​Colorado State offers comprehensive support services through OPS, Opportunities for Post Secondary Success. OPS costs $3000 per semester, but it can be funded by the Department of Vocational Rehabilitation. OPS works to implement compensatory strategies to help students with learning differences succeed. The transition to college and the transition to employment following college are two areas of focus. According to Julie Kothe, the Director of OPS, self-advocacy is the key to post secondary success, and the program works closely with students to develop this skill. Every aspect of a student's college experience is considered and addressed, for example, OPS offers an early move-in program to help students with learning differences adjust. Students meet with their advisors at OPS twice a week for about an hour or an hour and a half. OPS offers a social skills curriculum and works to develop study skills. This is a wonderful and well-established program, a great asset at one of my favorite universities!

Study: Early Classes Connected to Poor Academic Performance
Safia Abdulahi
February 22, 2023
​A new study found that early-morning classes are associated with “lower attendance, shorter sleep, and poorer academic achievement” among college students.
The study, published Monday in Nature Human Behavior, analyzed university students’ digital traces. Wi-Fi connection logs of 23,391 students revealed that class attendance was about 10 percentage points lower for classes at 8 a.m. compared with later start times, according to the study.
The study also analyzed the grades of 33,818 students and the number of days per week that a student had morning classes and found that morning classes negatively correlated with their grade point average.
“Growing evidence indicates that early class start times can be detrimental for students’ sleep and daytime functioning,” the study says.
A similar study published last week in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences found that every additional hour of average nightly sleep early in the semester is associated with an 0.07-point increase in end-of-term grade point average.

I like to think of admissions as a 100 point process. 70-80% of those points will come from a student's GPA. Next comes rigor, is the student challenging themselves in the context of what is available at the high school? Is the student finding avenues of enrichment outside of high school? Selective colleges want students who proactively seek knowledge and experiences, not students who wait for things to be assigned. There is no one thing that gets a student into college, it is the entirety of the student's record during the four years of high school that determines admission. When a parent claims, as was recently reported to me, that attending Berkeley's ADTP got his son into Cal Poly, there is a nugget of truth to the claim. ADTP classes can be reported on the Cal State application, so an A in a class does help the overall GPA. Did this one class outweigh the other elements in the application? No. Another piece of anecdotal information frequently passed on is the student who got into Stanford with a 3.9 and nothing special about them. DOESN'T HAPPEN: YOU JUST DON'T KNOW THE FULL STORY. Also,D3 schools do not give athletic scholarships, so please don't tell me that your daughter just got one. 
There actually is some fairness to admissions, and I find solace in that fact. Students who do their best are admitted to colleges where they can thrive and succeed. That may be Boise State or it may be Harvard. I've met successful adults from both schools, and some not so-successful ones as well. It's not where you go, it's what you do with it. 

11 Ways to Appeal for More Financial Aid or Merit Aid

An effective way to reduce the cost of college is to know how to successfully appeal for more financial aid.
It’s critical to understand that the first financial aid award that a college delivers often doesn’t have to be the only offer. This is especially true since the enrollment management arms of many colleges use sophisticated algorithms in the hopes of answering this question:
What is the smallest amount of a financial aid or merit award that we can offer a student that the family would accept.
How to successfully appeal for more financial aidHere are 11 things you should consider when appealing an award:
1. You don’t have to have a good reason to appeal.Conventional wisdom suggests that you have to possess a solid financial reason to successfully appeal a college award. Those traditional reasons include:
• Loss of a job or hours reduction which may or may not be caused by the pandemic.
• Death of a parent.
• Need to support family members such as elderly parents.
• Change of marital status.
• Expensive medical bills.
Parents who face these financial challenges should definitely appeal a disappointing award, but many, many schools will entertain appeals without a solid financial reason.
You also don’t have to have a good reason to ask for a better merit award!
2. Chances of a successful financial aid  or merit award appeal will improve if the college needs more students.
Chances of success with an appeal for more need-based  or merit aid can depend on how the college is faring with its freshmen deposits. If the freshmen deposits are coming in too slow, a college can be much more willing to sweeten an offer.
In fact, some schools will make up a new scholarship and tell accepted student that the admission office just “discovered” that the teenager was also eligible for an additional scholarship.
A former president of a Midwestern University once told me that his college would routinely give an accepted student an extra $2,000 or $3,000 a year if it looked like this would seal the deal. He recalled one instance when the school gave a child an extra $2,000 a year when the parent said the teenager’s aunt was an alum.
This behavior is especially true when applying to colleges and universities that must work harder to attract students. Schools in that category would include those that wish their U.S. News & World Report rankings were higher and their acceptance rate was lower. This describes most schools!
See the following post of mine that discusses money implications for reach, target and safety schools.
Reach, target and safety schools. Don’t slip when creating a smart college list
3. How desirable is the student?Whether a university will hike the amount of need-based financial aid or boost a merit scholarship can depend on how much the school wants a student. A college will be more likely to spurn an appeal if an accepted applicant was on the bubble in terms of admission.
4. Be careful when you negotiate.While negotiating for a better award, parents don’t want to antagonize the admission staffers by using the word negotiate. Parents also don’t want to come on strong. Remember, admission staffers have the power to dispense better awards. Treat them as gingerly as a police officer who is on the verge of writing you a ticket.
5. Appealing for merit aid won’t always work.Sometimes parents are surprised when their smart children get into elite schools, but don’t receive a merit award. As I’ve discussed previously in my blog and my course, The College Cost Lab, eite universities typically give little or no merit scholarships. They don’t have to since the parents of rich students are willing to pay full price for brand names.
If your child got into an Ivy League school, for instance, there would be no point in appealing for a merit award because these institutions don’t provide them.
6. You can appeal after the deposit deadline.Schools don’t like to admit this, but some of them continue to market to students even after the official admission season is over. Parents might be able to obtain a better price from a school that is forced to continue recruiting students into the late spring and summer. Many colleges are recruiting into the summer which makes the traditional May 1 deposit deadline a quaint artifact.
7. Ask about how your home equity impacts your award.Most colleges don’t include home equity in their aid calculations, but the majority of institutions that use the CSS Profile do. Parents can appeal the school’s use of their home equity and at the very least ask the college to limit its impact.
8. Back up your appeal with details.Parents should be as detailed as possible when requesting greater awards. If a household has high medical bills, for instance, offer to show copies. If hours have been cut, provide a letter from the employer that backs up the statement.
9. Share competing offers.If a teenager has better offers from schools, show them to the college the child wants to attend. Ask in advance if this would matter and find out who to scan the offers to.
I had a friend do this when her teenager’s No. 1 choice—California Lutheran University—made an offer that was lower than the other universities that included Linfield College, Dominican University and University of the Pacific. She shared the other awards with Cal Lutheran and the university matched the best award.
10. Be proactive.If the financial aid application won’t adequately represent your financial situation, you should speak up before receiving an award. Contact the school after your child has applied, but before you receive the award. Some advisors recommend withholding this information until a financial package is given, but I disagree. I think it’s better to present the extenuating circumstances upfront when there are more financial aid dollars in a college’s kitty.
11. Use TuitionFit.When looking at award letters, definitely check out TuitionFit. TuitionFit is an invaluable tool  that has helped thousands of parents and teenagers decide whether individual awards are the best possible and, if desired, quickly recalibrate their college search for better financial fits.
TuitionFit lets you see what kind of awards high school seniors are receiving this year from schools your child applied to and also what kind of awards students, with similar academic and financial backgrounds are getting.



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