Cal Grants: a boost for low-income students

Here's the basic info on Cal Grants. The main things to know is that these are not loans and they are based on need.

From the Cal Grants website:

...it's money you don't have to pay back. ... If you're a graduating high school senior or recent graduate, meet academic, financial and eligibility requirements and submit two forms by March 2, you are guaranteed a Cal Grant!

... With a Cal Grant you can get up to $9,700 a year to pay for college expenses at any qualifying California college, university or career or technical school in California. Depending on which Cal Grant you get, the money can be used for tuition, room and board, even books and pencils. The best part is, it's yours to keep and you don't have to pay it back.

Who Qualifies
Are you Eligible for a Cal Grant
If you are a California graduating high school senior or recent graduate, or just got your GED, and meet academic, financial and eligibility requirements and submit two forms by March 2 then you may qualify for a Cal Grant for college or career or technical school.

• To be eligible for a Cal Grant you must:
  Submit the FAFSA and your verified Cal Grant GPA by the deadline
• Be a U.S. citizen or eligible non-citizen (your parents don’t need to be citizens or eligible noncitizens)
• Be a California resident when you graduated from high school
• Have a Social Security number
• Attend a qualifying California college
• Not have a bachelor’s or professional degree (except for Cal Grant A and B extended awards for a teaching credential program)
• Have financial need based on your college costs
• Have family income and assets below the established ceilings
• Meet any minimum GPA requirements
• Be in a program leading to an undergraduate degree or certificate
• Be enrolled at least half time
• Have registered with U.S. Selective Service (most males)
• Not owe a refund on a state or federal grant, or be in default on a student loan

I haven't researched so far as to learn what the qualifying income levels are, but needless to say, if there's any chance you might qualify, check into it.

The SAT experience: cold and cursive

My son took the SAT yesterday at San Francisco's Archbishop Riordan High School. His biggest gripe was the early hour of the testing (8 a.m., which is the same time his school starts — he gripes about that too). But later I got an e-mail from the parent of another test-taker who said Riordan's heat wasn't working, that a Riordan student said it had been down for a month, and that kids' fingers were numb.

My son, who tends to be impervious to cold, was untroubled, though he confirms that an adult told the test-takers that the heat was off and they might want to leave their jackets on. If offered a do-over I'm pretty sure he'd decline. This has been brought up to a high school counselor, though, so we'll see if there's any fallout.

The temp was in the low 50s yesterday — this is San Francisco — so this admittedly isn't a case of icicles forming on kids' eyelashes.

What interested my son more was why each test-taker is required to use cursive to copy a statement affirming that they won't cheat, or some such language — no printing. My kids have asked me over the years why they're required to learn cursive to begin with, and I've never been able to get a very good answer. (I'm the one who's actually cursive-challenged.)

Workshops on how to get Cal Grants cash

A press release on Cash for College Workshops.

"If you are a graduating senior or recent graduate, meet academic, financial and eligibility requirements and submit two forms (FAFSA and GPA verification form) by March 2, 2008, you are guaranteed a Cal Grant." ... learn how at these events. I haven't yet researched what those eligibility requirements are. Watch this space for details.

Cash for College Workshop Dates

Are you a high school senior or recent graduate? Know anyone who is? Don't forget to apply for Cal Grants!

Cal Grants are one of the smartest ways to get cash for college - its money you don't have to pay back and it's guaranteed. If you are a graduating senior or recent graduate, meet academic, financial and eligibility requirements and submit two forms (FAFSA and GPA verification form) by March 2, 2008, you are guaranteed a Cal Grant.

Assemblywoman Ma has partnered up with San Francisco College Access to co-sponsor a series of "Cash for College" Cal Grant workshops throughout San Francisco.

"Cash for College" Workshop Schedule:

• Saturday, January 26th in Chinatown from 12:30 pm - 3:30 pm at Gordon J Lau Elementary School
• Tuesday, January 29th in Bayview Hunter's Point from 6:30 pm to 8:30 pm at Thurgood Marshall Academic High School
• Wednesday, January 30th in the Richmond District at 6:30 pm at George Washington High School.
• Thursday, January 31st in the Excelsior from 6:00 pm to 8:00 pm at Balboa High School
• Saturday, February 2nd in Ingleside from 12:30 pm - 3:30 pm at City Arts & Tech.
• Wednesday, February 13th in Chinatown from 6:00 pm - 8:00 pm at Galileo Academy of Science and Technology High School
• Saturday, February 16th at Civic Center from 1 pm- 4 pm at SF Main Public Library
• Saturday, February 23rd at Civic Center from 1 pm- 4 pm at SF Main Public Library

For a complete list of "Cash for College" workshops sponsored by SF College Access please call 415-202-7944.

