APRIL 2017

PLANNING NEWS
R2S Educational Planning Newsletter

It is virtually impossible to compete in today's global

In this issue: economy without a college degree. - Bobby Scott

4 Things You Should

Know After Filing Your When we make college more affordable, we make
FAFSA the American dream more achievable. William J.
Clinton
How to Write Your
Extracurricular Essay
without Rockstar The confirmation page provides federal
Achivements aid estimates based on the information you
provided on your FAFSA. Its important to
know that these figures are truly estimates
and assume the information you provided on
4 Things You Should Know After the FAFSA is correct. To calculate the actual
Filing Your FAFSA amount of aid youre eligible for, your
Source: FAFSA
school will take into account other factors,
such as the cost to attend the school. Addi-
Congratulations! You submitted your 201718 Free tionally, these estimates only take into ac-
Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA)! count federal aid and not outside scholar-
Wondering what happens next? Here are a few things to ships or state and institutional financial assis-
look out for: tance you may also be eligible for.
TIP: Each school you are accepted to and
1. Your FAFSA confirmation page is not include on your FAFSA will send you a fi-
your financial aid award. nancial aid award. Until you receive this
After you complete the FAFSA online and click award letter/notification from a school, it
SUBMIT, youll see a confirmation page like the one may be difficult to know exactly how much
below. This is not your award package. Youll get that aid you might be eligible to receive from that
separately from the school(s) you apply to and get specific school. To get an idea of how much
into. Your school(s) calculate your aid. aid schools tend to give depending on your
familys income, vis-
it CollegeScorecard.ed.gov

2. The Expected Family Contribu-

tion (EFC) is just one of many fac-
tors used to calculate your aid.
The information you report on your FAFSA
is used to calculate your EFC. Its very im-
portant to note that the EFC, in most cases, is
not the exact amount of money your family
will have to pay for college. Instead, the
EFC is an index number used by financial
aid offices to calculate how much financial
aid you would receive if you were to attend
their school. The formula they use is:
Cost of attendance
Expected family contribution
Your financial need

