Understanding the College Pricing Ladder

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By Rajkamal Rao

May 1 is the deadline for students to accept offers of admission from colleges and lock in their seats. Many families struggle with how to balance multiple offers of admission. Invariably, the struggles relate to the costs of college attendance (COA).

In the United States, the COA is collectively borne by the family, the student, the university or college through their endowments (called institutional aid), the state government (in the case of public colleges), the federal government through its massive Education Department budget, and private entities which make merit scholarship awards, such as those associated with the National Merit Scholarship program.

The degree to which each of these external parties assumes financial responsibility will determine how much the family ends up paying. For example, the breakdown for the UT Me Scholarships for low-income families is represented below ((If image is not clear, click on the image & right-click to "Open Image in New Tab").

 

 

Nearly all financial awards are need-based. External merit scholarships are rare, and when given out, are rather small. Most are one-time.  Exceptions are awards associated with the National Merit Scholarship Competition, such as the Finalist awards. Some awards can be so generous that they can fully pay for a student's tuition, room, and board for all four years of college.

Other exceptions are when students pursue in-demand fields in which the U.S. government has an interest. President Bill Clinton signed a directive to strengthen cyber capabilities of critical infrastructure; information and communications, energy, banking and finance, transportation, water supply, emergency services, and public health, as well as those authorities responsible for the continuity of federal, state, and local governments. The CyberCorps scholarship has since funded undergraduate students to up to $75,000 for three years of education. 

Students pursuing a Doctor of Veterinary Medicine can get attractive scholarship and internship funds from the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Students admitted to any military academy will receive a full ride plus expenses provided they sign a contract to serve in the U.S. armed forces. ROTC scholarships also offer comparable benefits.

But this article is dedicated to awards based on financial need. Determining financial need is a complex exercise and is facilitated through the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA®) website, run by the U.S. Department of Education, and the College Scholarship Service (CSS), run by the College Board. Review this excellent step-by-step video about how to apply for FAFSA. Also read Ron Lieber's excellent NY Times piece on Nov 23, 2024 about the latest FAFSA process. 

So, what is the difference between FAFSA and CSS?  Think of FAFSA as your gateway to federal funds, and the CSS as your ticket to institutional funds, such as private college endowments and grants. The CSS is a lot more invasive in the sense that it seeks more financial details about your family than does the FAFSA.

Public colleges and universities (such as UT Austin and Texas A&M) require the FAFSA. About 400 private colleges and universities require both the FAFSA and the CSS profile. Both websites employ complex algorithms and business rules. They take into account numerous family financial situations such as the age of parents, income, savings, debt, size of household, number of college-going students, assets, alimony payments, and other parameters.

The main sources for this information are the tax returns filed by the parents (and the student, if the student is employed). The prior-prior year is important here. If your student is starting freshman year of college in 2020, your family's 2018 tax returns are required. Deliberately filing erroneous information, with the intent of extracting a more favorable need-based determination, is a violation of numerous federal and state laws.

Some private colleges say that they are "need-blind" - that is, they make admissions decisions regardless of your family's financial situation. Federal law is clear in this regard. Section 568 of the Higher Education Act says that a college is not considered need-blind even if its policy helps students in financial need. Wikipedia maintains an excellent list of need-blind and need-aware (schools that factor a student's ability to pay whether or not they will be accepted).

 

Unfortunately, some need-blind institutions wade into need-aware territory and get into trouble.

According to a 2022 lawsuit filed against 16 elite schools, the University of Pennsylvania and Vanderbilt, for example, have considered the financial needs of wait-listed applicants although the schools claim that they are need-blind. Doing so is just as unlawful as awarding “special treatment to the children of wealthy.” In January 2024, top schools decided to pay $104 million in fines to settle the lawsuit. The bottom line is that need-blind schools should NOT look at the financial ability of a student whatsoever in making admissions decisions, poor or wealthy.

 

Some need-blind colleges (most top institutions such as Stanford, Yale, Harvard, and Rice) promise to meet the "full demonstrated financial need" of the student - after offering admission to the student based solely on the student's merit. This means that they will cover the difference between your EFC and the sticker price (see our graphic above) through a combination of grants, scholarships, and work-study programs. Loans, should they appear at all in the package, will be an insignificant part.

The need-blind private colleges that fully meet the student's demonstrated financial need use a simple formula - the so-called $65,000/$125,000/$200,000 rule.

According to this rule, if your family makes $65,000 or less (with proportional assets), the institution will pay for tuition, room, and board - the entire expense of college is completely free. For such students, organizations such as Questbridge will even pay college application fees, and all expenses at summer programs at the top-40 schools between junior and senior year. We implore low-income students not to consider public universities at all and concentrate all of their efforts on private need-blind colleges. Of course, the only catch is that students should win admission to these colleges, to begin with.

If your family makes between $65,000 and $125,000 (with proportional assets), the institution will pay for tuition, but you're still responsible for room and board. Harvard and Stanford are more generous in wiping out tuition fees for family incomes up to $150,000. The University of Southern California is far less generous, capping incomes to $80,000.

Between $125,000 and $200,000 (with proportional assets), the tuition fees are prorated. So, if your income is $162,500, your tuition fees are halved, but you would still pay full room and board.