If you attend a "Cash for College" workshop you are automatically eligible to win a $1,000 scholarship.

For more information regarding Cal Grants, please visit http://www.calgrants.org/or call toll free 1-888-224-7268.

Alert: CSU moves applicant deadline up to Feb. 1

Urgent news for California State University applicants! The proposed state budget cuts have led the CSU system to move the application deadline for all CSU campuses up to Feb. 1. The deadline has varied campus by campus in the past, with some accepting applications as late as August.

CSU moves up freshman application deadline to Feb. 1
The Associated Press

SACRAMENTO—California State University Chancellor Charles Reed is moving up the freshman application deadline in anticipation of $386 million in proposed budget cuts.
All applications from first-time freshmen must be submitted by Feb. 1 for all 23 CSU campuses.
Read the rest of the news brief

Celebrating "studenthood," not commercialism

I went last night to hear Lloyd Thacker, the nemesis of the bean-counting U.S. News & World Report college rankings, speak at Lick-Wilmerding High. I took a lot of notes and will post more about this soon.

Thacker is the enemy of the commercialization of the college admissions process — and what he calls for is "studenthood," his term for education with depth and values.

Here's one thought he started the audience with. With an audience of almost entirely adults (hey, our kids have homework — except that mine was at a band rehearsal at the Jazzschool in Berkeley), he asked if we ourselves had a rewarding college experience (I'm paraphrasing and not looking at my notes right now). Then he asked if we think we might have had just as good an experience at another college. It looked like everyone agreed with that — though in my less-driven public school world, I don't think the notion that there's only one right college and it must be the best is quite so deeply rooted.

That question did make me realize something, though. I went to College of Marin (a California community college) for two years, '73-'75 — for economic reasons — and then completed my B.A. at Sonoma State. This was respectable, but admittedly not terribly impressive or ambitious. But thinking even briefly about it last night, I realized that I actually got more out of the college experience at College of Marin. I did a lot more exploration and self-discovery there, for some reason, and just plain learned a lot. Just thought I'd share that for those who view community college as some kind of third-rate substitute for the real thing.

For more on Lloyd Thacker and his "studenthood" movement, see his Education Conservancy website and his book "College Unranked."

You got your PSAT score. Now what?

My son just got his PSAT (Preliminary SAT) score, along with legions of his fellow high school juniors who took the test on a Saturday in October, as usual at a miserably early hour by teen standards.

This is not the score you send to colleges — that's the actual SAT, of course — so I gazed at the elaborate score report sheet wondering what the point was.

I fished around the College Board website and found lots of bits information — but not really a clear answer to my question. So I asked an expert. East Bay college admissions advisor Kate Augus, who runs Get Going College Admissions Workshops along with our frequent information source Joanne Levy-Prewitt, helpfully wrote up an explanation for me.

The question is: What does the PSAT mean? How much will this matter to colleges, whether the scores are stellar or not? What do the levels mean, and what's the timetable for whatever happens next?

Answer: The PSAT mirrors the SAT in most ways. The vocabulary is about as hard, though the math only goes through Geometry (whereas there is Algebra 2 on the SAT), and the SAT has an essay in the Writing section. Here is what the PSAT can serve as:

• A Predictive Tool: One can basically add a zero to each of the three sections of the junior year PSAT to predict the future SAT score. Scores on the PSAT range from 20 – 80.
  
• A Diagnostic Tool: The big print out that College Board sends can give the student a sense of what he/she needs to work on — e.g. stamina (did she consistently run out of time?), algebra or another specific section (are those the questions most often missed?), student-generated answers (this can be tricky for many students), sentence completions, etc. Diagnosis is best, of course, when it is clear where the problem lies (when the student misses a lot of questions in one section but not in others). Diagnosis can help guide a student in choosing what type of test prep to pursue: Families can review the 10th-grade score reports looking for red flags (i.e. lots of questions omitted at the ends of sections, etc.), look at other standardized testing, and review grades and teachers' comments for analysis.
  
