College Admissions Secrets: What Parents Need to Know Before Junior Year | E56
In this candid 56th episode of Beyond Budgets®, host Deb Meyer shares her perspective as both a financial planner and a mom of a high school junior navigating the complex world of college prep. You'll hear:
(00:003) Behind-the-scenes insights from Florida college tours
(University of Florida, Florida State University, and UCF)(04:50) Key admissions guidance from a local high school teacher, including
the real impact of essays and extracurriculars(07:15) Early Action vs. Early Decision – what they mean and why deadlines matter
(08:30) Florida Bright Futures Scholarships – eligibility, requirements, and cost savings
(11:20) AICE, AP, IB, and Dual Enrollment – comparing academic pathways in high school
(18:00) Affordability vs. Prestige – how to help your teen build a balanced college list
(19:00) Ivy League book shoutout: Where You Go Is Not Who You'll Be by Frank Bruni
Whether your child is in middle school or already a junior or senior, Deb breaks down what to prioritize, how to keep expectations in check, and how to prepare without sacrificing your retirement or overwhelming your teen.
Related Episodes
Episode 5: Understanding College Financial Aid with Joe Messinger
Episode 33: College Funding Secrets Every Parent Needs to Know with Ann Garcia
Episode 55: How Dual Enrollment Saved This Family $60K in College Costs with Shelly Branine
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Full transcript
Deb Meyer (00:01.942)
Last episode we talked with Shelly Branine about dual enrollment and this episode we're gonna pull on that same string of college prep a little bit more. I'm going to share some insights I have just being a mom of a junior in high school. Yeah, I've done a lot of digging on this both from a professional standpoint but also just a personal standpoint.
I have done some college tours with my son, and I have some cool insights I want to share just giving you some behind the scenes. So this fall break, which was in October for us, we actually went around to a couple of different Florida schools. We are based in Southwest Florida, just outside Fort Myers. And some of the schools that my son is eyeing are competitive schools in the state of Florida. They're public in state.
One of them was University of Central Florida, which is where we started the tour. And then we went to University of Florida in Gainesville and we ended at Florida State University over in Tallahassee. We did a little road trip. The whole family was in tow and there were some really cool insights I had just not only from the college tours, but even just listening to a seminar that one of our local English teachers was gracious enough to host through our local Rotary Club where she was talking about the competitive schools … getting into these competitive colleges and what you can really do with your student to help them stand out. You know from an admission standpoint perspective, so just to put the numbers in perspective not talking about tuition numbers, but enrollment numbers.
University of Florida had over 90,000 applicants for 10,000 spots last year. Crazy, right? So they are considered one of the top public universities nationally, especially in terms of value and affordability. And so they're drawing a lot of in-state and even out-of-state international students in their application process.
Deb Meyer (02:21.206)
I don't have any affiliation with any of these universities. I went to St. Louis University. I'm a Billiken at heart through and through, but we are looking at some Florida schools. So again, I'm gonna share some of the behind the scenes I found being a mother of a high school junior. Okay, so let me start with a little bit of family background. My oldest son generally has been ahead in most.
classes throughout his life. He's a strong student. I don't share that to gloat, just to kind of give you a little background on why he's even considering these more competitive schools. He's always taken a very challenging curriculum. Not a straight A student in every subject, but mostly A's and B's on even these challenging courses. His standardized test scores have varied.
pretty tremendously. We've taken the ACT already. We're waiting on SAT scores. He did take the PSAT a year ago, so we at least have a feel for that. depending on what part it is, he can score very strongly on some and then not so strongly on others. So we're just trying to get.
into that mode this year in his junior year. So it's not as stressful when senior year comes and he's actually applying to colleges. So for you, in your case, you might be wondering when is the right time for me to start planning for college? Maybe you have a middle schooler or a high schooler, even if your high schooler is just in their freshman or sophomore year, I would say there's no time like the present. So.
The academic rigor that your son or daughter takes even in middle school is likely going to be a determinant as you go into high school placement and coursework. So if your child is struggling in math right now as a middle schooler, it's unlikely they're going to be taking honors or AP classes in math as a high schooler. Not saying impossible, but just unlikely, right?
Deb Meyer (04:30.798)
For those of you who have a student who wants to go to a competitive school, and when I say competitive, I mean probably in the Ivy League or top tier from like a US News and World Report. I know there's differences of opinions on those rankings and where colleges fall, but full disclosure, like I went to what I would consider a tier two school. So above average in terms of academics and who are there, you know.
bringing in from an admissions perspective, but it was still a very academically challenging environment for me, even as a strong student from high school. And so with my son, when we're looking at different schools, he's looking at, I would say, tier two and tier one schools, generally speaking, just so he makes sure he has some academic rigor in college. So.