The engines make several assumptions regarding proportional assets. If a family has an annual income of X, the programs will automatically assume that assets are some multiple of X. For families with lower incomes, up to $65,000, the multiple is less than 1. For families with incomes higher than $65,000, the engines assume, logically, that the multiple rises exponentially from 1. The more your savings or your assets, your financial need is deemed to be less, so you're likely to receive far less in aid.

The Federal Student-Aid Estimator, the official net price estimator of the Department of Education, uses an X factor of approximately 0.53. That is, if your income is $100,000 a year, it assumes that your family's net assets are $53,000. Conversely, if your net assets are $300,000, your annual income is deemed to be $566,000 a year. At such asset levels, you can be sure that you will receive no need-based aid.

The College Pricing Ladder

The top line for the college cost of attendance is the sticker price. But just like when shopping for a car, no one pays the sticker price.

How much your family pays for college is unique, much like an airline seat. It is mainly dependent upon FAFSA's and CSS's determination about how much both programs think your financial need is.

Federal grants and college cash awards, funded through college endowments, bring down the sticker price. These are monies that do not have to be repaid, so they're a great bargain. The so-called "full-ride" awards are essentially cash awards from colleges that will not charge tuition fees at all. Tax credits and deductions make up the remaining components of the "free money" bucket.

The "Net Price" is simply the difference between the sticker price and the discounts the family has been offered. Remember that the family is ultimately responsible for the Net Price.

Net Price estimates tend to deviate significantly from the sticker price largely for private colleges and universities - which tend to offer tuition discounts. For public schools, the tuition sticker price is fixed by state law and falls into two categories - the discounted in-state tuition or the more expensive out-of-state tuition. For many families, in-state public colleges represent the best bargain because they are more affordable and there's always a college that will accept a student, regardless of high school performance. For some students, it may be worthwhile to consider out-of-state colleges that may offer in-state tuition benefits in that state for specific majors - generally on a reciprocity basis.

 

Working your way up from the bottom of the image above, the first number is called the Estimated Family Contribution (EFC), now called the Student Aid Index (SAI). Learn how your SAI is calculated. This amount is a result of the FAFSA engine's computation (the Student Aid Report, or SAR) when you file your FAFSA application - and is nonnegotiable unless family circumstances for costs and income change. The EFC is the minimum the family must pay, and is like a deductible when filing an auto insurance claim. 

The difference between the EFC and the Net Price is called the Gap amount. The Gap is always the responsibility of the family. It can be met by family savings or borrowing. The borrowing could be a subsidized or unsubsidized loan offer from FAFSA. Or it could be from a Parent PLUS loan which has more generous limits but much higher interest rates. Or it could be from a private bank. Students who win work-study awards are contributing to the Gap amount, but with their sweat rather than with cash.

Source: Department of Education

 

To review a typical loan schedule so that you can estimate your monthly payments on a student loan when you know the Loan Amount, Interest Rate  (e.g., 5.30%), Loan Term in Months (e.g., 120) and the Number of Monthly Payments in the First Year (assuming you want to make more than 12 payments), use a mortgage calculator. 

 

Glossary of Terms, Image Courtesy: The University of Texas, Dallas

Our takeaway

Take a minute to study the example graphic above of a college with a sticker price of $75,000. This is today the average published cost of attendance at most Ivy League and world-class institutions. Notice how various pricing components kick in above the family's EFC. A $40,000 - $50,000 EFC determination is normal for a U.S. household with two children with both parents working in professional jobs. Remember that families must pay at least the EFC amount, no questions asked.

A Note About Rao Advisors Premium Services
Our promise is to empower you with high-quality, ethical, and free advice via this website.  But parents and students often ask us if they can engage with us for individual counseling sessions.

Individual counseling is part of the Premium Offering of Rao Advisors and involves a fee.  Please contact us for more information.

How important is STAAR?

Image Courtesy: Texas Education Agency

By Rajkamal Rao

Visit any Texas school campus during the second school term of every year. As the calendar moves closer to March and April, the State of Texas Assessments of Academic Readiness (STAAR) fever is everywhere. Teachers spend several minutes during each class preparing students for the test.  At home, parents urge their children to study hard. Children look up from their iPhone screens and utter a characteristic, uncaring "Uh huh."

So, just how important is STAAR? In Texas, you can't move up a grade without getting a passing STAAR score. Texas is one of 13 states in which you can't graduate from high school without passing the so-called exit STAAR EOC tests.

The truth is that STAAR is more an evaluation of how well schools are teaching children. It traces its origin to then-Governor Bush's No Child Left Behind (NCLB) vision which ultimately became federal policy: Teachers and school administrations work all year to teach students, so if students are indeed learning, a test ought to measure how well schools are doing.

A school that tests well is rated high by the state in annual rankings, and this helps the school's brand. A school that doesn't score as well may qualify for additional funds from the state. A school that consistently doesn't do well faces a risk of closure or even a state takeover.

So how does STAAR impact an individual student's performance? Other than as an official platform to practice taking standardized tests like the PSAT/SAT/ACT, very little. As long as the student earns a passing score on STAAR, no one cares about how well a student did. When a student is in middle school, the school may use the best STAAR test results and "recommend" him/her to Duke TIP, but this is of inconsequential value. [We are philosophically opposed to all Duke TIP-type programs for high school students as we repeatedly point out at our seminars and in one-on-one sessions with families].

