YouTube Deep Summary

## Welcome to the California College Admissions Summit [00:00] one. What's up everyone? Coach Tony here. We are here with Eagle and welcome to the California College Admissions Summit. This is our first big event of the year uh for us here. It's a really really amazing event uh we put together for you all who are here joining live. We have over 255 people here live so far. Uh we had a few thousand people register for this event. So, it'll be a super super amazing uh turnout and I'm sure those who uh will will watch this from the future uh as well too. So, this will be a really really amazing event uh here. So, just to get us started really quick in the chat uh go ahead and share let me know what grade is your graduation year uh in the chat. Are you going to be uh are you a incoming se senior 2026? So, you're incoming junior 2027, incoming sophomore, 2028, incoming 9th grader, 2029. Uh, if you're one of our younger friends, 2030, 2031, 3032, some of you even younger. Uh, we we saw a few registrations from grade school students. We even have some community college students. We saw uh sign up. Uh, as well, we have some educators uh we saw some counselors sign up. So, this is a really, really amazing event. So, running through the chat, looks like we have a really awesome mix today. We have a lot of we have a lot of current juniors, uh current sophomores, freshman's, we have a a bunch of middle school students as well. You guys are preparing. Awesome way to prepare for a high school uh with this event here. Uh amazing, amazing, amazing, fantastic. So, we are Eagle Log. We're we're the team who put this uh uh event uh together. And for those who don't know too much about us, over the last 16 years, we've been able to connect with a lot of families, right? We able to help connect with over 8,000 families. We pulled this down, I think last night. Uh 8,000 families on Instagram. Uh we have ## Why College Admissions Feels Like a Game You’re Not Trained to Play [02:00] uh several Facebook groups. We have over 21,000 families uh over there. We have over 30,000 families on Tik Tok. And over the years, we've helped our students get into pretty much every school you can think of, right? all the UC schools, all the Ivy League schools, and even we we start we started counting out the top 25, top 50, top 100 colleges, and they've all gone in. And of course, you guys say uh picks or it didn't happen. So, here's some some some screenshots, some screenshots. You can kind of see here students gone to uh Berkeley, more Berkeley, engineering for Berkeley, LMU over here, uh USC over here up there, UC Irvine, UC Berkeley, UCLA, another one, RICE early early decision financial aid over uh $50,000 per year in the middle. Caltech as well to on the right, UC Berkeley, Calpaly Schools, uh there, another UC Berkeley one. Uh, another one here. I more UC Berkeley, UC Irvine on the left. LA, San Diego, UCS, UCLA. The student left by the way went to Cornell as well too. So more schools, Pepperdine, Chapman, uh Purdue, uh San Diego State, uh tech schools, more USC's, Baylor, you University of Michigan, MIT as well too, more USC's uh more engineering, Purdue, Chapman, UPEN, uh the student there got in as a nursing and business uh dual program, right? And more students here. You can see LMU, more Berkeleys, uh SCU, tons and tons of UC's, uh more UCLA's, UCIs, uh and many many more stories as well, too. So, I share that to uh to show you we're not just going to talk the talk. We also walk the walk that everything we're doing and everything we're going to share with you guys uh in this summit is how we get there, right? So, if that's okay, I would love to we love to kind of kind of pull back the curtains a little bit. So for this summit right, we invited our our top coaches to come share alongside with myself today for you guys uh some of our top strategists, our enrollment advisors. Um and then they're going to be kind of opening up the toolbox, showing you guys kind of behind the scenes of how we've been able to replicate uh this type of success. And I also invite some of my buddies from uh other industries uh as well too, right? who have uh who have brought stuff. We have one of the top test prep companies out there coming today to talk teach you guys about the new ACT as well too. We have one of the top uh research programs out there that a lot of our families are very interested in that uh as well. So the more and more uh our goal uh to put the summit on is to do one simple thing today is to help you guys crack the college code. you kind of say boom. That's our kind of tagline uh on the thing cuz we know admissions can be very complicated, right? You guys go on forums, parents, you guys go on forums all the time and you guys, wait, that kid has a 4.8, how they get rejected. Oh, this kid with a 3.9 get in and ## How to Pick the Right College and Major (It’s Not Rankings) [05:00] you're looking at things that we don't understand what the real truth is. So, again, it feels like a game. It feels like a mystery as well too until you understand the game, right? Imagine yourself uh playing a game for the first time and you have no clue how to play, right? One of the things we have here at Eagle, we always hang out. Uh we have a really amazing amazing team. Every time we hang out, we we always play boarding. That's like our thing, I think, right? Or our coaches, we just play board games and it's one of those things like when you play a board game for the very first time, you're so lost. You're so lost. You're not sure what to do and you kind just going along and you're hoping you're following the right person because you're following the wrong person. Then chaos ensues, right? But once you understand, ah, I get how to play this game. That's when you become dangerous. That's when you're like, wait, I know how to do this correctly now. And that's going to be our approach uh for this entire summit here today. And our goal is to do all of this. I told every coach, every presenter today, hold nothing back. So throughout the entire uh entirety of this uh training, our goal is to help you guys give you everything you need to make sure you succeed uh as well too. There's not going to be an extra oh at the end go pay for this thing for the real information. There's none of that here. So if you were if you have your credit cards out, you can put your credit cards back in you and we're not going to do any uh no sales at the end of this session. No sales during any part of this session as well too. Uh I know some of our our our our guests will have some some extra incentives for you guys to help you guys in case you guys help you to save some money. Uh but again, no one's pitching anything on today's session here. Okay, so that is uh the big thing. So to give you guys a little preview of the summit, you guys know what to expect. Uh our summit is literal back to back to back to back to back. We are kind of following the TED talk style of uh of a presentation where everyone right let's get straight to the point. Let's give the people what they want, what they need. uh 20 minute interval. So be a back to back to back to back to back all the way from now until the end uh to help you guys out. We have a bunch of amazing topics that I think are on your way in. We did a little questionnaire right for you guys. And that's kind of the information that we pulled in uh for you guys as well too. So let me give you guys a little teasers and preview of today's session, right? We're going to kick us off with what is your best college and major for your child? That's probably one of the biggest things that a lot of parents always ask us first like hey uh where where should my child be going to? Uh what should we be doing? This would be sets up and also this kind of sets up the the the frame for everything today right this sets up like hey knowing this that's how we can plan for everything because if you don't know where you're going how can we get you there is is the things like trying to try and navigate to a destination without an end goal. you're just going to be driving and wasting gas dollar away as well too, right? So that your goal is to again figure out where do we want to go first? Let's establish that end goal in the sand and I use that sand purposely in the sand first and then let's figure out how to get there. Right? So we actually have uh one of our top uh advisors, coach Victor will be jumping in. This is actually one of his specialty is helping our students identify college list and majors. That's per for them. And again, it's not spoilers a bit. not ranking right so just a little spoilers you guys to kind of demystify things a lot most people would be like Google best college for a blank that is not one of the strategies uh for today so a little spoilers there second session I'll be jumping in once we have we once we understand what college and what major you guys want to go I'm going to go ahead and teach you guys how to set up your academics to make it there so if you're aiming for a certain school if you're aiming certain certain major there are things to help you get to where you guys want to go so we'll go ahead and talk about that Next, then we're going to move over to testing. Right? This is one of the new phenomenons that has kind of re-emerged uh for the last five years as well too. All right. Some schools are test blind. ## GPA Myths and What Readers Actually Look For [09:00] Some schools are test required. Some schools are test optional. So for those of you who are applying test optional and test required schools, um one of the new changes that happened was the ACT had a little tweak right actually uh last month in April. So, uh, one of our amazing partners, Magouch, one of the top test prep programs in the world, they are coming in. They're doing a special presentation for you guys and teaching you guys what the changes are and maybe that might be the right test for your child now that with the new changes, right? So, we're going to do that. Then, we're going to talk about what actually stands out in admission specifically is the activities um, as well too. So, what activities does your child need to do to stand out? I think that's that's one of the big things uh to keep in mind as well too. I know a lot of family was like, "Oh, should I do this? Should I do that? Should I do that?" We're going to break it all down for you guys here so you know exactly what we tell our students who have gone into the schools that you kind of saw earlier. Right. Then we bring on one of our other partners, Lumiere, uh one of the top research and internship programs out there. They're going to be talking about personal projects and research, right? How to do this. We actually, if those who joined us a few weeks ago, we actually had a mini presentation, a little teasers uh for this as well. So, we're going to go ahead and do a fully uh a much more detailed more tactical training for you guys uh on this session here. And we also invited Ray again for those of you who joined us last week, we had another mini training on uh how to build a business with AI. So, this is one of the cool things he's he's uh a Harvard innovation lab mentor. So he's been uh uh help mentoring students at Harvard on how to build businesses. So he's going to be teaching you guys step by step how to actually do this um in case that's something you guys want to do. This is a perfect teaser, a perfect summer activity uh for students to do here. Okay. Then on that topic, right, uh we're going to talk about what to do this upcoming summer. Right now, if you're watching this live is the beginning of May and for those people, they're like, I'm going to wait to get started with admissions in uh after finals. And I'm like, uh, you want to plan for summer in summer? That that's kind sounds kind of silly, right? So that the goal is planning for summer started like a few months ago. And if you haven't started a few months ago, next start next start time is now. It's like planting a tree, right? So we're going to help you guys kind of prep for this, help you guys figure out uh what to do this summer. If you haven't done it yet, there's still some tactical things you guys can do to make sure you're ready for this upcoming summer as well. And uh we're bringing on uh one of our our head strategist, our head of coaching, Coach Art. This is one of his amazing things that he does. He's going to teach you guys how to answer every single college an college essay. I know, but we have a bunch of incoming seniors uh joining us here today. And if you're not a senior yet, this is great to keep in back of your head for the future. Uh but there's there there's a little trick to this, right? Little little teethers and spoilers that this is probably one of the most important pieces. This is why you see kids who uh who have the strong GPA, strong ties, who still get rejected. It's not because they're not smart enough or good enough. It's because they don't know how to do this part correctly. So, Coach Art uh is going to jump in and help help you guys dig deep and help you guys figure out uh this section right here uh for how to write every college essays. I'm going to jump in and help kind of bring call some awareness things out for you guys of the biggest mistakes high schools make. for all years 8ighth grade to high school even some of them might even apply to middle school and community college students as well too but the biggest mistakes we see uh families make in this process so if you are doing it just pause it pivot let's do something else after this event now that you're aware um as well I forgot a slide here as my apologies one more thing uh we also do we also have a financial aid session as well too we brought in our financial aid expert coach David uh to come in and help you guys. He's been helping families. A lot of our families we know is especially this event is kind of catered to a lot of our California families, right? So, a lot of you guys make a little too much money to qualify for federal aid, but not enough to get like free money uh to get to get to not worry about the cost of college either. So, Coach David, he's been helping a lot of our families find free money, free institutional money, uh as well too. So, he's kind of our go-to expert when it comes to that. So, we're he's coming on he's going to share you guys money. So parents, this might be a really good session for you guys to understand, hey, how could I uh make sure the college bill is not so crazy uh as well to one of the uh one of the aha moments I had a parent told me uh was like, man, like you know, when you buy a house, you use a realtor, right? You use a realtor to buy a house when you do your taxes, right? You use a CPA, accountant to do your taxes. College, right? If you do the math, it's your second biggest expense in your life, right? Uh probably under a house, right? Right? If you think about anything you go buy, right? Second, the right cost, what $160 to $250,000, right? You do the math out times four, right? Plus more for those who go to med school and law school, right? Uh it's your second biggest expense and suddenly these families haven't prepared for it. I'm like, whoa, you're you're willing to gamble on your second biggest expense in your life as well. So, it's a very interesting concept uh as well too. And coach David will be coming in helping you guys uh with some awareness things when it comes to financial aid. Right. And I've been talking this entire time and some of you guys were like, "It's my first time." We have a lot of first time. Real quick in the chat, drop a quick one in the chat. If it's your very first time joining any of our events, any of our trainings in the chat, drop a two in the chat. If you've been with us uh here there, if you've been with if you you've seen our stuff, you're one of our coaching clients, uh you're one of our uh our partners, you're one of the stuff, go ahead and drop a two in the chat, but drop a one if you're Who is this guy? Who's this guy with this marvelous mohawk on his head as well? Drop a number. jump at number two if uh Oh, I I've seen this guy. I I hang out with Coach Tony on on the daily as well, too. Awesome. We got We got a nice little mix. Lot of guys mix. A lot more ones, though. A lot more ones as well, too. But then uh Awesome. Fantastic. Fantastic. So, again, uh my my mom told me don't listen to strangers online. So, ## Understanding Academic Rigor and Pathway Overlays [15:00] we go ahead and do a quick little introduction so you guys know who I am. We become virtual friends and we'll go ahead and jump straight in to the first session after this. Right. So, my name is Coach Tony. I'm actually the founder uh of all this. And then so the thing for me, I actually got into when I applied. I grew up in a family of immigrants. My parents had no clue about college, they told me to uh they told me to uh figure it out, go to college nearby. So I got into UC I got into UCLA full ride. My parents were super happy. Actually didn't go there. I actually went to UC Berkeley cuz I want to get away from my parents as well, too. Did not get a full ride. I just paid off my loans last year, too. Went to Berkeley. And then when I went to Berkeley, I uh I I kind of accidentally uh fell inside the admissions kind of world. I got to help them out with uh admit presentations and outreach. So when I graduate, actually I actually became a reader with them. So what readers do is readers are the people who read your application on the back end. They recommend yes or no, right? They recommend yes or no to your applications. So, I did that, read a bunch of ads, and that's kind of when I was like, my aha moment is like, wait, all these students you see online, they're doing things to look good for college. They're doing things to stand out for college. But as a reader, I didn't care about most of those things. So, why are we stressing about all these things that we have to do when no, as a reader, I'm not trained to look for that. So, you're giving me extra stuff, right, that I don't really uh need. It's like, for example, if I came up to you guys and I gave you a random sticky note, right? You don't need the sticky note, but like I have a lot of really good sticky notes. I'm like, uh, okay, but I don't need sticky notes right now, right? So, that's the same concept. You're doing so many impressive things, but that's not what readers are trained to look for. So, a lot of our approach and our angle is exactly that. What are readers trained to look for? Let's give them that. That's basically our kind of angle when we help our students and our families with this process. like, hey, this they're looking for this. Let's give them this. You should be fine after that here. Okay, so that's kind of what I did. Uh, quick little other extra bio for those interested. I actually worked at UCLA as an outreach director there for a little bit. I opened one of my I was a co-founder of a high school in the Orange County area um a charter high school. That was pretty fun. I actually became uh how I got connected with Magouch. I actually was one of their uh tutors at one point. I became their high school liaison uh there. I I worked I was uh Tik Tok educational partners. I actually uh did videos with them for a little bit. That was cool as their first college admissions uh college admissions partner with them as well too. And that kind of whole evolved into kind of what where we are at right over here. Okay. So, I'm super super excited. This event is really fun. It's kind of one of our core things of giving everything away, helping as many families as possible. Again, I always think of like selfishly high school coach Tony, right? high school coach Tony could not afford the the the the expensive programs to help families with stuff, right? And for those who do who have the the resources, right? Um again, it it helps a lot. I think a lot of our kids do really well at the same time, but I'm we also want to help families, right, who may not have the resources to invest in our programs or any other services or program in general. So, uh the purpose of this event again, give we're going to give, give, give, give, give and once we think we give enough, we're to give even more. So, hopefully that is a takeaway. I asked you guys to get the end if that's kind of the feeling you got from this event. Um, and I hope I'm hoping and by the end the answer is yes. Right. That being said, I also have uh a few tips for you guys. Few tips. We've run this events uh we've run a lot of events for those who know. We actually do a trading literally every single day. We run an event almost every single month. So, we are very good at events. Hopefully, you guys seeing we're quite good at what we do uh so far. So, here's a few tips on how to make the most of this event is number one. Number two, first off is we're going to ask you guys, right? Feel free to engage with us in the chat. Go ahead and ask us questions, share your reactions, let us know. Uh our team is reading. You can kind of see we have different coaches coming in. We're monitoring the chat. We have a lot. We have over 200 uh people live right now. Again, we have I told you we have a thousand people who signed up for this event, too. So, we're going to go ahead and um interact. And my one thing to you guys, be selfish. Ask any questions you guys have. We have a Q&A box uh over there. uh in the zoom somewhere somewhere where your screen is. Uh we we'll be answering questions over there uh as well too for you. And the one thing I ask is again if you can chime in our team may ask for comments. Our team might ask you guys answers in the chat. Feel free to answer it. You guys know we we've all lived in a Zoom life at one point or some of us still do as well too. It's kind of awkward talking to a camera as well too. So let's practice real fast, right? Could everybody say hi? Everyone drop a quick hi hi in the chat real quick for me. Let me know. Uh, making sure the keyboards are working, making sure the keyboards are working, and everything is good to go uh for you guys there. Beautiful. Beautiful. That's all I ask, guys. And if if you if you're nervous, if you're shy, feel free to turn on host and palace mode, right? So, at least we can see it, right? As long as the the the palace, we can see it that we we're we're feeling we're feeling good. We're feeling good for this, right? That's ## The New ACT Format: What Changed and How to Prep for It [20:00] number one. Thank you again. Appreciate that one, right? Number two, take notes, right? We we had someone ask earlier like, "Hey, we're going to send slides." Like real talk, we've done this for years now. Every time we send the slides, no one opens, we have a tracker on them. No one opens the slides. No one opens anything as well, too. So, uh, but the best thing if you take notes for yourself. Okay, keep in mind we're trying to account for a bunch of different grades as well, too. So, we're going to do some some information for everyone. So, take notes on your thing. You don't if you're a freshman, you don't have to worry about senior stuff yet, right? So, just focus on the ninth grade stuff right now. If you're a senior, you can kind of ignore the the eighth grade stuff and focus on the senior stuff as well, too. So, take notes for you guys uh as well. Like I mentioned, uh our team will be sending out some freebies for you guys. So after this event, uh we'll send you guys the freebies uh afterwards as well, too. Right? Big thing, think in terms of action, not information. Right? One of the big things we have learned is we give a lot away. If you check out our YouTube, by the way, we just did a track. We have over 500 hours of training and it's all free tactical stepbystep training, right? I think we've I I can safely say I think we give away more free training videos than any other group to my knowledge. I challenge anyone to kind of find someone that has more. Right? So the information is not an issue because we've given you guys the information. The issue is action. The reason why each presenter only has 20 minutes. We want to give you it fast and we want you guys hopefully by by Monday you do something with each of these. Okay. Number four, stay present. Try not to multitask. We're human. We think we can multitask. Our brain says we can't. So again, if you can focus again, relax, grab a drink, enjoy the next three uh three and a half hours there and let us know in the chat if you have an aha. Again, this is why we're here. Again, we feed off the comments. So if you guys let us know as we go, that's going to be the biggest thing to us here. Okay, before we bounce off, I I'm going a little over apologies, Coach Victor, as well too. Uh before I bounce in, if you guys can go ahead and uh uh drop any ch sessions uh here uh as well too in the chat, we'll go ahead and do that. Okay. Uh first one will this recording uh be emailed to us? We will be get sending a recording uh for those who registered. So those who registered uh we will get one. Those who haven't registered and you found this link somehow at the end I'll give you guys a special area to uh register. We can send you the replays uh as well too. Okay. Uh that's one. Uh someone asked if these trainings are free to why do we have to pay thousands to join? I'm assuming you mentioned like a coaching program or a service as well too because the information is not the issue. Ooh aha. Big big aha right there. the information is not the issue. If the information was the issue, then our kids be fine. And we have families, right? Again, we we we we've sent screenshots a lot as well too of there's families who have the information and they used it. They couldn't they they used the information and they got in, right? The reason why a lot of uh people is they don't implement. That's the big key. So again, that's why that the purpose of today's session is very actionable things you can do right away. It's not just theory. Do this is kind of what we're hoping to get you guys to do, right? Because if you do it, you're fine. Uh but for a lot of our families, some students need the accountability, some of our students need the expert guidance, right, as well too. So it's not just the information. Uh but for some people, the information is that first step that they just don't have access to is the big key. Okay, with that being said, I'm going to go ahead and stop presenting. I'm going to pass it off to coach uh coach Victor, are you here in the chat, sir? As well, I thought I saw your name uh as well. Let me go ahead and promote you to panelist uh as well. Uh I believe you should be able to uh share your screen uh as well and you can go ahead and get started uh with the first training. All right. Hello everyone. Welcome. Can you all hear me? Okay. All right. And can folks see my screen? Are folks able to put that in the chat just to make sure? All right. Excellent. Excellent. Okay. Nice to meet you all. Uh if y'all don't know me already, I'm Coach Victor. I'm super excited to share the stage with coach Tony. Fun fact, we actually did admissions together way back in UC Berkeley together. We actually learned admissions with each other at during the same time. Uh I was an outreach coordinator going to different high schools sharing information about how to get into a college and also I taught a class on how to get into graduate school at UC Berkeley. And also fun fact if you didn't know, I also got a full ride scholarship to UC Berkeley for undergrad and graduate school. If you haven't checked it out on our YouTube channel already, uh it's a really great training that I did about how I was able to do that. So, if you haven't, uh definitely check that out so that way y'all can be able to save money or learn from coach David later on about that. So, uh super excited to uh go into this topic about what's the best college and major for your child. And as what coach Tony said, the way to do it isn't necessarily just googling it, right? It's to be able to really think introspectively about what matters to you. And so what we'll cover is about how to determine criteria. We'll talk about the difference between pathways versus majors and an introduction to the term EP guide which is super valuable and important to help students understand what exactly do they want to do because in the world of college admissions there's so many different colleges out there right and I I actually don't even know the number in the US but there's more than I'm pretty sure there's more than hundreds of them. And so how do you actually make sense of which one is the right one? And a pro tip, it's not about the most prestigious university. Yes, we got students into Harvard and Berkeley and Stanford and all those other top schools, but that's not what really matters about the name. What matters is about what's a good fit for your child. So, let's talk about how do you actually determine your criteria. So, first off, you want to ask yourself what really matters to you, right? What do you actually want? Because for school, it's going to be about two to four years of of schooling, whether if you're transferring in as a community college student or you're going to be there for the next four years. And that's a good significant amount of time and you deserve to have a really great fantastic two to four years of schooling. And so you don't want to regret it. Don't just choose a school based off the prestige or the name, but you really want to understand what is the experience. What is the learning experience do you want? And uh and also when it comes to college apps and the strategy, right, what matters is that you're telling to the readers why this school is a good fit for you, right? and uh you're not going to just going to say, "Hey, I I think I'm a a really good fit for Stanford just because the name is great. I have a great name and therefore we are a good match." It's not like that. So, some example criteria, the top 10 uh common ones are such as the academic reputation, the location, campus size and majors and programs, campus facilities, career services, campus culture. There's so many different types of things that relate to uh your school. And particularly I want to emphasize like especially location. Location matters a lot more than what people think because generally speaking majority of students tend to stay in the area after undergrad. So think of this way. If you are a student and you want to move to a different city, is there a sense of an idea of where you want to potentially work later on? Because more than likely you're going to have opportunities to take internships or get your first job right after college in that local area. So that is something that's super important. Plus uh you never know is you do you want something more urban something more uh rural like do you want to look at kind of a change of scenery what really matters to you because if you want to take a change and you want to get out of your hometown and like experience something new this is the time to be very selfish about what exactly is it that you want for that experience because uh most people either move away for two reasons. one is to get a job at some other city and second is college, right? And so those are two generally uh big uh inflection points in your life that you could be able to decide that. So really take consideration of what's your top 10 common criteria and then you want to ask yourself why. Okay, why is it important to you? And then we're going to go into an example