Each school will then do its best to meet your fi-
nancial need. Some schools may meet 100% of
your financial need, and other schools may only
meet 10%it just depends on the school and the
financial aid they have available that year. You
should complete the FAFSA annually because there
are many factors that can change each year you
plan to be in school.
NOTE: Contrary to popular belief, the EFC formu-
la considers more than just income. Factors such as
dependency status, family size, and the number of
children in your family who are attending college
are just a few of the additional factors considered.
3. You wont receive an award letter
from your school right away.
Even though the 2017-18 FAFSA is available in
October this year, that doesnt mean youll get an
award letter earlier. Some schools may send you an
award letter earlier, while other schools may stick
to the timeline they have used in the past.
Remember that your school disburses your aid, not
the FAFSA, and each school has a different sched-
ule. Contact your school for details about when
they send out award letters. If you want to see an
estimate of your schools average annual cost, use
the College Scorecard. If you want to report signifi-
cant changes in your family or financial situation,
contact your schools financial aid office.
TIP: After completing your FAFSA, its always a
good idea to double-check with the financial aid
offices at the schools you applied to. You should
find out if they need additional paperwork or have
other deadlines.
4. You can submit a FAFSA correction
later, such as adding a school.
After your FAFSA has been submitted and pro-
cessed (takes about 3 days), you can go back
and submit a correction to certain fields. This in-
cludes correcting a mistake or adding another
school to receive your FAFSA information. Login
with your FSA ID, and then click Make FAFSA
Corrections. You can add up to 10 schools at a
time. If youre applying to more than 10
schools, follow these steps.
HOW TO WRITE YOUR EXTRACURRIC-
ULAR ESSAY WITHOUT ROCKSTAR
ACHIVEMENTS
Source: College Essay Guy
Not everyone has had a chance to speak at a
UN conference.
Or play in Carnegie hall.
When your most valuable experiences arent
tied to big name titles (like State Champion,
National Scholar, First Place, Founder and
CEO), that doesnt mean your experiences
wont bring value to a university campus.
This article gives three tips for shedding light
on some of the things that are harder to put
into words.
TIP #1: QU AN TIF Y YO UR E XPERIENCE.
This is crucial. While you may not have a job
title, a well-recognized company, or dollar
signs (like money raised) that can make an
activities list pop, quantifying how you spent
your unstructured time shows youve burned
the midnight oil, youve put in hard work, in
short--you've done great stuff. Heres an ex-
ample:
Ive read every book by Paul
Farmer and 50+ books and 20+
films on Global Health and so-
cial justice to better understand
social health care inequity.
This isnt just for STEM folks. If you're
an artist, consider writing down all the
hours spent and projects youve worked
on, even if you didnt get a chance to
finish all of them. Heres an example:
Ive created ten short films, worked
as an actor in seven (nominated
best actor--see add'l info), and have
written over 200+ pages of script.
Only you know how much time and en-
ergy youve put into your passions.
While society values well-recognized
names (Fulbright Scholar), competi-
tion winners, and large numbers
($5,000 for cancer research), things
that people tend to focus less on are
the endless hours of unstructured time,
unfinished projects, and unrecognized
work required to learn skills, develop
yourself, and affect change in your com-
munity. Give yourself a chance to be
proud of this time well-spent. Heres
one more example:
Ive spent 80+ hours coding 10K+
lines of code for a natural language
processing program that correlates
the gender of historical figures with
the number of verbs performed by
each gender in the text of middle
school history books (unpublished
study).
TIP #2: BRIEFLY M ENTION W HAT
RO ADBLOCKS STOPPED YOU
FROM PURSUING A REL AT ED
ROCKS T AR ACHIEVEM ENT AND
THEN EXPL AIN W HAT YO U DID IN-
STE AD.
Important: Your extracurricular essay
should briefly mention roadblocks only
to that extracurricular activity. Dont use
this space to mention roadblocks to
your academic career in general (i.e.
why you failed a certain semester or
didnt take more AP classes)thats for
your additional info section.
Admissions officers will understand that
some students have not had the same
access to resources and opportunities
as others (i.e. ten years of piano les-
sons, started a non-profit, traveled the
world before age 10, etc.).
INSTEAD, W HAT READERS
W ANT TO KNOW IS THAT YOU
TOOK FULL ADVANTAGE OF
THE OPPORTUNITIES PRE-
SENTED TO YOU, AND THAT
W ERE SPECIFIC TO YOUR CIR-
CUMSTANCES.
While counselors may have some infor-
mation about your high school or socio-
economic environment, they wont have
all the details. Why not make it easy for
them? Example:
Without a means of
transportation (in Korea
the driving age is 18), I
was unable to participate
in school-sponsored
activities or outside tour-
naments, so I spent
most of my time taking
online college courses
(MOOCs) and reading
books about world
health care.
 Or:

Unfortunately, I had to drop basketball my junior year because practic-

es finished after dark and I had to take public transportation home and
it is not safe to walk through my neighborhood late at night. However I
still helped fundraise for the team and played basketball on the week-
ends with my little brother.

Other possible roadblocks:

Did your school lack funding or not even have a particular club?
Was there too much bureaucratic red tape? (Be specific, if so; dont
whine.)
Were you or a family member sick, making it difficult for you to participate
in a meaningful event?
Did your family lack the funds to pay for your flight to a conference?

Some ideas for what you did instead:

I started that club myself.

We put together a fundraiser to raise money for the trip.
When I couldnt take that class, I studied on my own (if it relates to your extracurricu-
lar activity).

TIP #3. M ENTION OPPORTUNI TIES EVEN IF YOU W ERE UN ABLE TO ATTE ND
DUE TO FIN ANCI AL, HE AL TH, OR O THER RE ASONS

For example:

I was accepted at the Stanford Medical Youth Program (SMYSP) but

was unable to attend because my family couldnt afford the cost of the
five-week residency.

This was not a missed opportunity. This was a success, even if it

didnt go as far as you wanted or expected it to.

Not only is this an acknowledgment of your partial success, your reader might see
accepting you as a chance to finally give you the chance to pursue your dreams.

For information about college guidance you can:

Email: r2splanning@gmail.com
Phone / Fax: 1-877-418-8719