The more important truths are these: Contrary to myth, STAAR scores are not reported on a student's TEA grades. School districts are not allowed to use STAAR scores to calculate GPA, weighted average GPA or class rank. No college admissions committee asks you for a STAAR score like it would for the SAT or ACT. The National Merit Scholarship award is not made on STAAR performance but actually on a student's PSAT performance.

The Various STAAR Tests

Younger Grades

Grade 3 - reading and mathematics (English and Spanish versions)
Grade 4 - reading, mathematics, and writing (English and Spanish versions)
Grade 5 - reading, mathematics, and science (English and Spanish versions)
Grade 6 - reading and mathematics
Grade 7 - reading, mathematics, and writing
Grade 8 - reading, mathematics, science and social studies

High School End-of-Course (EOC) [Exit tests]

Grade 9 - Algebra I, English I, Biology

Grade 10 - English II
Grade 11 - U.S. History

Our takeaway

STAAR is not as consequential a test as some may have you believe. We urge families to relax and prioritize time to help students do well on their traditional in-class tests and exams to improve grades.


A Note About Rao Advisors Premium Services
Our promise is to empower you with high-quality, ethical and free advice via this website.  But parents and students often ask us if they can engage with us for individual counseling sessions. We are indebted and privileged to have earned their trust in matters which are so important to them. Please check out our public Google reviews to see what they say about us.

Individual counseling is part of the Premium Offering of Rao Advisors and involves a fee.  Please contact us for more information.

How many times should you take the SAT/ACT?

By Rajkamal Rao

 

If you ask a parent a simple question: "How many times would you have your children take the SAT/ACT?", you can be sure of getting different responses.

Twice is the most popular, although three times is not uncommon. Some parents may even say four times.

But you rarely hear "just once." And this has baffled us.

Why not just once?

There are very few things that children do in school that they repeat. You don't retake the STAAR or your end-of-term assessments. You rarely take an AP or IB exam again. But why do we seem to make an exception for the SAT/ACT?

One reason is the way that these tests are marketed.  Both the College Board and ACT pry on families' anxieties by intensely promoting the SAT and ACT as tests in which students can improve their grades if they take the test multiple times. They throw in dubious research which supports their claim that students taking tests a second time often score 100+ points more on the SAT and 3-4 points more on the ACT. While this may be true in many cases, we don't know how students would perform the first time if they're told that there's no option to retake the test to improve their score.

They also talk about superscoring - a practice used by colleges wherein a student's best scores across multiple test administrations are considered - as a way to close their pitch. If you get a 700 on Math the first time you take the test and a 760 the second time, colleges which superscore will take your second test administration for your Math score. If you got a 720 on Reading the first time but a 680 the second time, colleges would take your Reading score on the first test. With colleges being this generous, why shouldn't you take the test multiple times?

There are several problems with taking the test multiple times. First, not all colleges superscore and colleges that do superscore do it differently. Read the College Board's blog on the topic. Even they concede that superscoring is a super confusing idea. 

 

Second, the idea of taking the SAT the first time more as a dry run should be insulting to most smart students - we have the PSAT for that very reason! 

 

Third, the Khan Academy, the College Board's official partner for the SAT, has upwards of 2,200 official test questions to practice on, in the comfort of home.
 

Fourth, the College Board's own inventory of 8 official tests - previously administered - gives students the chance to take the SAT 8 times at home before going to the test center. Click here for our post on how best to prepare for the SAT/ACT for free.

 

The College Board knows all of the above well - which is why they offer Score Choice which allows students to select which scores or sets of scores they want to send to a college. With Score Choice, students can control which score reports, by test date, will be sent to each college. Our point is if that the College Board lets you junk certain scores, why should you even take a test when you're not that well prepared?

 

There are several advantages to taking the tests just once. Prepare well - really well - and go take the test. If you feel you're not prepared enough, postpone the test date to the next available date and prepare in the interim. But go with the mindset that you are only allowed to take the test once, and that your career depends upon it.

Sure, this elevates your stress level a bit but there are lots of circumstances in high school where you're not permitted a do-over. Your all important National Merit Scholarship Test depends only upon your PSAT-11 test, which is given only once. When you apply to colleges and you're invited to an interview - like for job interviews throughout your career - you can only do this once. Life rarely gives you second chances for the same opportunity, so let's start tuning our minds to this grim fact.





Think about the stress levels after you complete the SAT/ACT knowing that you have done well. You never have to worry about taking them again - which frees up time to focus on grades and extracurricular activities.

Our takeaway

Take the SAT or ACT just once and hit a home run. The collateral benefits of so doing are numerous.

A Note About Rao Advisors Premium Services
Our promise is to empower you with high-quality, ethical and free advice via this website.  But parents and students often ask us if they can engage with us for individual counseling sessions. We are indebted and privileged to have earned their trust in matters which are so important to them. Please check out our public Google reviews to see what they say about us.

Individual counseling is part of the Premium Offering of Rao Advisors and involves a fee.  Please contact us for more information.

What should we make of the college admissions scam?

By Rajkamal Rao

 

 

Stanford University. Image: Rao Advisors

This week saw the Department of Justice prosecute the largest college admissions scam in the country's history.