what that actually looks like. So for example, u if you were saying like academic rotation reputation really matters to you, which I would say majority of the families it's the top number one of this list, right? But what does that actually mean? So if you ask yourself why, right? Why does Berkeley, Stanford, Harvard, Yale, all these things like stand out to you? Well, colleges that sound better on my resume. Okay, sure. Right. Why is it that this uh sounds better on your resume? Because employers know that I work hard and that I am smart. Yes, it is very true that in the employer world right in the especially in the workforce development uh for most entry-level jobs they do look at the academic reputation of the college but it's because of what they learn from the college and also what skills and experiences do they are typically getting from that because it is uh uh typically known that or generalized that students who do go into very prestigious universities have developed the really soft skills the discipline the hard work ethic to be able to work hard to get into that college and therefore that translates to what how they might perform in the job. But however, that's not the only uh thing that really matters to them in terms of the academic reputation because in other places you might want to ask yourself like why is it that employers value uh your experience in college and what is it that you learn? And it's possible that you ask yourself why again this program is taught by a specific professor in the field. So what that means is the reputation of a university might be tied to a professor and that professor has a very great reputation and if you're able to say that you learn from this particular professor then through your uh experience of being able to learn from them that can be tied to your uh employment or your uh your professional reputation. And so therefore uh by asking yourself why why why right that gets you to be able to understand what are is the main importance of this particular criteria and then uh that way you be more intentional. So let's just say after you've uh explored a few of the criteria that's most important to you the next part is to put it into a uh trade-off matrix. The trade-off matrix is a way for you to be able to decide across all these different criteria which one might be the most uh the best ones to apply to ## Personal Projects and Research as Spiky Differentiators [30:00] or to enroll in. So for example, you might on the on the left side you have the colleges one, two, three, and four. And at the very top you have all your different criteria here. And then you can rate each one by high, medium, low. And this is uh really important to be able to help you determine which of these colleges might have a majority of the criteria that you're looking for. And in most cases, right, uh most students will not have all their criteria fulfilled. And this is where it's important to acknowledge what are the tradeoffs will you be okay to accept if you go into a particular college. So for example, let's just say you fill this out. After you go through colleges 1, two, three, and four, you evaluate the cost, the location, the majors, and extracurricular options. Then you have uh all these low, medium, and high scores. From there, you can easily tell like, oh, okay, college one is probably the best choice, right? Because it has two highs, which is majors and extracurriculars. Medium, like the location's all right. And then also the costs are are low. And in this case, maybe the costs are too high in this case, as in like it's very expensive, and therefore it is rated as a low uh as a low outcome. So from this sense right you might prioritize college one then college four because there's two highs and two lows and then uh there's a toss up between college two and three right there. Uh however right it's possible that maybe one of your criteria might matter more than others and this is where you might add weights to it. So for example what if cost is the most important thing to you? it makes up 50% of your decision uh making process followed by location of majors or a tie and maybe extracurriculars is just 10% meaning that it's not as important to you. So in this case right if you were to look at the far right there's an adjusted calculation where you take the value of low being one medium being two and high being three you multiply it by the uh particular percentage and for those who have taken stats right or taken uh I think you learned this in stats but you are pretty much taking the expected value the expected value is what you would uh get from uh taking the probability multiplied by the like outcome or the result. So in this case, when you add all these numbers up, that puts you actually uh college number four as the top number one with a 2.2. And if you think about it, right, this was originally marked as preliminary ranking uh number two, but now it's number one because you value the cost more, right? And the cost is the most important thing. So once you get to college four then the question uh then becomes to you are you okay accepting this college given the low rating on location and major because you want to go to the next uh college or the next two to four years at a place that you really enjoy and that you really are comfortable with and you don't want to go in regretting that you made a decision to go to this college because you realize that another criteria was so important to you. So for example, it's possible that you go to an amazing school where the location's the best, the majors are the best, extracurriculars are the best, but the costs are so high that uh it hurts you uh like financially and are you okay accepting that potential tradeoff if the costs are so high. So uh that's why uh by evaluating your criteria and thinking about what criteria matters most to you and adding weights to it, this will help you give you a mindset to move forward comfortably. So that's the way to be able to uh consider which colleges that you want to apply to. Now let's talk about majors. Okay? And the way that we think about majors here is that we don't want you to choose a specific major. And in fact, majority of students don't even know what major they want to go into uh when they first go into college. Even myself, right? because for the most part uh students change majors all the time. It's likely I think it's like 70 or 80% of students once they go into college they're like likely to change their major at least once. And so admission officers and readers, they understand that. So instead of thinking about majors, you want to think about pathways. And the way that we think about pathways, there's three general ones. First is the computer science and engineering pathway. Second is STEM and business. And third is everything else. Meaning that uh for example for pathway number one if you were to study software engineering versus mechanical engineering versus electric electrical engineering those majors are different but the pathway is the same and the requirements for those pathways are the same. Coach Tony is going to talk in a little bit about what exactly are the requirements for all these different pathways but just know that you don't have to just stick to a particular major. You just have to think about which pathway is most interesting. Now I know some people are thinking like oh second uh pathway is STEM in business isn't the E uh in STEM like engineering. Yes. And we pull that out because the pathway for computer science and engineering is much more rigorous and requires a little bit more rigor in particular math and physics courses uh which we'll talk about later on. So that's why uh just ask yourself which one of these are the most important. And if you don't know, then I would recommend to start validating whether pathway one is the right one first because pathway one would require uh a much more of a rigorous kind of pathway in terms of being very selective on the courses and the strategy there. If you know that for sure you don't want to go to computer science or engineering, then validate whether if you want to go into STEM uh pathway two, which is STEM and business. And then from there, if you realize that none of those actually fit for you either, then you're in the everything else pathway. And again, we'll talk more about these particular pathways later on, but just know that you don't have to choose a particular major right away. And in fact, there is a uh there's a lot of mistakes for thinking about what major that you want to do right now. Because uh the common mistakes for choosing a major is that if you don't know what you want, uh this is a quote right here. If you don't know what you want, then you'll be told what you want and you will believe it. meaning that we will uh tend to follow whatever like uh like people think is the right fit for ourselves without really internally analyzing what's actually the best choice or the right choice. For example, confirmation bias. Now, uh common mistake, someone goes on to the university website, checks out all the majors that are available at this particular campus and they look at the list of 100 majors and they try to find the top five or 10 things that look interesting to them. Yes, that could be effective to be able to like help you figure out what what are you're leading towards or gravitating towards, but it's a confirmation bias, meaning that you will see something and then uh you will think that that's something that you want because it sounds cool, because it sounds right. And really uh your mind is trying is like kind of playing tricks on you thinking that that's the best choice to go for. So that's something that you want to avoid because you want to instead ask yourself what do you want to learn? then figure out what major is the right fit for you, right? Uh because if you do the opposite way around of looking at all these majors and seeing what which one am I a good fit for, then you are uh kind of uh like unintentionally putting yourself in a box and you don't want to do that. Second is conformity bias. You are likely to choose whatever your uh friends are going to do. your friends are studying a certain like uh major and you're you're trying to choose schools with them, you're likely going to go with the crowd and just go with whatever else everyone is studying. And lastly, sampling bias. You don't know what majors are out there, right? But because you went to check out just one school or two schools websites, you see a list of 40 majors and that's the only list of majors that you're only interested in because that's the only thing you know. So sampling bias is pretty much you just don't know what's actually out there. So stop asking yourself what major should I be choosing. Ask yourself what pathway first to help you strategize and then ask yourself what are you really interested in which goes into the concept of eeky. Okay is a Japanese concept for meaning a reason for being right? It's a it's a way to be able to combine what you love what the world needs what you can be paid for and what you are good at. And by finding your eeky guy this is what will drive you and bring a part of happiness in life. There's a really good book called Eki actually and they talk about like there's this village remote village in Japan uh where uh they have the longest life expectancy and a part of that long life expectancy is because it's encouraged in their culture to find this eeky guy and this eeky guy is what uh drives people to wake up every single day and to work every single day and they're actually working way past retirement age of 60 all the way up to 80 years old but they're not seeing it as work they're seeing it as it's their life calling. It's what they want to do. It's what they need to do. And it's what makes them wake up every single day purposeful. And as parents, you know, isn't that like the most beautiful thing to see? Like if your child is very excited to wake up every single day, study study the things that they want to do and and do the things that they love and still get paid for it, right? That's an amazing uh uh possibility. And by thinking about the API, right? Uh you could be able to discover it in two ways. Okay? First off, right, there is the intersection between what you love and what you're good at. This is something that students can be able to figure out right now. Uh, and the way to kind of determine that is when are you in your flow state? Your flow state is a combination of when are you doing a particular skills and what's the level of challenge to be able to accomplish it? Because uh there's at times where uh what what flow is like is where everything around you doesn't matter anymore. you're so hyperfocused on doing that one thing and that uh and that one thing is the only thing that you really enjoy doing and you like lose the sense of time that passes by. So many students tend to experience this especially when you're a gamer, right? You like to play games and you're in this flow state because you're enjoying it and also you're playing a game of difficulty that you really enjoy. The same can be applied to other things such as art, right? Like some people really love to draw and they get lost into it and they try out different techniques and they really start loving it. Same for puzzles, right? That's why if you think about it, right, there's different levels in games. There's level 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 right? If you go to level 10 and you ## AI Startups and How Students Are Building Real-World Skills [40:00] haven't even like played this game yet, it's too hard for you and then you're going to give up. And then so uh therefore that puts you in this anxiety stage or this worry here where the where the the the uh skill the challenge is way too hard and so you kind of disengage. But if you start at level one and start building your your way up right you start noticing that you start really enjoying it and that this is something that you really love to do. So uh something to ask yourself if you're a student is when do you lose track of time? When is it that you get so passionate that you love doing that one particular thing that it just drives you forward the whole entire uh time and that you can see yourself spending hours and hours on it. And for parents like when do you notice that of your child, right? You've seen your child uh really often and I'm sure that you've noticed where you have a hard time pulling them away from something. Sure, it might be things like that are associated with games and such like that, but there's uh could be other things that uh bring students into that flow state. So that's the way to kind of figure out for the their passion. The next part is the vocation. Okay, being able to figure out what the world needs and what you can be paid for. So how do you figure out what you can be paid for? What is it that that's actually out there that um that you can be a part of the industry and uh the world would benefit from it and they're willing to pay someone for it. Now in most cases, you will not figure this out in school. Okay, let me read that again. You will not understand or learn this information from school because in school you learn just about the academics and what is the concepts to apply to particular jobs in the future. But really you have to bridge the industry the the career world or the employment world and that's through networking. Networking is being able to converse with other people that you don't know and to be able to learn more information about them. And so I always tell students about the ability to conduct informational interviews. Informational interviews is where instead of you interviewing for a job, you're interviewing a professional to learn more about their field, more about their interest. So that way you can figure out if that is something that you might want to do in the future. So let's just say you conduct anformational interview with one person and uh maybe this person is like a engineer or something like that and you ask this engineer all these questions to learn more about what is it they do. So that way you can figure out is this something that I want to do? Is this something that I might enjoy? And then yeah, you can ask them questions like, hey, can you also connect me with one or two other people that uh that might be a good like learning experience for me? And so they connect you to more people. And so this creates a web of connections. If you keep asking each person to introduce you to one or two other people, then you create a web. And that is where you get expansive knowledge about what is going on in the industry and what exactly is it that the world needs for this particular skill. So if you can stay on top of both of those things, right, you uh network with the market to be able to understand what is the potential jobs out there, where is the industry trends going, how is it that you won't be replaced by AI or how's AI being leveraged, right? Then that can help you understand what are the opportunities while at the same time you try to combine what is it that you've discovered that you actually like to do on a day-to-day basis that you really enjoy and you try to match those particular skill sets that you uh really like to do or the challenges that you like to embark in and the needs of the world and then you combine them together and that's where you can put particularly find that intersection of the guy there. So, that being said, uh I know that I went a little bit over my time, so apologies for that, but this is a way for folks to be able to really discover what the right pathway is for themselves. So, I'm going to pass it back to you, Coach Tony. Alrighty. Oh man, what what a jam-packed session. Really quick in the chat, you guys you guys enjoyed that? Drop a quick yes in the chat if you guys enjoyed that session. It was a good one. I dropped I see some hearts. So, guys, you guys are the emoji hearts. There you go. The emoji hearts. Uh I know Coach Hunch R be excited for that. He loves the emoji hearts uh flowing through. So you lot lots of yeses now in the chat. Uh beautiful, beautiful. Cool. Let's go. Let's kick it. We again this event's non-stop. Let's move straight in. So again, you know, there's a flow to everything we're doing today. So coach Victor kind of set the stage for us, helping us understand kind of where we want to go and also the the the majors as well too. And once we identify that, once we start thinking about this stuff, and keep in mind, you don't have to do this in live speed. Again, we're we try to combine years and years of knowledge for you guys in a really compact session. So again, take notes. If you know, keep keep going on. But if you're like, "Hey, I'm not sure now what college is my child." Or if you're if you're the student, me or the major, right? Take notes on this. And then when you come back, you can go through it. We strategically put every kind of uh topic in a strategic order. You guys can kind of literally flow through it step by step by step. So, jumping straight in to the academic section here. I'm going to talk about now that you establish what pathway and those little teasers, what pathway you guys are going down, what colleges, let's go ahead and kind of figure out what classes we need to do as well. So, I'm going to talk to you guys uh zoom out a little bit and talk a little bit about one I'm going to convince you guys why the GPA is not as important as you guys think it is. What two factors are more important and something we call the pathway overlays or things that a reader is trained to look for in your academic section itself. So, first off, I'm going to show you guys really quick why GP is not important. In the chat, can you guys participation real quick in the chat? Can you drop a one if you and or your child has or not and it's or you or your child has at least a 3.0 or higher uh GPA. Drop one in the chat. Right. 3.0 or higher. Um just drop a quick little one. Lots of one. Boom. Boom. Boom. Right. So, next question. Now, you'll start seeing this get a little smaller. Who here has a 3.5 or higher? Drop a number two in the chat. So, drop a number two in the chat if uh you your child has a 3.5 or higher. All right. All right. Still looking a lot of people still. Right. Moving down. 4.0. 4.0 GPA or higher. Drop a number three in the chat. Drop a number three in the chat. Still. Wow. We have We have a lot of smarties here. Lot of smarties here. Got a lot of number threes. And I think this is the last one. Um, who has a has a 4.5? A 4.5. Drop a four in the chat. Still a lot, but it's not. If you guys notice the chat is not as fast. I maybe it's on the host mode. That's why you guys see it now. But it's not as much as the previous one, right? Like that's a big like ones was fast. A lot of ones, a lot of twos, a lot of threes, but four it slowed down a lot. So the question is, does that mean that the four group, the 4.5 has a has a higher admissions chance than the 3, two, or one group? As well too, spoilers. No. So that's definitely not the case. Okay, so here's a quick little example to kind of drive this point home. So let's say you are admissions office. I think this is probably the best way. So put on your admissions hat. You are the uh un so I'm the university of coach Tony, right? As well too. I'm trying to get the best students in my students as well too, right? Let's say I have student number one with a 4.0 GPA and we have student B with a 3.8. The biggest misconception, by the way, is everyone keeps looking at GPA and keeps trying to optimize your GPA. So, with these two students, you're like, "Oh, of course the 4.0 student is better than the 3.8 student as well, too." But let's break it down. This 4.0 student got straight A's, right? Does that's how they get the 4.0. But they took zero honors or AP. They did not challenge themselves at all. And they also didn't have a lot of activities uh on their schedule either. Versus student number B. They did have a 3.8. They had a lot of A's, a few B's here and there. Uh, but they took every single AP available at their high school and they were involved in 10 plus activities at the school, too. So, quick little poll now. Now that you know more context about both students, which student would you want for your school? If you ran a school, would you want the 4.0 student with uh no rigger, no activities, or student B? Again, still a strong GPA, but right, a lot more rigor, a lot more activities as well, too. overwhelming amount of B's in the chat, right? So, the G the takeaway that we have so far, we're getting the GPA can be an indicator, but it doesn't tell me much. That's why if you notice a lot of our coaches, we never ask for GPA. It's a fun metric we track cuz parents like to know that number, right? But for the most part, I have no clue any of our student. Maybe our coaches know, but I have no clue any of our students GPA, right? Instead, we look for two other factor. We ask for two factors that are the most important. So, little teasers, but this is the call out real fast. This is in the future when you ever see parents on forums that say my child was x GPA, keep in mind they're looking at the wrong number right away. That's kind of that's my kind of my instant oh giveaway as well too because they're trying to optimize for GPA. But it's it makes sense. Their counselors talk about GPA all the time. Their friends talk about Coach Victor's talk about the the group, right? Your friends talk your neighbors talk about GPA all the time. That's why you're conditioned to think about GPA. Let me restructure your brain a little bit. Right? Okay, the two factors you should be looking at, grade trends is number one and number two is academic rigor. So when it comes to grade trends, there's two trends that as a reader I'm trained to look for. Number one, high plateau means as many A's as you can. If you get a B, the only person who will be mad is mom and dad as well too, right? People freak out too much. Oh no, B is not a bad grade. Oh my god, do I got to tell the readers why I got a B in the class? No, a B is fine. Do not stress out about a B, right? A's and B's. Most of our again, we interviewed a bunch of our Ivy kids. You guys are bored after this this summit. Uh we interviewed a bunch of our Ivy kids and top like MIT. So they all had A's and B's too. And I was like, wait, if those kids got A's and B, they made it to the Ivy's and it should be fine. So don't stress out, right? The other thing is the upward trend as well, too. So let's say ninth grade you were a little rocky, right? A little rocky ninth grade cuz the transition from middle school to high school is hard, but you figured out and your grades went up over time. That's another good thing, too. Like again that dip that dip in the grace right we like to think of it you want to ## Writing College Essays That Reflect Your Real Story [50:00] think about a Nike swish you want to come basically if the dip there you want to bounce back up if you go down and you stay down that's where like uh oh that's not probably not the strongest thing to look at but your goal is to go up right and also keep in mind colleges will only see grades up to the summer before 12th grade that's why a lot of our our students we recommend you guys take classes by the way 2026 families we recommend you take classes this coming summer because that's the last set of grades colleges will see. So you want to finish up with two A's, make a kind of grade trend. Uh finish up really really strong. But the most important thing that we care about is the rigor. Uh so the rigger, think of it as the honors level courses, accelerated courses, AP, IB, and college level courses. The reason why this is really important is because college is hard. I don't know why people teachers don't talk about this more. Counselors don't talk about more. College is hard, right? We all think we want to go to Harvard and and UCLA and Stanford and all these schools. Do you know how hard it is at these schools? You know how Go on Tik Tok, look at students uh venting about how hard life is uh at these schools. It's tough. It's not only hard to get in, it's hard once you are in. Because think about it, they took the best of the best and put them in one room. That's why it's so tough. And colleges have curves, right? Right? So kids for the first time, wait is what's a B? Wait, what's a C? They're you they're for the first time some of these kids are kind of feeling. So it's really really hard for them. So what the colleges want to know is if I say yes to you, are you going to be okay? So the key here is you want to demonstrate that on your schedule. So our strategy to how how much do we need to demonstrate? We tell our students you want to match the number of rigored courses to that ex student at your school. Meaning, let's say you're aiming for top schools, right? Let's say, "Oh, my child's aiming for uh UCLA, UC Berkeley, Stanford, one of these schools." I'm like, "Awesome." In that case, you want that's a top school. You want to match the top student. How much rigor is the top student doing as well too? And that's kind of the key that you want to do because if they're taking four, you want to take four is the the element as well too. And and people are like, "But that's a lot of work." I'm like, "Yes, college is hard. Not everyone's going to make it in. Acceptance rates to UCLA dropped under 10%." Right? If it was easy, everyone would will make it in. Doesn't that make sense? It's one of those like like expectations. Here's here's the answer. People just don't want to believe the answer is the thing. But that's kind of how it's set up. But keep in mind, it's more than just the number of classes you're taking. You can take the classes, but if you don't demonstrate the what we call pathway overlays, right? you're not going to show the colleges that you're ready for that type of pathway. So to kind of piggyback, this is was coach Victor's slide, right? But the three kind of pathways that you guys have, there's three things that we're going to talk about. The computer science engineering pathway, the STEM business, and the everything else as well, too. So, first off, if you're everything else, so basically your humanities, liberal arts, uh polyai, pre-law, a lot of this stuff, right? Your goal is to max out the rigor for as many non- STEM classes as you can is is the key that you want over here. Right? It's number one. If you're interested in STEM or business, we had a com question earlier. What's STEM for us? How we define STEM? We define STEM as basically anything science minus computers, data, engineering, right? So that's that's the the pathway number one. But science is everything else. So biology, chemistry, um all that, right? Falls under here. Be a doctor. Boom. Over here as well too, right? Uh, so right here you want to do strong math. You want to get to calculus 2, which is the equivalent calculus BC at the high school level, right? And you also want to have strong biological sciences on your schedule. AP bio, AP chemistry, AP environmental science. Again, do you need these? No. Keep in mind, you don't need these. However, keep in mind a lot of students who are making it in have these over. This is what the REI is trained to look for. So keep that in mind as well. Again, the admission is holistic. So there's a lot of different moving pieces uh in this but again we like to play it very safe again understanding the game and playing the game as well too there right and if you're interested in computer science engineering uh as well too you want stronger math so basically a lot of our students are now doing calculus 3 or multivariable calculus uh keep in mind most high schools do not offer this some schools do uh but they do offer this uh there right and then so you probably need to go to the community college to take the higher level math multivariable calculus linear algebra uh differential equations as well too and you want strong this is this is more for the engineering field is more physical science the physics AP physics one CE all these extra ones that's kind of what you want to do over here right I also put a few screenshots if you guys want to take a snapshot as well I think coach David on our team created this coach art one of our top coaches they car these sample ones so if you guys want to screenshot it you guys can you guys can uh as well too but this is example Again, keep in mind this is not the framework. Keep in mind, every single student is different. Every single school is set up differently. Not every school offers certain classes. Some schools do, some schools don't. Some schools will allow you to do certain things, some schools don't. So, this is a sample. Keep in mind, sample, right? So, you can see here this art student, right? Art student for us will fall under path. Quick poll, quick little test. If it's an art student, which pathway are we putting them under? One, two, or three? One, two, or three. in the chat. Are are we going to set them up for pathway number one, pathway number two, or pathway number three? All righty. Thank you in the chat. Pathway number uh three, arts. Arts is pathway number three. All right, cuz remember one is engineering. We're back in one Oh, I I mistyped this. Go back to this slide. There you go. One, one is engineering, two is STEM, three is everything else. So, art is everything else, right? So, uh it it didn't fit under the first one, didn't fit the second one. So, it fits under the