PPY poll: Your answers and our responses
Information to help you
We asked if there was information we could provide to help you—and the answer was a resounding yes, including information to share with families. We’ve put together this PPY worksheet for you to share with your students.
Here are a few things to keep in mind about the changing deadlines:
- The Common App will open on August 1 as it always has.
- Any changes to college application deadlines will not be until into the school year—students will not need to start applying to college before August.
A point of clarification:
- We will not ask for 2016 tax information unless a family comes to us with a special circumstance situation such as job loss or death of a parent.
- 2015 tax information is all that will be requested by our office in a standard situation.
We’ve also finalized the Cornell College application deadlines for the fall. To enroll at Cornell in fall 2017, apply by:
November 1 : Early Action and Early Decision
December 1: Early Action II
February 1: Regular Decision and Early Decision II
PPY: What you had to say
60 people responded to our poll including 15 independent educational consultants and 45 high school college counselors. Here’s what you said:
Do you feel prepared for PPY?
What changes do you expect?
About half of high school counselors are expecting earlier requests for letters of recommendation and earlier requests for transcripts. Less than 10% of counselors anticipate college fairs dates moving, but almost 100% anticipate supporting students by explaining PPY.
One third of individual educational consultants plan to advise clients to apply earlier, and one third plan to advise students to move college visits earlier. Half of consultants don’t see PPY as changing the college decision-making process.
How do you anticipate this will change workload?
While many respondents either don’t know how it will affect their workloads or don’t think it will, there were a few insights we thought we’d share with the group:
- We have already scheduled a financial aid night for the class of 2017 for this May.
- The biggest difference will be educating parents to engage in the Financial Aid process earlier.
- We are preparing a letter to go out to the members of the Class of 2017 and their parents before the end of this school year. So, to that end, we’ve already had a shift to our workload this spring while we prepare this communication.
- With this, the pressure students will face to complete their college admissions process AND apply for aid in the early months of fall of senior year will be tremendous.
- We will have to balance the opening of school and settling schedules with financial aid night and FAFSA presentations. This is going to be a BIG challenge.
- We will couple our Senior Parent meeting in the fall with our Financial Aid Night, which will make that meeting longer, but will keep us from having programs on two different nights.
- I think the date shift and the PPY is a good thing, but this fall will be a bugger to get through.
As we all learn more about PPY and how it affects the college search process, we hope you’ll check in with our admission counselors if new questions come up. We’re here to help!