The details of the scam showed that the perpetrators thought they were not in America but in some banana republic. Sit-ins taking the SAT/ACT for students or doctoring score sheets, parents faking the mental conditions of kids to be granted special accommodation privileges to take the tests, doctors writing fake prescriptions and certificates to confirm these medical conditions, eager consultants Photoshopping images of student faces into the pictures of established athletes and creating fake athlete profiles, athletic coaches in colleges accepting bribes to recommend students with fake profiles to college admissions committees - acts like these are common in other countries.

But the United States proved again that flawed though it may be, its relentless pursuit of justice caught the bad guys after all. These self-serving, unethical and narcissistic people will spend years in prison and will wonder each day if an Ivy League admissions offer was really worth it all.

How serious is all this for your teenager?

Actually, it's not serious at all. The college scam got a lot of attention for a couple of days but as it happens in our 24x7 news cycle, the story has slowly started to wither away. Other breaking events such as the Boeing 737 Max 8 grounding and the horrible Christchurch terror attacks have taken hold.

More than 99% of parents and kids would never think to cheat in the manner described by the U.S. Attorney's office in Boston. Even if some of them did, they wouldn't have the resources. Those in the scam paid upwards of $50,000 to secure a 1400 score on the SAT, something that most of our students do for free by practicing on Khan Academy. The entry point for making donations to the top schools - and receive favorable consideration - was set at $10 million. This wealth threshold does not even represent the top 1%; it probably involves the top 0.01%.

Advocates of eliminating all college admissions tests - such as FAIR - will try to exploit the scandal but they will fail. There is substantial evidence that both high school GPAs and scores on college admission tests are excellent predictors of academic success. The University of Chicago may have decided to go test-optional, but the rest of the elite group of schools will continue to use SAT/ACT tests to evaluate student quality. Four million students took the exams this year alone.

Also, the second cohort of scam participants tried to get in through the athletic back door. This shows a weakness of admissions policies of U.S. schools because college sports are a huge revenue maker for them. Head coaches in the Big Ten conference often make more money than the presidents of other colleges.

As long as ESPN continues to beam college sports, student-athletes will always be in demand. And even if athletic coaches are under additional scrutiny in the wake of the scandal, there will always be a disproportionate number of under-qualified students who will make the top schools because of their so-called athletic abilities. Athletes are known to be significantly preferred over other students who exhibit the same proficiency in other extracurricular activities, such as debates, drama, or music.

According to NACAC, more than 8 million high school students play a school sport. But of that group, less than one percent will go on to play sports at the collegiate level. And even fewer of those will ultimately go pro.  So unless your teenager is not an athlete angling for an athletic scholarship, nothing about college admissions has really changed. Basic college admission factors such as grades, strength of high school courses (AP/IB, Dual Credit, Honors), SAT/ACT scores, college essays, class rank, extracurricular activities, teacher and counselor recommendations, demonstrated interest in the schools that you wish to attend - are fundamentally the same as they were before the scam.

Our takeaway

The basic rules for obtaining admission to the top colleges have not changed.  The scam - and the intense social media attention that it generated - has shone a spotlight on corrupt admissions practices and this should help clean up the system a bit.

Meanwhile established practices which many consider unfair, such as legacy admissions (when you're given bonus points during application evaluation because a sibling or family member attended the same school) and athletic preferences will continue.

A Note About Rao Advisors Premium Services
Our promise is to empower you with high-quality, ethical and free advice via this website.  But parents and students often ask us if they can engage with us for individual counseling sessions.

Individual counseling is part of the Premium Offering of Rao Advisors and involves a fee.  Please contact us for more information.

Have you fine-tuned your teenager's high school course roadmap?

 

 

Our 4-year Roadmap. Image: Rao Advisors

 By Rajkamal Rao  

If you're the parent of a teenager, you're probably having debates at the kitchen table about what courses he or she is signing up for next Fall. You're frustrated that you don't seem to get the required help from your school's guidance counselor. You're anxious that your child is not thinking far ahead to college and are unsure if the right course selections have been made.

Please don't worry! This scene is playing out in homes all over the United States. We know because these families come to us for help. [To check out our Google reviews, please click here].

High school course planning takes extensive thought and deliberation. It has to fit the exact needs of each student. A one-size-fits-all approach, which high school counseling teams often engage in, is never optimal. Course selection and other activity decisions made now will impact college selections and admissions in a profound manner.



Our 4-year roadmap tool considers the following factors to optimize your student's high school experience:

1. Your school district's policies, resources, and opportunities. Here is a summary of the graduation and grading policies of several Texas school districts.
   
2. Favorite topics in school (we conduct the RIASEC test for younger students to determine interest)
   
3. Intended major in college
   
4. Course selections in school during the school year
5. Course selections for convenience (for example, completing the mandatory Health Credit in the summer)
6. Career and Technology Education (CTE) courses.
7. Course selections for acceleration (for example, taking Algebra II in the summer)
8. Extracurricular activities
9. Summer programs & internships
10. Community service and volunteering
11. SAT/ACT/PSAT-11/NMSQT prep
    
12. Additional information (TAMS/IB/Magnet)

When you come to us, we try and understand your child's interests and goals after high school. Most students come to us with the intent of attending college. But some want to work after high school, or pursue vocational, trade, or technical school - and for such students, public schools offer an impressive menu of Career and Technology Education (CTE) courses. 

