January Rant from the College Guy – the “Follow Letter”

First things first – the College Guy has a new email address: gcanter465@gmail.com. Due to an unexpected glitch with my Spectrum Cable and Internet provider my gcanter1@maine.rr.com email address no longer is receiving incoming mail. If you’ve tried sending something to me in the past month I have not received or seen it.

Please make this change in your address book or contacts list so future emails will get to me.

I used that Roadrunner address for 25 years – I was an original Time Warner customer and remember well my introduction to email after learning about it from a homeless teen in the Portland Public Library. He set me up with my first hotmail account back in 1995 (no kidding!), after which I signed up for the newly introduced TW Roadrunner. All things must pass.

For those of you have sent all your applications in to your colleges and are now playing the waiting game, congratulations and nice job! For those of you who have not gotten all your applications out yet – not to worry (unless you were planning on applying to a college with a January 1 or 15 deadline – then you’ve got tsouris). For many schools you’ve still got time to apply, but what the heck is holding you up? If you need some help getting organized and getting things done, give me a holler by phone or email. I’m happy to read and comment on essays, review your list of schools and answer questions you may have regarding the application process.

This email explains and elaborates on my idea of sending a “follow letter package” with supporting items to each of the colleges you’re still waiting to hear from. This is neither a required nor a commonplace thing to do, but I think it’s a smart and potentially helpful move which could increase your chances of getting accepted, and perhaps even being awarded merit money from the colleges who offer it.

Before jumping in to the follow package, here are four quick and important reminders:

1. Confirm that all your sent applications have been received in their entirety at each of your schools, and set up your student “portals” for each one
2. PARENTS: Make sure you’ve completed and filed all required financial aid forms, and don’t forget to add any additional schools where your student has applied lately to the FAFSA (and, if required, the CSS PROFILE)
3. ACKNOWLEDGE the acceptances you’ve received so far, and show some humility, gratitude and appreciation even if you’re waiting on decisions from some more prestigious schools.
4. Make sure you’ve properly notified your guidance office to send your mid-year grade reports

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1. If you’ve applied and have not received confirmation that your application materials have been received from each college within two weeks after applying, CALL THE ADMISSIONS OFFICE AND ASK THEM. Be nice and polite, but DO THIS! Things can get misplaced or misfiled – happens all the time. And most schools won’t begin reviewing your application until it’s complete.

If you call you should ask specifically whether the following things have been received:

– your high school materials (transcript, counselor’s letter and school report).

– your application and supplemental materials.

– SAT (and/or ACT) scores. Some schools will accept them if they’re on your official transcript; others require that they be sent by the testing agency – you can inquire about this.

– Letters of recommendation from each of the persons you asked to send them.

Only make this call after waiting two weeks from when you applied, by which time you will hopefully have gotten email or postal or on-line confirmation. If you do get notified that something is missing don’t panic, but deal with it immediately with a phone call, and if necessary bring it to your guidance counselor and get him/her involved. Chances are the missing items are hung up in the college’s intake system and will turn up, but the safest thing is to offer to fax them duplicate copies. Your guidance office will do this for you.

Each school should send you instructions to set up an online account (or “portal”) with a special ID user name and password. DO THIS! And make sure you regularly check in on each of your portals for status of your application and other possible “to do” lists.

If anyone runs in to a gnarly problem with any of the above give me a holler and I’ll help you solve it.

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2. All families who plan to apply for financial aid should have completed the 2020/21 FAFSA at this time. In addition to this form some schools require an additional form, either the CSS PROFILE or their own institutional form. To find out whether a school requires such an additional form (they ALL require the FAFSA), go to their web site and look under ‘admissions’ and find a link to ‘financial aid’, and read the instructions about how to apply.

Each of these forms ask for a family’s 2018 tax numbers, which you completed last winter or spring. Easiest way to report them on FAFSA is to use the IRS data retrieval tool.

Also note that schools which require the CSS PROFILE usually are going to require you to send or upload parent and student tax forms and W-2 forms – follow instructions to complete the “IDOC” if asked for.

Parents, if you aren’t crystal clear on what I’m talking about here or if you feel like you need help with this process, give me a call at the phone number below for instructions and support.

This stuff isn’t hard. Annoying, yes, but not difficult!

3. Many of you have already received acceptances from colleges where you applied early decision or early action (or via “Rolling” admissions) and hopefully you’ve all let me know that and I’ve offered you my sincere congratulations. Remember you have until May 1 to make your final decision so there’s no rush (unless you applied ED and got in, in which case you’re committed to attend UNLESS the financial aid package you received is not satisfactory to meet your needs – definitely contact me if you find yourself in this situation!). I’ll be happy to chat with you over the coming weeks/months about your options and how to go about making your final decisions.

For those of you who have been accepted to a college (or several) already, I think it’s a good idea to send a quick “thank you, I’m grateful and excited!” email to them. Address it to the person who signed your admissions letter and cc it to any other contacts you may have made along the way. Write something like this:

(Make the subject line read “A message from Accepted Student Derek  Jeter, student ID # xxxxxxx)

“Hi, I’m Derek Jeter from Portland, Maine and I’ve recently received my acceptance letter from ________. I’m writing to tell you how excited I am and (if you were offered a merit scholarship add) also how grateful I am to receive your generous offer of a University Achievement Grant for $______ per year (specify the name and amount of the award they gave you).

Please know that as I await word from the remaining schools I’ve applied to, ___________ is a school I’m very seriously considering and is high on my list of options.

Thanks so much for your confidence in me.

Sincerely, DJ

Writing this email is just plain smart, courteous, and good karma. Ya dig?

4. All colleges expect and in fact require mid-term grade reports. Your high school guidance office will send them providing you’ve let them know where you’ve applied (either through Naviance if your school uses that, or on a special transcript request form). Check with your guidance office about this particular task.  Those of you who attend schools which operate on a trimester basis won’t have mid-year grade reports, but your school will know what to do.

Okay, the rest of this email is devoted to what I call the “follow letter package”, which I suggest you put together and send at the end of this month to all the schools you’ve applied to and are waiting to hear from. I’ve included an example at the end of this email. Look it over, rework it in your own words, and if it makes sense to you, do it!

Hey, I know you’re busy, but this could be important, so give it your consideration. Read on…

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Now I know there are some of you who are snickering cause you’ve already gotten acceptance letters via early decision or early action from your first choice school, so you can take a hike and not read any further (but remember to write ’em a “thank you” and follow directions about submitting a deposit to reserve your space and any $$$ awards they’ve offered you.)

For the rest of you, I suggest sending a “follow up” letter to the colleges you’re waiting to hear from at the end of the semester. This is a “hi, how-you-doing-thought-I’d-check-in-with-you-and-remind-you-of-what-a-wonderful-person-I-am-and-what-an-injustice-it-would-be-if-you-don’t-accept-me!!” letter.