121: Which Schools Are the Most Generous With Financial Aid? (US Version)

Ethan Sawyer  0:00  
Music.


Hello, friends. This is Ethan Sawyer, aka College Essay Guy. My goal here is to bring more ease, joy and purpose into the college application process. I kind of always want to say porpoise there more porpoises. That's what we need in the college app process. Welcome to the College as a guy podcast, where it's my job to interview some awesome people in the college admissions world and turn their awesome genius and insights into practical, actionable stuff that you can do, whether you're applying to college or helping someone else. So I'm super excited about this episode, and it represents part one of three in a series of incredible resources put together by my beautiful colleagues, Jeff Levy and Jenny Kent, whom you'll meet shortly. So check this out. This first resource, which is the topic of this first podcast that you're about to hear is a spreadsheet. I know that sounds exciting, but stay with me. That provides a list of over 400 colleges, and that's not all, and tells you what their total cost of attendance is, what percentage of financial need they meet and get this, what percentage of students receive merit aid, and what the average merit Aid Award is. So in terms of scholarships, this kind of lays the thing bare. And actually, colleges have really been interested in seeing this, like, who gives how much money and to how many students do they give it? So it's kind of awesome, and I'm so so grateful for to Jeff and Jenny for putting this information together. Now, this podcast is just with Jeff Levy, and it covers financial aid for students who are applying to college in the US and who are from the US. So we call these domestic applicants. Okay, the next episode, and this is just a little teaser covers how much financial aid is given to students applying from outside the US, so international students. And that interview is with Jenny Kent, since that's her specialty. And guess what? Spoiler, they've got a chart for that too. For the third episode, I interview both Jeff and Jenny, and they share with you what I think is the coolest, most exciting resource, which I'll tell you about on that episode, but on this podcast, the one you're about to hear, Jeff and I discuss this really cool resource on which schools are most generous with financial aid. And after he shares with his story, we discuss three huge myths that students and parents have about financial planning for college, why parents should basically ignore the school's sticker price, which schools meet 100% of demonstrated need, and what that means, a tool you can use to help you figure out how much a school might offer you based on how much money you or your parents make. What Jeff believes the biggest problem is with the financial aid process. Why he created this resource in the first place, and most importantly, how you can use this tool, along with a few other resources we'll talk about to decide which school might be right for you. All this and more on this episode, Hello friends, and welcome to the College Essay Guy Podcast. I'm here with a man whom I have admired from a distance for a while, and I told him this when I first met him earlier this year. I said, you know, I went up and I said, You are the Jeff Levy. And he kind of laughed. I think I kind of embarrassed him, but I convinced him to come onto the podcast and share with you this really one of really three rad resources. And we'll share with you what those are in a little bit, just to give a little quick bio on who this dude is, Jeff has gotten a certificate in college counseling from UCLA. He's a professional member of so many organizations. Some of you will have heard of these, and some of you won't. I ECA, NACA, ncag. You can google those to know what those are, or look in the show notes. He's also a certified educational planner, which, if you heard the Steve Antonoff episode, you know, that's legit, and that's super hard to get he teaches counselors. So he's kind of like a counselors counselor, helping counselors do their job better. He teaches at the Summer Training Institute for idca. He's taught at the UC San Diego extension courses. But before that, and I want to, I'm curious to hear a little bit about this. Jeff, he worked as an as a gaffer and cinematographer in dear old Hollywood. Is that right?


Jeff Levy  4:12  
Yeah, I started in New York, and then moved with my very young family at the time to Los Angeles. Wow. Got into the business here. Well,


Ethan Sawyer  4:21  
first of all, thank you. Thanks, Jeff, for you know, being on the podcast, I appreciate your time,


Jeff Levy  4:27  
my pleasure. So


Ethan Sawyer  4:28  
tell me a little bit. I mean, before we even get into the whole deal, like, what did you learn being a gaffer and cinematographer? What did that teach you about life


Jeff Levy  4:40  
that could be a whole other podcast, but there did, I guess the saying it taught me was that there are many, many roads to personal, creative, professional success. Do. Seeing directors and writers and cinematographers and producers all come from a different place, and in many cases, doing very well in the industry, gave me a perspective that there's no one preferred path. Yeah.