CTE courses are also appropriate for some students who want to pursue specialized college programs, such as BSMD. These students take several so-called "Health Sciences" track courses that demonstrate to BSMD colleges that they are committed to pursuing a public health career. In general, however, students bound for college should avoid taking CTE courses because the classes are not taught with the same rigor as advanced or dual-credit or IB or Advanced Placement courses.

We recommend a detailed year-by-year roadmap broken into three sections: Activities during the summer leading to the school year; activities during the school year (in school); and activities during the school year (after school).

We consider every minute detail during our course planning session, with one goal in mind: How to maximize the weighted average GPA and therefore, improve a student's class rank. Are there courses which a child should take for CBE (credit by exam) so that a slot opens up for a more advanced course during the school year? Should a student take a summer online course either at the district's virtual school (e-school) or at UT High School? When does the child prepare for admissions tests (SAT, ACT)? How do you maximize your chances of doing well on the PSAT-11?

[In Texas, no prior counselor permission is required to take an online course from UT High School or another approved TEA provider. Please see section 74.23 under the TEA rules. Some school districts limit the number of online courses by grade, so check with your district - but taking one course is always permitted.

But just because state law requires school districts to accept coursework done online or at another school, the law is vague on forcing school districts into accepting grades earned elsewhere and incorporating them into the school district's student academic record. For example, at Plano ISD, grades earned even in courses taken in its own eSchool are not used in computing a student's weighted average GPA and hence, class rank. Such courses appear in a student's transcript as "neutral," meaning like a "Pass/Fail" course. It is PISD's thinking that the purpose of such courses is only to get the student to complete a prerequisite course for topic acceleration (such as taking Algebra I in the summer to take Geometry I in the Fall) or complete a required course to fulfill state graduation requirements (such as Health).

As a general rule, check with your school counselor once before registering elsewhere as district policies keep changing].

Most importantly, our detailed proprietary customized roadmap tool helps free up a student's time so that there is sufficient school-life balance. Each family receives our popular, proprietary 280-page guide to elite college admissions which is the content source for our public appearances, books, and flagship online courses.  Families will also have free access to this website along with regular updates on our Facebook page. All client families get membership to our growing WhatsApp group community.

With a roadmap, you can project-manage your child's high school years limiting the need to come to us frequently. [We recommend a 1-hour discussion once each school year to make sure the roadmap is still working, and fine-tune it as needed].

We're changing the way families help their children succeed in high school. If you still have questions, please contact us - we promise you will not be disappointed.

A Note About Rao Advisors Premium Services
Our promise is to empower you with high-quality, ethical and free advice via this website.  But parents and students often ask us if they can engage with us for individual counseling sessions.

Individual counseling is part of the Premium Offering of Rao Advisors and involves a fee.  Please contact us for more information.

