Episodes

It’s that time of year again: National Merit Scholarship finalists have been announced, and students are scrambling to update schools with their new status. How did those students qualify? Does it even matter in the admissions process? And how much money can you win anyway? We’re going to answer all of these questions and more in this week’s episode of Getting In. Applying to college can be very stressful for students and parents, and parental involvement can play a large part in ratcheting up t...

As financial aid awards start to come in, families can be thrilled and disappointed at the results. If your award isn’t what you expected or, more importantly, isn’t enough to allow you or your child to attend their chosen school, you may want to appeal. Tune in to learn more about how and when to do that. If you’re listening to our show, you are focused on college as an important part of your or your child’s life. But what if college is not the immediate right next step? We’ll talk about some o...

Preparing for your interview at an Ivy or similarly selective institution and wondering what it’s all about? We’ll share information on why these are offered, what to expect, and the role your interview will likely play in the review process at these schools. Financial aid offers will also be coming in over the next few months, and we’re going to help you compare them and evaluate which is the best for your needs. Finally, we’ll be looking at some of the unique leadership and mentoring programs ...

You may have heard that if you want to apply for scholarships to help pay for college, the key is to start early. But if you procrastinated, you’re in luck, because in this week’s show we’re going to share information about scholarships with February and March deadlines. For those who are investigating community college as an entry point to a four year institution, we’ll be speaking with John Fink, research associate at the Columbia University’s Community College Research Center.

Have an aspiring veterinarian in your household? In another segment in our High School Plan series, we’ll review the best courses and extracurricular activities for potential pre-vet students. We’re also answering your listener questions on both admissions and college finance.

Lots of students head to college with a goal of earning a million dollars—or finding a cure for cancer—before age 30. If you anticipate applying to business or medical school, you’ll want to tune in this week, when we’ll talk about steps to take now if you want to get your MBA and applying to medical school. If you’re planning a mid-year transfer and worried about financial aid, well we’re going to cover that too.

We answer a lot of listener questions on the show, and one that we get asked fairly frequently is “Can an average student get into a top-tier school?” Tune in to find out. We’re also looking at options for families who find themselves without the money to pay for their spring college bills. And in Office Hours, we’ll discuss the rumor mill, including how to recognize a rumor and separate fact from fiction.

It can be tempting to take an extended break once you finally submit your last application. Guess what? Not a great idea! We’ll offer some advice about what not to do now that apps are in, and how to best approach the remainder of senior year. We’ll also be answering your college admissions and finance questions.

Most colleges have released their decisions for the early round, whether that is Early Decision or Early Action. We’ll be discussing how to handle all possible outcomes in terms of what to do if you were admitted, deferred, or denied, including whether or not you should add additional schools to your list at this point. We’re also going to look at recent trends in college pricing per a recent College Board report.

The last big deadline is approaching and we’ll be offering tips and suggestions for making sure applications are ready to go. We’ll also take another shot at answering your college finance and admissions questions.

To transfer or not to transfer—that is the question! Meet Brooke, who came home from college after a few months determined to transfer. She’s going to share why, what her research uncovered, and whether or not she ultimately decided to stay put or move on. In our weekly School’s In! Application Workshop, we’ll complete our tour of Ivy supplements with a deeper dive into Yale, Princeton, and Dartmouth’s supplemental requirements.

If you’ve taken out a new student loan every year or even every semester, keeping track of them can be a herculean task. Tune in for tips on how to best do this. In this week’s School’s In Application Workshop session, we’re going to talk through the supplements for Penn, Brown, Columbia, Harvard, and Cornell. With the January 1 deadlines approaching, you don’t want to miss this!

With Thanksgiving only a week away, New Year’s Day is fast approaching. The holidays may mean gifts and family gatherings, but here at College Coach ‘tis the season for regular decision application deadlines. We’ll spend a little time on planning now so that you’re not writing at midnight instead of ringing in the new year. We’ll also do our best to work our way through more of your college finance and admissions questions.

One of our most frequent questions revolves around whether or not to apply for financial aid when applying for acceptance. There are many factors to consider here, and we’ll try to cover as many as possible during today’s show. Twenty days from our airdate of Nov. 10 marks the final deadline for the University of California, which started accepting applications for all its campuses on Nov. 1. If you’re working on those essays, you don’t want to miss this week’s show, when we’ll go through all ei...

It’s November 3, and that can only mean one thing: all of the ED and EA applications with November 1 deadlines have been submitted. In this week’s show, we’re going to discuss what to think about and do next. We’re also going to talk about religion in essays, both in terms of personal statements and supplemental pieces for religious schools. Finally, many students and parents think primarily about college prep coursework as the ideal groundwork for college. But there are benefits to working part...

As we get closer to the fall and winter deadlines, we know you have lots of questions. We have lots of answers, and we’ll devote this week’s show to sharing them with you!

What are the consequences of missing a financial aid deadline? Does that mean you definitely won’t receive any money? Or is it not really a big deal? In this week’s show, we’ll answer these questions and more in our segment on the importance of financial aid deadlines. Our School’s In!: Application Workshop segment will cover test score submission—what to submit and when to submit, including what score choice means and how to decide when to submit scores to a test optional school. We’ll also tal...

Two weeks ago we focused an entire show around completing the FAFSA. In this week’s show, we’ll go through the CSS Profile, another financial aid document required by about 200 colleges and universities. In our weekly School’s In! Application Workshop series, we’ll discuss the pros and cons of disclosing a learning difference on your college applications.

The Common App is accepted at close to 700 public and private colleges in the US, making it one of the most popular choices for one-stop-shopping in the admissions process. Every year, College Coach puts out a multi-part series with tips for filling it out. The author of our yearly blog, Elyse Krantz, will join us to share her insights on this year’s version.

Ever wonder what public health majors are all about? Catherine Ettman, director of strategic initiatives at Boston University’s School of Public Health will join us to share more, including what the major entails, which schools offer it, why students interested in pre-med should consider it, and what a career in public health looks like. In this week’s School's In! Application Workshop, we will be discussing everything you ever wanted to know about filling out the FAFSA -starting with the fact t...

A few weeks ago, we ran a Facebook contest asking for your most pressing college admissions and finance questions. Today, we’re going to answer as many of them as we can during our hour-long session.

You may have read a recent article in Business Insider chronicling one graduate’s story about finishing school 113,000 dollars in debt back in 2009, and paying it off by November of 2016. We’re thrilled to welcome that graduate, Jessica Elberfeld, to the show to tell us a bit more about how she wound up in debt, what prompted her to pay it off in record time, and how she did that. In this week’s School's In! Application Workshop, Kara Courtois will join me to discuss how to approach the Why This...

Back to school and still don’t have a college list? You’re in luck! In this week’s School's In! Application Workshop segment, Ian, Julia Jones, and Laurie Peltier will discuss how to craft a college list if you’re getting a late start, including where to start and making sure that finances are part of the process. In our ongoing series on international education systems, Zaragoza Guerra will offer his insight into the Cambridge Program—what it is and how the results are evaluated as part of the ...

It’s September, and school is officially back in session. With that in mind, we’re shifting our summer application workshop series to the fall and relaunching it under the School’s In Application Workshop banner. But despite the name change, our focus remains the same: helping students to master their applications in a timely and more methodical manner. Divorce can be challenging under the best of circumstances, but it gets even more complicated when it comes to applying for financial aid and-or...