Ethan Sawyer  5:18  
So how did you make the transition then, from, you know, this world of the Hollywood world, to the education world and college affordability, well, some


Jeff Levy  5:27  
of these writers decided in oh 708, to strike for higher wages and better working conditions and better terms. And I guess I intellectually was in favor of a lot of their demands, but I found myself as a member of another local, the set lighting local in Hollywood, out of work for for many months, work shut down. And this coincided with my older daughters, I think she was in 10th grade at the time, maybe just going into 11th, and she had done very well in high school, and it was time, and she was starting on her own, to start thinking about college, and I knew absolutely nothing about college, and even less about how to afford it. So I started doing some research, and realized that I loved it a little more than a parent was supposed to love it, and with time on my with time on my hands and a thought in the back of my head that I may need to switch careers, that I wasn't sure I wanted to continue into old age, not knowing when, when my next paycheck would would be. I took a first course at the UCLA Extension program, and it was taught by Angel Perez, who, at the time, was the director of admission at Pitzer. He's now VP of enrollment and Dean of Admissions at Trinity College, and he was completely inspirational. I knew by the middle of that six week course that this was the career I was going to move into, and I kind of haven't turned back. A few years later, I kind of segued out of film and full time into college consulting, but as a as an Epilog that same daughter of mine completed college successfully and is now a working television writer in Hollywood, I guess he was turned out the way they're supposed to turn out right


Ethan Sawyer  7:47  
rep and family one when one levy says the industry at least, and you, I want to pick up on something, you said, you said, you turned out it turned out you loved it way more than you should have. Like, what did you love about it? What did, what did you and what do you love about this, this work.


Jeff Levy  8:08  
I really believe that college can be a transformational time for students. It it was for me, and we're not going to go into that today, but it's so it's it's a time when kids become adults in so many ways and but what we're faced with is a real problem in this country, because we have probably the best system of higher education in the world, but it's also one of the top two or three most expensive. So access becomes a real serious issue for many kids graduating high school. So I just begin, I became very enthusiastic about helping families figure out not just which colleges you know their child should apply to, but or helping students figure out not only what colleges they should apply to, but also helping families figure out how to make it affordable.


Ethan Sawyer  9:16  
Yeah, and what are? What are some of the things that you feel like people get wrong about this process. Are there any Can you bust some I'm a big fan of busting myths. Can you bust some myths for us in terms of paying for college?


Jeff Levy  9:30  
Yeah, one I hear over and over again from some loud and ill informed quote experts is that you shouldn't say for college that that's going to hurt your eligibility for financial aid. And that is so wrong that it's, it's it's dangerous the colleges, it's like some. You don't save to buy your first home. I mean, it just, it makes no sense, right? So, and why


Ethan Sawyer  10:05  
do people say that in the first place? Like, why is that? What's the misunderstanding there? Why is that information out there? Because


Jeff Levy  10:11  
when a family apply the the grain of truth in it, and it's a grain, you know, as opposed to the whole the whole plant. When families apply for financial aid, their income and their assets are looked at, looked at closely in order to determine what it is they are expected to pay toward their child's college education. So yes, if you have savings, a portion of that will reduce your financial aid by a certain amount. That amount is actually quite low, and it becomes much more difficult to afford college if you haven't saved than it is to afford college if you've saved responsibly and over a long period of time, it's just you're in a much better place to afford college if you have saved. Gotcha,


Ethan Sawyer  11:15  
what about what about 529, plans? You know, I've heard that even my daughter's too, but people are already talking about those


Jeff Levy  11:23  
you're you're already panicking about how you absolutely


Ethan Sawyer  11:26  
this is me preparing for my future. Jeff,


Jeff Levy  11:31  
I don't know what's going to be around in 15 or 16 years from now, but right now, 529 plans are a good way to save for college. They're not great. They're not as good as as an IRA is to save for retirement, or 401, K, but there are, I won't get into all the details. Now, there are a few tax advantages to putting money away over time, into a 529, plan. It's, I think it's one of the best ways to save. Okay, great.