• A Stress Relieving Tool: The more times students sit down for a long standardized test in “test-taking conditions,” the more opportunity they have to become confident test takers. Many counselors view the sophomore PSAT, and even the junior year PSAT, as a “no risk” practice opportunity. So, even though PSAT scores will not be used for college admission, it is still a good idea to take the PSAT. The more times you take standardized tests, the more familiar you will become with the format and the types of questions asked. So if your goal is a National Merit Scholarship, prepare for the PSAT. If you’re not aiming that high, still familiarize yourself with the PSAT so that you know what to expect and so that the test is a successful learning experience.
  
• A College Junk Mail Attracting Tool: Colleges use the personal data and scores to begin sending out guidebooks to prospective students. If you wish to receive free information from colleges, indicate on the PSAT test answer form that you want to participate in the Student Search.
  
• A National Merit Scholarship Qualifying Test (NMSQT) Tool: Junior year PSAT scores may qualify a student for the National Merit Scholarship Competition, the National Achievement Scholarship Program/National Scholarship Service (for African-American students), the Telluride Association Scholarship (to study the humanities), and the National Hispanic Scholars/Recognition Program. If junior year scores add up to a certain number (called the Selection Index, which varies state by state and year by year – California’s is usually between 213 – 218), the student becomes eligible for the various National Merit Scholarship Programs.

Some students score just below the level required of Semifinalists; these students become Commended Scholars. Although Commended students do not continue in the competition for Merit Scholarship awards, some of these students do become candidates for special scholarships sponsored by corporations and businesses (see below for more information). When there is NOT an asterisk next to the Selection Index on the score report, the student is potentially in the range for consideration. An asterisk means the score won't be in range. The national average Selection Index is 147.

Typically sophomore scores have the asterisk because they aren't considered for NM. The lack of asterisk is not a guarantee; it just means the score is potentially in range.

The state cutoffs are never released en masse by College Board. but each state's cutoff is shared with that state's counselors in mid-September, after the results are in. NACAC (National Association for College Admission Counseling) counselors have revolted by sharing states' scores with one another through the NACAC listserve. Sometimes California's score is as high as 219, but it usually hovers at 217.

In April of junior year, about 50,000 high scorers are invited to name two colleges or universities to receive their PSAT scores (many counselors would advise listing a student’s most competitive colleges for this purpose — check with your school counselor to make a final decision).

In late September of senior year, about 34,000 students receive Letters of Commendation (Commended Students) which are sent to their high schools. Approximately 16,000 students are notified that they have qualified as Semifinalists, the highest scoring entrants in each state. Next, the National Merit Scholarship Corporation provides scholarship application materials to Semifinalists through their high schools. To be considered for a scholarship, Semifinalists must become Finalists. Semifinalists complete an application which includes: transcripts, an essay, a recommendation, and SAT scores that confirm the PSAT/NMSQT performance. In February, some 15,000 Semifinalists become Finalists. Half of all finalists win scholarships. For more details, check the National Merit Scholarship Corporation website.

To be clear, high PSAT scores alone won't snag that National Merit Scholarship; grades are assessed too. Thanks to Kate for the clarification!

The travails of the wealthy college applicant

Hardships, poverty and adversity trump a life of privilege when it comes to getting into colleges — or at least that's the facetious point of this Wall Street Journal commentary, which takes a mocking tone about the whole notion and about the packaging that some college advisors urge.

The thoroughly researched book "The Price of Admission: How America's Ruling Class Buys Its Way into Elite Colleges -- and Who Gets Left Outside the Gates," by Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Golden, tells the opposite story. (The book is based on Golden's Pulitzer prizewinning reporting on the topic for the WSJ.)

A Desperate Need for Acceptance
How to get into college despite the disadvantage of privilege.
BY NAOMI SCHAEFER RILEY
Thursday, January 3, 2008
Given that, with the arrival of the new year, college applications are now flooding into admissions offices all over the country, it might be a good time to reflect on the absurdity of the whole college-admissions process.

Take this passage from Michele Hernández's "Acing the College Application," where she assesses the chances of a high-school student getting into a college of his choice. "Best case: Neither of your parents attended college at all, your father is a factory worker, and your mom is on disability. . . . Worst case: Your father went to Yale as an undergraduate and then Harvard Business School and is now an investment banker and your mom went to Brown, holds a Ph.D. in chemistry and works as a research chemist."