third one um as well, too. So here's a sketch. You can see right uh with math they went to pre-calc and stats. They didn't go to the the higher calculus classes as well too but they took all the other ones AP psychology, AP art history, AP gov, all these other ones. Environmental science actually it's a science but it's not as as difficult as the other ones. So that you you'll see that reflected over here. Uh there next schedule business. Which pathway is this guys? Is this a pathway number one for for keep in mind this is not like public knowledge. This is like our internal lingo. So you guys will be with us now. you'll be symbiotic with our team uh as well too. So for us if it was we us working with a student or we put them there we go we put them under pathway number two which is a STEM business schedule right so for this student right here looks like they are uh in bio it look like in bio you can see as well too their school offers a bioed pathway some schools offer like a pathway course as well too so they are they're taking that at their school um as well too and you can see again they're going higher they got the bc getting more and even stats because that's not again if if you're interested in the uh if you're interested in the uh math static you going as high as BC stats is just memorizing a few equations um I think I was a former math teacher so that's how I know this uh so it's that there right but you see maxing out rigger is still there again it's it's stacked the overlay and going to be the other class as well too right this one's computer science engineering process elimination pathway number one for us right so this one looks like a computer science student uh as well too you can kind of see the math went super high right they're taking calc 3 at the community college as well too they've been taking some advanced classes they're still doing again they're still doing AP AP Lang, but coach Tony, my child is a engineer. They don't they don't like English. That's fine. They don't need to like English, but that's the rigger. Now, you see how the rigger stacks on first, then we stack on the overlays overlay on top of the rigger uh as well too. So, that's kind of the big thing. And they took the the physics uh here as well too there. Okay. Want to kind of give you guys a quick again this is sample things overlays. I know there's a few questions in the chat. I want to just answer them before before we pass it off. I believe um Lenny is up next. Lenny, if you can let me know in the chat if you're still you're here uh as well. But really quick uh I'm going through the questions really fast. I'm seeing here uh someone asked how's a 4.5 possible for the UC system? Is it cap to eight courses 4.33 cap? So the the the question here is asking about the UC GPA which is a special way to calculate it. Again, if you want to learn how to do it, you can, right? We have we have like hours of trainings on that on our YouTube channel. You can take a peek at that. We always caveat in those trainings we just showed you. You probably don't need to waste your time calculating this. It's not a big thing. Every school actually has a different way to calculate the UC GPA. Some schools do UC cap, some do UC uncap, some do both numbers. So the idea, the takeaway, again, hopefully by the end of today, you shouldn't be talking about GPA anymore, right? That the whole idea of this whole purpose that that's kind of one of our big kind of emphasis is get rid of GPA talk. Let's talk about grades and classes. That's kind of the big thing we want to focus families on because the more you think about GPA or like you're going to optimize for GPA and that usually ends up in not a good situation. Uh because you might make mistakes that you normally wouldn't have made if you didn't uh do that as well too. Okay, so as that um someone says activities, we'll talk about activities in a little bit. So I'll save that question for later on. Um as well someone says students at schools take 18 to 20 APs and get A's. How do I match or do more? Uh depends, right? Again, does your school even offer that much? Is number one. Some schools are some schools that we have students from like the Bay Area, from New Jersey. Those are I think the two pockets of really really competitive students as well too. Keep in mind admissions is regional. So, they'll be comparing you against your classmate as well too. They're always always away. Um I wanted to give you little teasers this summer. So, not the summer in the summer training. So, hang on tight for that. I'll give you guys that as well too. Um uh was biomemed pathway. Some schools offer like a pathway for uh for bio. Uh so uh like a pathway series like a pathway for engineering pathway for uh bio for medicine they have that in play as well too. Um, if you engineering path, can you discuss the need for foreign language requirement? I'm not sure what the exact question is, but that's a high that now that's a high school requirement, right? The high school requirement is to make sure that you need to uh get your language in. There's also a if you're applying to UC's, the UC's have a UC requirement to get the A throughG requirement. Again, we have a bunch of trainings on this. If you're specifically on UC's, look up A throughG requirements on our YouTube eolock. You'll find a bunch of them on there. But the idea is um the the college the UC's are requiring that as part of their thing, right? Um is that so it's not it's not the the rigor of the requirement for the UC's itself. Okay. Um uh looks like Magouch is here. I'm going to invite Magouch up to the room. I'll do like two more quick questions and then we will uh pass it off. Uh There we go. I see you. All right. Promoting you up real fast. Uh if you want to go ahead and get your slides started, too, Lena, uh there. And then um my my child's ninth grade, takes algebra 1, geometry is next year. They have no idea which pathway. Missed the summer schedule. Vote for geometry. Can't take different math this uh next summer. So again, if you don't know what you want to do, I think coach coach Victor kind of slid this in his presentation. Start at the p start at one and work downwards, right? So start and do we think we want to be an engineer? Do we think we want to do uh do we think we want to be an engineer? Do we think we want to be um computer science? Right? Try that. Try that first. Set up for that one. You find out nope, don't want it. Perfect. Let's move over to pathway number two. Let's try do we think we want to do science? Do we think we're going to do business? Then switch over again. So the idea is you want to move start from the most rigorous one all the way downwards as well too. Okay, take a quick little pause. If you have more questions, feel free to drop it in the Q&A box. I'll go ahead and I'm hang out in chat in Q&A mode. So, if you guys have questions, I'll be the ones answering the questions in Q&A. Feel free to drop any and all questions in there. But without further ado, I'm going to pass it off uh to Lineia. Hey, you can see me, you can hear me. All is good. I'm I'm hoping that's a yes. All right. I'm going to talk to you guys a little bit about the enhanced ACT. Um so, just to kick this off, a little bit about myself. I already told you my name. I'm Len. And also, thank you, Coach Tony, for that introduction. Um, I'm currently since 2019 a content creator and instructor at Meouch. But prior to that, since uh 2004, when I first started teaching the SAT for the Princeton Review, I've spent over two decades in the test prep industry, both in the US and abroad. I've been a teacher, a tutor, and a content creator for pretty much every test that's out there. And then eventually I became a teacher trainer for the Princeton Review for SAT, ACT, and GRE tests. Eventually after that, I worked my way up and was the director of instruction management for the Princeton Review in Taipei, Taiwan. But that was really more about hiring, training, and supervising. So that took me away from the student experience. And that was okay for a time, but I found that I really missed working with students. And so I started looking for opportunities to come back to the US. That's where I found meouch. And I was particularly excited to join me because historically test prep was something that was not very accessible to a lot of students. And it's a huge game changer. The SAT, the ACT, it's something that most students are going to have to tackle at some point in the admissions process. The students who had access to test prep really excelled when it came time to that test because I tell my students it's like learning a foreign language. The more familiarity you have, the more fluent you are in that language, the easier it is. And students who didn't have access to test prep just didn't necessarily know the ways that you could apply different strategies and techniques to excel at these tests. So, Magouch not only offered me an opportunity to come back to the US, but it offers test prep at a much more affordable and an accessible capacity. So, I get to work with students again. I get to work with awesome people. That's where I'm at, Coach Tony. Um, and I get to uh nerd out on the stuff that I love to nerd out on, which is test prep stuff. So, because the SAT or ACT is something that is a part of the admissions process, it's really important to know which test is the best fit for you. And that's usually going to come through practicing those tests. But that brings us to today's topic, which is the ACT is changing. And it's good to know about these changes because that way you can consider, you can talk about, well, what might be a better fit for me? And now that the ACT is changing, maybe it's offering some elements that will make it a better test for me to take. So, what we're going to cover, we are going to talk about traditional ACT versus the enhanced ACT just so you get a sense of the differences. We are going to talk about the timeline for the enhanced roll out so you know when to expect these changes. And we're going to talk about student considerations. So, what's changing? To see what's changing, it's best to start with what hasn't changed, which is the traditional ACT format. This has been the ACT forever. Questions and aotted time have not changed. There was a change a few years back and that's when the essay went optional. But for the most part, the way the ACT has looked for the last million years is students could either take a test that's around 3 hours or they could take a test that was around 3 hours and 40 minutes with the optional essay. They had to take the English, had to take math, had to take reading, had to take science, and it was a long exhausting test. Now within the test sections, each question that a student answers correctly, they get one raw point for that. Every single question in every section is worth one raw point. And that brings up traditional scoring. So the raw points you get in the sections are converted to ACT's proprietary 1 to 36 scoring scale. Traditionally, the composite score, and that's important because the composite score is the one that admissions looks at. All of the different section scores, those are averaged to give you the composite score. That's the score that matters to admissions, and that was the average of the English, math, reading, and science scores. All four of those were the core tests. Writing has its own separate score. And then if you do opt to take the writing test, you'll get an ELA score, which is the average of your English reading and writing scores. That is the way it has looked for a long, long time. But now the enhanced format. So you'll notice that the questions and a loted time have dropped significantly. And also science is no longer a core test. Science is now an optional section. So students really have a choice. Do they want to take the ACT with science, the ACT with writing, the ACT with writing and science? So, you have more options. Your total testing time at this point could be around 2 hours if you just take English, math, and reading, the three core tests, 2 hours and 45 minutes if you add science or writing, or around 3 hours and 20 minutes if you opt to take all of it. The way that this has changed for scoring, each section is still given a score on ACT's 1 to 36 scale. Nothing new there. But the composite score, the one that matters, that's going to now just be the average of the English, math, and reading scores. Science got the boot. Writing will still have a separate score, but now science will also have a separate score. And with those separate scores, if you opt to take those sections, you'll have an ELA score if you take the writing section. And that'll still be the average of your English reading and writing scores. But now, there's also the STEM score, and that is the average of your math and science scores. You only get those if you actually opt to take those test sections. So, STEM score if you take science, ELA score if you take writing. You get both of them if you decide to take both. At a high level, here are the key changes. It is a shorter test format with more time per question, which students are feeling pretty stoked about. Math has dropped from five answer choices to four answer choices. So, a little bit easier, a little less time consuming. They've also removed some of the higher level math concepts and that used to be a big difference. So ACT math was considered quite a bit harder than SAT math, although SAT math might be trickier, but ACT math tested higher level concepts. They are taking those out because they just want to look a little bit more like the digital SAT. These two test companies, when one makes a change, within a few years, the other's going to make a change. SAT made a bunch of changes and went digital. ACT is now making a bunch of changes and offering a bunch of different options because they don't want to lose any more market share. And that's pretty much what drives the changes here. They're constantly innovating to get more and more students to take either the SAT or ACT. Science, this is a big one, is optional. But here's something you want to consider. Is it really optional? Colleges can still require, especially for the time being, for students to take the science section. That was the case when the writing section went optional with ACT. For a while, a lot of schools still required that students opt in to take the essay. It was part of their admissions requirements. That we've heard rumor will be the case for science for the next x number of years. Eventually, schools will probably not require it. Uh, for example, at this point there's maybe 10 schools left that require the ACT essay. It before it used to be a considerable number, but that's something for students to think about. I jumped ahead a little bit to students considerations, but I know a lot of students who were really excited that the science section was becoming optional, and I'm like, okay, cool, cool, cool. But pump the brakes. Like, it might not be optional for you. You got to do your research and check what the colleges you're applying to are going to require. Another kind of interesting thing, ACT used to have this thing called the fifth test and it was where they did all of their research for future test questions. But now those experimental questions or ACT calls them field questions, they are built into the scored sections. So there will be questions inside of the sections that will not count, but you won't be able to tell the difference between a question that counts and a question that doesn't count. So that's really going to make accuracy an essential component because there are fewer questions now. And in that group of fewer questions, some of them are not going to count for your score. And then of course another key change, probably the biggest key change is the composite score. Again, the one admissions cares about. You now just have those three core tests, English, math, and reading. Flexibility is what ACT is pushing. They have greater options maybe. Uh but also with that becomes different pricing. You will pay extra if you take the science section. You pay extra if you take the writing section cuz why wouldn't you? All right. The things that are staying the same. Core content is staying the same. That's a good thing. Question types and format staying the same except they do claim that they are going to remove some of the higher level math questions. So really that just means some of the higher level math questions might no longer be included, but the way that concepts are tested, that's all going to stay exactly the same. The scoring scale that is also staying the same, and that's great because people know what 1 to 36 means. That means an ACT test. The optional writing section is still optional. And then the test format options. The thing that a lot of students do like is with SAT there is no longer paper choice but ACT is still going to offer paper. So with test options you can take the paper ACT or you could take the digital SAT unless you are taking the test outside of the US. International students taking the test abroad have to take a digital ACT test and that's been since maybe at least for the last two three years. Okay. When is this all going to happen? The enhanced ACT roll out. For students who took the digital tests in April, they already saw the shorter version of the ACT. September, that is when paper tests and international digital tests will shift to the shorter format. And the last thing that will change in April of 2026, that's when school day and district testing will shift to the shorter version of the ACT. But here's something to note. This is kind of a key point. Beginning in September, science will no longer be included in the composite for all tests, digital paper, and school day. So that new scoring system starts in the fall, despite whether or not you actually have ACT as an option or not. Student considerations. So highle comparison, ACT versus SAT. ACT you have paper and digital testing options. SAT just digital. For enhanced ACT, you've got the English, math, and reading core sections. And then for SAT, it's module-based, two reading and writing modules, and two math modules. The scoring for the ACT is not adaptive. However many raw points you get in a section will be converted to that 1 to 36 scale. For the SAT, the scoring is section adaptive. So that means that your performance on the first module will determine the difficulty level and ultimately your overall scoring range on the second module. So what that means is if you don't do well on the first module, your second module will have easier content, but then that also lowers your scoring ceiling. But if you do awesome on the first module and you get a second module with higher level questions, you now have the opportunity to reach a higher range of scores. I have a student right now who is shifting from the SAT to the ACT simply because the section adaptivity causes a lot of test anxiety for her. Um, some students might find that, okay, I just don't like having that much pressure in the beginning. That's not a good fit for me. that can be a consideration. And then of course with enhanced ACT, science and essay are optional sections. You can do them or you don't have that whereas you don't have that opportunity with SAT. So historically, we would tell students who really excel in STEM but were weaker in verbal to gravitate towards the ACT. and we would tell students who excel in language arts but maybe are a little weaker in STEM subjects to gravitate towards the SAT. That line is no longer going to be as clearly defined now with the changes to these tests, but something to consider if you do excel in STEM. There is a science section that's available on the ACT. If you know you're going to do an awesome job at that and you will have a great STEM score, especially if you're applying to programs that are STEM focused, that might be something for you to consider. It might be a place for you to showcase a particular strength. You don't have that option with the science or with the SAT, but the counter to that is there are science-like questions built into the SAT test and everybody knows that. So, a lot of it really does come down to whether or not the compositions of the tests and the text complexity, the format, if those are tests that or those are things that feel comfortable for you when you have to sit down and take these tests. Probably the best thing to do is take a practice test in both before committing to one or the other. And quite honestly, they are similar enough that you could prepare for one and really be okay taking both. But then at least if you take practice tests, you might get a sense of, oh, hey, I am way better at ACT. Uh the text complexity text complexity on the SAT is still a little higher. That might not be comfortable for certain students. So now they might be like, okay, ACT is for me. Or you might be a student who just has familiarity with the SAT. That's been the test that people you know have taken and your older siblings have taken and it's just something that you know better. There are a lot of different things to consider, but honestly, take a take a practice test in both and that will help you decide which one might be a better fit. Other student considerations, become familiar with the updated test structure if you're going for the ACT, especially in regards to pacing strategy. That's going to be the big thing. You want to practice with updated study materials. There's not a ton out there, but honestly, older materials are going to work, too, especially since the content and question format hasn't changed. But I can't emphasize enough how important pacing is on the ACT. And it's such a crucial element that if you are going to practice with older materials, you really want to be careful to adjust the number of questions you're doing, especially if you do a full practice section and also the time you all lot yourselves to do that practice session in. There is so far when I wrote these slides, which wasn't that long ago, I keep checking, but there's only been one released updated test through acd.org. Again, this is one of those things I love about Magouch. We already almost have our product ready. We will launch it really soon uh for the fall exam. So, if you are prepping this summer, no matter what you choose for prep, just be sure that you either are using updated materials or that you are modifying older materials so that you really get a sense of your pacing strategy. If you're taking a digital test, you want to be sure to practice with online tests to become comfortable. And a big part of that is just don't walk in on test day and have that be the first time you encountered ACT's platform. You want to be fairly comfortable with that. Especially if you forget your calculator and you're going to use the Desmos calculator that ACT provides. You want to be sure that you are comfortable navigating that. But don't forget your calculator. Um, and that's it. I mean, this is such a huge piece of it and I love helping students kind of decide where they want to go and then help them get over this hurdle to get there. So, choosing whether or not you want to take the ACT or SAT, that's probably the most important first step. So, I can't encourage you enough. Take a practice test in both. I can hang out for a couple of questions, but I think I'm right up at time. So, I can also happily hand this back to to Coach Tony. Uh if we do have a few questions if you can help answer them. Uh I think you'll probably be the the expert from from from us uh there. So one question here is do you know what percent of the new ACT math will require algebra 2 knowledge? Here's what I would consider. A lot of the makeup really hasn't changed. The higher level algebra 2 concepts. You probably aren't going to see those as much. So, algebra 1 and algebra 2 concepts make up the bulk of ACT math questions. I'm not 100% sure how to divide those out, which ones fall under algebra and which one fall under algebra, too. But I can tell you that brushing up on something like coordinate plane. Be very familiar with coordinate plane fundamentals. ACT loves to test lines. They love to test quadratics, things of that nature. So you can expect that algebra and algebra 2 will be the majority of question content for that section. Awesome. Can another question here was can you talk about the transition dates and like switching uh like the AC switching if you can either show the slides or explain that really quick one more time. Yes, let me let me see if I can go back to that slide. I'm sure that I can I have that ability somehow some way. Okay. Well, maybe I don't. I'm just going to tell you. So, April was the official roll out, and this is a really slow roll out for the summer starting in April. And then the tests that are available from April, April on that are digital, which I and I completely if you're like, it's impossible to get into a digital testing center. It is. ACT has to approve digital testing centers. There's not a ton of them right now. So right now you might just have to take paper because you can't get into a digital center unless your school offers that. So digital tests starting from April are shorter and science is optional. The fall 2025 test. So this fall's test that is when both paper and digital are shorter and science is optional. Awesome. Fantastic. And last last question for you uh is have you seen any changes in the composite test scores from the April testing in a new format? I have not and ACT has been a little ky about this because they're very much like don't worry about it. Our composite scores you can compare one from like 1988 and one from 2025. It'll all make sense. And I think all of us are kind of like how there's literally a section missing. But I'm not sure necessarily about the composite. But here's what I can tell you. Because there are fewer questions, what I've heard is that even though they're claiming that it's easier, the mix of questions that people are reporting tended to scale a little bit medium to harder because you don't have 75 questions in the English section anymore. They took away 15 questions and they the report has been word on the street is that a lot of the easier questions were cut and what you're left with is the mediums and the harder. But I mean that's a little bit kind of hearsay. I haven't sat down and taken one yet, but I've read experiences and talked to students who took that and that's they they both have agreed that it seems that it's not as easy as it used to be because you don't have as many easier questions in those shorter sections. Love it. That's pretty much it as well. Um, one one other fun little call out like I mentioned at the end of this event, we're going to send out some free goodies. Uh I believe uh Mcouch has a little special gift for the attendees. Is that correct? Meouch has a special gift. We have free practice tests for everybody all the time. So if you really want to try out an SAT ACT, then if you go to Meouch, you can navigate to Meouch's free SAT practice test or free ACT practice test. And those also include score reports. So those could be a crucial first step for you in deciding which direction you want to go in. But also we are offering a discount for students who would like to work with me through this conference. Love it. Thank you so much. Yeah, for me I I I I I was with them. Still love them to this day. Ours, by the way, it's a little spoilers. Our coaching families, we use Magouch as our main uh platform as well too because they their stuff works. So it's one of those if it works, it's really really good. We we we roll it out as well too. So for our coaching families, you probably have known, oh that that Magouch logo, that's this this is them in the flesh. uh as well too. So, thank you so much for coming uh today. Thank you for having me. This was awesome. Awesome. Cool. All right. So, uh moving on, got jumping on as well too. Again, if you have questions, if you can throw them into the uh the uh Q&A, our chat does go a little crazy. We're having like a lot lot of chats with some families as well too. But kind of moving on uh to the next session right over here. Uh we're going to move over to activities now. Right. So, we going to talk a little bit about planning where we want to go. We talked about now uh figuring out in terms of academics. Now we're going to move into the activities of what actually stands out when it comes to the activity section itself. So first I talk about what are activities number one. Number two is our internal metrics. What we look at specifically when it comes to activities. This is kind this is not a public do this. This is more like this is what our families do. Our families do really well. Feel free to copy it uh there. And then there's two bucket. We talk the concept of two buckets. We'll talk about that as well too. So, first off, just going to pull, make sure we're all awake. We're still good. We still have I don't think we lost anyone yet. Maybe we lost one or two, but holy moly, we're still 200 plus strong. So, that's crazy. You guys are amazing. So, in the chat, quick little like uh little uh keyboard activity real fast. Make sure your keyboard is still working. In the chat, can you give me an example of an activity? So, either something your child is doing or something your child should be doing as well too. Just go ahead and drop just an example of an activity that your child is doing in the chat. Go ahead and take quick five seconds uh keyboard key uh keypad uh drop what activity is your child doing or if if you don't know what child what just give me examples of activities here. So in the chat right now, uh, soccer, sports, musical theater, um, taekwondo, fun fact, I have a 50 black about myself. Uh, there volunteering, tennis, workshops, uh, martial arts, um, sports, athletics, a lot of sports here, robotics, uh, tao, very cool. Uh, dance, coro, baseball band, swimming, lacrosse, uh, ha, gaming, rock climbing, track, cross country, culinary, fire cadets, marching band, scholarship program, uh, jazz club, volunteering, film, scuba, very cool as well. So, I think you guys are understand the concept of this, right? So when it comes to activities, it's just basically the how we define it is how you spend your time minus sleeping minus school minus your homework. That's kind of like if you think about the activities sort of that way, right? Everything you guys are sharing is the traditional things that we do. But right there are also potential a few things that you might have thought like wait that's an activity. Yeah, that could be an activity as well too. So let's go ahead before we actually talk about the activity uh the exact activities as well too. We always talk about what's something we look for, right? So something that we look for for our students to try to keep um where they need to be is not what they do. So when people tell you, oh, when their first question to us is, uh, what research program does my child need to do? I'm like again, you're looking at the wrong thing. Just like GPA, don't look at that. What we look at first is the number of hours that you are spending for the activity that week uh is the thing as well too. And uh we have some numbers again. Keep in mind these are not hard set numbers. These are not do this or you won't make it in numbers. These are kind of aim for this. If you aim for these, you will be kind of fine. And our students aim for these. They do them. They