Ethan Sawyer  12:12  
What are some other bus some more myths for us. Jeff, what else do people get wrong?


Jeff Levy  12:17  
Well, a really big one that I run into with with parents, is that they look at the sticker price, they see that at some of the most prestigious schools, they're they're private universities, they have a sticker price now of 6570 even $75,000, a year, and the families immediately assume that that's unaffordable. So let's restrict our search to public institutions in state. What's wrong about that way of thinking is that if a family has a moderate to substantial amount of need that they can demonstrate through, you know, through applying for financial aid, the the private institutions with the highest sticker prices are, in Many cases, the most generous with financial aid as well. So you're not paying based on what the price of the school is, as much as you are paying based on what the government and institutions determine you're able to afford. Now they're they, you know, they have a different definition of what's affordable than than any family will have but but the most generous financial aid packages often come from those schools. And I'll just say one more thing in my own case, as I was just beginning to learn the rules of the road about college affordability when my older daughter was still in high school. It turned out that as a good student, she got into some of the top university of California campuses, and she also got into some very selective Ivy League schools, and it cost me, and I was, you know, I was a middle income guy, and of course, everyone defines that differently as well, but I wasn't poor and I wasn't rich. It cost me less out of pocket to send her to Columbia University than it would have to send her to UCLA or Berkeley, literally, it was several $1,000 a year less out of pocket after her financial aid award. So the big lesson is ignore the sticker price and work with someone knowledgeable to figure out what your net price will be. You. For each year of college. Great,


Ethan Sawyer  15:01  
that's really clear. Thank you. What else give us one more. What else do people


Jeff Levy  15:09  
get wrong? There's a pretty widespread misperception that if your kid does really well in high school, they're going to get all kinds of merit aid at most of the colleges. It's important for families to know that the most selective schools in the country, the Ivy's and the like ivies, give zero in merit aid. They are entirely driven by a need based aid model. So if you're a family who is doing fairly well financially, but the but your ability to pay 70 or 75,000 a year per child is not something that you can easily do, and you need some form of financial assistance to help you afford college. The IVs may not be a good choice at all because they give zero in merit aid, you should probably be looking at some of the colleges that are academically very strong, but do offer merit aid as an enrollment tool for high achieving students and other students who meet some of their institutional goals. You


Ethan Sawyer  16:43  
know, as you're talking, I was imagining the parent listening and going, boy, but how do I even know, you know, how much these schools offer in terms of merit aid? And the what popped in my head is like, Wouldn't it be cool if somebody just, like, figured out, you know, how much each of these schools give as an average merited award? And, like, you know, put that all in a document and, you know, release that information. Really,