We all understand that being a rich white kid puts one at a disadvantage in the college-admissions process. But it is worth pausing to savor the irony of an institution that charges as much as $45,000 a year asking its applicants to demonstrate their proletarian credentials.
What's a privileged kid to do?

Ms. Hernández, a former admissions officer at Dartmouth, offers a couple of options. "Be vague" about your parents' occupations: "If your mom is the chief neurosurgeon for a New York hospital, try 'medical.' " Or you could get yourself a job, "the less exalted the better," Ms. Hernández advises, citing one boarding-school student who improved his admissions chances by baling hay every summer (on his family's farm).

Click to read the rest of the article.

Michele Hernández, by the way, is extremely controversial among reputable college advisors. (And in keeping with the tone of her own advice, she's a Caucasian who acquired her pleasingly ethnic surname by marriage.)

Noted admissions-frenzy critic to speak in S.F.

Lloyd Thacker, the nation's most visible critic of the high-pressure, high-powered college admissions frenzy, will speak in S.F. on Monday, Jan. 14, at Lick-Wilmerding High School, 755 Ocean Ave. Here's the announcement:

The Parent's Coalition of Bay Area High Schools is pleased to host LloydThacker, author of "Colleges Unranked: Ending the College Admission Frenzy."Mr. Thacker's message will inspire us to think about education, and give us tools to help us make the college admission process more educationallyrelevant, rewarding, and productive. Seventeen years as a college counselor gave Mr. Thacker a candid insight into the admission process. His message that our current admission process no longer serves the values and purposes traditionally associated with h igher education has resonated with college presidents and trustees around the country. In the past year, Mr. Thacker has been interviewed by the San Francisco Chronicle, New York Times Magazine, Yale Daily News and The Chronicle of Higher Education, as well as numerous other publications. He has appeared on the McNeil Lehrer News Hour and The Today Show, and has been interviewed on NPR's All Things Considered and KQED's Michael Krasny show. Teenagers are welcome. For more information on Mr. Thacker, visit www.educationconservancy.org.

Monday, January 14, 2008 7:30 to 9 PM
Lick-Wilmerding High School
755 Ocean Ave, San Francisco
A $5 donation is requested at the door.
Street and nearby parking at San Francisco City College (lot on Phelan offOcean -$2) is available. Lick -Wilmerding is also walking distance from the Balboa Park BART station and Muni lines.

Harvard's gift to the non-super-rich may harm poor

Harvard last month announced a new financial aid policy aimed at making tuition affordable to families with incomes up to $180,000. Families with incomes from $120,000-$180,000 would have tuition capped at 10 percent of their income — a big chunk of assistance toward Harvard's full $45,000 annual tuition. Sounds great at first reading, but many say it could hurt low-income students.

Here's the New York Times story about the announcement:

Harvard steps up financial aid
BOSTON, Dec. 10 — Harvard University announced today that it would significantly increase the financial aid it offers to nearly all middle-class and upper-middle-class students, expanding on efforts it made three years ago to make its campus affordable for low-income students.
The initiative appears to make Harvard’s aid to students with household incomes of $120,000 to $180,000 the most generous to be offered by any of the country’s elite private universities. Harvard will generally charge such students 10 percent of their family household income per year, substantially subsidizing the annual cost of more than $45,000.

Click here for the rest of the story.

And from the story, this is of interest to San Francisco families, who even in the current real estate crisis may be likely to be sitting on lots of home equity:

The university also plans to eliminate loans from all financial-aid packages and no longer consider home equity in calculating eligibility

And now other pricey private colleges are under pressure to follow Harvard's lead. The N.Y. Times covered that a few days ago. Some excerpts from the Dec. 28 article Harvard’s Aid to Middle Class Pressures Rivals:

By substantially discounting costs for all but the very wealthiest students, Harvard shook up the landscape of college pricing. ... officials of other colleges say its move will create intense pressure on them to give more aid to upper-middle-class students and will open the door to more parental price haggling.
Some colleges had already been moving to eliminate loans from all their financial aid packages and replace them with grants. In the weeks since Harvard’s announcement, a stampede of additional institutions — the University of Pennsylvania, Pomona, Swarthmore, Haverford — have taken the same step, which will help middle- and upper-middle-income families.
But Harvard, in adopting that practice, has also gone far beyond it: for families earning $120,000 to $180,000 a year, costs will now be limited to about 10 percent of income, meaning that students from such families will pay a maximum of $18,000, a deep discount from the university’s full annual cost of more than $45,600.
Officials at colleges without anything like Harvard’s $35 billion endowment say a rush to give tuition discounting to the middle and upper middle class at institutions like theirs could end up shifting financial aid from low-income students to wealthier ...