tend to be fine. Right? So, a few metrics for you guys. Again, this is the California College of Mission Summit. So, we're going to focus on California based schools, right? So, first one, if you're applying to a Cal State schools, you think about Calpali, uh, Cal State Long Beach, all these schools, they actually don't have an activity section. So little fun fact for you guys who didn't know that when you apply to these schools there's it's only academics they don't really ask for anything else. So uh does not exist DNA right is number one. So again just do things uh is number one but if you're aiming for the UC schools typically what we have our students aim for is roughly 20 plus hours of activities per week not per month not per year per week. Right? If you're aiming for like the the the more like the next tier up which like was like USC, USA, UC Berkeley, 25 hours is typically what we tend to see. And if you're aiming for like again Stanford and these type of like uh almost like top 25 plus colleges, 30 plus hours a week as well too. And at the moment I know some of you guys eyeball shot out use like holy moly coach Tony that's a lot of hours. There's no way I can do that. There's no way I can make that happen in the time I don't have time. My child's too busy. All all those those I'm call excuses now, right? You g call them excuses now. So I don't have time because the thing is I'm gonna prove you that you do have the time is the number one. So how are you spending your time? So let's do some mental math. We do some some I call public math and public math together and we can see together why uh it's very possible to hit these numbers. First off, in a week typical week, there's seven days a week, 24 hours in a day. If you guys have more hours in your day, let me know. I I want to learn that too. But 24 hours, seven days a week, 168 hours in a week. Your child should be sleeping eight hours a night, right? That's one of the big things we tell ourselves. It's a really big imbalance, right? You can't just go hard hard. You're going to burn out. So, you have to sleep. Sleep's really really big, especially when they're like in their teen years. It's kind of where sleep is most important. I know a lot of kids are not sleeping eight hours. Again, sleep to eight hours number one. Then you have school. You can't change school, right? School is there 6* 5 30-ish hours a week of school. Homework. Let's say you spend three hoursish a night times five 15ish hours uh a week. I know a lot of you guys are not spending at least even three at two even one or two hours but let's give you at three hours a day uh doing homework right so that's that's that as well too and something we have a concept something we call me time me time is something that you do just for you aka scrolling Tik Tok aka watching Netflix aka playing Valerin playing video games right all these things that you do just to keep yourself sane is is the biggest thing as well and you know 14 hours we tell students do it around two hours daily, right? Just me the mental breaks. Our students do run really hard. Because they run really hard, you need to take more mental breaks or else you are going to burn out. If you burn out, everything we do is kind of lost as well, too. So, we're really really big on all this stuff. So, I subtract these like non-negotiables per se, you still have 40 to 50 hours. Again, if you add in like dinner time, add in family time, add in all the extra things, right? Boom. You still have 40 to 50 hours left in a week, right? So now right now that for me so so if I tell a student if a student told me oh I'm only doing five hours of activities a week I'm like wow are you spending 35 hours watching Netflix this week and most of like no I'm not doing that so I'm like cool so what are you doing and that's that's kind of teaser right now what are you doing with that time because what I'm going to reveal to you because sometimes right we might be like oh my kids are doing a lot but actually sometimes they are sometimes they are doing a lot but they're they're just undersharing who they are is the key. So, let's talk about there's two buckets of activities that we make sure students try to uh have on their schedule, right? Number one is called tasting your major and number two we call it who you are. I think this is really awesome. A lot of the talk so far today has kind of going gone back to a lot of these two things as well too, right? So, basically the who you are is stuff outside of your major. We'll talk about both. So, first off, let's talk about tasting your major, right? Tasting your major is basically if I was a reader and I looked at your activity section, right? Without giving me any extra context, can I tell you are that student? Meaning if I looked if so really really quick by the way let's say I gave you a student right in the chat if I told you a student you look at their activities and all they told you oh I am I did code academy I uh built my own app uh I was part of I was part of three hackathons I uh I did two outside coding classes as well too what would you assume as their major if you saw all those things on their activities what things do you think as their major right uh in the chat there you go boom computer science data science right sometimes I agree that was be I would argue as well that this student will be a computer science student right let's say another student uh I told you they are uh they are in band they do band uh they love band they've been playing since they were a kid they play band growing up uh they also love volunteering so they're part of key club and they volunteered a lot a lot of hours there. Uh, great. Tons of hours here as well, too. Uh, they also love sports. They're not the greatest, but they love sports. I say they play soccer. They love soccer. They they made it to junior varsity in soccer. They probably varsity senior year as well, too. That's it. That's all they do. Question. Can you tell what major that student is based on those three things? All right. The chat some some people say said said music, right? because of the ban, right? Some people said no as well too. So, what's the answer? You see how it's hard, right? So, I'm a as a reader, I again something coach Victor talked about earlier in his call is do you need to know your major? Absolutely not. Parents, you guys know this, right? There your kids are 14 to 18 years old, they have no clue what life is. I guarantee you when they're 22, when they graduate from college, they still won't know what they want to do. And when they're 30, they'll reset again. They have no clue what they want to do. That's normal, right? Normalize that. That is very, very normal. It's at this point. That's why we use the word taste. How can you taste your mate? Just like you're trying new foods. You're thinking, I might like this. You try it. Wow, I like it. Let me do more of this versus I try it. Ooh, I don't like it. Let me pivot. Let me not do order that again. Let me try something else. That's the whole concept of tasting your major. Right? So, what we want students to do is you want to demonstrate this. And here's the why. Now, the why is skipping ahead. A lot of the schools you'll be applying for, there's going to be a question on the college essays. Little spoilers later, right? That they're going to say, "Why do you want to be this major?" Also, at this major at our school, that's a different part of the question, right? But why do you want to do this major? Most students don't have the activities to back up their answer. They say, "Oh, I want to I want to I want to be a a bio major because I want to save the world, right? I want to change lives. I want to blah blah." I'm like, "Cool." But how do I know right? How do I know uh you can do you the things that you can do is the thing. So for me tasting more is really really important to show the readers as well too. So if then this is this is the if your child is lacking a few of this let's let's start adding that right let's start adding that this upcoming week this upcoming summer as well to taste your majors. And some of you guys are like coach I have no clue what to do. Is it okay in the chat if I give you some ideas? These are not like do this. There's just ideas. Drop a yes in the chat if I can give you some ideas for a few fields. For a few fields out there that we know a lot of families are probably in as well. Can I give you a few ideas and I'll show you kind of why they're tasting the mage. There we go. A few yeses. Only like four people want yeses, right? Everyone else doesn't want yeses. The other 200 people don't want don't want the the samples as well, too. All right. There we go. There we go. We need a little little little little little uh little feel right there. All right. Let's go ahead. First one. Engineering. Right. Keep in mind this is not a to-do list. Don't treat this as a do this this this is this. This is like ideas right that you can think and ask your child or if you're a student ask yourself would I like would I want to taste this right? Right. So for engineering, starting a club, right? Taking a course, uh, a Corsera, edex, these are free, by the way. Don't pay for the certificates. Doesn't mean mean anything as well too, right? Do competitions, right? If your child is very competitive competitions here. Build a personal project. Build a Rube Goldberg. If you haven't seen one before, look up on Tik Tok or Instagram. Really, really cool things there. Um, shadow an engineer. Coach Coach Baker talked ear about an informational interview. That's what this is, right? You want to ask them and also see if you can shadow them as well, too. maybe a program, right? Some really, really amazing programs. Uh, MIT's offered at MIT. Cosmos is a really cool one. It's offered by the UC system as well. Some ideas. These are again not a to-do list. These are just ideas and hopefully it can percolate more ideas that you have, right? Next one, computer science, right, as well too. What if you build an app, a game, a website, enter coding competitions? Again, I mentioned the hackathons earlier, right? Do stuff on GitHub. I I taught law students do this as well too, right? GitHub as well too. Take online classes, right? You can learn on YouTube like there's 12hour long courses on all these things on YouTube right start a series right if your if your student's a teacher like a teaching mentality you can teach stuff right maybe they can intern and volunteer what if any any future doctors right future doctor shadow shadow a doctor a nurse or a technicians or do research at a local university as science fair stuff right volunteering at different areas or nonprofits because hospitals are really hard to get right nonprofits taking classes starting project, join clubs, hostess a big bio club as well, too. Business, if you're interested in business, start a micro business. Again, a little spoilers as well, too. In about like 30-ish minutes, we're inviting uh Rey uh he's a Harvard indivision mentor. He's going to teach you guys actually if if this something you're interested in. He'll teach you step by step how to do this. Not only limit to business majors, but if you're interested in making money, that's that's a good like a setup for that as well, too, right? business competitions, taking courses, shadowing people, launching a fundraiser, tracking things on your own there, pre-law, people interested in become a lawyer in the future, right? There's a lot of clubs, mock trial, debate, model UN, interning at local office as well too, writing your own opinions uh on things, volunteering, uh sharing summaries, right? These are there's people who do this on on TikTok if you show them like a daily thing. That's really cool. Creating a campaign. So, there's tons and tons of things you can these are ideas. These are all just ideas that you can do but idea taste it so you can so you can show the colleges. And part two of this is showing who you are. This is how you stand out in the admissions process. Most people think, oh, I need to do if I want to do law, I have to compete at the highest uh national level in debate to to to qualify. And I'm like, no, because only a few people can get that. And you're doing debate. Every other kid is doing debate, right? So when you're doing the same things, you can't stand out. This is where you don't stand out. You do this to show your interest in that field. Where you stand out, here's the trick, by the way, is this. The stuff not related to your major. How are you different? What makes you stand out is things that are you outside of the major, right? So, think of sports, think of hobbies, think of interest, things that you do that's not related. Right? Again that that student I mentioned earlier who's doing the uh the volunteering the key club the other thing right if that student if I told you now that student is interested in law and then he started joining some some debate and it's that and doing all this stuff oh wow you're doing that but you're also a very you're a giver right you you give back your commute a lot that that's going to be the big thing as well too and the best way to think about this in terms of should I do this or should I not because a lot of people will ask like should I do research or should I do internship? Should I do a passion project? Should I do all these things? Right? The question you want to ask yourself in your head is if coach Tony wouldn't let me put this on my college apps, would I still want to do it? Because if your answer is, wait, why why would I want to do it then? If it's not uh if I can't share it, then you're doing it because you want to look good for college. That and that's that's reality, right? That that's truth, right? And then if that's your answer, which is fine. That is your answer. But I guarantee you if someone else has a stronger answer than you, then they would trump you on that uh specific topic. Right? So do things you want to because again parents think about your life right now. You don't do things you're not chasing something, right? You're doing because you enjoy things. Same thing with students, right? I have students who love this certain thing that they do. And I'm like, would you if I don't put you up, it's like it's okay. I still love doing it. I'm going to still keep doing it regardless if I like it or don't like it. That's the key we want to make sure we do as well here. Okay, that's a little setup for our activity section. We have a few very tactical things for you guys coming up to help you guys with this, but hopefully kind of start some some ideas uh for you guys to think about what to work on as well. Really quick, as I start to answer a few questions, Duva, are you here in the chat? If you can say hi in the chat, up next, I think Duova from Lumiere. There you go. I see him. Let me go ahead and stop sharing. If there any questions again, go ahead and drop it in the chat. Sorry, in the Q&A, not the chat uh as well, too. I see people uh dropping in the chat, but then chat we're just chitty chatting with folks back and forth uh as well. So, um someone asked for more ideas for medical stuff. I gave I gave you guys all that as well, too. So, that is pretty much it. All right. I invite Duva uh line. And if you want to go ahead and uh share your screen um and we are ready for you whenever you are ready. Hi everyone. Can you hear me? Okay, you are good. Hello. Hello. Thank you so much for having me, Coach Tony. I'm super excited to tell you guys a little bit about research. Heads up that some of this is going to be interactive. So, make sure you have your fingers ready to type out some answers. um over the course of the next 15 to 20 minutes, I'm going to be telling you about what research is, how it works, and if you wanted to do it in high school, what are some ways that you could consider doing it? Before diving into any of that, I want to start with telling you a little bit of a story. Who am I and why are we doing what we do? So, my name is Duva. I'm one of the co-founders of the Lumiere Research Scholar Program, which is a one-on-one research mentorship program for amazing high school students from around the world. Um last year we worked with nearly 2,000 students from over 80 different countries more than 200 of whom did the program entirely for free as part of our financial aid program. So um we had a record of working in research but the story actually goes a long way back. I grew up in Chennai a city in South India. I have helpfully marked that out in the map in case you don't know where it is. And growing up I don't think I knew a single person with a PhD. If I really looked, I probably could have found someone who is working in medicine or engineering because you know I came from an Indian family. But I found myself interested in other topics. I was interested in questions like why are some countries rich and other countries poor? What causes economic what causes ethnic conflict and how can you prevent it? What are the roots of technological innovation? And there was no one that I could turn to with these questions. So I decided um studying at a liberal arts university would be my best bet. I applied to universities in the states and ended up getting into Harvard where I studied economics. But even at Harvard, I was knocking on the doors of professors trying to get access to research opportunities only to be told, "You're a freshman. You're a sophomore. What could you possibly add to our research?" That changed for me finally the summer after my sophomore year where I got into a one-on-one research mentorship program where I was matched with a professor and I got to work with them on a research project about labor market gaps in India. And that blew my mind. The fact that there were people whose entire day job was to think about how the world worked, write that up in the form of papers and communicate that with others and others would actually care enough to listen and give feedback. That changed the trajectory of my life. I continued doing research through my junior and senior years of college. Ended up deciding to become a professional nerd. So I did a master's and a PhD in international development. But that program also changed my life in another way and that I met the other beaming young man you see on the screen. That's my co-founder Steven and if I didn't know a single person with a PhD growing up, Steven came from a lineage of researchers. His dad was a professor of business at the University of Missouri. And his great-grandfather Fritz Khan was s whose book you see there on the screen was such a prominent researcher in World War II Germany that when Fritz had to flee Germany because of the Holocaust, Fritz was Jewish. The person who wrote him a letter that got him asylum in the US was none other than Albert Einstein. So that's the the generations of researchers that Steven came from. But for him too, the research program that he did was life-changing because while he knew what research was, he found that through the program, he worked with a professor who would turn out to be a real mentor for him, who would give him advice and feedback and support on all sorts of decisions, both academic and non-academic. After graduating college, Stephen ended up working at McKenzie, the consulting company, and then um had gotten into Harvard Business School for a PhD when he and I started talking and realized just how much our lives have been shaped by the program that we'd happened to do as sophomores in college. And we thought, gosh, we would have loved to have done that as 17year-old nerds in high school. And so, we started Lumiere now five years ago with about 12 students. And it's been so amazing to work with tons and tons of students and but I've been using the word research without actually defining it. And I think there might be differing conceptions of what research is. So when you hear the word research, what comes to mind? Throw it in the chat. What does the word research mean to you? Okay. I see science. That's a great answer. hard. Fair enough. Study, analysis, data, reading, writing, investigating a subject, delving deeper. These are all great, great answers. Academic publish or perish, really interesting term. We can talk about that in a second. I think if you put together all of what you guys said, that would come together to be a um definition of research that works for us. The way that we think about research is that it begins with curiosity. So you identify something that you find confusing or interesting. This could be something you've read about in school. It could be something in the news. It could be something in the world around you, in your own body, in outer space. Whatever it is, you pick something that makes you go, hm, I find that interesting and I don't fully understand it. But then the next step is to find out what we already know about the topic. So read the existing research. The reason is because research that you do needs to put forward a unique perspective, argument or idea or finding. Let's say an apple fell in my head. I found that interesting and then I did a ton of scientific research and I came to you guys and I was like, "Oh my god, there's this thing called gravity that exists." None of you would be impressed because gravity has been discovered and it's been studied. And so you want to know what we already know so that you can then define a specific research question which is new and interesting. And then you do your analysis. We're going to talk in a second about what this analysis looks like. Um but you do the actual research and come up with findings with an argument that you find convincing and true and interesting and you write that into a research paper and get it out into the world. And it is this entire process of coming from starting with identifying something you're interested in, learning what we already know about it, narrowing down a research question, doing the analysis, and writing a paper and getting it out into the world. That entire process is known as the research process. So I think you guys had bits and pieces of the answer in there, but you've got to bring it all together to understand what research is. And so I'm curious, what fields are you guys interested in doing research in? Um, and this can be as specific as saying, I want to do research on this specific gene that cause that causes Alzheimer's in mice. Um, or as general as saying, I'm interested in history. So, take a second, assume I tell you you have no choice but to do research right now. You're walking the plank uh like a on a on a pirate ship and you say, "We're going to push you off the plank if you don't do research." So, what what area are you doing research in? I see computer science book bands. Super interesting. Alzheimer's. Yeah. Let's keep going. World peace, environmental science and climate change, data science. What's fascinating is that you see that research can be done in pretty much any field imaginable. Just in the few responses that we've gotten so far, we have biology, computer science, environmental science, sociology, um all sorts of really really history, the book banning topic, politics, philosophy, um and neuroscience. And the kinds of methods used in these different fields is slightly different. And I think it's important to go through this because when you say the word research, I think people imagine scientists in white lab coats mixing chemicals together in a lab. And that's a super important type of research, but it's only one type of research. So in lab- based research, you're setting up an experiment that's tightly controlled and you are then conducting experiments in that lab to f to to get findings that you then publish in the form of research. This is super common in the sciences like medicine and biology as well as in engineering but also in some of the fields in social sciences like psychology where you might run psychological experiments on people to develop findings. But that is by no means the only or even the best kind of research that there is. And so I want to introduce you to three other types of research which I think are interesting for you as high school students because those are all types of research that can be done from home online and therefore a lot more accessible than lab-based research which you might only be able to get to say in your senior year of high school. So one is called quantitative research. And so I'm curious when I say the word quantitative what what does that mean? Once again feel free to throw it in the chat. numbers. That's exactly right. So, quantitative research is about using numerical data and conducting statistical analysis on I see the word stats as well. Conducting statistical analysis on that numerical data to find patterns which then tells you something about what you're studying. So this is common um in the social sciences where you might be studying census data which lots of countries collect data on their populations in the form of census. Um businesses create a huge amount of data. There's polling data where you have results of polls and surveys that are conducted. It's also super common in the sciences where for instance in biology you have enormous data sets of um genetic databases online where you have information about different genotypes and what kinds of diseases are correlated with them. You have physics data sets in the form of the observations of um things like the Hubble Space Telescope for instance. So these are all things that are giant numerical data sets that are out there that you can just download and run statistical analyses using Excel or R or Python um to find the the kind of uh patterns that would then allow you to make an argument and you can do something really new and interesting there. The flip side of quantitative research is qualitative research. So if quantitative research uses numerical data, qualitative research uses non-numerical data. What could that be? So, what's what's some examples of non-numerical data that you might use in fields that is especially common in the humanities and the social sciences? So, I see an answer that says a survey. A survey is interesting because it could be quantitative or qualitative. So, if I send out a survey and on the survey I say on a scale of 1 to 10, how smart and good-looking is Duva? And you say, you know, a nine, a 10, then that's a quantitative survey. But if I if I send you a survey that says write 500 words on how good-looking and intelligent RUBA is, that's qualitative data because that data is not numerical. That's textual data. Um interviews, that's another really good uh explanation of another really good example of qualitative data. Thank you, Coach Tony. I appreciate that. Um observations are a really good one. So in anthropology in particular, you might just sit somewhere and observe the people around you and try and see patterns that way. Um other common uses are images. So you could be doing research on pictures, paintings, advertisements, could be video, it could be audio, it could be archival documents. So for example, government public policy documents, historical documents, uh works of literature. All of these are examples of qualitative data that once again as a researcher your goal is very similar to the quantitative researcher where you're trying to look into the data and try and find patterns within the data to say okay what what am I what is this telling me about the thing that I'm studying. So this is super common in fields like history, English, political science, sociology and so on. And the final type of research is called a systematic literature review. So systematic literature review is not necessarily using new data but it's coming to new conclusions based on existing research that has been done. So in a systematic literature review you might be reading 30 40 50 academic papers in the field and then trying to synthesize that to make an argument. So you might say here's two camps uh in in terms of researchers that have done research on this topic before. Here are the things that camp A says. Here are the things that camp B says and here are the gaps in both of them and how I as a researcher would bring them together. So that's a systematic literature review and every single field has systematic literature reviews. You have professors all the way up till the top top universities who write literature review papers because they're so valuable. So the question becomes why should a high schooler consider doing research? I think the first is that you get to have an impact on the world. So when you do research, you're really being a thought leader. You're taking an interest in the world around you because all research engages with the world in some way or the other. And the findings of that research could make the world a better place. The only reason we were able to come out of the COVID pandemic is because scientists and researchers moved faster than they ever have to come up with a COVID vaccine. There's researchers in education trying to make sure that kids who are falling behind in math and English all over the world are able to catch up. It also develops a whole bunch of skills because when you're doing a research paper, you're dealing with ambiguity. You're taking on a project that you don't know what the outcome of it is going to be and you have to deal with that. You might face imposter syndrome or you might start procrastinating or you might realize you've taken on more than you can chew and then you've got to recalibrate, strategize and figure out how to deal with that. You've got to work with others. You've got to learn how to read and analyze data um and write that up in a way that makes sense. So, all of these skills are ones that um or pretty much all of them are skills that that are in the top 10 skills of 2025 according to the World Economic Forum and ones that will stay with you through college and beyond. And speaking of college, it's something that can help you get into college as well. So, if you are a high school student and you do a research paper, there's a number of different places in the college application that you can put it. Of course, it can be in the activities list and that's the most straightforward, but you can also, and this is really powerful, talk about it in your essays, either your main Common App or UKCast essay, Common App or UC essay or your supplemental essays. Um, and it can be positioned either as an academic experience or as a personal experience of growth where you learned something, overcame an obstacle or whatever else. Um, a number of students also ask their mentors for recommendation letters. So if you work with a mentor in your research program um or your research project, you can ask them for a letter because they've gotten to know you over the course of 3, six months, however long the project is and that will then enable you to um ask them to to write a letter speaking to your success. Finally, you can also include the letter in the additional information section either just the abstract of the paper or the paper itself. And altogether I think it shows three things. The first is it shows academic interest and excellence. It shows that um uh you are if you say you're interested in physics, you say you're interested in environmental engineering, it demonstrates that you actually are interested in that. Second, it demonstrates an external legitimation of your ability. So if you get a red letter from a mentor, if you publish your work, it shows that there is somebody else other than yourself and your