Jeff Levy  17:04  
really funny that you should bring that up. Ethan, yes. So part of what we, we, we do want to talk about today this podcast is one of the charts that my colleague Jenny Kent and I have been distributing free of charge for the actually, this is the first year we're doing. We've been distributing a number of charts, charts for three years. This was a hard one to pull pull together. This was our first year we we dropped it in August, and what did it's an Excel spreadsheet, and we developed it because we needed this tool at our disposal so that we could advise families knowledgeably. So what this is, is a fairly simple Excel spreadsheet, which you can also access, we'll go into later where to access it, but it's also available as a simple PDF. For those of you who might be a little intimidated by Excel spreadsheets I was, but gradually I'm becoming more used to them. That lists about over about 420 colleges, I believe alphabetically, it gives the total cost of attendance, the sticker price it it gives you the total undergraduate population, and then it gets into what I think is really necessary financial information to be able to evaluate these schools to see if it's if it makes sense financially for for any particular family, one of the columns is percentage of need met. So in other words, Amherst and Barnard and Bates, the top three colleges on the list meet 100% of need. So whatever the FAFSA and the CSS Profile, the other form that is used by many of these schools in determining financial need, whatever the financial need is, they determine you have those colleges and about 60 more will meet 100% of need. So that's very good for families with a substantial amount of need to know the next column is. The next two columns have to do with merit aid, and one of them is the average merit aid award given to students, to undergraduates in the institution. So that's nice. That's very important to know, but by itself, it isn't enough information. So I see here that my chart that I'm looking at Boston College, for example, averages a mere. Award of $21,388 that's a large average marinade award. However, in the column next to it, we learned that 4% of undergraduates receive merit aid at Boston College. So you have to use both of those columns the average size of the award and the percentage of students receiving it as an example of a school where a larger percentage of students receive merit. I'm just scanning down my my same chart, I see Grinnell College, wonderful place, has an average it meets 100% of need, which is great, and it's also very generous with merit aid. It's a school that has a lot of money. Their average merit Aid Award is about 17,057% of their undergraduates are receiving merit aid. So I would call that a school that is quite generous with merit aid. So that's sort of this data, just one last family data all comes from the common data set. The most recent one that is out is 2016 2017 and we've compiled painstakingly, Jenny and I have compiled all of this data which is sortable in the Excel spreadsheet. Tell us,


Ethan Sawyer  21:28  
for folks who don't know what the common data set is, will you just mentioned briefly what that is and and why that's reliable thing. Yeah,


Jeff Levy  21:38  
the common the common data set is a kind of consortium. It's an Institutional Research Consortium of many colleges and universities, but not all who publish all of the important data. I mean pages and pages and pages of stuff, including, what are the important factors in the admission process? Information about transfer applications, just on and on and on everything you'd want to know about, about what's under the hood of a college and it publishes it in a standardized format, so there's no one place to go to see all of the colleges, but you would Google, for example, Grinnell College, common data set, and it would, it would probably be the first result on your Google search, and it's free, and you it's just a really reliable source of data for anything you might want to know. That's


Ethan Sawyer  22:48  
great. And just to give a side note, kind of a footnote to what else the other kind of stuff you can find there. You can also find out, if you just do exactly what Jeff just said, where you Google the name of the school common data set, you'll find out things like, you know, how much does demonstrated interest matter? In other words, you know, does a school care? If you you know, if you've taken, you know, had an interview, if you show up on campus to take a tour, if you've, you know, been in touch with the admissions officer, if you've written a why us essay. So things like that. For some schools matter more than others, and you can find out how much that matters through the common data set and for more, for more on demonstrated interest, you can just listen to that. That's a separate podcast and a separate resource for how to demonstrate interest. So talk to me, Jeff, about why this is such an important thing. You said something really interesting as we were chatting about this, you know, recently where you talked about how this is a pretty big financial decision. Why? What? What's you mentioned? There was something I'm kind of trying to lead you into this. There was something kind of messed up about, like, when we find out about this financial decision,


Jeff Levy  23:55  
the financial aid process is far more opaque than it should be. It's complicated. It's not intuitive, and the biggest single problem with it is that families don't find out until the end of the process, not the beginning of the process, what the net cost is actually going to be to them after financial aid, right? It's like the only large purchase that anyone will ever make that they don't know the price going in, like they only know the price coming out. And the way that timeline looks is, if you're if the student is applying regular decision, as most students do, they will be hearing from the college you know, between middle of March and April 1 about whether they've been admitted. They will, hopefully, along with that acceptance letter, or in a day or two following that, get a separate letter which says, what their financial aid. Ward is, and therefore what the family is going to have to pay? Yeah,


Ethan Sawyer  25:05  
I've always thought of it, yeah, sorry to cut you off. I always thought it was two rounds of acceptance. It's like, first you get this answer, and then you get the second answer,