How to interpret PSAT-11 scores for National Merit Scholarships

How to interpret PSAT-11 scores for National Merit Scholarships By Rajkamal Rao Image Courtesy: Rao Advisors LLC If you're a rising 11th grader or a parent of a rising 11th grader who is about to take the PSAT/NMSQT, this post is a must-read! It is also a must-read for students who have already taken the PSAT-11 test. If you are interested to know more about the financial benefits of becoming a National Merit Scholar, read our separate post here. There's a lot of confusion about what exactly the PSAT is. For starters, it's the Preparatory SAT, so it gives students a chance to test-drive the actual SAT with a look and feel that's identical. The exam environment, the proctoring of the test, the questions, answer choices, the balancing of the degrees of difficulty across various questions, the sections, the scoring, the reporting - every aspect of the larger SAT is replicated on the PSAT with great care. The PSAT tests skills in reading, comprehension and math using questions in Science, History/Social Studies, Expression of Ideas, Standard English Conventions, Algebra, Problem Solving, Data Analysis and Advanced Math - skills that high school students learn throughout their careers. It is refreshing to note that at least one nationalized organization recognizes these skills in our teenagers. There are some important differences between the two tests. The SAT is on an 800 scale but the PSAT is on a 760 scale. The SAT's essay is optional; the PSAT has no essay. The PSAT in many ways is a lot more important to school districts than it is to students. Just like the STAAR test is an indicator of a district's performance in demonstrating that children have learned basic math and reading skills, the PSAT is a test which school districts covet because it allows them to brag about how well-prepared their students are to pursue college. After all, SAT (or ACT) scores are still needed at most colleges, so a good PSAT score is evidence of a likely good future SAT/ACT score, which means you're likely a good candidate for college. At least, this is the theory. To the 9th and 10th grade student, other than the "test-drive" features of the test, the PSAT score is not of much consequence. The PSAT score cannot be used in college admissions. Every student is mandated to take the test, so there's no differentiation that one student can claim over another. The PSAT Recruitment For the 11th grader, a good PSAT score can mean significant advantages in the college admissions process for elite universities. Although long known among professional counselors, the recent Harvard case threw additional light on how elite colleges use the PSAT. Students with high PSAT scores are sent "Recruitment" letters which are invitations to students to apply. According to the New York Times, in the fall of 2013, white and Asian-American men had to have scored at least 1380 on the SAT (converted from the equivalent on the PSAT), and black students and other underrepresented minorities had to have scored at least 1100. The PSAT score is the first "academic" factor that Harvard looks at in a long line of factors by priority - Athlete (A); Legacy (L); Director’s List (D) (Royal child); Children of faculty (C); Sparse country; PSAT invite. The ALDC students form 30% of all freshmen admits. What is remarkable is that 60% percent of admitted freshmen received a recruitment letter - which means that doing well on the PSAT is almost a prerequisite to be considered for admission. Either one must be an ALDC student or must have received a PSAT invite letter. These two groups form 90% of the admitted freshmen class. Most elite schools follow admission policies that are close to Harvard's. Yale, Stanford, Princeton, and Columbia also send out recruitment letters to high PSAT scorers. The NMSQT Scholarships The PSAT-11 test also serves as the NMSQT and assumes enormous significance, more important than the SAT/ACT. Nearly 1.6 million 11th grade students took the PSAT in 2018. Only 16,000 high scorers, about 1% of the total, qualified for the NMS Semifinalist recognition. While the NMS Semifinalist determination is based only on the Selection Index Score (SIS), the Finalist and Scholar recognition are through further filtration. About 15,000 were classified as NMS Finalists based on other academic accomplishments, including class rank and GPA, and extracurricular activities/leadership and principal recommendations. NMS Finalist Award Letter, Courtesy: NMS Corporation. And about 8,000 will qualify for the NMS Scholar recognition, about 0.5% of the total. How SIS Scores Are Calculated The National Merit Scholarship Corporation piggy-backs on the exhaustive/expansive testing infrastructure of the College Board to use the same PSAT-11 scores to determine its awardees. The NMSC is a non-profit that lobbies thousands of private companies to dole out merit scholarships to merit-worthy students. The SIS, which the NMSC generates, weights a student's "Reading and Writing" skills as 67% important whereas Math skills are rated as only 33% important. A future NMSC could change the SIS computation to make the two sections equally weighty, or even switch the weights given the world's gravitation to STEM fields. But for 23 years, the non-profit has stayed with its current bias towards reading and writing. Suppose a student has a PSAT score of 1480, broken down into 730 on the "Reading and Writing" section and 750 on the Math test. The SIS is calculated as [730+730+750]/10 = 221. In Texas, the National Merit Scholar Semifinalist cutoff for the freshman college class of 2020 (students who took the PSAT-11 in 2018) was 221. The bias in the SIS computation can mean that two students with identical PSAT scores could see different NMSC outcomes. Suppose a different student had a 720 in Reading and a perfect 760 in Math. Her PSAT is 1480, just as the student above. But the SIS would be calculated as [720+720+760]/10 = 220. In Texas, this student would fail to qualify for the NMS. The ranking of the Semifinalist winners is not performed nationwide but within each state. So, while a Texas student with a 221 SIS made the cutoff for the 2018 NMS awards, he would have failed to make it in California where the cutoff was 223. In Arkansas, the cutoff for the same year was 204. <!-- replace with your text END-->

By Rajkamal Rao  

Image Courtesy: Rao Advisors LLC

If you're a rising 11th grader or a parent of a rising 11th grader who is about to take the PSAT/NMSQT, this post is a must-read! It is also a must-read for students who have already taken the PSAT-11 test. If you are interested to know more about the financial benefits of becoming a National Merit Scholar, read our separate post here.

There's a lot of confusion about what exactly the PSAT is. For starters, it's the Preparatory SAT, so it gives students a chance to test-drive the actual SAT with a look and feel that's identical. The exam environment, the proctoring of the test, the questions, answer choices, the balancing of the degrees of difficulty across various questions, the sections, the scoring, the reporting - every aspect of the larger SAT is replicated on the PSAT with great care.

The PSAT tests skills in reading, comprehension and math using questions in Science, History/Social Studies, Expression of Ideas, Standard English Conventions, Algebra, Problem Solving, Data Analysis and Advanced Math - skills that high school students learn throughout their careers. It is refreshing to note that at least one nationalized organization recognizes these skills in our teenagers.

There are some important differences between the two tests. The SAT is on an 800 scale but the PSAT is on a 760 scale. The SAT's essay is optional; the PSAT has no essay.

The PSAT in many ways is a lot more important to school districts than it is to students. Just like the STAAR test is an indicator of a district's performance in demonstrating that children have learned basic math and reading skills, the PSAT is a test which school districts covet because it allows them to brag about how well-prepared their students are to pursue college. After all, SAT (or ACT) scores are still needed at most colleges, so a good PSAT score is evidence of a likely good future SAT/ACT score, which means you're likely a good candidate for college. At least, this is the theory.

To the 9th and 10th grade student, other than the "test-drive" features of the test, the PSAT score is not of much consequence. The PSAT score cannot be used in college admissions. Every student is mandated to take the test, so there's no differentiation that one student can claim over another.

If you're a PSAT student who will complete your high school diploma in the United States, your citizenship or Green Card status should not matter. Students on dependent visas (H-4, L-2) can qualify for NMSQT awards. But if you're living abroad, you can only qualify for NMSQT awards if you are a US Citizen or Green Card holder.

The PSAT Recruitment

For the 11th grader, a good PSAT score can mean significant advantages in the college admissions process for elite universities. Although long known among professional counselors, the recent Harvard case threw additional light on how elite colleges use the PSAT. Students with high PSAT scores are sent "Recruitment" letters which are invitations to students to apply. According to the New York Times, in the fall of 2013, white and Asian-American men had to have scored at least 1380 on the SAT (converted from the equivalent on the PSAT), and black students and other underrepresented minorities had to have scored at least 1100.