teachers who are putting a stamp of approval on you and saying, "Hey, this student is good enough for this university." And finally, it demonstrates university readiness. At the end of the day, even though you have to do community service and you have to show leadership, universities are academic institutions. You go there to study. You go there to work with professors. And so they want to know that you're ready to take on university level coursework, that you will succeed when you're there and not fail. And so being able to demonstrate university readiness by doing a college level paper in high school is hugely valuable. And this is what we've seen in the admissions data as well. So at Penn um there was a blog post a couple of years ago which said that nearly a third of the admitted students had done research and that was a third if you taking into account recruited athletes and legacies and so on. And if you don't happen to be in one of those categories then the the percentage of students that did research is even higher. We've had instances where um admissions officers including um at Ivy League universities have called up the mentors of or or written emails to the mentors of students that have done research and asked, "Hey, is this student a good fit? What are they like?" Um will they get along with other students at this university because they value what those mentors say. Um, we've also had instances that we've seen where admissions officers have written in the acceptance letters little things that say, um, and we've had this happen a couple of times with Case Western, a little handwritten note that says, "Your research seems really interesting. We're excited to hear more about it." So, we're seeing that research is something that quantitatively and anecdotally is playing more and more of a valuable role in the college application process. If, and this is where coach Tony's advice comes in, if it makes sense with the rest of your high school experience and your story, the number one thing that admissions officers have told us is a red flag to them is if the research that students have done stands apart and is totally divorced from the rest of your application. So if you're an envir if you're someone who's an environmentalist, so you volunteered with environmental conservation, you've started the environmental club in your school and you randomly do a research project on particle physics, that is going to look like it has no connection to what you've done so far and like you're doing it because you have to do it or because someone told you to do it. You never want that to be the case. You want to think about what you're interested in. What are you genuinely curious about and turn that into a research project. So, let's say you're an environmental um uh and kind of like someone interested in the environment. You want to study physics in the future. The thing that you would then want to do is think about what's a research topic that would actually bring those together and do a research project on um something like the dynamics of um uh ocean currents and how that causes water pollution to move between borders. You might look at fluid mechanics of the air and how that affects wildfires. So that's the type of thing that you would want to do in order to try and build a research project that makes sense with your story. So I'm just going to take down the slides. Um so I hope that over the last 20 minutes it's been helpful in thinking about um what research is, what are some of the different methods that you could use and why research could be an important part of the college applications process. There are a ton of different ways that you can do research. You can do it yourself. You can reach out to professors and cold email them and try to get access to them. You could see in your community if there's anyone who's willing to support you and you could apply to research programs both uh research programs like Lumiere as well as research programs house universities like MIT's research sciences institute. If this is something that you guys want to explore more um please feel free to shoot us an email. My email ID is lumiere.education. Our website is lumiereeducation.com. And just to before I wrap up to go back to the first slide, um research really has shaped who I am and changed my life. Uh I hope that some of you get to experience it through Lumiere. But regardless, I hope that you get to experience it in high school and college and that it changes your life the way that it did mine. Uh thank you guys so much and thank you, Coach Tony. Awesome. Thanks so much, Duva. Again, one more time, Duva uh Duva put his email in the chat if you guys want to go ahead again. Also, again, after the event, we'll do a big blast of all the freebies, resources, and everything as well. We'll include uh DUVA's email and how you guys like and some of our students are involved with the Lumia program. They love it as well, too. So, we're definitely going to go ahead and uh send it over for anyone else who else is who is interested uh with that. Okay. Again, the email's in the in the chat if you guys want to see it. It's actually lumeducation. Like, wait, where's where's the.com? There's one.com. That's what you know education. That's right. Yeah. Fantastic. Cool. Perfect. Thank you so much, Duva. And without further ado, let me go ahead and transition again. Another kind of really cool thing for students. Again, uh we talked about the research angle for for certain students. That's going to be a really perfect fit for your application. For anyone really quick in in the chat, can you guys help me out? Uh is anyone here interested? Is your child interested in business? Drop a one in the chat. Anyone here interested in business, uh entrepreneurship, drop a quick little one in the chat. We got a few folks. Is there anyone here whose kids interested in technology? Not not doesn't have to be business but technology. I love kind of drop another one as well too if you're interested in technology. And one more if you guys are your kids are curious and interested in playing with AI as well. Go ahead and drop number one in the chat as well too. So hopefully if you answered yes to one of those three kind of topics that our next speaker and next question is be perfect uh for you guys. I'm going to go ahead and introduce Array. We go. Am I on? You are on. Hey Tony. Hey everybody. Thanks for having me here today. Um before we get started, let me start sharing my screen and get all the technology stuff out of the way. So let's do here screen share. Let's see if it's there. Little adjustments and we're all set. Can I get a quick comment if you can see the screen on your end in the chat, please? Yes, we can. And you can hear me. Thank you so much. Awesome. Let's get started. I'm going to talk today about how to start your first online business this summer using AI. you can learn a skill that'll help you in college and if you want it'll help you build an income for life. So, a quick review of why you're here, particularly why you're here in this section of today's Eagle Summit. You're here to answer two simple questions. How can I how can I launch my first business this summer? And will it help me get into my dream university and make me my first real income? But before we get into the details of the answer of that and how to do it, let me introduce myself. My name is Ray Blakey. I have a bachelor of science in computer engineering, even though I did a lot more computer programming in my professional career. Um, from Case Western Reserve University. I am also the chief operating officer and CTO here at Eagle Lock Prep. Uh, in the little free time I have outside of working here spending time with my family. I'm also a mentor or online businesses at the Harvard Innovation Lab. And over the last 20 years, I've built about 20 profitable online companies. And I've sold four of them. And I've appeared in a few of those magazines below. So, if you're interested in learning a little bit more about me, you can just Google my name and that should come up real quickly. Now, let's get on to the interesting stuff. And obviously, I am biased when I'm recommending a lot of these things. that this is my life. This is my passion. I love doing this stuff. The big opportunity for you is this summer in just a few weeks, you also can launch your online education business. And this is something that's new. A year ago, two years ago, this wasn't really possible. But now that AI has become part of our lives and accessible to almost everybody on this call, it is really a possibility. you can build a business that not only helps you and your family, but it'll improve your college educ um application, excuse me. Um it'll help you earn your own income. And speaking from a personal side, you'll learn skills that I wish I had learned at your age if you're in high school. These are things that I've used my whole life, but I had to learn as an adult, usually working corporate or starting my own businesses, and I had to learn them the hard way. So, let's talk a little bit about that today. Why don't most students stand out when they apply to to universities? I think a lot of you know this. That's why you're here at the Eagle Summit today. Most applicants already have good grades. They have extra a few extracurricular activities. They do some volunteering. But these days, if you're trying to get into the top 100 universities, that just barely gets your foot in the door, right? Because everybody who's applying, not only from the US, but from around the world have those. So, how do you get yourself to stand apart? Drew already talked about research and internships as one of the possibilities. So, I'm going to add a third option there, and that is to to launch your own business. Why do colleges love young entrepreneurs? You can see on the news today, entrepreneurship is trendy, right? People love it. Um, but it also gives you freedom and skills. It shows that you have real world skills, not just academic skills. It shows initiative. It shows problem solving. And most importantly for your universities, it shows that you are a leader, that you can take something, you can take it through to completion. And that is one thing that will help you stand out from 99% of the applicants, right? And remember, DUVA again mentioned this on the last talk. It allows you to make an impact. And the beauty of launching your own business is you get to kind of direction that impact in in the direction that you want. So by doing that again, making that story coherent all the way through high school to make sure that it's not something way out there, you can launch almost any business you want. And it takes a lot less time than you think. And then the three life skills that I was talking about, the main ones that you'll learn outside of that, right, outside of college application, outside of making an income are marketing, how to sell. This is going to be important no matter what career you follow. Whether you want to do marketing, business, even if you want to go into medicine, marketing, how to sell, how to convince your patients that what to do the right thing to cure themselves is an invaluable skill every step of the way. Problem solving doesn't matter what you want to do. Whether you want to be an engineer like me or whether you want to go and work on the environment, problem solving is a skill that you will use every single day of your life. not only in high school but in college and all the way afterwards. And finally, I mentioned it twice because it's that important. Leadership. How do you manage people? Because if you do launch a business, yes, in the beginning it might be you, but then you're going to have your first customers. So, you have to be a leader to the customers. Then you're going to have, if it grows enough, you might have people working for you and you have to be a leader to them as well. And then plus, you can also learn AI in a real world application, not just for looking stuff up or editing some of your writing, but really to put something together that is cohesive that makes a lot of sense on your college application. So, step number one, your first business idea, and honestly, I have helped over 3,000 people make money online, and this is where most people get stuck. While it might seem like the easiest part, for most people, it is actually the hardest. Your first business idea because everybody wants that first business idea to be perfect. So, one thing I want to be 100% clear on, your business idea does not need to be perfect. In fact, the first one you make, I'll tell you right now, will probably not work or at least it won't work as well as you want. But the beauty of it is unlike in school where if you get a bad grade on a test that might show up on your transcript in business, it's actually, you know, like a badge that you'll have on top of it. I tried it, it didn't work. That's great because every successful entrepreneur has done that. In fact, if I met an entrepreneur who said, I've been doing this for 20 years and I've never failed, I wouldn't believe them. So, go try a business. Don't worry so much about the first idea. Just ask yourself these three questions. What do people ask you for help with all the time? What's something that you've learned that others want to know? And what do you love doing? So, let's take a short break from me talking. And if you have any ideas, any answers to those three questions that you have, please drop it in the chat real quick. What do people ask you for help with? What's something that others want that you know that some other people want to know? And what do you love doing? Give a few seconds. No, no answers yet. Well, if you think of anything for the rest of the talk, feel free to check. Oh, there we go. Thank you, Cindy. Math. That would be something you could definitely help other people with. There we go. Graphic design for your son. Graphic design. Wow, that's a really useful one as well. It doesn't matter. And you're going to see as the ideas come up and I'll if we have time, I'll do a quick example for everybody here. Oh, artwork. photography. Love it. On a total random note, I was just at a conference earlier this week and there was somebody doing very well with an online business. She was teaching artwork um people how to draw watercoloring I believe. Drawing. Ah, there you go. More math. This is it. There you go. Tennis. Oh, my son just started taking tennis. Love that. Maybe I can hire SC to to help teach him that college application. There you go. Absolutely. Absolutely. You can teach people how to do that. I mean, that's exactly what we do here at Eagle Lock as well. So, we know for a fact that this is something that you can do. Healthy recipes. Oh, I need some of those. Uh, definitely. Uh, my wife can tell you I probably use losing a few pounds. Thank you so much. Those are amazing ideas. You can see and once you get started, the beauty about generating ideas like this is once you get started, they start flowing. It's a muscle that you develop in your mind about generating ideas. I joke that before I have breakfast in the morning, I have about 10 or 15 business ideas. And my wife tells me, "Yeah, write them down somewhere, but this is not something you want to do here." But keep in mind, most people get stuck here. Don't get stuck. Find an idea. Find something you like and then move forward. Now, I'm going to introduce to you the concept what we call info products. This is a product that shares knowledge. This might not be your final business, but this is what I recommend for a lot of people in high school to start their first business. And here are some of the reasons why. Low startup cost and minimal risk. You can launch just with what you know. And when I say me mention expertise here, you don't need to be an expert. I teach martial arts and one of the things that we teach there is you don't need to be the best person in the world to teach it. You just need to be one day better than the person you're teaching so you can bring them up to your level. So minimal risk, scalable income potential. That just means since it's a digital product, you don't have to worry about buying items from China and shipping them over. You don't have to build stuff. Even the delivery of a service is minimal. You can scale. You can sell one just as easily as you can sell 10 as you just as easily as you can sell a 100,000. And then it helps you build an authority and an audience, right? Because you're sharing what you know, your passion, what you love, all of that. And the people who buy it will see that in an info product. It's really easy to see in an impro info product, especially if you add videos to some of the material. They're going to know you. In fact, you can do some live classes. Do what we're doing right now. This summit in a way is an info product. You can put it together. You can share your knowledge. It doesn't have to be perfect. You can see I stumble all the time. I'm sure our other presenters will stumble as well. It doesn't matter. It's the knowledge that matters. So, this is why we recommend info products. You can go from zero to launch in just a few days with one of these. You could before launching an info product, the problem was you have to write it, record it, create the images for it, all of that. It could take months if not longer to launch the first info product. And the bad side is, remember I told you failing isn't that much of an issue when you try an idea. If you spent months to build it and you try it and nobody buys it, it can get very discouraging. But this is where AI comes in. AI can help you brainstorm a topic in a few minutes, outline the content in a few more minutes, draft and polish your writing, and even create graphics for the slides, like you can see in this presentation. Every single one of the graphics in this presentation were generated by AI. But it goes farther than that because once you have the product, what do you have to do? You have to put it in front of an audience and sell it, right? People have to find out about it and see it. It's not something you just build and hope somebody will accidentally stumble across. AI can help with that as well. You can get free or even cheap tools like Squarespace, WordPress, Wix, go high level and you can throw up a website in a few minutes using the same AI tools. You can write all the script and the sales copy, what we call copywriting for those tools. And even as long as you're older than 14, you can open up an account at Stripe and PayPal and start collecting payments. Once you have that all set up, all you have to do is go on your social media or even just tell your friends about it and they can go to your website and if it's something that they like, they can purchase your info product and you can email it to them right away. And there are different systems that you can use to do that. All of this setting it up almost no initial startup cost and even maintenance cost. The server you can get for $70 a year. That's right. Not a month, a year you can get a shared server for $70 a year. And that pretty much is your only big startup cost when you're trying to launch a business like that. So at this point, what I'd like to do is give you a quick demonstration of how quickly you can do the basic outline of an info product using some AI prompts. And don't worry, remember Tony's already mentioned that at the end of this presentation, there you go. Tony's asked the question in the chat. Let us know if you want to see the demo. I think I have a little bit of time. Hopefully won't go too far over. We will send you all of these prompts in an email once all of this is done. So don't worry about taking screenshots or trying to copy it down onto your end. You'll get a document with all of them there and you'll be able to work through this at your own pace in your own time and there'll be a recording of this as well. So if you forgot anything that I said, we'll be able to do it. So I'm going to quickly go through the four prompts and I'm going to stop sharing my screen, share another screen and then we'll go through the examples. So the first prompt is what are some online businesses I can launch that involve delivering an info product which can include an ebook, mini video course or live teaching over Zoom around we'll list out some interests. So when I put those square brackets and everything's in caps, we're going to replace that with whatever we want um for that particular prompt. So that's going to be prompt number one. Prompt number two, can you help me create an outline for a product based on product idea? Whatever it is that you had there, I want to teach others how to boom. And what do you teach? That's a little bit more specific. So, if you were teaching Spanish, um, your product idea is what you want to teach somebody another language. Let's just say Spanish. And I'm going to teach them how to go shopping at a market. So, that's what you would teach, right? So, we would fit that in there. The fourth prompt, write out the detailed curriculum for the module number and all you do is replace it for number one. Because remember in this previous prompt, we said break it down into clear modules, right? So, it's going to break it down for you. Write out the detailed curriculum for module number one with a description for the content of every lesson along with a resource for module one. So, what we want for a resource is some kind of handout, some kind of book, all of that. And then the final one that we're going to use, I'm creating a website to sell my product. And remember product we determine number one info product and I need your help with recommendations on a hero image which is the big image that goes across the top as and the text that's going to go on every page. That's it. We're going to use these four prompts. I'm going to share it with you right now and then we're going to see the results. You're pretty much going to have the outline, the details, and everything of your business ready to go in probably, depending on how fast I'm able to type in under five minutes. So, are you guys ready to get started? Quick. Yes. Little bit of enthusiasm in the chat on the right. And I will start sharing the screen. So, I'll stop real quick and then I'll share another screen for you. [Music] screen and share. So, I'm going to go right into here to start. Perfect. Let me move everything around so I can see everybody. Well, let's do that. Okay. So, I'm going to start. Remember, we already reviewed these scripts and you're going to get a copy of this Word document in your email. So, check your email after the whole summit is over. I'm going to copy and paste this. I have chat GPT already open. You can use like perplexity and do the same thing. So, other GPT agents will work, but chat chat GPT is the most wellknown. So, I'm going to copy and paste it into here. I already read my way through it. I'm going to put some of my hobbies in here just as an example. So, as I mentioned, I teach martial arts, kendo, which is Japanese fencing. Um, I like computer games and I have a little son, so I like building Legos with him. Legos. Period. You can make this list as long as you want. I'm just going to do three so that we don't get too far behind time. I hit enter. There we go. It's going to give us two responses. Sometimes it does that. And here are some of the ideas that they're giving us for each one. I'm going to read the right side because I can't read all of them, but some of these caught my attention. So, like a Lego building course. Lego robotics for STEM. That sounds Lego building workshop. Let's go with a Lego building workshop. So, what I'm going to do here, I have another document open just so we can keep all of these in one place. It's empty right now. I'm going to go in here. Lego building workshop. So, we know that that's the idea that we're going to have. I'm going to go back to the script. Copy and paste. And I'm going to go back in here. Let's go and sub in Lego Building Workshop. Oh, Lego Building Workshop. And what am I going to teach? I want to teach others how to build creative things without using instructions. Without using instructions, right? Um, for anybody who played with Legos or does play with Legos still like me, uh, you know, you build with the instructions the first time, but the real fun comes after you build, you know, after you take those apart and you start putting together different Lego sets and building without instructions. So, we're going to go in there. It's going to outline an entire course for us. Here we go. The live Lego building workshop module one, unlocking your inner building, excuse me, your inner builder. 3D fundamentals, little bit of theory, collaboration and feedback. Perfect. Now, if you're doing this longterm, you read through each module, you break it down, and you might ask the AI to make little tweaks. You might say, "Hey, module 3, that's not really what I have in mind. Let's change that around." But for the purpose of this example, I'm going to say that it's perfect. And I'm going to go here. Same thing. I'm just going to copy it down. There we go. We have the outline for our entire info product done. And you'll see that chat GPT even knew what I was going to say next. He was like write out the full curriculum. I do have the AI over here for module number one saying come up with the details. But I think I've done this so many times that my chat GPD knows what I'm going to say and I'm just going to say yes. But you can just copy and paste my script. And when you need it for mod module 2, I'm going to hit yes here so it can get started. You just copy and paste this and put the number two in there and you play it again. And then you just put the number three in there. So it goes all the way through. There we go. Now it's taking the module and it's breaking it down by lessons under warm-ups, wrap-up, homework, challenges, live group activities, everything there. So we go and do that. Copy and pasting that in there as well. Keep in mind I'm kind of doing this slow so that everybody here can follow along, but I've done this so many times that I could probably do this a lot more quickly than I'm doing right now. And then you would just have to keep on doing this for every single module. Right? So, we just did module one. We would do it for module 2, module 3, module four, module five. For this one, I'm just going to skip ahead. Let's just assume we finished all of it. And now that I need some text for the website as I went on there and created a free place again WordPress website bought it for $70 info product. Let's go up here. Lego building a workshop. You guys can tell I'm not AI because this is obviously not doing this perfectly. Let's do this. We're here and enter. Now, it's going to create the three basic pages you need on a website when you want to sell something. There's a homepage, there's a sales page, and an about us page, right? So, telling people about, in this case, particularly about you. We go in there. This is the headline for the page, subtitle, call to action. So, this is going to be the button that you have. Join our free trial building session. Hero image, left side's recommending what you want to have on there. We can have AI generate that later. Here's all the text. Here's the about us page. Here's the recommendations. It's even saying, "Hey, would you like to put this into Word WordPress or Web Flow to free builders that are out there and they could give us that. That's it. I'm going to copy and paste that into the same document and we're done. So, in less than 5 minutes, maybe a little bit more. Haven't quite been timing. We have done most of an online course and info product. Now, we have to put them in place. There is a little bit of nuance to doing that but really we have done the bulk of the lifting. What's amazing here I'm going to stop sharing the screen so we can go back to finish up the presentation is back when I started and I don't want to say my age but wow back then it would have taken me weeks if not months to do all of this right but right now we just did this in five minutes. It's an incredible time to live. It's an incredible time to launch an online business because the opportunities are out there and it has never been more affordable than it is right now to do that. Let's go back here. So, the final points, what are the financial benefits? Because really, that is the point of launching an online business. It's to help you with your college application, sure, but a real success in an online business is selling something. That's what businesses do. And some of the people that I've worked with, both adults and kids, they can make $500 a month launching their info product. Even a,000, $3,000 a month, that's much better income than a summer job. And of course, people who stick to it for long enough. So, if you started in high school, work on it through college, by the time you leave, you might be making a h 100,000, 200, 300,000, or millions of dollars a year from this info product. I've been lucky enough to meet many many many people who've been able to do that and earn freedom for themselves and their family through launching these businesses even while they were going through college um and in some cases even pay off their entire college tuition um by doing these businesses. Don't hold yourself back with a lot of the doubts that a lot of people have. You might see it on the news that you need investors, you need fancy technology, you need a huge audience in order to launch a business. I can tell you from personal experience when my wife and I launched our own first business back in 2018, we had none of those things. In fact, I've never taken an investor for a single one of the companies that I've built and sold. Um, you don't need fancy technology. Anything fancier than chat GPT and WordPress. These things are almost free these days. You can get there. And a huge audience, you don't need it. You just need the right audience. You need to get in front of the people who have the same interest as you, and you will be able to launch a successful online business. and share what you love with the world and hopefully again like Duvo was saying make an impact not only on your life but on the lives of others. That's it. And if anybody has any questions I'd be happy to answer them. That was awesome. Ray, we have we do have one question here. One question is how do you suggest people drive how do you suggest to drive people to your website? Oh that's a whole a whole topic. I can do a whole presentation on that. So, there are multiple ways of driving people to your website. For the first round, what I recommend is use your existing audience. That's why I mentioned this kind of social media aspect of it. Reach out to your friends. Um, there's a technique out there called the one outreach 101 where you actually send a private email with a video to 101 people, you know, and you don't have to know them really well, but you just kind of reach out to them and you say, you don't go out there to sell because that can be a little awkward for some people, but you say, "Hey, here's my new thing. Can I get some feedback on it? And do you know anybody who's interested? And that's the key question there. You don't have to say, "Are you interested?" You say, "Do you know anybody who's interested?" And you'll be surprised about 10 20% of the time, it's actually the person who gets the email who's interested. And they they will buy it. That's what you start