Jeff Levy  25:14  
congratulations, you've been admitted. And then then the parents say, Dear, you know, we're so sorry, but you're not going. But so that's the that's the beginning of April and May 1 is the last day you can deposit. You know you have to, you have to commit. But so, so families have three, maybe four weeks to make a decision about what will be, in many cases, the most or second most expensive purchase they will ever make. It's crazy. It's


Ethan Sawyer  25:52  
crazy. It's actually, it's actually pretty good sales tactic, though, right? It's, it reminds me of like the you're sitting in the dealership, you know, and they've got you on hold, you know, for like, two hours, saying, Let me talk to my manager. And then they go, Okay, so we've got, you know, here's the price that I can give you. It's a little bit higher than what you wanted, but we got another caller on the line that's ready to take it if you're not.


Jeff Levy  26:14  
So, yeah, exactly. Maybe I'm less cynical than you are. I don't think that's why. I don't think but, but it's a it's a broken system that you know is not really going to get fundamentally fixed in the foreseeable future. So so we hope, Jenny and I hope that this chart will help families, will help counselors and Educational Consultants share with their with their students and families an approximation of what these colleges will actually cost much earlier in the process, so we can build Principal college lists and not put colleges on a student's list that we know are way out of reach financially for a family? Yeah,


Ethan Sawyer  27:10  
I've heard said that there are three dimensions to fit, right? There's what the student wants, there's what the parent can afford and what the College wants, right? So this is like that, that that third dimension, what? So let's get into the practical then. So how do folks use this and what other resources are available to them so that they can find out a little bit sooner than three weeks before the bill is due or the decision needs to be made about, you know, which schools might be in range for them financially.


Jeff Levy  27:36  
All right, so there, this does get a little complicated, but if a family has used some other resources to figure out with some accuracy that their expected family contribution, their EFC is not going to be 70,000 or $60,000 but is more in the range of 10 or 20 or $30,000 per year that they're expected to pay per year, which would align with income in the range of 8090, 100 120,000 a year. That's still a family with substantial need at most colleges because they're 10s of $1,000 away from being able to afford the sticker price of the college. So they if they are able to learn, and we can get into some of the other tools in a moment that where they can learn that, but if they do get this information that they have a moderate to substantial amount of need there. In other words, they're 20 or 30 or $40,000 short of of an EFC that is equal to the sticker price, the $70,000 sticker price of the college. Then they want to look for schools that will be meeting full need or close to full need. So I would, I would get a hold of this chart. I would sort it according to the percent of need met column. And I would look at those 70 or 80 or 90 colleges that are meeting 9095 100% of need. Great. That's one way that families with with some, you know, some amount of financial needs, can narrow down the list of colleges that make sense for


Ethan Sawyer  29:32  
them. Great. And I'm sorry, I'll just jump in and say that for folks listening, if you're Excel phobic and you're not sure how to sort an Excel sheet, don't worry. There'll be a simple step by step in the show notes showing you exactly which buttons to push in order to do, to get the chart to do what Jeff just said it can do. So go ahead


Jeff Levy  29:49  
and it literally is a five second operation. I mean, I'm not exaggerating. That's how long it takes to sort it that way, if you're a family. Who has a has a little more wealth. And as I described before, maybe it's a family that has an adjusted gross income annually of 250,000 a year. And maybe, maybe they've got, they've been saving some money, they've got 150,000 in savings and investments and that sort of thing. They may learn that their EFC is 6065, $70,000 a year. So they don't earn they don't earn enough to pay 70 grand a year for their child in college, but they're earning too much to get any financial aid. So they would use this chart. They would sort for average merit award to see the set of colleges that are most generous with merit aid. They would make sure that a substantial enough percentage of undergraduates are receiving merit aid, as I described earlier, at those schools, and they will find some amazing schools on that list that historically are generous with merit aid, and if the student is, you know, is a fairly strong candidate at that at that institution, there's a pretty high probability that they will get a nice merit aid award. I every year, you know, a bunch of of my students get merit aid from all sorts of colleges. So, so the chart can be used that that way as well. That's great.