One of the things I learned from the session that Ms. Long, our local English teacher, mentioned in her demonstration is that a lot of it is gonna come down to essays and extracurriculars when your son or daughter is looking at a very competitive school. And that was an eye-opener for me. I knew at a fundamental level that that's probably true, but I didn't realize that that...
was such an emphasis because if you think about it in an ultra competitive environment, 99 % of the kids are already gonna have the stellar grades, they're already gonna have the stellar test scores. So the school when they're making the admissions decisions are likely looking at how well rounded of a person they are and where they've really had some talents that perhaps they could bring to the university at a later time. So one of the important distinctions I also learned from Ms. Long was that
Early decision is typically binding and early action is usually non-binding. So those can get confusing because they both start with the word early, but early decision is binding and early action is non-binding. There's also a regular kind of rolling admissions, but usually for those more competitive schools, you wanna be thinking about an early decision or an early action if you're...
Deb Meyer (06:49.386)
student is unsure whether they're going to make it in or not, there's a better chance of them getting selected for admission the earlier that you apply and meet those deadlines. So like in the case of University of Florida, I know they have an early action non-binding deadline. That's the same for students, whether you're in state or out of state. But I also learned at FSU, Florida State University, that they have an early action just for Florida residents.
So that's kind of a cool feature being a Florida resident that maybe my son has a better chance at getting into that school through their early action rather than University of Florida. Now, if your student is really looking competitively and thinking about the Ivy League, I did read a whole book on, it's called Where You Go Is Not Who You'll Be by Frank Bruni.
And I liked the premise of the book because he really said it's not as important for undergraduate admissions as like a graduate degree. So let's just say your son or daughter knows they want to go to med school. Okay. They want to be a physician. Well, in the sense of getting the undergrad at an Ivy league versus the graduate degree at an Ivy league, they're probably better off taking on.
taking on any kind of debt they need to be at the Ivy League for the graduate degree, not the undergrad degree, or maybe it's a degree in law or an MBA or whatever it is. Usually the Ivy League name is going to carry more weight on graduate degrees than it would on undergraduate degrees, or at least that's the argument that he made. Now he spent a lot of time in that book.
just talking about some select examples, mostly of politicians that didn't go to traditional Ivy League schools. And I liked some of the points in the book, but I wasn't like, my gosh, this is the best book I've ever read. I felt like there were, again, some good points made, but I didn't necessarily think he needed to harp on every little example like he did. So my Cliff Notes version of it is...
Deb Meyer (09:08.192)
you, your son or daughter doesn't need to go to an Ivy League school to get a high quality education. There's plenty of schools out there that are not Ivy League that are still very academically rigorous and competitive. Okay. The other thing that I learned and I guess just in talking to Anne Garcia on an earlier episode, speaking with Shelley, like
for a lot of students, they focus more on the academic reputation of the school and don't think as much about the fit. And that's a big concern because fit really is important. And when we talk about fit, it can be a combination of factors, location, size of the school, whether the school is in more of a populated city or more rural in nature, maybe it's in a suburb.
You know, there can be so many different factors on fit. And that's why college tours I think can be extremely important in helping distinguish not only for the child, but even for the parents. Like, hey, yes, I can see my son or daughter really succeeding here or no, I can't. And at least with our college tour, was funny because I'm highlighting all the differences between the campuses and the people and the sizes and whatever. And my son is just like,
I think if I could get into any of them, I'd be happy. I'm like, okay, but what's your first choice? And I couldn't get a straight answer from him. uh, needless to say we're undecided on where he's going next year. Uh, or even if he'll, he'll be able to get in, but, um, for, for him in particular, like he does know he wants to go to a school with a larger following and like a division one.
football team. He wants to be able to cheer at football games. Why? I don't know, but that's just part of his criteria, right? So that's going to eliminate a lot of smaller schools or schools that don't have a division one football team. But you might have a son or daughter who hates the idea of going to a big school with 40,000 students and would much rather be at a school with
Deb Meyer (11:25.902)
10,000 or less. So it's really just going to depend on that specific student. And even within your family, if you have multiple children, there might be different fits, even among twins, on where they're best going to succeed. So you know your child better than anyone else. And the best fit can come down to some of those non-academic ranking factors and more on
the affordability too, that's another piece to consider. So like in case of my son, when we were at this seminar talking about the college admissions process, it was a pretty lengthy workshop and they said, hey, what are some of your dream schools? And of course my son said, University of Pennsylvania business school. And I'm like,
Okay, that's Ivy League and that's $96,000 a year. So I told him, was like, I hate to squelch your dreams, but if you do get in, you're gonna have to take a lot of student loans out because the affordability of that versus the affordability of a Florida in-state school, it's an astronomical difference each year, right?
