Episodes

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...

One of the scariest things about having more than one child close together is paying for all those diapers, but what happens when diapers turn into college tuition? We have some advice for those of you who will be in this situation shortly. We’ll also explore predictors for success and discuss resources for first generation students heading off to college. And we’ll feature another of our School’s Out Application Workshop sessions.

Ever wonder how being an athlete can impact your chances of admission? In our next episode, we’ll take a look at athletic recruitment and college admission, and the ways in which the two processes will affect each other. We’ll also go over tips for making a strong financial transition to college. Finally, don’t miss our weekly School’s Out Application Workshop session.

Enjoy sushi on the weekends, a pricey gym membership, and shopping at the mall at least once or twice a week? Wondering how this will all fit into your budget when you get to college? You may want to tune in for this week’s segment on learning to live like a college student. Hint: you may have to forgo a few things… If you’re hoping to maintain a similar lifestyle, then you’ll definitely want to tune in for the School’s Out Application Workshop series, since applying for scholarships are on the ...

The office is open this week, as we do an all Office Hours show. We’ll continue our work on the application process, and one of our focuses will be what students should include as part of the “additional information” section of the application. Hint: it could be nothing at all!. We’ll also answer listener questions related to both admissions and financial aid.

There are a lot of companies and organizations out there making big promises when it comes to scholarships and student loans. If something sounds too good to be true, guess what? It probably is. Join us as we take a closer look at scholarship and loan scams. We’ll also have another segment in our School’s Out Summer Application Workshop. We’ll talk some more about presenting extracurricular activity accomplishments and other elements of the application. Make sure you listen in for the homework! ...

Worried that family debt might affect financial aid eligibility? Don’t miss our session discussing this very issue. Wondering how to present your extracurricular activities in the most impactful way on your college applications? Join us for our weekly School’s Out Application Workshop. Curious about other organizations supporting college access? We’ll talk to Donna Connolly, director of youth access at Massachusetts Education and Career Opportunities organization as part of our College Access se...

One of the questions we get very frequently is some form of, “Do I have a shot at getting into an Ivy League or highly selective college.” In this week’s show, we offer tips for students and families to help them evaluate their chances using the colleges’ own primary criteria. We’ll also discuss more about putting together a college list, including how to factor finances into that process, as part of our ongoing School’s Out Application Workshop series, and explore the world of quirky scholarshi...

Join us for segment two in our ongoing summer program, School’s Out Application Workshop. We’ll follow up on last week’s homework and talk a bit about getting started with putting together a college list. A college finance expert will join to discuss how much is too much to borrow when it comes to paying for college, and we’ll wrap up with office hours answering listeners’ college admissions questions.

Ever wonder how highly selective schools evaluate and make final decisions on applications? If so, take a trip with us inside the Yale admissions office with Amy Alexander, former admissions officer for the university. School’s Out: College Application Workshop, our special summer program taking students and families through the college application and finance process step-by-step makes its big debut as well as we discuss how to get started on the college essay. Finally, we’ll look at how to bes...