with. Later on, and you can look this up on YouTube, there are things called SEO, search engine optimization. There's paid ad channels. Um on a high level, there's three ways to get um people to your website. First is to buy an audience. Second one is to rent an audience. And third one is to build an audience. Buying an audience is generally considered paid ads and you can do that. It's real fast. You can get them there today, but it costs a lot of money. Borrowing an audience is you contact your friends who maybe has a big audience, has an email list, has a YouTube channel, has something else and you can ask them, hey, can you get in front of can you promote my product? And if they do that, there's usually a financial deal that you do, but they get 10, 20, 30% of the sales. Um, and then the final one is building it, which is free. SEO falls in that or building a YouTube channel or Tik Tok channel is falls into that category, but that's takes a lot longer for you to get in front of an audience. Last question here is uh is this essentially how to create a website to sell like a how-to manual? That could be one of the info products that you do. So info products is a very general category. How-to manuals are one of them. That's an easy one to get in there. Follow them through. And manual also can mean a lot of things these days. So yeah, it can easily be an ebook with some images in there. What I personally recommend for your first info product and a lot of what I teach this the students that I work with is mini video courses is actually it with a community and coaching aspect in the back end, right? So it's not 100% info. You have a little bit of a what we call accountability and connection. Um so you give them this thing and then once a month you you have a call and you can talk to them. Maybe when they finish, you have a call, you can talk to them and say, "Hey, any questions that you have that's there, but they have videos with a little hand workout worksheet, excuse me, and then they get all the way through." So, that's what I would recommend. It's But you can try it. You can try it just with an ebook. Um, I know a lot of people who've done really, really, really real really well with that. Awesome. Perfect. Thanks so much, Ray, for sharing your knowledge. I know coach Ray will again, he will again, like he mentioned as well too at the end, we'll go ahead and send you guys all the scripts that he used. You guys don't have to like screenshot or go back. you guys can copy and paste it directly in um as well. Okay, awesome. Perfect. Thank you so much. All right, pleasure. All right, now uh moving on. Summer, this will be nice short one, not not not uh not super uh uh in in depth, but again, something important, very timesensitive as well too for a lot of families. If you're watching this live, it's in May. Summer is in the month, right, as well. A lot of families like, you know what, we're busy right now. Let let me wait. Let me wait to do something next month. And I'm like, uh, you know, next month is summer. So, uh, and usually when summer hits, it's really hard to do anything. So, let's go ahead and talk about a few things you can do, uh, this upcoming summer. And I kind of broke it down for you guys. Very tactical, right? Really quick in the chat. You guys remind me so I can kind of see which one to skim and which one to go faster. Who where is everybody at? If you are a let's let's do grades now. So, if you're a current eighth grader right now, actually, no, future future future. Let's talk about future. In the fall, in the fall, in five months from now, what grade is your child or you going to be? So, in five months from now, are you going to be a ninth grade starting high school for the first time? You're going to be a 10th grader, 11th grader, 12th grader as well, too. Um, all right. That didn't help. We It's like a good mix. It's a good mix of everything. Uh, as well, too. Good mix. And also some middle school families as well, too. Awesome. Cool. So, I'll kind of skim through each section so you guys have an idea there. Keep in mind again just like all things today these are all general things right um each student is little custom so but at a very high level there's a few kind of things to keep in mind right so first off summer after 8th grade so if your current eighth grade family right now uh listen up you're about to join high school uh very very soon a big thing is building a strong foundation in science and math that should be the big key for us and the reason why is that this is for to help you plan for the future if you know a lot of things we do. We like to work strategically. And though for those who haven't caught on yet, our company is called Eagle. If you flip it backwards, it's the word college, right? Because our goal is to work you backwards to get to where you guys want to go uh in this process here. So again, where should I prep for hm where do you think you might want to go? So building a strong foundation in the math, in sciences, even for non- STEM majors, right? You can get your classes done faster to do on the other pieces later on is one of the key. A lot of the big issues people don't think about this ahead of time. Um I I think we one of the parents shared like oh man I wish I knew about the the advancement classes that now now they're like oh man I have to kind I can catch up versus why stress about that if you plan early enough you can kind of map that all out ahead of time too. So if you can't take algebra geometry that's a really awesome one. There's also science at the college uh science of the summer. That's another good one too. We're also going to throw in the concept of community college. So what community college is one of our big kind of core things we like to encourage our students to think about this is basically dual enrollments. All right the perks of dual enrollment basically taking classes at local junior college community college has a few extra perks. Number one is half the time. It's half the year but it'll get you the same credit as a fullyear uh riggered course like an AP level course right half the time. All right. The second perk of it is that you actually earn college unit. It's a college class. So instead of AP or IB where you have to pass a test, a lot of our our students right now this week and next week they're taking the the AP exams to get college credit. If you pass a college class, a transferable college class, you're guaranteed to use A, B, or C in the class. Again, of course, Aim for the A, right? Is it was there. And the best part, you get to pick your professors because some professors are easy. If you have an easy professor, it's an easy class. Think about in high school, right? Some of you guys in high school, there's classes at your school where your kids are scared to take. It's not cuz the class is hard, it's because the teacher is known to be really, really difficult. So, same concept applies. Doesn't change when they go to college. There's some professors that are really easy, some a little tougher. So, if you want to write this down in your notes, there's a website we like to recommend called ratemy myprofessors.com. It's like Yelp per professors, right? You try to find the little tip here, the easiest professor you can find in the field. That's going to be one of the keys here. Okay, so that's that's pretty much it. Going into nth grade, if you're current ninth grade, I see some tenth graders or you guys are incoming 10th graders. Right now is a good time to start doubling down on your activities, right? Uh is the other piece as well, too. So, one of the big things we like to teach a lot of our families is a concept called the personal project. Right? The personal project, you may have heard of it as the word passion project. I never like the word passion project personally myself, right? Think about your kids. They're 13, 14, 15, 16 year olds. Do you do you think they know what they're really passionate about when they're when they're that young? Probably not, right? So they it ends up being their passion product or stuff they do to look good for college is kind of thing. And that's not again based on all the calls the presentation so far that's not the intention of this area. What we want to do is we want to show who we are. Those spoilers for coach Art's call talk next, right? Spoilers is that who we are. The key for this is we want to talk about us. what's personal to us. If you start there, that's going to help you showcase who you are as a person specifically, right? So, you want to think about what do you love doing daytoday? What do you what are you passionate about? Right? What do you think you like? What do I what do I who do I want to impact? What do you want to affect? You don't have to change the world. Keep in mind, we're in high school. We don't have to change the world, right? But who do you want to impact? And how can I make a difference is one of the keys here as well, too. So, a few examples really quick. Number one, one of our students loves animals, right? and not even related to their major, they just love animals. So what they did and their their field by the way was computer science. They created an app. They merged the two together. They created an app to for help to help their local area with a dog adoption as well too. Very cool. One of our students uh she got early decision. I think uh she was interested in business. She created a Shark Tank uh style uh camp for middle school students uh as well too. That was super cool. One of our students loved uh like uh environmental sciences right as well. What they did was they start initiative at their school that grew uh so but they had the idea like 9th 10th grade and they started growing and got bigger and bigger every single year. So these are some ideas again there's nothing there's no kind of blueprint road map you kind of set up because that's something you care about. I told you I told all of them hey I won't let you post on your app. you're like, "Okay, I'll still do it." Cuz that's something they they want to do, right? And I think that's really cool there, right? Summer after 10th grade. After 10th grade, now we're starting to get make sure, hey, make sure your academic rig. So, anyone incoming 11th grade, this could be really big for you guys as well, too. Making sure your rigor is starting to show. This is when the the number of AP level courses, college level courses starts to start mattering because this is when you can take more of these higher level courses as well to make sure that's locked in with your academics and making sure your interests align as well too. So, uh when it comes to that, right, are you like we say these are ideas for like B classes you can take, right? Again, doesn't have to be a formal class either from a a school. It could be online courses you can think you can find online. uh like I know Harvard uh has a free uh I think through edX they have a free set of classes you can learn and things you can do right these are like areas you can learn as well to just to explore show the colleges hey again another one of those tasting your major right hey I'm interested in this field I'm taking the classes show that I am interested and I I am right I am doing it and I I do like this uh as well too and keep in mind it's not just the classes it's being hands-on right maybe you want to shadow someone this is probably an easy way to get your foot one of the things people tell me coach tell I want to be an engineer. I'm like, okay, do you know what engineers do dayto-day? They're like, no. I'm like, so you want to commit 40 years of your life to something that you have no clue it is besides just hearing it from your friends, right? Think about that. Sounds kind of silly, right? So, the first one, shadowing someone in your field is going to be amazing to give you like a real life uh here's what real life looks like. Because then you hear stuff on TV like fun fact, you know, like police officer people like, oh, they're always in the streets doing stuff. Most their day is doing reports. Most their day is actually in an office typing reports. You guys wouldn't know that unless you shadowed a police officer and see and they do that. They do drive stuff, but then most of it's reporting is what the most their bulk of their days are. So the more you do it, you don't you think here. Look for internship program. Again, this is a hands-on experience in certain fields. Could be local ones or virtual post 2020. A lot of uh virtual things have opened up. Definitely leverage into that. Volunteering, right? finding uh volunteer opportunities that matches kind of what you're looking for. It's another amazing option as well too. Summer programs and keep in mind a lot of summer programs starting it right now. It's a little hard to to find a bunch of them. There are still a few um that are out there. Uh but again, it's getting these getting a little harder if you're p planning ahead. Typically summer apps open around December time and then they close around February, Marchish time is usually how it is. But then there's still a few programs out there. There's always things out there you guys can always uh that kind offered year round. take a peek at those as well too. Online certification, again, I wouldn't pay for the the actual thing. It's like $3, $500, but it doesn't really do anything specifically. Just take the class, use the knowledge, and apply the knowledge is the kind of big thing here. Um, join competitions, right? Some of our students are very competitive uh in things that they do. So, maybe join competitions or camps uh related to what you want to do or again start starting a team, right? Starting that personal project or joining someone. Again, you don't have to start everything, right? If if you know your friends doing something really cool like hey I want to be part of that go join them do that thing with them there's nothing wrong with uh participating in that people want to start stuff all the time but they don't have time to execute anything it's really hard as well too okay so that that's going to be the big thing uh over here now summer after 11th grade so if you are basically incoming seniors right now a few things you have two big goals one make sure you you have things related to your major and number two work on your college applications, right, is the big thing as well. So, uh, one of the big things that comes up typically is like internships, right? People talk about internships a lot as well, too. Here are some fun kind of facts from Coach David, one of our top strategists on our team. He always tells our students to avoid we, he calls them mug and hoodie in uh, mug and hoodie internship and program. So, like people like, "Oh man, if I got an internship at Google, I'd be so happy. I'm" And then people like, "Okay, cool." And then um, then when we found out, hey, what what did you do that week? They're like, "Oh, I sat in a room all week." and they gave uh at the end I just listened to people talk to me and by the end of the week I got a Google mug and a Google hoodie and that's it. And I'm like, so you basically it's a very fancy like summer program. That's all it is, right? So again, you want to avoid these internship is hands-on. You want to be hands-on in the things that you're working on and see if you can get something done by the end of the week would be the goal here. So some programs that would be super cool for you guys to consider as well too. Cosmos is a really big one. Stanford, Sumac, Young, uh, Yel's program, MIT's program as these are really awesome ones. And just to transition us to the next presentation as well too. College applications. One of the big things we know is a lot of students don't think about college. Oh, that's later. I will start that the end of summer. Let me start that later on once I'm ready. Um, spoilers as well too. You're going to be really really busy later on. So, one of the big things we do with our students, we frontload a lot of the work. Our students actually started, we actually started in April last month. We have I think uh coach Ar can can share later on, but I think we have like over 70 students done with their first drafts completed already and we're working on with more and more students as time goes on because it's something you can frontload. You can do early because again warning summer is busy. Warning, fall semester senior is busy if you can frontload a lot of the work because spoilers again the essay prompts don't change, right? It's the same ones for this year as well too. So again, one thing Coach Art will teach you guys in a little bit is how to write all these essays for the different schools. And if you can get all your main essays completed by end of summer, you get to relax. One of the tips that we'll share uh we may or may not share, but then one pro tip is that we you do want to apply early action to a lot of schools that you can. The reason why more students don't do it more is because they don't they can't finish in time because most students think, "Oh, let me get back from summer then start my apps." But by the time you get this a month, you have a month to submit. And it's really really hard for students to cram all that in uh in time. But if you start early enough, you could you open up that door to be able uh to do that as well too. Okay, that's pretty much it. Little little teasers into summer. Again, there's no again again there's no right in these things to consider think about to kind of craft your own profile. Here we have one quick question here. How do you handle if your kid doesn't show motivation for extra quick activities outside of sports? I'm sure they like more things than sports. I bet you if you scroll through their Tik Tok feed, their Instagram feed or YouTube channel is more than just soccer. It's more than just basketball. And if it is, maybe they're really really good. We had a student for Olympian uh years years back, right? That that's literally all all they eat, sleep stuff was that sport. I was like, "Oh, that makes sense for you." But again, you probably have more interest, more hobbies, right? So again, keep making them again going back to the the activity example. It's not even formal. Just what do you like? What do you what are your interests? And again, that's kind of a little spoilers. kind of what I do. I if someone tell me I don't know what I like, I'm like open up your phone, scroll Tik Tok for a minute. Tell me what you see. Tell me the type of videos that gets and stuff or show me the ads you're getting targeted with because the ads we tease our parents as well too. If you want to see what what your interests are, look at your ads. You'll tell exactly like, "Oh man, they know me really well." Ads follow us, right? Cuz they know us better than we know ourselves. If we like it, we don't like it as well, too. But that's that's the little thing. So if students say, "I don't know." I'm like, you probably know. Let me and if you don't know, let me show you what it is and you can just look through that. Look at YouTube. Your front page of YouTube tells you that your your most recommended videos because they know who you are. They're going to recommend that to you. So, again, I try to find themes like, "Oh, wait. You like uh oh, you also like uh science. Oh, look, you also like astronomy. That videos you have a like three videos about like space. Tell me more about that. Let's do something with that." The idea is there's no magical list, right? That's why we custom build activities per student because it's each student sharing sharing showcasing who they are. Okay. Um, awesome. That is pretty much it for me. I'm going to pass it off to uh Coach Art uh Mr. Dig Deep uh to go ahead and talk to you guys about the the essays. Go ahead, Coach Art. Woo! Man, I'm telling you everybody, uh, before we do that, everybody just take a stretch, take a deep breath, because I know we've been going hard and fast, just as how it normally is, uh, with, uh, with all of our things that we do at at at Eagle. Uh, one thing that I want to make sure that you guys know about is that, um, it's been so crazy for the last gosh, what has it been, three or four years now? um just because uh we've just been doing so so successful in helping out all of our students, but at the same time uh I'm just so proud of our team, you know, of what we've gotten accomplished um and helped so many thousands and gosh, I say thousands of students, that sounds crazy, but it it really is. So, um I'm going to go ahead and share my screen here and uh again, you guys know I am the reaction guy. So, if you could do me a favor and provide me with a reaction saying you can see my screen and you can hear me loud and clear. Yes, there it is. Everybody knows it. I think my my some of the people that join me all the time with hearts and uh and uh um you know, thumbs up. So, thank you so much for that. Uh you guys are amazing. Incredible. Uh I'm Coach Art. I want to go ahead and before I start is really introduce myself. Um, so people kind of I'm one of the senior coaches here. I'm head of coaching um and chief product officer at Eagle Lock. Uh, and one of the senior coaches uh, Coach Tony has asked has labeled me as the parent leaison and student whisperer and and you know what I'm proud of that moniker and I'm I'm proud to take that on because I love helping students and I also love helping um, parents as well. uh been in technology for over 30 years at Fortune 500 companies, small startups or so. Um and but the big thing is uh throughout my life I found a passion in helping and educating and mentoring uh young uh uh kids, adults, young adults or so. And so that's how I got into this space. Uh been over 20 years of uh being a a a sports coach, a life coach to students and young professionals. uh been in the industry uh gosh over eight years now. Um and I've helped uh students from across you know all across the nation get into uh a lot of schools. But you know my biggest achievement is being a husband and a dad. Uh everybody kind of knows this if you've been through uh my trainings or so uh is I'm just um I have a beautiful wife that supports me in everything that I do. But secondarily um I have amazing children. And the reason why is uh my proudest moments are my three boys. Uh my oldest graduated from um UC Berkeley with a mechanical engineering degree. My middle son is pursuing his uh nursing degree um at uh University of Illinois Chicago. My youngest is pursuing his physical therapy degree at Biola University and uh is playing college soccer. And so just to give that to everybody there, all your parents, I know what you're going through. I've been through it three times. I've been through the the stress and the strain and and all the things that you go through of wanting your children to just, you know, make it to the college, be happy, uh, and not to be so stressed under this. So, I hope that this presentation that I provide you today is going to give you a little bit of peace. Maybe not. Um, but we'll we'll we'll get through it. Okay. Um, so what are we going to talk about today? We're going to talk about why essays are important. Uh, what types of essays are out there? uh you know how what is the writing process and and give you some tips. Uh I know this is going to go fast but again uh hopefully you can take notes here uh and um we can we can get started. So why are essays so important? Uh coach Tony touched upon that and everybody else touched upon it as well. We really focus on three things. Academics, activities, and the application. Uh academics of course again uh you know good grades uh rigor uh activities uh and we you know coach Tony and everybody else have gone through activities is really finding something that you're passionate about and uh of course um you know doing things with commitment and leadership right but the one thing that I think students really forget is they focus so much on the academics that they forget about their application the most important part which is the essays because you have academics activities an application. But the least important out of those is the academics. Now, I'm not saying that you just can just not do well in school. That's absolutely wrong. You have to do well in academics. You have to have um you know really impactful activities. But your application and particularly essays are the most important because that can turn the tide with readers. that can turn the tide in a reader understanding who you are, showcasing your unique potential, and then all of a sudden saying, you know what, I really love this student. I'm going to fight for them. And so that's why it's so important that the essays that you work on your essays, especially if you're a junior now, okay? Your essay is a way to show who you are behind your uh beyond your grades and your test scores. It really provides colleges with authenticity, self-awareness, and growth. Okay, in what you write and that is what can differentiate you from the hundreds or even thousands of students that are applying to college. Okay, so what are the different types of essays out there? And I I tried to put those together. Um but I want to make sure that you understand the types of applications that you may be filling out. Okay, for you juniors, you're probably un just starting out now. And um so the different types of applications so there's the common application uh about a thousand or plus schools ac around the country use this and what's notable about this with respect to the uh essays it's a personal statement that you one personal statement 650 words and most this is the one that's most popular used by many private and selective public schools. Now you may get additional supplemental questions that you may have to answer but the main thing is a 650word essay. Now the UC applications uh that's all the University of California uh number of schools they use it is the nine campuses and what you have to do is you have to uh answer four what they call PIQ's personal insight questions. Okay, each one are 350 words. Now, there is also uh an application called the coalition application. It's sponsored and integrated within SCORE. If you don't know SCORE, that's a platform that's used commonly within high school. It's about 150 schools out in the nation use that. And it's really all about access uh access and accessibility, meaning being able to access that particular application. There is uh apply Texas that's really specifically only for Texas schools. There's about 30 schools in Texas um that utilize this type of application. Um and again the essays vary for each of those uh Texas schools. Then there are school specific types of applications. Okay, those are select schools. For example, MIT, Georgetown, the militarymies. All of them have different types of essays. Okay. Um and then there's one other application uh that's called the universal college. It's very few uh use it now. it's been largely phased out. But again, if you think about it and you look at all of the different types of applications that students are going to be applying um into, there are all these different types of essays that you might be um uh filling out. Now, what are the common themes? Okay, these are the common themes and these are the things that um as usual have really figured out of the type of uh general themes that the essays are going to cover. uh leadership, creativity, uh a talent or a skill, an educational opportunity or a barrier, um life challenges or some type of obstacle that you've experienced, an inspiring subject or a topic or an idea that you um that that really drives you. Uh community involvement and community impact. Uh belief or personal values that you hold. Uh an imp impactful person that's been in your life. Uh something where you took initiative or something that you started uh something that provided you with personal growth. Uh an event or something you went through where you showed resilience or perseverance. Uh something that provided you with self-discovery or really allowed you to ident uh find some type of identity. A curiosity or a love of learning. Uh navigating a change or a transition that went through in your life. Uh challenging a norm and belief or expectation. Okay, here's two things that are really um really a lot of the schools will ask you about particularly with the common application is why are you choosing this major and why are you choosing our school and then there are short answer funs you know one is like what is your favorite sandwich and then there is usually an additional information section. Okay. So, the thing is is that, you know, for me to go through every single one of these, it would take me, you know, probably the entire day. But what I'm going to do is is I'm going to uh explain to you a writing process that you can go through that will really allow you to touch upon all those different types of themes. So warning the very first thing that we always teach is do not read the questions first. That is one of the biggest um advices that I give when everyone says coachard how do we write these how do I write my my my essays don't read the question first and the reason why is because automatically you're putting blinders on your brain because what happens here is you're going to that you know one question could say is you know give me an example of your leadership skills and then all you're going to do is think about leadership leadership leadership to the point where you might say oh my gosh what if I don't even have leadership experience, then you're stuck and you won't be able to write anything. And this happens probably 99% of the time when we first start working with students and they say, "Oh my gosh, I have no idea what to write about here. I'm completely stuck." Don't read the questions first. Now, if you already have, it's okay. It's all right. Don't worry. But what I want you to do is get out of your mindset and let's go into the process now and try to explain to you how we're going to go ahead and um and start this. Okay. So, what the process I'm going to show you is first of all, you're going to do some brainstorming. brainstorming on on all the things that you've done and then uh coach coach Tony uh it's funny you know about three or four years ago we were we were talking with a student and I came up with this with this phrase dig deep dig deep um and it's just stuck and so this is where you're really uh looking inside yourself being introspective and and finding out um who you really are through digging deep then what happens is once you do that and you've done the brainstorming dig deep. That is when you read the questions and then you assign the questions. After that, now the work starts. Now you're going to start doing what we call a messy draft. And that messy draft is where you put everything together and you have just a blob of stuff. Once you have the blob or what I call the blob of clay because, you know, every um great artist starts with a huge block of clay. You're going to start cutting. You're going to start editing. And that's where you revise and then you're going to finalize. And that is the process that we follow when we talk about having students um write their essays. Um I want to say thank you everyone. I see the little hearts. If you find and anytime that I am uh saying something that really resounds uh or or you know you feel is useful, give me the hearts. I love it. Woo. Uh because then I know that I'm doing it right. So let's get into the process. Let's break down the process