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.

CEO and mycca.net Integration is Now LIVE

We are proud to announce that CEO has now been fully integrated into the mycca.net platform, giving Independent Consultants access to the most comprehensive college planning platform on the market.

Independent Consultants who purchase their CEO accounts through mycca.net will enjoy various benefits:

1 - They can access CEO directly from their counselor mycca.net accounts without having to re-select any colleges for their students.
2 - The rate will be a flat fee of $34 per student, regardless of how many students you create CEO accounts for.
3 - Each student account will have a maximum of 20 college selections instead of 15.
4 - Each mycca.net account will get one free CEO student account

If you are already a mycca.net member who has purchased CEO, your current CEO student accounts will automatically transfer over so you can access them through mycca.net. You will still be able to access your CEO master account directly through CEO, if you'd like.  For details on how to access your student accounts, see the latest mycca.net news page.

If you are already a mycca.net member but have not yet purchased CEO, we encourage you to try your free CEO student account within your mycca.net account. It will take less than a minute and will save you hours with each student. 

If you are not a mycca.net member, please click here to check it out so you can discover the benefits of a comprehensive college planning platform.

All mycca.net members will receive one FREE CEO student account, whether you have already purchased CEO independently or not.

We look forward to making your educational consulting job even more efficient and successful!