If your child is headed off to college in the fall, you are probably worrying about a lot of things: What if he has a medical emergency while at school? What if he runs out of money? How will I know he is passing if I don’t see any of his school work?

There are documents pertaining to health, money, and college records that your child can sign to give you some peace of mind. Not all of these are required, but you may want to consider if you need them or not.

In the latest episode of Getting In: A College Coach Conversation, host Elizabeth Heaton and her guests offer up some valuable insight on choosing a college and answer both college admissions and finance questions from our listeners.

Community colleges were once considered a place to go if you couldn’t get in to a “better” college. How times have changed! More students and their families are giving serious consideration to community colleges as a great place to start their education. Why?

On the most recent episode of Getting In: A College Coach Conversation, guest host Sally Ganga covered a variety of topics targeted to a range of listeners: for college students, the importance of college advising in containing college costs; for middle and high schoolers, a discussion about the plethora of summer programming available (and why students should take advantage of it); and for high school seniors, what to do now if they have been deferred from their Early Decision or Early Action school-of-choice.

Carnegie Mellon University has just two required supplemental essays, one long and one short. You’ll also find two optional prompts that allow students to explain educational interruptions and discuss their CMU admission interview, if they had one.

What the 2017-2018 Common App Changes Mean for You

Welcome back to Part 2 of our blog that highlights ten of the biggest changes to this year’s Common Application. In Part 1, we revealed tips on who exactly needs to complete the new Courses and Grades section of the application, and the dangers of using Google Drive when transferring your essays from Google Docs into the Common App. But now, let’s turn our attention to six additional Common App changes.

What the 2017-2018 Common App Changes Mean for You

The Common Application, which is accepted by nearly 730 colleges and universities across the country and around the world, underwent a bit of a makeover this summer. Students who created a Common App account prior to August 1 will notice several enhancements to the application as they navigate their way across the online platform over the next few months. Some of the changes are minor, perhaps better viewed as timesavers or user-experience upgrades than major developments. But some of the modifications are significant and provide students ever greater opportunities for self-expression and reflection. Below are our picks for the 10 biggest changes to the 2017-18 Common Application.

With many tuition bills coming due this week, student loan applications are pouring in to lender websites. With nearly three-quarters of college students graduating in debt, many families consider student loans to be a given part of the college financing process. A necessary evil. And while a minimal amount of college debt, borrowed responsibly, can be a worthy investment in a student’s future, borrowing for that college degree is not always a wise decision. (And unchecked borrowing almost never is.) Believe it or not, it is, in fact, possible to get through college with little or no debt (and no, not just for the filthy rich). Here are ten ways to pay for college without student loans:

California residents have long been aware that the University of California system plays by a different set of rules than many other colleges and universities. Your GPA is based only on grades earned in 10^th and 11^th grade. You must take a fine arts class in order to be minimally qualified for admission. And application readers are much more interested in the story you tell in your essay than the language or style you use to tell it.

Putting Together a Payment Strategy for College

After your child has deposited at the college of their choice, the pressure of meeting college costs all of a sudden becomes very real. That first college bill is usually sent out in July with a due date in August. What takes many parents by surprise is that the bills are sent directly to the student, either via snail mail or, much more commonly, via an electronic notification, either to the student’s new college email address, or to their student account portal, which typically requires the student to log in and retrieve their billing statement.