Ethan Sawyer  31:35  
That's all super clear. Tell us, what are some of those tools that you mentioned, that you alluded to that where students can figure out and families can figure out what, for example, their estimated family contribution is


Jeff Levy  31:45  
going to be okay. So there are two main places that families should go to begin to inform them about what their EFC, their expected family contribution might be way early in the process before the school counselor or the or the educational consultant begins to assemble the college list. One place is called FAFSA forecaster Ethan. So is this something that is you're going to send out to people that


Ethan Sawyer  32:20  
are all in the show notes. Yeah, when people go to the show notes at the end, they can just click


Jeff Levy  32:24  
on the link. Okay, great. So FAFSA forecaster is like FAFSA light, very simple to fill out. It's done online. It can be done any time of the year. Your child can be a ninth grade and you can do it, and that will yield that will you punch in your numbers. You fill out the form, the online format, it will tell you at the end what your expected family contribution is. That's a useful tool for the set of schools, which is almost all colleges, with the exception of about 200 of them, but all the others that only use the FAFSA, that is a good guide to what your expected family contribution will be at those colleges. The other place to go for the 200 schools that, in addition to the FAFSA, use the CSS Profile a better place to go because the profile also, I don't want to get too much in The weeds here, but the profile also looks at at home equity in the in the family's primary residence in their principal home. The FAFSA does not so that can you know for family was really smart and bought, bought in a in a in a city or an area that, over the years, has grown in value, they may have accumulated a lot of equity in their home. So for schools that use this second form the CSS Profile, they're asking you about the equity in your home, and the FAFSA doesn't even ask about that. So I would recommend for people looking at those schools, and those tend to be the most selective colleges, I would recommend going to the College Board's net price calculator, and the way to do this is just to go to the College Board site, the College Board Net Price Calculator site, and there you will see a list of several 100 schools that license the College Board Net Price Calculator. You would plug in your numbers, and it will tell you a price. Approximately what you would be expected to pay at those colleges. None of these methods is foolproof. None are foolproof. If you're going to use the net price calculator, I recommend doing it at 23423, or four schools. Kind of triangulate the answers, and then you're going to have a much better idea of approximately what some of these schools might cost you.


Ethan Sawyer  35:24  
Yeah, this is great. This, to me, this resource, well, one of the three that we're going to talk about on this three part podcast series, but it, to me, feels indispensable. It feels like it's absolutely necessary. I have two questions for you about this, Jeff, one, given the work that it took you and Jenny to assemble. It was it worth it? And two, do you feel committed to creating this year after


Jeff Levy  35:49  
year? It's it's a lot of work. We not only go to the common data set that the common data sets that are available online, but we then follow up with each institution. If we can't find it, we follow up multiple times. We really hunt these down from, as many, you know, from, like I said, about 400 450 institutions. So it's a lot of work. We are absolutely committed, committed to doing it each year. We may be crazy to do it, but I don't know how. I honestly don't know how to do my work efficiently without having this at my disposal. And I don't know of any other resource that. I mean, there are other resources, like the common data set, like college data.com where you can get this individual you can get this information for each individual college, but I know of no place that aggregates all of the institutions together so that you can compare them and see which set makes the most sense for you. Yeah. So, so, yeah,


Ethan Sawyer  36:58  
I'm sorry, go ahead. No, no, no. I just was agreeing with you, saying, Yeah, I don't know that either. I think you, you guys, have done it, and I'm so we, I'll just thank us, on behalf of all counselors out there. We thank you for this. So you know, before we close, I'd love to, I'd love to end with the show and tell, which is, what's something that you're listening to, or that you're reading or that you've been inspired by lately, that that's just on your mind.


