can choose to keep College Essay Organizer to yourself, referencing each client’s report on your own. You can thus use College Essay Organizer like an accountant might use TurboTax, as a tool that optimizes your time and productivity.

You can experiment and share College Essay Organizer with a few of your stronger students. For example, you can go over the essay plan with a student together. If the student has a diversity essay that will work for multiple questions, you can brainstorm with the student what diversity means to her and help her craft that piece. You can then help her see how that finished essay can be used for various questions, with some modification if needed. And then you can move on to the next essay together. As the process unfolds, the student becomes more independent.

You can immediately share College Essay Organizer with all clients, making clear that this website will save them hours of time and ensure a much smoother, more successful writing experience. Many consultants recognize from the start that their students are naturals at using online technology. Teens intuitively understand College Essay Organizer just as well as a professional and appreciate having this tool at their disposal. They often feel empowered with College Essay Organizer’s clear, personalized plan and thus work more proactively on their essays. If you choose to share College Essay Organizer with all your clients, you can then of course use it as your one-stop website for the entire essay process.

You'll also find that having clients access College Essay Organizer demonstrates the value of having a professional guide, for they see how time-consuming and complex the process is (“it’s not just a couple essays anymore!”). Most parents and students are not aware of College Essay Organizer on their own, so they’ll be glad you use this cutting-edge technology in your practice. Plus, College Essay Organizer hardly replaces your role; your greatest asset is helping students brainstorm the essay topics that work best for them and helping them bring out their most compelling voices.

4. I don’t have many clients.

Businesses only grow when owners have the time to focus on the big picture, instead of organizational or managerial details. Technology makes that possible. It’s like using Google instead of driving to the library. College Essay Organizer eliminates hours of tedious and frustrating work, elevating consulting practices to new levels of efficiency.

If you have only 5 clients, your total cost for College Essay Organizer accounts will be $170. If you are billing your clients $50 per hour, that is just over 3 hours of billing time (and if you bill a higher hourly rate, it could work out to less than one hour of billing time). For this low cost, you will save hours in tedious research and organizational confusion, work much more efficiently, free up your days to focus on growing your business and providing even better service, and ensure a level of accuracy and professionalism that is very hard to provide on your own.

Many consultants also find that sharing College Essay Organizer accounts with each client validates the client’s decision to hire the consultant. Too many parents still believe that the essay process entails only one or two personal statements. Seeing the multitude of essays, including scholarship opportunities, allows them to appreciate the complexity of the process and the importance of your expert guidance.

Good word of mouth starts with using the right tools and knowing how to make them work for you.

5. I can do this research and organizational work on my own.

In our experience as admissions advisors, we found that manually collecting and organizing the essay questions took about 2 or 3 hours for each applicant—more if the student was applying to specific programs or had hard-to-find essay requirements (USC's film program anyone?). As students added and dropped colleges, we were forced to re-conceptualize their essay plans and determine if their previous essay topics were still sufficient. It’s just too time-consuming.

In the midst of a hectic fall, would you pay $150 to save yourself, say, 20 hours of work?

Independent consultants have stressed-out clients, who naturally make the job demanding. College Essay Organizer is designed to make your work simple and efficient, while cutting out redundant work, stress, and anxiety.

Prayers and buckets

With the devastation that followed the storm Irene as it swept through the east coast this past weekend, our hearts and prayers are with you.  Homes, property, businesses and lives have been disrupted and turned upside down with the aftermath of the storm.  We have heard from many people who have intermittent or no power or internet.  From afar we feel very inadequate of offering assistance. If I could, I would bring my bucket and broom to help.  As it is, what we can offer is communication assistance. If you need us to send a broadcast email out to your families due to intermittent internet connection, just let us know.  We will be glad to give that assistance.  Two things we are reminded of after this weather chaos; 1) we are nowhere near being in charge, and 2) How many blessings we each have to be thankful for.  We pray for sunshine in the sky and in your hearts in the days to come.

Cyndy McDonald

President, Mycca.net

Student Motivation- The Magic Elixir

As students are launching back into a new school year, parents and college advisors both have the same question in mind, "How do I motivate my child?"  This is a question we receive often in connection to the student portal:
-How do I get my students to use the student portal?
-They have Naviance where they have to add information, how do I encourage them to add it to the student portal?
-If students keep information in the common app, will students feel keeping information in the student portal is redundant?

Over the past 18 months of working closely with students using the student portal, I have developed some tips for encouraging teens to use the student portal.

1. Make "go to the student portal" your mantra.  The more students know you are expecting them to use the student portal, the more they will do so.  Studies show students rise to the expectations others have of them. If you have a consistent message, "Use the portal", they will respond to that message.