In the competitive scramble for prestige and rankings, numerous colleges already try to lure some top students away from the Ivy League by showering them with “merit aid” even if they are well off and can afford full tuition. The practice is controversial, with some college administrators scorning it as a way of “buying” a better incoming class, sometimes at the expense of lower-income students.
Some administrators say there will now be pressure to provide more merit aid to relatively wealthy high achievers, reducing the amount available to poorer students.
“It could lead to schools’ doing this sort of thing because they want to be part of the top group,” David W. Oxtoby, president of Pomona College in California, said of Harvard’s move. If that meant those colleges had to reduce the number of their low-income students, Dr. Oxtoby said, “that would be terrible, exactly the wrong outcome.” (Pomona itself, where full costs are more than $45,000, does not provide merit aid.)
Some academics who study higher education predict that Harvard’s decision may even reduce economic diversity at Harvard itself, even though the university already allows any admitted student from a family earning $60,000 or less to attend virtually free of charge.
Donald E. Heller, director of the Center for the Study of Higher Education at Pennsylvania State University, said that if Harvard’s new aid program encouraged more middle- and upper-middle-income students to apply, then the number of slots for low-income applicants in an entering class would probably decline.
“They’re just going to get crowded out,” Dr. Heller said.

Click here for the whole article.

If you ask me, California's UC/CSU systems are looking better and better.

Happy new year, college searchers!

In my household, 2008 is the major year for the firstborn's college application process. He graduates from San Francisco School of the Arts in June 2009, and basically the applications are due by the end of November. (There may be exceptions — private colleges with different deadlines, plus some less-oversubscribed California public colleges/universities that continue accepting applications after the Nov. 30 deadline.)

It would be interesting and I think readable if we could chronicle the search in a first-person narrative. It might even attract the interest and participation that a San Francisco blog chronicling a family's kindergarten search has. Unfortunately, the high school junior in question would not be amenable to the idea, to put it mildly. If anyone out there has a kid who wouldn't mind being in the spotlight and is willing to blog about the application process (applicant or parent), we'd be happy to post the accounts.

Mine did not turn out to be one of those kids who dedicates his high school years to perfecting and packaging himself as the ideal applicant for highly selective colleges, either. It would be interesting to follow a student like that. My son has the raw material to do that if that's what he had set his mind to — I'm confident of that, anyway — but his interests took him another direction. So, as I've posted, we're looking at jazz majors, and probably within California's UC and CSU systems. I'll post as much as I can without crossing my son's boundaries.

I can share the college testing schedule, for anyone interested.

We are awaiting the results of the PSAT that he took in October (I believe they're supposed to be sent to his school in December, but we haven't heard anything; winter break began Dec. 15).

He takes the SAT on Jan. 26 and the ACT on Feb. 9. We'll deal with SAT subject tests later in the spring.

His schedule of tests and prep is light compared to kids in high-end private schools and suburban public schools. Our urban public high school doesn't have the resources to maintain that pressure-cooker environment, and the school community isn't driven enough to demand it (these situations feed each other, of course — parents who want their kids in a high-pressure, Harvard-or-die environment are likely to look at other high schools*). If our kid or our family were so motivated and we could scrape up the money, we could do that stuff privately — hire a college counselor, pay for test prep courses and so on. He disdains that regimen as phony and superficial. So be it.

*We do have a blog reader who's a Harvard student and was a star graduate of SOTA — it can be done!

S.F. Chronicle cancels college column

It's a shame that the Chron is scrapping Joanne Levy-Prewitt's weekly College Bound column. Bad timing, too, as the high school graduating class of 2009 is supposed to be one of the largest in history, and is gearing up for its college search now.

Here's Joanne's last Chronicle column. We've been linking to the column most weeks, and Joanne has provided other information and assistance with this blog. She's a college advisor based in 925-land (the East Bay suburbs) and will continue syndicating her column elsewhere.