And because he's our oldest, he's also going to set a precedent for what our younger children might be doing when it comes to college decisions for them. And the other important part I want to draw on for college in general, like I'm speaking very candidly about our family's journey with college. Not every student is going to want to go to college or a traditional college, right? Some students are going to want to go into more of a hands-on role like
electrician or I think actually one of my nephews is going to be doing like diesel technician and going to trade school. So there's a lot of different options out there. And going back to Shelly's episode that we just did on dual enrollment, I think it's important to really listen into that discussion too of like taking college courses in high school can help equip that student to better figure out what their chosen career field might be.
Deb Meyer (13:42.784)
My son in particular is looking to go into the business field and he really does want to go to college. But if he was like completely uninterested in college, we wouldn't even be having these conversations, right? We would be focused on what kind of technical role or skill do you want to develop that you can, you know, go to maybe a trade school or just not go to school at all. So there are a lot of different nuances here. I'm not assuming anything. I'm just saying
for your particular family situation, a traditional four-year college might not be the best fit. every family is going to be unique. Every child is going to be unique in terms of where they're going to thrive and where their goals are for the future. One of the other things to be thinking about as you're contemplating Ivy League or not, if you have a strong student, is
you know, there might be some scholarship opportunities at less selective schools, regardless of the financial need. So an example here, when I went to St. Louis University, I actually had a very nice scholarship going to St. Louis University and I was a top student in high school and, you know, had pretty good, not only grades, but test scores and extracurriculars, all of that.
I chose St. Louis University because I felt I had a really great fit with it, but I also had a lot of financial support going to it. Even though it was a private school, it was much more affordable for me to go to that versus like I got into Vanderbilt University as an example, but I had no financial aid at Vanderbilt. So for me, it was an easy decision. I'm very math oriented.
But these are all very delicate discussions that you need to have as a parent, but also with your child and laying some groundwork on where your financial support is going to end and where the child either needs to make it up in scholarships or through loans. And we'll talk about loans in a minute. so financial implications of loans. Student loan debt is at an all time high. It's over 1.
Deb Meyer (16:02.158)
That's trillion with a T dollars. The average student loan balance is over $40,000 and that can be really debilitating for a lot of people. Now, there are some of you who are listening who might even be still paying off your college student loans. I hope that's not your situation, but if it is, I'm sorry that you had to take on that debt and you're still paying for it.
all these years later. The main thing I want to convey here is that I don't want you to feel like you have to rob your retirement in order to pay for college. There are plenty of different outlets that your student can pursue, even if they're on that four-year traditional college path, that don't have to completely
curtail your retirement goals. So it's going to be extremely important to have that communication with your son or daughter as they're getting closer to college age on what you are able to financially contribute and what you will expect your son or daughter to either financially contribute directly through work, paid work, or through scholarships or through loans, whatever the combination needs to be.
If you want to dive deeper into financial aid, would highly encourage you to go back. It was an early episode with Joe Messenger called Understanding College Financial Aid, episode five. And then also the episode with Anne Garcia, number 33, called College Funding Secrets Every Parent Needs to Know.
So both of those episodes I will link to in the show notes, but again, that's gonna be a deeper dive on all the topics I'm covering here today. Okay, let's take a quick break and I'd encourage you, if you're getting value from this, please share this episode with a friend. I know for me, I'm learning a lot of.
Deb Meyer (18:12.11)
cool things and I want to be able to share this with like every parent I know. So that's why I'm recording this podcast episode. But I know I can only reach so many people myself and I would encourage you, especially if you're a parent of a high schooler, just passing this along to a friend that you know has a college bound student. Okay.
Let's talk about dual enrollment. I want to pull a few of the details out from the last episode with Shelly, episode 55. First off, she was talking about dual enrollment as a broad concept. It's where you're getting college level coursework in high school. And one of the things she pointed out is there is a lot of variability by school and district. So you are
looking state specific, but you're also looking in your specific local vicinity, there's going to be a lot of different options depending on where you live. So this is a national podcast. I'm not going to be able to speak to every particular state. Shelly happens to come from the state of Colorado. So she was giving some very Colorado specific guidance in episode 55.
But I live in Florida and I've investigated dual enrollment for my son. So I do have some insights to share there, especially if you're tuning in from, I live just outside Fort Myers in Babcock Ranch. So if you're local to the area and want some insights on this specific area, I'm happy to go into those details. So.
One thing to keep in mind when it comes to dual enrollment is that it is extra work for the guidance counselors. So they may not be proactive in telling you about the dual enrollment program. And that's whether you're at a public school, a charter school, a private school, it doesn't matter. It's unlikely that they're gonna be openly broadcasting this and making this information readily available. So dual enrollment can be a very great intro to college.