The PSAT score is the first "academic" factor that Harvard looks at in a long line of factors by priority - Athlete (A); Legacy (L); Director’s List (D) (Royal child); Children of faculty (C); Sparse country; PSAT invite. The ALDC students form 30% of all freshmen admits. 

Harvard's PSAT Recruitment Letter

What is remarkable is that 60% percent of admitted freshmen received a recruitment letter - which means that doing well on the PSAT is almost a prerequisite to be considered for admission. Either one must be an ALDC student or must have received a PSAT invite letter. These two groups form 90% of the admitted freshmen class.

Most elite schools follow admission policies that are close to Harvard's. Yale, Stanford, Princeton, and Columbia also send out recruitment letters to high PSAT scorers.


The NMSQT Scholarships

The PSAT-11 test also serves as the NMSQT and assumes enormous significance, more important than the SAT/ACT.

Nearly 1.6 million 11th grade students took the PSAT in 2018. Only 16,000 high scorers, about 1% of the total, qualified for the NMS Semifinalist recognition.  While the NMS Semifinalist determination is based only on the Selection Index Score (SIS), the Finalist and Scholar recognition are through further filtration. 

About 15,000 were classified as NMS Finalists based on other academic accomplishments, including class rank and GPA, and extracurricular activities/leadership and principal recommendations.

NMS Finalist Award Letter, Courtesy: NMS Corporation.

And about 8,000 will qualify for the NMS Scholar recognition, about 0.5% of the total.

How SIS Scores Are Calculated

The National Merit Scholarship Corporation piggy-backs on the exhaustive/expansive testing infrastructure of the College Board to use the same PSAT-11 scores to determine its awardees. The NMSC is a non-profit that lobbies thousands of private companies to dole out merit scholarships to merit-worthy students.

The SIS, which the NMSC generates, weights a student's "Reading and Writing" skills as 67% important whereas Math skills are rated as only 33% important. A future NMSC could change the SIS computation to make the two sections equally weighty, or even switch the weights given the world's gravitation to STEM fields. But for 23 years, the non-profit has stayed with its current bias towards reading and writing.

Suppose a student has a PSAT score of 1480, broken down into 730 on the "Reading and Writing" section and 750 on the Math test. The SIS is calculated as [730+730+750]/10 = 221. In Texas, the National Merit Scholar Semifinalist cutoff for the freshman college class of 2020 (students who took the PSAT-11 in 2018) was 221.

The bias in the SIS computation can mean that two students with identical PSAT scores could see different NMSC outcomes.

Suppose a different student had a 720 in Reading and a perfect 760 in Math. Her PSAT is 1480, just as the student above. But the SIS would be calculated as [720+720+760]/10 = 220. In Texas, this student would fail to qualify for the NMS.

The ranking of the Semifinalist winners is not performed nationwide but within each state. So, while a Texas student with a 221 SIS made the cutoff for the 2018 NMS awards, he would have failed to make it in California where the cutoff was 223. In Arkansas, the cutoff for the same year was 204.

A Note About Rao Advisors Premium Services
Our promise is to empower you with high-quality, ethical and free advice via this website.  But parents and students often ask us if they can engage with us for individual counseling sessions.

Individual counseling is part of the Premium Offering of Rao Advisors and involves a fee.  Please  contact us for more information.

Rice University: Campus Visit Observations

By Rajkamal Rao  

Image Credit: Rao Advisors LLC

In 2018, we went to Rice University in Houston for a campus visit. Our verdict? It's a world-class school that must be on your shortlist.

All You Need To Know About Rice

The best way to visit Rice is to register in advance and choose any classes you want to take as a guest. Rice is generous in letting you sit in on as many classes your teenager is willing to take.

Rice is smack in the middle of downtown Houston. The neighborhood around Rice isn't the best in terms of street infrastructure and shops, but once you get in to the campus, beauty takes over. For a full set of pictures (including a few shots of a live dorm room) visit our Facebook page.

Parking is $12 a day in the visitor lots. Check-in is easy at Lovett Hall. Campus tours are offered at 11 AM and 3 PM, so if you arrive early, you're on your own to explore. If your child wants to take a class, ask for a campus map and proceed right to the classroom.

While teenagers are in class, parents can sip a coffee at the FLO (French-styled cafeteria) where you can buy your favorite drink at prices double than that at Starbucks!

Our campus tour started at 3 PM with a student guide. Class rooms are relatively small and resemble a large conference room in an office. The library is small too and is of the size of a city public library.  While the campus is large, nearly 300 acres, everything in it is relatively small. This, in fact, is Rice's appeal.

The university admits only about a 1,000 freshmen each year. There are only 4,000 undergrad students from all four years. (Compare this to UT Austin which has 42,000 undergrad students!).

There are 11 residence halls, about 350 students reside in each. Each hall as its own Magister (a Professor with family) to oversee it. There is also a Research Assistant family in residence. Food is served in the servery attached to each hall. Menu options are varied. When you pay your annual fee for tuition, room and board, meal plans at the servery is what you are paying for. Each student gets three chances a day to eat, via an electronic card.

The idea of these residence colleges comes from Cambridge, Oxford, Yale, and Princeton. Students feel an identity first to their residence college, then to Rice and then on to the world. Friendships are made in the residence colleges because this is where you eat, sleep and live. Intramural sports are often competitions between residence colleges. For overprotective parents worried about how their teenagers will adapt to an independent life, residence halls are a great way to transition the change.