here. Okay, you can see I get excited because I love writing essays. I love helping students writing essays. I know all of our coaches love helping um students writing essays. Okay, so first thing is with the brainstorming, what you want to do is you want to identify all the activities that you've done. And this is literally the activities that started the day after you graduated or or were promoted from 8th grade. Okay? Everything. Think about everything. When I say activities, I'm talking about in school, out of school, hobbies, things that make up the time, okay? Make up time uh that you're doing when you're not in class. Okay? Um now, if there are activities that have flown through, meaning have carried over from your middle school and elementary into your high school, those are valid, too. I also want you to think about the experiences in your life, things that have impacted you. Okay, list out those experiences. And then lastly, want you to think about what you identify as. You know, are you an artist? Um, are you uh a robotist? Um, are uh do you have a certain ethnicity? Uh do, you know, do you are you an activist? Okay, so think about all of the identities that you are. So, you're going to be you're going to have a list of activities, you're going to have a list of experiences, and you're going to have a list of of what you identify as. Then what you're going to do is out of all of that, you're going to you're going to really look at that, be introspective, think about it. Um, and then you're going to brainstorm on creating four topics out of those four topics. Okay? For example, a topic could be is when you traveled from the United States to let's say China and you had this amazing experience looking at um at a different culture or maybe it's um why you are so interested in math um or um another one is you know a a particular uh situation where you led a group uh to achieve something successful or maybe achieve something that was a failure. Okay. So, you're going to do four topics and then what you're going to do is something that I really love is called story time. Now, what story time is is you're just going to basically write the who, what, where, when of the story. Okay? So, when I say story, um, what you're going to do is is you're going to write about the details of a story as if you're reading a book and it just tells you, uh, I went here, uh, and the the sky looked like this and, um, I was speaking to this person. Give us the details of the story. But remember, this is a freewrite. Don't worry about the format. Don't worry about the spelling. Don't worry about the grammar. Don't worry about the limits. And I will tell you as of right now, don't worry about the word limits at all. Okay, just keep on writing as much as you can until you can't write anymore. Okay, so you're doing story time. You've done all the brainstorming. You have a blob of stuff so far. Now, the next thing you're going to do is you're going to dig deep. Okay, dig deep. Find your why. So, what do I mean by why? The why is what you are. Okay, it's what we cannot see by just looking at you. It's what's in your brain. It's your thoughts. It's your insights. It's your beliefs. It is not the story. Okay? So, for example, if I see someone that has a racket in their hand, they're in front of a net in a and on a green uh court and they're hitting a yellow ball, I'm going to kind of assume that that person is a tennis player. But what I can assume is why are they motivated? Why are they there at 5:00 a.m. in the morning practicing? Why do they wake up in the morning and they are inspired by wanting to play tennis? Why were they motivated to help younger students learn how to play tennis? All of that, the insights, the thoughts, the beliefs, all of that is something that's inside your brain. Okay? That's the reason why I love the the the the label that the UC's use is PIQ, personal insight questions. It's personal because it's about you. It's insights of things that you uh personally um have inside of you and it's a question right? Okay. So we normally say the ratio should be 70% why and 30% what meaning 70% of what is inside of you and who you are and 30% of the story. Okay. So 7030 7030. Now, now that you have uh put together the story, you have created uh you know, you've you story timed and wrote about the story and you've dug deep and you have all of the motivations and insights, this is now where you're going to go ahead and I'm going to say is even if you're not applying to the UC's, look at the University of California PIQ's or personal insight questions. because they have eight questions that are really great because they cover all different types of areas of questions. This is where now you are going to go ahead and grab those questions and you're going to assign those questions, okay, to your writings, okay? And that's the gold right there. And the reason why now is because you have so much content now you're going to take the question and you're going to match it to what you wrote about that you're passionate about. Okay. Now couple of guidelines when you're doing the four PIQ's what we will normally suggest is not to necessarily if you can write about the significant challenge one. The reason why unless you do have a significant challenge, a significant challenge that we define is something where let's say that you were um an accident and and you and you you know you you lost your leg or so. That's a significant challenge in your life that you really had to go through and it and and it affected you significantly. Having a B or getting a C in, you know, AP calculus BC is not a significant challenge because so many students may go through that. Okay, another thing is try not to answer question number eight which is the almost the anything else question. The reason why because it gives a a very difficult time for readers to figure out what context of which you are writing. Okay, it doesn't give them direction. Same thing with a personal statement. If you're doing the personal statement in the common application, avoid number question number seven because that's the again that's the catchall. Okay, but now you've assigned the question. So imagine you have this blob of story. You have added now the uh the deep insights, right? The dig deep insights. And now you have the question. This is now when you're going to do the messy draft. So you're going to combine everything, the what and the why. This is where you're going to start adding. Now you're going to write in your own voice. Okay. The biggest thing here is don't try to write what you think a college application reader wants to hear. You're going to write about what you want to tell them about yourself in your life. And that is the big thing. You need to tell them who you are. Why are you passionate? Okay, that is what is going to be the differentiator between, let's say, the 27,000 students that applied last year to the UC's because they're going to learn who you are. And you know, Coach Tony, he talked about the overlays, right? and and and also all of our other presenters talked about the um all of these things about you. Well, guess what? That is what the readers are looking for is do you match the archetype of what they're looking for? And if you do, you're in. Okay. Now, for this, because you're focusing on the UC um drafts, aim for about 400 to 600 words for the UC essay and about 800 words for the Common App. Now, I say this by numbers, but that's just a guideline. I want you to write. I don't care if you write two, three pages of stuff, that's even better. I just want you to freewrite and keep on going because if you're writing something that you're passionate about, this should be easy. You should be able to write pages because if you don't, if you only write like maybe a half a page, then maybe that's not the right tap topic. Go back and figure out another topic. Because the thing is, this should be a very easy thing. You should literally be able to write out in about maybe half an hour a page, maybe a page and a half of the the topic that you're writing if you're truly passionate about it. Now, you are now having the block of clay. Okay? You are the sculptor. You have the block of clay. And it's and remember with the block of clay the reason why I keep on stressing about you know write as much as you can is because with an artist remember if you have a huge block of clay you can cut and you can start revising it so that you make this amazing piece of art. But if you have only a sliver of clay it's really hard to create this masterpiece. And that's the reason why we say you know have that messy draft create that blob of clay of writing. Now, once you have that, it's revision time direct. This is the key now where you're now going to look at what you wrote and you're going to start looking at the essay prompt and start revising based on the essay prompt. And you're going to answer these following questions. Does every sentence contribute to the overall narrative, to the overall theme of your essay? Does it reveal something meaningful about who you are? Are you showing depth and reflection or are you simply listing out a bunch of your accomplishments? I can't tell you enough. This is the one thing that I've seen so many times where uh that whole thing about when coach Tony was talking about, oh my gosh, my kid had amazing, you know, academics. They have very amazing activities, but they didn't get accepted. And the reason why is because I read the some of these essays and it's literally a regurgitation of the acu uh the activities. um uh listings, okay? They just say, "Oh, I did this. I did this. I did this." They're not looking for that because you've already listed it out in your activity section. What they're looking for is who you are, your insights. Okay? So, what you're going to do is you're going to go through, you're going to look at the prompts and you're going to try to answer the prompts, revise, rest, revisit, repeat. I can't tell you enough. And that's the reason why Coach Tony said that we actually started already in April. We've had Yes. about 70 80 plus students already gone through our first um iteration uh what we call our kickstart where students are just exactly what I'm showing here. This is what they're going through. You want to go ahead and get your messy draft, your blob, you want to revise and then you want to rest. Take a day maybe and get away from it. clear your brain because what happens is our brains are still working and they're working things out of how to clearly write then revisit and then repeat. That's the reason why you want to take April, May, June, July, August, September to write these essays because you give your time uh for your brain to rest and to just um to really make sure that you give the best. I'm sure many of you have realized when you have this thing that's really um uh you know bothering you and then you go ahead and get a good night's sleep and then the next day it automatically hits you what the answer is. Right? That's exactly what you're doing here is you're writing, you're revising, you're going away and then you're coming back and normally your brain will give you an idea of how to revise. Okay. Another thing have another person read and provide feedback. We do that in our program all the time, of course, of with our coaches. But I want to caution you is not to have too many editors. If you have too many cooks in the kitchen, sometimes you'll have opposing ideas, opposing uh comments, and the problem is then you get lost. Okay? So, go to someone you trust, um a coach or mentor or somebody, and make sure that they help you work through out, you know, the the particular revisions, but don't go to too many. Okay. Now you have this amazing work of art, no pun intended, okay? But we're amazing uh writing essays. You have these essays. You've gone through um the revising. You have answered the prompts uh and and you're there. This is now when you start finalizing it where you're going to trim it to the word count. You notice I never said trim to the word count throughout this entirety of the process. This is where now you trim it. So for example, the UCP IIQ's 350 words for the personal statement 650. You'll have a different range. Um different schools will have 150 50. Um the most is usually about 650. I've seen one that's like a thousand, but that's kind of crazy. The essays that are shorter ones like 150, 150, those are the most difficult. And you might think, why? How can that be coach? It's because you have to be so refined. Okay? So, make sure to stick to the 7030 rule. Check word choice. If you can't answer the question, uh, so what, meaning you ask the question and you read it and say, well, so what? If you can't answer that question why it's relevant, take it out. Uh, make sure the essay is readable on a quick read. Okay? Let your story do the talking. And the biggest thing is impact, impact, impact. Now, I know I probably um I don't remember if I put in here, but another phrase that I use, slap the reader in the face. And again, I know I'm not talking about physically doing that to somebody, but what I mean is impact impact impact. Don't waste your time by trying to, for example, the PIQ's to try to wait till the end to tell them what you you're going to tell them. Tell them in the very beginning, the very first sentence, the very first paragraph. slap them in the face and say, "This is who I am." Because the readers literally do not have time. They are not going to sit there for 30 minutes and an hour to read your essays. They don't have that time. So, you need to grab them from the very beginning. But I'm not talking about like a hook, you know, like something like um a phrase or or some imagery. I'm talking about tell them right away right from the very beginning who you are. Okay? So, impact impact impact. Now, here are some last minute tips. First of all, give yourself time to think, write, think, write. I already mentioned that. It is really, really important. The biggest thing is be yourself. Don't write what you think colleges want to hear. It is so very important to tell them yourself. Be the big thing is brag about yourself. Brag about yourself. It is really difficult because students these days are not trained to talk about themselves. They're talk they're trained to talk about other things events. This is the time to talk about self because remember in your application the readers only have what they see on paper. That's it. They're not going to go out and look at your your your social media. They're not they're going to only see what they have on the application that you submitted and that's it. Show don't tell. Okay. Show don't tell meaning tell them you know in instead of saying I love math describe a moment that shows it. Don't just tell them I love math. Okay be concise. Okay do not repeat topics. That is a big no no. Like for example for the PIQs if you have four of them those four essays that you do should be four separate essays as if they were written by four different people and they were put together and you become a superhum. Okay. Uh, each essay should be unique. Ask again the so what. And as I mentioned, slap the reader in the face. Get to the point from the beginning and be bold. Be brave. Tell them who you are. Okay. Now, here are some don'ts. I'm going to tell you. Here are some don'ts. Don't do these things in your essays. Don't write about a controversial topic. You don't know. Again, readers are meant to be unbiased, but still, you don't know. And so you don't want to risk that. Don't write like a 40-year-old professor. Okay? There is this thing called AI. Be careful when you're writing, you know, using that because what happens here is it writes so very clean that the raiders are going to tell. Okay? And they're going to know you're not they're they're expecting a 17-year-old writing this. I tell you, I I I talked to a Yale reader, okay? a Yale a person uh one of the readers at Yale and one of the biggest things in their training says are they writing like a 17-year-old that's one of the big uh requirements okay so you got to write who you are and at what you know what age you are write things that don't answer the entire don't write things that don't answer the entire question it is so important to read the entirety of the question and make sure you're actually answering the question okay don't write about someone else something else or some event that's not related to you. I can't tell you I always hear about the whole thing of uh you know maybe oh um someone who influenced you like my grandmother or something like that and then they write about the grandma and it's wonderful it's beautiful but thing is the grandma's not going to school you are. So don't get caught up in writing about somebody else. Don't write a glorified list of your activities. Okay again don't write your activities. you've already done that in activity list and don't use AI to write your essay. Now, I'm saying is when I say don't write use AI, it doesn't mean necessarily that it can help you with some sentence structure, but don't say tell me a time or write an essay about me breaking my leg in college in a soccer game and I triumphed over it and then let it write it for you because then you are not giving your insights. What you're doing is you're getting letting AI do that. Okay? And I can't tell you there are schools out there that are saying don't use AI or or you know they they may remove your essay. There are some schools that are saying well use it to help you write but don't have it write it for you. Okay. So I just want to be caution you know be cautionary on that. Okay so with that with that questions questions questions Tony was that was did that make sense? I I I think I think the chat needs to let coach Art know. Was that a good session? drop a quick yes or drop a little heart emoji so coach art knows. Uh it was a good session, man. One of our uh one of this is actually one of our like I think most frequent requested topics. Uh I know there uh there uh I I answered most questions but one question for you coach Ard came live is would it um would it work if one of my four topics is leave living in Barcelona and attending there for eighth grade or is that too far back and should the essays be related to high school years? Well typically the the the essays should be related yeah they have to be related to to high school years. Again, remember one year, one day literally after you promote from 8th grade is all, you know, valid content. But again, it's one of those things where if it's something that had shaped you and it's carrying over, you see what I mean? Like for example, if you had something in eth grade where you say, you know, I visited Spain and it really made an impact on me because then I started thinking about languages. Okay? and that really propelled me into now I'm wanting to major in I don't know um classical you know Spanish architecture or something like that then that's that's fine okay but the one thing is that yes it has to be something that's related uh in high school because that's what they're looking for you are a much different person in elementary middle school than you are in high school so awesome any other questions yeah one question here is uh I think someone asked like do you start writing in summer junior year summer sophomore year can you share what we do with our students. Yeah. Yeah. Again, that's the the exact process. Okay. I I got to tell you, please please parents, and I I'm talking to you as a parent because I've done this, okay? Please don't stress your student out by asking them to start writing in your freshman or sophomore year. It is not necessary. It really isn't. Because the one thing is they're going through growth spurts. They're growing in their high school. They're trying to get accustomed to high school. They're trying to just get through their classes and get through their activities and making friends and going to the prom or whatever it is that they do, right? Don't worry about writing their freshman sophomore year. What you start writing is is again now in their spring of junior year. We we used to start writing in July. Now we're starting in April a little bit. Just give a little time. But around that time in spring is when they start. Now, I will say a lot of students, they stress out because they're having AP exams right now. They may be taking their SATs. They they're trying to do their finals. They're trying to figure out their prom, you know, what they're going to address for prom all those things, right? Allow them to do that and then then they can start, you know, after that. But it's the case is is that you want them to clear their mind, get that stuff out of their way because junior year is the most one of the most important. Have them finish strong in their academics. have them finish strong with their activities and then start writing. So, not necessary to write freshman sophomore year. Love it. Awesome. Thank you so much, Coach Art. Before Coach Art heads out, uh, Coach R, can you share? So, little little spoilers a little bit. So, right after the summit, this is like unannounced. Oh, you have a special event right after. So, if you guys are free at 1:00, which is the end of this event, there's a special event that Coach R is leading. Coach R, you want to do a little preview of that? Yeah. Oh my gosh. Okay. I am a parent, guys, and I can't tell you how proud I am of all of our students that are graduating in 2025. If you have a student, congratulations to them. Right now, we are doing our first event. It's called the signing day celebration. It's going to celebrate um all of our uh class of 2025. We're going to have a panel of students that are going to talk about their experience. They're going we're going to have uh amazing guests uh these uh twins that went through our program and had amazing results as well. But and we're going to just celebrate uh those students that that uh are going to be graduating and going to their their college. So if you if you have time, please join us at 1. It's about 1 to two and we're going to be um you know, you're going to see real world students that went through the program, but also are just going to talk about their experiences. I think it's going to be amazing. So, please, if you have the time, please join us because we'd love to have you. Um, and it's I believe Tony, it's the same link. So, you guys can just same here. If you guys if you guys want to tune in for that, just stick on stay on that event as well, too. Just stay on. So, thank you everybody. I appreciate you know again, Coach Art here. Thank you so much for for listening. Okay. Awesome. Fantastic. All right, moving. Man, I looked at clock. It's 12:30. Is that crazy? And we still have maj I think we only lost like 10 people which is insane for an event this long. So shout out to everyone. Shout out to everyone. Go ahead and drop drop the little hearts again. Makes me feel good as well too. The the little hearts uh down below. So I'm going to go ahead. There you go. The hearts as well too. So two more quick little uh training session. Again, really quick little chat check-in. Are did you guys Is this a good event so far? Quick quick yes in the chat if you guys are enjoying it. Are you guys getting value? Are you taking notes? Are you finding? Oh man, I'm definitely doing that this weekend. I'm going to changing this, changing that uh as well too. Love it. Love it. Love it. Awesome. Cool. Hopefully, we can keep on going. So, let's go ahead and talk to next. This one is just uh a little session on the biggest mistakes we see. So, again, we talk to a lot of families every single day. So, these are just like a compilation. I asked uh our uh advisor team of like uh uh because we offer free coaching calls for for new families. Uh so, we offer like, hey, let me and then these are probably the biggest mistakes that we see. So kind of highlight if it's you and not calling you out. It's like hey let's make a little pivot to make sure you guys are in the right direction uh as well too. Okay so it's got top okay I put like top 10 top 10 number 10 ignoring deadlines and missing financial aid opportunities. Little teasers then right right away this the next one probably probably be one of the most important sessions for a lot of the families here because again living in California is one of the college is expensive right? College is very expensive and our income doesn't help because we need the cost of living to live here, but from a federal level, it hurts us a little bit from that point of view. So, Coach David uh is going to do a really amazing session for you guys about financial aid and finding money despite living in California uh as well too. But on top of that, also understanding deadlines, right? Usually deadlines November 30th every year. If you're applying to private schools, they have early and regular decisions as well, too. Little fun fact for those who don't know, if you guys uh do early action schools and you don't get in, you're not rejected. They defer you to regular. That's kind of the perk why we say apply regular because then now you have two chances of applying to get in uh is the thing there. So definitely don't miss out thing deadlines here. Number two, misunderstanding test optional policies, right? Again, a lot of schools now there's a a lot of terms people are using, right? You have the test blind U season right now season and Cal States are officially or still test blind at least to 2028. No changes yet. Uh we're always looking to see what what's going to happen next, but we haven't heard any changes yet. So there's still test blind, meaning if you got a perfect score, it means nothing. There are some schools that are test required. Stanford, for example, is one of our schools that are test required, you have to submit a score uh to that school. And a lot of schools are in the middle of test optional, right? So keep in mind test optional is not test blind. If you do have a good score, submit it. But if you don't have a great score, it doesn't hurt you either. So, so don't don't freak out uh there. And then for us, it's very strategic. Should I should I take not take the test? That's the big thing over here. Okay. Top number eight, underestimating rigor, right? A lot of people we talk about and the question always comes, coach Tony, should I take a hard class and get a B or should I take an easy class and get an A? And here's the answer, everyone. answer and you take that hard class and you get an A. Why are we giving our kids an option of the or you're teaching them that they can kind of have to pick and choose it? No, I want to have my cake and I want to eat it as well too. I I don't have to choose between having cake and not eating. I want I want to I want to have a big cake. I want to eat all my cake as well too. So again, the answer is and the answer is and you want to have the rigor and do well. The question is how. I think that's the better question to ask rather than oh I can't. Oh, my kid's too busy. Oh, my kid doesn't think they can do it. No, how can we? How can we do it? That's the growth mindset, right? As well. Again, keep in mind that's the mentality of if you are aiming because this is a lot of ifs now, right? If you are aiming for these top schools, right? It's not going to be different, right? These schools are hard and it gets harder once you get to these schools. So, they want to make sure you can. So, again, one of the things we like to have our students think about is can you is is the is the big thing. how how can you rather than I can't or I don't want to as they don't want to then then again keep in mind this is just like this equals that is all right number seven submitting generic or boring essays I think coach R did a master class on this you guys I don't need to go too deep into this section but this is the big thing and again one more time one more thing time to echo coach art's kind of lessons as well too uh you again parents is talking to you guys um we are on pretty much a lot of the groups a lot of the other the college groups out there as well too and then you see a lot families, lot lot of angry parents every single year, usually around April, uh that they're like, "My child didn't get in. How dare it's because he's a boy. It's because he's a boy and he didn't get in." Uh and all cuz all these people are getting. I'm like, "No." And it's cuz my kid has a 4.9 GPA with a perfect SAT score with all these things and they didn't get to the school. And I'm like, "Uh, and a little spoilers now. If you notice to these posts, go back to these posts that the people complain right they share their grade the GPA you guys have hopefully by now can agree with me that's not the biggest metric I you should be ask them hey tell me your grade trends over time tell me the rigor how's that compared to your school that's the better questions right activities that's cool why did they do each of the activities it's not just doing activities to look good why are the two buckets there all right and the big thing you'll notice now none of these parents ever share their essays online and then the minute I see it, cuz we do have a lot of families who send send their essays just for closure purposes, right? Like, hey, coach Tony, uh, the public like, uh, I we couldn't get to work with you, but can you can you show us why our kid didn't get in? They sent me the essay. I'm like, oh, yeah, easy. Look, boom, boom, boom, boom. And everything Coach Art mentioned, they did the opposite of it. That's pretty much it. So, basically, just follow Coach Art's training and you're good to go. But if you didn't, you'll see that, oh, again, just take his training, go to anyone you know that go give you your their essays, compare, contrast, you'll tell exactly why. uh um they do it and I I'll give you another pro tip as well. Another fun little nugget for you guys, right? Is when it comes to these college apps, you'll notice that a lot of the essays are called personal insight, personal statement. The word personal is the student. The student is the student, not anyone else. Right? Coach mentioned focus on the student, not anyone else. So, a good tactical tip, every single sentence, use the words I, me, or my in every sentence. If you do that, you force yourself to talk only about yourself and not anyone else. Little pro tip right there as well too. But the reason why it's really really hard for students is that in school they're trained never to use I, me, mine, anything. That's what makes it really tough for students to write that way. That's why a lot of our editing is just that, hey, I don't this is not about you. Talk about you. Turn turn into an I. Turn into an I. Turn into a me. And that's the big focus here. Okay. Number six, right? Uh letting parents take over the place. uh we we we've seen stories uh of people telling us we may have seen one or two stories ourselves as well too. Uh parents when you jump in when you write it sounds very different right parent writing these things sounds a lot different than other people's number one uh when you your your brain how you think about stuff is very two you can't think like your kids number three sometimes even for some of our essay workshops we tell parents hey you're talking to your kid too much go sit in the back like literally kind of forcing them to sit away from their kids because again it's not your statement parents it is your kids statement it's your kids personal statement. It's not mom's uh personal