Deb Meyer (20:26.686)
even if you don't have the most stellar student. As Shelly was sharing in the episode, her two daughters have some amazing abilities, but one of them struggled with a learning disability and had just issues in not only high school classes, but even middle school classes. In her particular case, when she went and started taking college classes, she loved it. It was the perfect solution for her.
It really can depend on the student. It doesn't have to be a stellar student in order to take advantage of dual enrollment. For my son's school in particular, they have three different pathways. One is a technical school. Another is a full-time route where they would go at a university both fall and spring. And then they would get their associate's degree by going full-time in that program.
And then their last option was a part time route or it could be full time if you wanted at a community college, a local community college. And in that particular option, they even have summer classes that they offer too. So I'm convincing your son or daughter to take the summer classes. That's a whole other story. But in his particular case at his school, there were those three different pathways for dual enrollment. So likely if we end up going the dual enrollment route, it will be next year.
and in that part-time option at the community college just to get some classes under his belt. My son right now is taking more of the advanced classes at the high school level. So one of the other things that I want to point out is like the AP, Advanced Placement, and IB. Those, Shelley went into some detail about as well, but just to summarize.
My son did some AP classes his sophomore year and his junior year if the other offerings weren't really there. So last year we happened to be at a school, a big public school in Missouri where they didn't really have IB as an emphasis at all. It was all either honors or advanced placement classes. And then the school he's at now has a program called ACE, which is based out of Cambridge overseas.
Deb Meyer (22:47.194)
And if he gets enough of these ACE classes completed and does well on the exams, he'll get what's called an ACE diploma where he's eligible for this bright future scholarship in Florida automatically getting the ACE diploma. So we're working through a little bit different plan because we're taking, having him take the ACE classes as many as he can this year. And then depending on how he does in them,
We might continue that on his senior year or we may pivot and switch just to the dual enrollment classes at the community college. With ACE Cambridge in particular, that program I haven't seen much outside of Florida. So I don't really know, even within Florida, I don't know how common it is at the other schools. But I do know on his ACE diploma,
it's two consecutive years, he has to have seven courses and each course is a year-long class, one credit hour. So he's taking three this year and then if he does well on these three and we want to keep pursuing the ACE diploma, he would take the remaining four next year in his senior year.
I mentioned Bright Futures, again, that's specific to Florida. It's a statewide program. So with that, there's a Florida Medallion Scholarship. That's a 75 % tuition waiver. And that's a 3.0 weighted GPA and then a 24 overall on the ACT or an 1190 on the SAT. those are above average things to be pursuing, but.
Again, if you have a strong student that's very much within reach and 75 % tuition waiver is a pretty awesome deal at in-state schools. If your student is even more capable academically, they get a 3.5 weighted GPA and a 29 overall on the ACT or a 1330 on the SAT, then they could qualify for the Florida Academic Scholarship, which is 100 % tuition waiver.
Deb Meyer (25:03.894)
So the state of Florida in particular, our tuition's low to begin with. We're between like six and 7,000 per year on tuition for college. But that's still a big chunk of change. And if you can get the academic support to get either of those bright future scholarships, whether it's the medallion or the academic, it's awesome that potentially we would be looking at just paying for room and board.
and no tuition or very little tuition. Not to be touting Florida as the be all and end all, but it also offers some pretty competitive rates for out of state students and has some special provisions. Now they could close this loophole at some point, but what I learned is that they have some loophole currently with grandparents that live in Florida.
where you could get some in-state residency rates if that grandparents live there at least 12 months. So who knows how long that loophole will last. But that's something else to consider. If you don't live in Florida and your son or daughter is looking at a Florida in-state school, that you might be able to get some Florida in-state tuition rather than paying the out-of-state rate as an out-of-state student.
Bottom line here, be knowledgeable. Don't do it for your child when you're thinking about college planning. Make sure they're involved in this process as well, that they're the ones writing the essays, they're the ones asking for letters of recommendation from their teachers. Make sure they're taking the initiative because you can't be there on their college campus doing their work for them, right?
But it is good to be knowledgeable and informed as you think about planning for college. also, make sure your son or daughter, as they're getting further along in their high school journey, that they are keeping on top of these deadlines. The early action deadlines in Florida are quite early. Some of them are in October, and I think others are in November.
Deb Meyer (27:17.87)
I don't remember them off the top of my head because we're not applying this year, but we will be applying next year. And you better believe I'm going to have my son put those dates on his calendar to make sure he doesn't miss a deadline because colleges are not very forgiving when it comes to late applications on admissions or scholarship applications, things like that. OK. I hope this was helpful.
Again, not here to promote any particular pathway, but just to be sharing some personal insights I've learned through visits I've done at the college campuses or reading some books on the subject. And maybe if, again, if this resonates with you, let me know and I'm happy to bring on future college planning episodes where we can dive deep into it and get some other perspectives. Okay, thanks!