2. Direct students to the student portal to retrieve information you have left for them there.  Don't print a college list and give them; put your comments in the shared comments section of their college list and send them to the student portal to look at their list. If students want to see their testing schedule, send them to the student portal to get it.

3.  Show students how the student portal benefits them.  Putting test scores in mycca.net and then notifying you the scores are there saves Suzie time and energy in emailing you back and forth. Doing research using college website links in mycca.net is faster than doing all their searching on google.  As students use the student portal, they see how it empowers them. Teach them how to set up their own college application plans.

4.  Use the Competitive Student Quotient (CSQ) gauges to motivate students and parents. Student love to view where they are in comparison to other students.  Parents love the CSQ gauges as well. CSQ gauges are exclusive to mycca.net.

5.  Put the student portal upkeep into each week's assignment. Students are used to having deadlines and assignments. Utilize the student portal as part of that pattern.

As you work with your students, try some of these tips. As you build this process, you will be empowering and engaging your students in a very dynamic college planning process.  Tell us what you have tried, and how has it worked?

Date, anyone?

The calendar is my best friend and worst foe. It shows me time is running out or time is moving too slow. I would like to embrace time as a warm, fuzzy friend, but so often it is my tense, over-bearing boss. I see offers of online tools that will help me manage time down to the minute. I pause to ponder if that would help me. Only for a moment do I consider it. I refuse to give up the last vest vestiges of control I feel I have over my life.

Our lives as educational consultants are driven by dates. What are the SAT deadlines? What date is the FAFSA due? And the never ending question, what date is your application due? Which part? Our students and our parents feel the stress of the time clock ticking away. Managing deadlines is a major part of our role as educational coaches for students and families. Thus, having a way to organize all the dates connected to the college applications is essential.

Keeping all the pertinent dates connected to applications correct and updated is a challenging yet vital process. We are up to the challenge! This summer we have had a team researching college application types and deadlines. A number of application types have been added to the My College Consultant Assistant database, along with their associated deadlines. These updated categories will be added to mycca.net soon. Categories for the following types of applications will be displayed:

-Early Action 1
-Early Action 2
-Early Decision 1
-Early Decision 2
-Restrictive Early Action
-Rolling Admissions
-Regular Admissions
-Priority Admissions

Dates will be listed for the upcoming 2011-12 application year. If the dates have not passed, it will show a 2011 deadline. Once the date in the calendar is past, the date automatically rolls over into the next year.

Are all dates guaranteed to be correct? If the colleges would cast their college application deadlines in stone, then we could make that guarantee. As it is, colleges often change their deadlines, sometimes in the midst of the application season. I know of several colleges last year that changed deadlines two or three times. Our best resource for college dates are you, our subscribers. If you see a date that you know is incorrect, send it to us. We can update the college data easily. Keeping dates correct is a group project. We are counting on you to do your part! By contributing together as a community, we can keep the data fresh for all.

Joining the Electronic Age

Check the weather online.  Order movie tickets on your phone.  Receive a text message your plane is late.  So many tools are available electronically now.  We can do so many things now without having to print a ticket or create a report.  Viewing data electronically is how our world revolves, especially the teen-age world.  We are adding more and more features to the student portal in mycca.net to meet this need to have instant interaction with data. Recently, mycca.net has enabled the following features to be displayed on the student portal:
1. Competitive Student Quotient Gauges
2. College Essay Organizer reports

Coming soon- Academic Scholarship Reports will be displayed on the student portal too.

These features give you more tools to use to market your practice and the services offered in an online tool.

Now, how do I update the maps app on my ipad?

Senior Outcomes

Drum roll, please.... and you are going... where?  This is usually, for us, the hardest part of the college counseling process; finding out all the schools a senior has been accepted (or denied) at, and where he or she decided to attend next year. Once students write their last essay or polish off that last application,  they breathe a sigh of relief and move on to the next task on their senior agenda- graduation.  They often share with us their anxiety as they wait for the colleges to respond to their applications.  We hear from students or parents as those letters start rolling in:  jubilation for the acceptances, anguish or anger at the rejections.  Yet, it sometimes is a wall of silence after all their letters have come in. Getting students to enter into their student portal ALL their acceptances, rejections and ultimately, where they have decided to attend college as a freshman for 2011-12 can be a challenge.

It is time for "Operation Senior".  This is a technique we use for encouraging students to enter that last bit of data into their student portals.  Operation Senior starts with:
1) sending a broadcasat email out to all seniors, encouraging them to update their student portals
2) including in that broadcast email a deadline for the update
3)  including in that email an incentive for meeting that deadline.  We use a  $5.00 Starbucks gift card.
4) limiting the number of gifts that will be given :  "first 20 students" "in the next 5 days", etc.