Why Small is Good At Rice

Returning to the concept of small, Rice is known for extremely small class sizes. Faculty-student ratio is about 1:6, what you may get at a private tutor! Almost all classes are taught by professors. You can imagine the intellectual intensity if you're surrounded by 6 or 7 bright students overseen by a sage-like professor teaching you.

The "speed" at which Rice students learn is therefore incredibly fast. Each student wants to outdo the other, so the rigor is high. Slackers are advised not to consider Rice at all.

We spoke with Dr. Jason Hafner, a veteran Chemistry professor who earned his Master's and Ph.D.s at Rice, completed his postdoc research at Harvard and returned to Rice to teach. He told us that Rice is a very high performing, high-intensity environment which attracts motivated students who want to go the extra mile. He was recounting how most Rice undergrads easily gain admission to elite schools such as Stanford, MIT, Caltech, and Harvard for their graduate degrees. And how, because of Rice's rigor, they stand apart at these schools.

So, if your plan is to study further at a top school, Rice, itself ranked within the top 20, is a great stepping stone.

Rice, because of its small class sizes, fosters a strong bond between academics and students. Because each Rice professor is into research, there are numerous opportunities for undergraduate students to participate in research and obtain internships through referrals from Rice faculty.

Getting a job after graduation is easy. Houston is a big city.  Rice has important partnerships with the big Houston corporations and the MD Anderson Medical Center.

Our takeaway

Rice is an elite institution, which at just 11% selectivity, is more difficult to get into than some of the Ivy Leagues. With a change in their financial aid/scholarship plans beginning this year, even more students will apply next year for the same 1,000 spots making Rice even more selective.

It's a great school and should be on your shortlist.

A Note About Rao Advisors Premium Services
Our promise is to empower you with high-quality, ethical and free advice via this website.  But parents and students often ask us if they can engage with us for individual counseling sessions.

Individual counseling is part of the Premium Offering of Rao Advisors and involves a fee.  Please  contact us for more information.

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Now, This is Truly a World-Class Extracurricular Activity

By Rajkamal Rao  

With Mason Andrews, World-Record Holder for Youngest Solo Pilot to Circumnavigate the Globe. Image Credit: Rao Advisors LLC.

Extracurricular activities have come to define what college admissions officials say they look for in a high school student when they conduct a "Holistic Profile" evaluation.  For more on this, please read our blog post from Sep 2018.

On Oct 4,  I was privileged to meet Mason Andrews, who is all of 18 years and 4 months old!  His claim to fame is that he will shortly enter the Guinness book of World Records for the youngest solo flight around the world in a single-engine plane.  And for the youngest person to fly solo across the Atlantic and the Pacific.

Mason's Dual Extra Curricular Activities

To be fair, he was not a high school student when he completed the adventure, although, he was one when he started planning the trip.

Mason's interests in flying started about 5 years ago.  When he was 13, he went to Europe on a family vacation.  He took a paragliding flight and fell in love with it.  By the time he was 14, he already had a paragliding license.

Back in Monroe, Louisiana, he started practicing flying on a simulator at home.  And he began flying with his dad in his Piper single engine 6-seater aircraft racking up nearly 300 flight hours in just a few years.

When he was 15, he learned of an organization called Medcamps which helps children who are mentally or physically disabled attend summer camp.  He began to volunteer there even as he continued to pursue flying as a hobby.

When he was 17, he had already earned all FAA certifications including those coveted instrument ratings.  This is when he dreamed up a plan to take his Piper around the world to raise awareness and funds for the Medcamps charity.  He had to have his plane modified by having extra fuel tanks installed in the place of two rear seats.  This extended his range to 11 hours of flying.  Remember, Piper planes don't go that fast, nor do they fly so high.

His adventure took a little over 2 months and nineteen stops.  He told me he spent 180 hours flying his plane.  I asked him about his scariest experience.  When flying over the Bay of Bengal from India's southern coast to Malaysia, he got hit by hailstorms so strong that the ice chipped away parts of the elevator on his wings.

He also said that while he was flying between mountains in Siberia, things got so cold that he had to drop to 4,000 ft just so that he could keep relatively warm.  These are unbelievable experiences for anyone, let alone for a young man.

Our Takeaways

Mason has demonstrated several attributes - a commitment and passion to flying, leadership (promoting a charity while simultaneously doing what he loves) and not only caring for those who are not as lucky as the rest of us but doing something about it (by raising awareness and tens of thousands of dollars in funds).  Medcamps would probably have never gotten so much TV and print news coverage around the world were it not for Mason.  He even had the Medcamps logo emblazoned on his plane.

Mason's Piper at the Executive Airport in Dallas, TX. Image Credit: Rao Advisors LLC

Mason could probably have gained admission to all 8 Ivy League schools and performed the "Ivy Sweep".   Instead, he enrolled in Louisiana Tech where he will earn a degree related to flying.

This is what extracurricular activities are all about.

A Note About Rao Advisors Premium Services
Our promise is to empower you with high-quality, ethical and free advice via this website.  But parents and students often ask us if they can engage with us for individual counseling sessions.

Individual counseling is part of the Premium Offering of Rao Advisors and involves a fee.  Please  contact us for more information.

Go back to "Rao Advisors - Home".