Jeff Levy  37:25  
I'm almost done with ta nehisi Coates newest book called we were eight years in power, an American tragedy. It's an interesting collection of one of his columns per year for each year of the Obama presidency, and the connecting tissue between his essays were written recently. So he's sort of reflecting back on what he said eight nine years ago and seven or eight years ago. So it's kind of a it's his own commentary, on his own commentary, and I just think he is one of the smartest people out there today, talking about race and talking about American history and politics and how all of those fit or grind together. I just learn a lot from them every time I read them. So that's that's what I've been that's what I've been reading. One of the things I've been reading lately, and a movie I just watched last night for the first time, was sheer entertainment. It's called open range.


Ethan Sawyer  38:43  
This is awesome. Do you know them? Do you know the movie? I've never seen it, but I know it's an animated film,


Jeff Levy  38:48  
right? No, no, it's a Kevin Costner directed Western from 2003 I think it flopped when it came out, okay? But it's got a little bit of a schmaltzy beginning, but stick with it, and it is one of these iconic existential American stories in a way that only really good Westerns can tell that story. So I it's, it's, I just found it. I found it really, really kind of moving, actually.


Ethan Sawyer  39:26  
That's awesome. Yeah, I'm thinking of something that has a similar title, but it's just just a kid's cartoon, so probably not what you're thinking of. But yeah, so what I'm listening to last night, I heard this really rad podcast from Lewis Howes. Does this podcast? Howes, H, O, W, E, S, I linked to it called the School of Greatness, but he did this amazing interview with a woman named bazona st John, and she lost her husband to cancer a few years ago. She's done so much. She worked for Pepsi, worked for. Beats. And just talked about, you know, branding in the ways that just to her ability to find strength throughout in her life. She's just got an incredible story. I'm not being very articulate about what I learned from it, but just hearing her story and her living her best life, and then suddenly, you know, her husband is stricken with cancer, and then six months later, he's gone like he dies, and just hearing the way that she processed through that. And, you know, a few moments that they shared together before he passed was just, just had me thinking about my own life, my own relationship with my wife, and feeling a lot of gratitude and and she's just also a really, just powerful human being in this world. And now she's working for Uber and working to sort of turn things around for them. And, you know, talking about what it's like to be. She's from Ghana, you know, being the minority in Silicon Valley, because how many you know, black women are in positions of power? She sort of mentions this and how she feels like she's, you know, making a stand for that. So she's a hugely inspiring person. I'm getting chills thinking about, and she's got an amazing voice and spirit. So anyway, that's, I highly recommend that. So thank you, Jeff. I mean, it's not going to be long. We're going to the folks listening. Y'all check out episode. The next step, you know, there we got two episodes, two more episodes in this series coming up next. We got Jenny Kent. And then check out Jeff's the third. The third episode of this is going to be, I think, my favorite, because there's just, there's just, there's a chart that I feel like is another one that's sort of indispensable. So that's a quick teaser for that. But Jeff, thank you. I really, I just appreciate your time and your work.


Jeff Levy  41:30  
My pleasure. Thank you for giving me a chance to to talk to your listeners about college affordability. It's very important to me, and I think it should be important to everyone, and thank you for the opportunity.


Ethan Sawyer  41:43  
Great. We will link in the show notes to where you can find Jeff's charts. You can get them on the Excel or on the PDF through his website, so you can check out those links. And yeah, thanks. Hey friends, thanks so much. Hope you enjoyed that Jeff is pretty cool. Stay tuned for part two, where we discuss which schools are the most generous of financial aid for international students, and if you're not an international student, skip ahead to the next episode, where we discuss, should you apply early decision or regular decision, and a chart that can help you decide. You'll find the show notes, which is to say everything we discussed on the podcast. If you go to college essay guy.com/podcast if you haven't seen it already, I've got a free guide to the personal statement on my website. Just go to college essay guide.com and click on free and you'll find that on the free page, you'll also find a little box that you can type in basically anything that you're looking for, if it has to do with college and the application process. I've probably written something on it. Finally, if you're a counselor listening to this and you haven't yet, joined my college essay forum for counselors, that's a private Facebook group, just type in college essay forum for counselors on the facebook and join us. That's all. Stay curious. You.


Transcribed by https://otter.ai