This technique works really well.  As a follow up, we check for completed senior enrollment plans using the Enrollment report on mycca.net (see help guide in  Latest mycca.net news).  Many, but not all, students will update their application process in their student portals.  Using the report in App List, we can see which students have updated, and which ones still have work to do.

Then our next phase of "Operation Senior" kicks in. We do another broadcast email inviting them to send us an email with the requested information:
1) where were you accepted
2) where were you not accepted
3) where are you going next year?

This will usually garner more notifications from students. 

Operation Senior has one final step.  In the very end, we still need to use the old fashioned way- call the student and the parent and ask.  After all, these are teenagers we are dealing with.

We would love to hear from you as to ways you finish up the year with your seniors- how do you get the final notifications from them as to their acceptances, rejections, and enrollment decisions?  What other things do you do for your seniors?  Share as a comment .

The Performing Arts Application

Working with students pursuing performing arts majors has special demands. These high energy creative students have very demanding schedules as well as lofty dreams and aspirations. It is important that counselors help students review their options and make a plan for application. The application procedure often varies from the norm. Possible supplemental applications, early deadlines and auditions require due diligence on the part of both the student and counselor. To complicate the process further these students usually apply to a larger than normal number of colleges. Below are four important factors to keep in mind when working with these students:

1. Determine the type of college that best meets the needs of the student. Consider the following factors: admission audition vs. non audition, B.F.A. vs. B.A., conservatory, arts college, or traditional college.

2. Start early. Allow time to research the type of program desired and if the student will be applying to programs that require an audition, time is needed to complete applications early and prepare for auditions.

3. Apply broadly. Audition based programs are subjective. Often students will apply to a combination of audition and non-audition programs.

4. Get organized. Supplemental applications, scheduling and preparing for auditions, and busy schedules make calendaring and planning indispensible.

Shan Schumacher

Higher Applications

PLEASE JOIN US FOR AN ONLINE SEMINAR WED. APRIL 27 & MAY 18 ABOUT WORKING WITH PERFORMING ARTS STUDENTS.  USING TAGGED LISTS WILL BE FEATURED AS ONE OF THE TOOLS AVAILABLE TO USE WHEN WORKING WITH PERFORMING ARTS STUDENTS.  CLICK HERE FOR THE SEMINARS PAGE

Spitting Mad

I was very incredulous as I sat and listened to her. I went from incredulous, to dismayed, to spitting mad.  What in the world were they thinking? What had she received only a part of the story?  Settle down, I told myself. Don’t jump to conclusions. 

My friend was a young mother, raising two small children on her own.  She has a dream; to get an education so she can provide a better life for her children and herself.  She has been taking classes at a regional community college on and off since high school.  She now has focus and drive.  As a part of that drive, she went to the counseling center at the college to get an assessment of her transcript.  What did she need to be able to transfer? When could she transfer to the four year university?  How could she get all she could out of the community college?  Could she transfer soon?

She was given a list of all the classes she needed to complete to have her general education certified upon her transfer to a four year university. She was soooo close to fulfilling all the classes.  Her desire was to transfer in fall 2011.  To do that, and complete all her general education classes, she was told she needed to take a heavy load this spring; Macro-Economics, History, English, Math, and a science class too?  She felt she could not handle all those courses in one term with her job, children and other responsibilities.  That left her with one class to take in the fall.  One class of 3 units was keeping her from transferring.  Could she then transfer in the spring?  No, because the four year university only takes fall transfer students.  She explained to me how she would have to wait AN ENTIRE YEAR to get into the four year university because of ONE class.  No wonder she was discouraged.  But, wait.   I told her, “That’s not true.  Didn’t they tell you about transferring without having your general education completed? That there are only 4 classes you need and 60 units total of transferable credit to be eligible to transfer. No?  No one mentioned that? Really?”  It became apparent as we reviewed her transcript, that if she had only known, she could have transferred easily in the fall, with only one general education class to take at the university.  She would not be adding another year to her educational time. To top it off, she has been informed her financial aid is on hold because she is not making satisfactory academic progress.   Such a catch 22 situation.   I was spitting mad.

I take a breath.  Settle down, I tell myself. I am an educational consultant.  There has to be another solution to this mother’s dilemma.  I tell her, “Appeal the issue of the satisfactory progress to the college.”  Done.  “Check out other programs in the area.  What about a degree completion program?  You could be done in 18 months?”  To her, that sounds like a plan made in heaven.  Then she will be ready to apply for graduate school.  She will receive guidance from me in the process, helping her to weigh all the options available.  What she needed from the beginning of this process,  was an educational consultant.   We are the ones who see the entire picture and think outside the box.

But I am still spitting mad.