insight. It's Johnny's personal insight. So again, the I all of it should come from the student. That's why when parents ask me, "What activities look good?" I look at the student. Hey Johnny, what activities do you like? And the answer the answer is yes. That right? It's not a it's not if there was a magical bullet, I'd be like do this. Right? All today we there was nothing we say do this. All of it was consider this, consider that, consider that, consider that because for every student's different. If your kid's not athletic, don't put them in sports. They're gonna hate it. They're gonna hate it. You're going to feel feel frustrated as well, too. But if they love to volunteer, man, let's find volunteering for them. If they if your child has a very curiositydriven mind, maybe research is the answer for them, right? If they your student learns best by trial and error and they're very entrepreneurial, maybe that summer program uh uh like business thing is it's really cool. So that idea is what is best on the student start there and work outwards. Okay. Number five, applying for the wrong colleges for your profile as well too. Whenever parents look at colleges, the first thing they look at is best school for major. That's kind of and I bet you guys that's how you guys thought about as well too, right? You guys started, right? Best major, best school for this major. But is that really what you're focusing on? Right? Because I would argue now over the last like 50 years for sure. We've done I've done 16 years. So last 16 years for sure the the the prestige factor of colleges when it correlates to success down the line is starting to slow down. Meaning back in the day if you went to Harvard you were set. You were set for life. You were in the Harvard network. They will help you out with things that you the name carries you longer. In today's world, it has the effect, but pretty much at your first job, right? It might they might help you get get your first position. You might know someone who might connect you as first position, but if in today's world, you're not good, right? And especially with uh with coach art talking about AI and stuff, AI is coming as well, too. Not I don't think it's there yet. It's almost here, right? It's it or it's here, but the the the power of AI is not fully here. We haven't fully utilized it yet. that's going to basically if you're not skilled it's going to take you it's take your job take everything as well too right so that's part of the big thing here is that find schools that's the best fit for you meaning we always tell students ranking keep it top 10 again we're human we have egos we love to brag all of us went to incredible schools ourselves so we we we have that little human ego to brag and plus if our students do really well again you'll see uh in like 30 minutes for those who actually can join us live or those watch the replay ask us for the replay we may have the replay of that I'm not Don't don't quote me. Uh but for signing day, you'll see our kids go to amazing colleges. We get to brag, too. It's a win-win for that way. But at the end of the day, though, we also want to make sure, yes, the the school's top 10 ranking, but what are the five other factors that you care about more than that? That's the big takeaway. Okay. Number four, wasting your summers. Again, the big thing here are not planning strategically. A lot of people are planning for summer in summer, right? Most of the programs are usually gone. I always talk to people like, "Oh, when are you going to get started?" "Oh, we'll get started in three months." And three months later, how far did you get? Oh, no. We're stressing out now. I'm like, "Why are we stressing out then where we could start early?" And so, a lot, you know, a lot of just planning ahead, right? You plan ahead and you execute the plan. That's the part of the big thing here. Number three, just joining random things. Again, that was not a strategy with us. Just do random things. Do things your kid enjoys to do, right? There's no point joining a million different clubs, right? Just do stuff that enjoys. And that's going to be the big thing. consistency which leads to leadership. Uh because again if you do something more you just get better. When you get better people see that you're better. When they see you're better you kind of rise up naturally. So it's a very natural organic kind of way of growing it. Number two focusing on GP test scores. This is one of my the thing that irks me all the time when people talk about but my child's a 4.x or like a perfect SAT blah blah blah and they use that as uh the measuring stick for everything. No, that's not it. We we even argue that's probably the least important factor in the admissions process today, right? Coach Art Kai showed you guys as well too. It's a holistic approach, but it's kind of back heavy. Meaning the application is probably going to weigh the most based on our experience. The activities is the next biggest thing. Academics, because everyone's smart now, because everyone's smart, it plays a role, not the full role there. And the biggest thing that we see as well too is people waiting for junior and senior. I did a poll. We have a lot of young students here uh who are joining us. So kudos and shout out to you guys. We got some some ninth graders, some eighth graders, we got some some middle schoolers families as well too, right? Uh people always say when's the coach, when's the perfect time to get started uh preparing for all this? I'm like it's like a tree, right? If you want the best time to plant a tree is always yesterday, last week, last month, last year. Next next best time is always today. So again, the purpose of this session, this summit is to give you the tools to plan to help you figure out, okay, cool. My child needs this, this or if you're the student, hey, I'm missing these things. let me go ahead and figure it out and add to my schedule. Again, prepare now for summer. Once you're in summer, prepare for next year. And that's kind of how the the stage will kind of work out to make sure you guys do really really well. Okay, quick question uh here. One question, what is considered a good score as well? Coach David kind of answer this in the chat. Is that our goal is to aim for top 75th percentile uh of the averages uh is the biggest thing here. Uh when's the latest? We have kickstart. Um so really quick little off topic subtle plug right as well too or the unsuttle plug we do have an event we help our students with the essay workshops uh as well too so we have a one-day event where the students get their drafts completed um that's like we call it kickstart we have it every weekend from April May and June so that that that's that and the second part is accelerator we help our students finish their drafts July August September as well too but again we're not going to talk more much about if you're interested text our team our team can get give you more information uh about that. Okay. Uh yeah, we and we we're hosting it every single weekend. Multiple week multiple events per weekend. So it's it's crazy. We were like 3x I think last year's numbers. So craziness there. All right. That being said, we kind of saved the best for last. Again, what's one again? So some of these topics it may apply to some students, some some people it doesn't. Some people it applies but some doesn't. The next topic is universal for every single student, for every single family. Whether you make uh a dollar a year, whether you make a million dollars a year, money, that's that's that's the one common thread all of us have, every college you're going to end up going to has a price tag associated with it. So, we brought on our financial aid expert, Coach David, to give you guys a quick little 101. Off to you, sir. All right. Okay. So, thank you guys for sticking around until the end. Uh my name is Coach David. Uh I am one of the head coaches in our coaching program. I'm also uh leading the financial aid uh portion of our Eagle family, financial aid secrets. Today, I'm here to kind of talk to you about financial aid 101. Here are the things that you need to know. Here are the things that you need to kind of understand so that you don't get lost in the financial aid process. So, kind of a little bit about me, okay? I am a former lawyer, right? Uh I am a former law school and college admission reader. Uh I am a financial aid uh self-proclaimed master, right? I graduated from the Claremont Colleges. got my jurist doctor at the University of the Pacific, right? And I've saved families millions of dollars. I hope I can do the same for your family later on. Okay? But in order to do that, you guys need to understand what financial aid looks like. So, today we're going to be talking about what financial aid is, how to get it, what forms to fill out, and then a lot of the common rumors or myths that people believe or hear from their next door neighbor uh that get them in trouble and make them lose out on tens of thousands of dollars a year. Okay. So, really quickly, we'll kind of talk about what is financial aid, right? Financial aid is a kind of very broad term uh given to money that is given to families in order to make college more affordable. Okay. Now, a lot of people might think, oh, financial aid is uh money that I don't need to pay back. But unfortunately, if you look at the list of the things here, grants, scholarships, work study, institutional aid, departmental aid, loans, all these things have different names. But money that they give you that you have to pay back and money that you kind of uh get for free is all considered financial aid. So keep that in mind because that becomes very important. Okay. Now for me when I'm talking about financial aid, there's only two buckets of money for me, right? There is free money that never needs to get paid back and there are loans. Whatever it's called, it might be called the presidential scholarship. It might be called this. It might be called that. some kind of institutional aid or some kind of grant. At the end of the day, my what I'm looking at is do I need to pay it back or not? Okay, so uh again, just remember the two types, free money and loans. Okay, now real quick takeaway that I kind of just already alluded to is this, right? Remember, financial aid is any money given to you, whether it's a loan or free money. Okay? So, if a school says that we're going to provide you 100% of your demonstrated need and the college costs $50,000 a year and they give you a $50,000 loan, they have provided you with financial aid. Okay? So, do not be tricked. Okay? So, I know that a lot of families, they go on to different websites and they say, "Oh, this school meets 100% of demonstrated need." Well, again, don't make don't let colleges make you think that it's going to be cheaper than it actually is. Right? because a lot of the times they stick loans in there to saddle parents and families with the brunt of the costs. Okay. Now, the first step in this process is the FAFSA. Okay? And excuse me, I will be going fast, right? Because we do kind of want to keep make sure that we're staying on time, right? Uh but again, uh we do have trainings every Wednesday at 5:00. So, you can join us there. Okay? But the FAFSA, okay, now for the class of 2025, for the class of 2024, there has been delays. Okay? For the class of 2024, the FAFSA opened on December 28th. Okay. For the class of 2025, it opened on December 1st. Okay. Class of 2026, I am not sure yet when it's exactly going to open, but with all the turmoil going on in kind of, you know, the the kind of arena of education, right? I'm hoping that it's October 1st, which is its normal open date, but I am not 100% sure. Okay. Um, but here as far as kind of like the website you should be going on, you need to be going to studentaid.gov. The reason I bring this up is that there's too many scam websites out there that try to get your personal information and credit card information. If a website asks for your personal or credit card information before letting you do something, right, or getting into the site, make sure that you are not doing that. That is a scam website that's just going to send you a bunch of junk mail. Okay. Now, here are the things that you need when you're filling out your FAFSA. You need your appropriate year tax return. Okay? Now, a lot of people are like, "Oh, well, it's just the tax return that we just we just filed." Right? Actually, it's the tax return that you filed for two years ago, right? So, for a lot of families, just last month, you filed your 2024 tax returns. If you do currently have a junior, right, that's going to be a rising senior next year, right? That is the tax return you're going to be using. So, it's 2 years before the graduation date of your student. Okay? You need your social security number. Okay? Now, parents, I've seen this too many times, so I'm gonna I'm gonna kind of bl it out here. Make sure that your social security number is correct, right? There's plenty of people that have thought that their social security number is correct, and then they only find out when they're trying to match up their information with the IRS. One thing that people don't understand is that if you file your taxes with the wrong social security number, it doesn't necessarily really flag it. Okay? As long as you're paying something to the government, that's all they really care about. Okay? I've had parents that have been using the wrong social security number. I've had students where the parents said they knew it by heart, but they were one digit off. So, make sure that you check your social security number. Okay? You need two emails, one for the parent, one for the student. Separate emails. They need to be unique to you. You also need two separate phone numbers where you can receive text messages, right? Again, one for the parent, one for the student account that will be needed later. Okay? Now, the form, I'm going to go through this very quickly because again, I want to make sure that I get all the information out to you guys. Okay. So this is just these are just screenshots from my own personal FAFSA that I went into and I took some screenshots so I can show you guys the different things that they ask, right? They ask about kind of like are you the student? Are you the parent? Right? Your state of legal residence. This becomes very important especially, you know, if you're applying to your your home state schools, right? Especially in California, I don't know if you guys know this, but at a UC, if you're from out of state, the actual cost of attendance, the total cost of attendance is closer to $75,000. Okay? So, if you mark this wrong, right, or you type in CA and like and you choose something else like North Carolina, right? Uh you're going to be in a world of hurt, okay? Trying to prove again and that you have to prove that you are actually from California. Okay? You need to provide consent uh so that they can link with the IRS, right? Uh you need to tell them what year you're in, right? Uh you know, if you're going to be a first-time freshman, this and that. A lot of a lot of families get messed up on this portion, right? because well, they're like, "Oh, well, my student has enough credits to be a sophomore." That's not what they're asking. They're asking if your if your student has ever been enrolled full-time at a college, right? If the answer is no, right? If they've taken community college classes, doesn't mean they're a sophomore, that means that they're going to be a freshman. Okay? Uh they ask about personal circumstances. If you're a veteran or if you were in foster care, ward to the state, uh you know, if there if you were an emancipated minor, so on and so forth. They also ask about you know if you are if you were homeless or at risk of being homeless right they ask you and this part has changed right just so that everyone knows right um they ask about the student's gender right it used to this is what it used to look like male female non-binary or prefer not to answer this has changed on the FAFSA form with the new mandates that have come down with the federal government there's only two options here and it's male and female okay they also ask about your race and ethnicity right again you can answer you cannot answer this is kind of used as a census Right? Uh and then they also ask about your citizenship status. Okay? They ask about, you know, your high school completion status, right? Most of the the the students that we're we're helping have gone through high school, gotten their diploma. They'll ask you where you went to high school. Okay? Now, for the student, right, usually the students aren't working enough to make or to kind of file their own taxes. Okay? So, if they are making under I believe it's like like around $14,000, they don't need to file their own taxes. They can go ahead and just file under their parents. So for most students, the answer to this is going to be no. One very important piece of the puzzle is this number in college. Now if you have one student in college, that's fine. That's kind of the default answer that is inputed into the form for you actually. But a lot of people just skip through. They see something filled in, they skip through, skip through. If you do have multiple students in college, please list it here. Okay. Now, one of the things that is very important with the FAFSA form is that you're only you're limited to 20 colleges at one time. Now, a lot of families might be thinking, well, 20 colleges, that's more than enough, right? But the average student is applying to their home state schools, right? And we're in California. So, let's say you're applying to the UC's across the board, that's nine, right? Let's say you're applying to a couple CSUs. That's another maybe three or four. So, that's already 12 or 13. And then on average, students are applying to 10 to 12 private schools. So, that's already over 20. Okay. Now, for the FAFSA, you're not just sending it to one kind of like umbrella UC. you have to send it to each individual UC, each individual CSU. So if you are applying to more than 20, you do need to turn it in with the 21st, then you need to come back after it's been processed, remove those schools, add the new schools, and resubmit it. Okay? So if you have, I don't know, 47 schools, you'll have to do this form three separate times. Okay? All right. So again, I did a brief look at what the FAFSA looks like on the student side. Okay. I also want to tell you about another form that's very uh widely used in the college admission space and it is the CSS profile. This is run by college board. It's called this college scholarship search profile. This is the form that a lot of private colleges and some public universities uh use to see if their institution can give you any money. Right? So the FAFSA is more federal and state. Right? The CSS profile is more individual colleges. Okay? But you have to remember that any form you turn in with any additional information is another way for colleges and the government to try and disqualify you from getting aid. Right? So I'll kind of show you a little bit about what that looks like. Now the CSS profile and College Board are probably very familiar to families because you've either taken an SAT or PSAT or an AP exam. Okay? But the actual website is just CSS profile. Collegeboard.org. You can also just go to Collegeboard login and search CSS profile once you're into your account and you should be able to find it that way as well. Okay, but the CSS profile, it asks a lot more questions. Okay, it asks the same personal information, but it also asks you about housing information, right? About your residence, who lives there, right? Academic information like what grade you're going to be in, also what type of school you're going to, public, private, charter, magnet, all those different things, right? And then they ask about parent details, right? their income, if they have any child support. They also ask about your retirement. They ask about social security benefits. They ask about everything. They ask about kind of like what your mortgage is on your house or if you're renting, what is your rent, right? Um they ask about the equity in your homes, right? They ask literally everything. It's like you're doing another tax return but for college. Okay, so these are all the things that they ask here. Okay. Now, again, just quickly going through the form here, right? Um here again, name, right? They also do have preferred name. Uh there's, you know, a lot of students have nicknames, things like that that all their teachers know them by. That might be the one that you want to use. It's just about how they address you in any formal emails. Okay. But again, same thing here. Make sure that your birthday is correct. Make sure that your social security is correct. Okay. Parent information. Okay. So, this is something very important out there in our audience. There's probably families that are maybe single parent families. There might be separated parents. All of these things. There is a lawsuit going on right now, a class action lawsuit. Okay? And so if there is a question about kind of like, hey, we're a separated family, right? Or I'm a single parent, right? Um this or that, that's something that I feel we can't really talk about here because it's uh you know, I don't want to put everyone's kind of information out in the world. Um but uh we can talk about that at a later time. Okay? But how you fill out this form if you are divorced, widowed, never married, but living together, all these different pieces will greatly impact your financial aid. Okay. Now, for colleges, this is really nice on the CSS part because you can add as many that you want. But here is a problem. Okay. Well, not the problem, but here's like one of the kind of uh not what's the word I'm looking for? One of the kind of differences about the FAFSA versus the CSS is that the FAFSA is a free application for student aid. That's what FAFSA stands for. The CSS profile, you have to pay. Okay? So, it's $25 for the first one and then $16 for each additional campus that you add afterwards. Okay? That adds up too. Now, if you are under a certain income range, then there is a waiver so that everything is free. But for families that are over it, unfortunately, you do have to pay to send the CSS profile. Okay? They're also going to ask about kind of where you're going to live. Now, whenever a college asks you where you're going to live, and they're asking because of financial aid reasons, you always want to say on campus. Onampus housing and food is the most expensive type of housing and food. If you're living at home, there's no dorm cost. If you're if you're and if you're eating at home, there's no food cost that that the college calculates. So you always want to say that you're living on campus. That is how you're going to have the highest cost of attendance. That is how your income is going to look smaller versus that higher cost of attendance. Okay? Housing situation, right? Again, the one big piece of information that I give to families here is that if you do if you do own your home, let's say it's mortgaged, right? The value of your home is not the Zillow or Redfin or whatever other kind of, you know, platform that you use to check what the market value of your home is, right? It is what you pay taxes on. That is the value of your home. That is what the government has told us the value of our home is. So, make sure to put that. Okay. Now, the one kind of pro tip I'm going to give you on the CSS profile is this. Okay. They only ask five questions that are required. Everything else is kind of discretionary or optional. Okay. So, well, one thing I tell parents is do not answer or volunteer any type of information that is not required. Telling them how much interest you made on your savings account. Telling them how much your how how much your investments made in dividends, that's not helping you in any way, right? But I know a lot of parents where it's like, oh yeah, well, I did really well in the stock market. I want to tell them about it. That's not the that's not the kind of mindset to take into the financial aid. Okay? For financial aid, we want to give them the minimum amount of information and show them that we have not a lot so that they give us more. Okay, so keep that in mind there. Okay. Additionally, for the student resources section, right? Well, students, if you're working and things like that, I totally get it. But they ask you what your expected earnings are, put zero across the board. Okay? Uh when they ask how much other people are going to contribute, well, put zero across the board, too. Right? Let's say, well, and for this section, I get it. parents, it's not actually going to be zero what you contribute, right? But students, as you're filling this out, I want you to think that your parents are mean, your uncles are mean, your aunts are mean, your grandparents are mean. No one's going to give you anything, right? You're like Cinderella. Okay? Everyone is kind of like picking on you. Okay? So, we're all going to be mean parents, uncles, aunts, and grandparents. Okay? Even though it's not true, again, we want to show them that we have less. Okay? Quick takeaway here. This form is here to screw you over. Okay? Sorry for the French, right? Um, but here, right, go ahead, provide them the basics and then if they ask for additional information later, we can figure out how to deal with that later. Okay, the CSS is kind of more than just what I showed here. I tried to show you important parts where I can kind of pinpoint a couple things, right? But before you sign anything, obviously, make sure you talk to us. We're available on Facebook, we're in Discord, right? You know, you can comment on our on our different training videos as well. Okay, so really quickly, right? I know I have a couple minutes left. I want to talk about some of the common rumors and myths, right? The one I hear too much and I've already seen right in the chat here is is it like so I always hear people oh like if we know that we're not going to qualify. Well, if you're not going to well well first off there are some high schools that have made it a graduation requirement in order to graduate, right? That you have to fill out your FAFSA. So for some people you're going to have to do it. But our family makes too much money. 85% of the people that are thinking right now thinking that right now are probably wrong. Right? I do not qualify because of this. I tried to get it once and I didn't get it. I have so many kid I have so many families where the older kid didn't get anything. We got something for the younger kid because they just had given up. Right? My grades are not good enough to get aid. Right? There are some requirements, but again, you don't need to be a 4.0 student. Right? Um and a big one is like, oh, I'm I'm an independent student because I have a job and I have my own lease on an apartment in college. Okay? So these are actually all wrong things. Okay. Um I do see some questions. Uh I will get to those kind of in a second. Okay. Now one of the things here is again there's a lot of traps, right? There's different deadlines. There's this there's so on and so forth. The biggest thing that I want to kind of point out there is that I know that there's a lot of families out there that prepare kind of for the future for their students. But the worst thing that you can be doing is having assets in your student's name. putting half the student, you know, half of, you know, the family home in, you know, student A's name and and the other in your, you know, students B name, right? Um, if you do that, the colleges look at student assets as 20% versus 5%. Okay? And there's a lot more intricacies as we go through, but again, I'm just trying to pinpoint a couple things for you, okay? But, uh, the biggest thing that I will say is the biggest problem, and again, Coach Tony brought this up with college admissions, don't take advice from unqualified people. your next door neighbor that has a son that went to UC Berkeley but didn't get anything is not the person to ask. He has one case study. Okay. Second, right? And again, I know that there's some situations where you cannot control, but if there's any way to hold off bonuses or you know huge stock sales, right, from the relevant ye tax year that we are going to be using, try to do those things. And then finally, missing deadlines, right? Calls for additional information. That's why I always tell students, you need to be checking your email, but not just your inbox, but your spam box, your junk, your junk box, all those different places, so that you can make sure to get the emails from schools. Okay, so there are a couple questions here. I'll kind of go through those really quickly. So again, is it advisable to submit FA even if we know we will not qualify for any financial aid? I always tell families, if you're making over a million dollars a year, you don't need my help. You can pay for college, whether it's state school, private school, all on your own, right? Um so you should, right? If you're not looking for aid, well then no, right? But again, don't complain to, you know, other people that, oh, college is expensive because you didn't turn those things in, right? Not it's the same thing with applications. Your chances of getting to any given college are 50/50, right? Same thing with aid. You're either going to get it or you're not, right? But if you don't turn in the forms, you will zero you you have a 0% chance of getting anything. Okay. Um, we have another question here. It's like, value of home based on property tax assessment. Uh, uh, correct. Right. So the the the property tax assessment is usually the lowest amount. So that's the one you want to use. Uh does applying in financial aid any hurt acceptances? Right. Some colleges want to accept students that want to pay fully. So generally this is what I always tell families. The applying for financial aid that means that every kid that went to Harvard, right? Every kid that went to Stanford, every kid that went to MIT, every kid that went to UPEN, right, got in, right? But if you're saying that the chances are higher, then how come it says on their website that 80% of students receive financial aid, right? So it doesn't really correlate that way. Okay? So I wouldn't worry about it too much. Okay? Uh will colleges give you merit scholarships even if you don't fill out the FAFSA or CSS profile? Well, first thing that I always tell parents is that marriage scholarships do not exist, right? They do exist by for for certain colleges, right? The UC's have the region scholarship, but if you actually look at the region scholarship, it's actually not a merit scholarship. It's a merit scholarship that qualifies you to get a certain amount of money and then it is your financial need that dictates how much you're going to get in a range between two and $20,000. Okay. Um and then uh we have another question here. It says why filing tax by October 15th. So for families that have rising seniors soon, right? Or they have juniors right now, you want to file your taxes as soon as possible. October 15th is too late. I know a lot of people kind of get an extension, but I do think that is advisable to do it earlier. Okay. Um, so again, the tax return you're going to be using is the one from two years before their grad year. So for a 2027 student, it's going to be 2025. Okay. All right. I think I answered all those questions there, right? Thank you, Coach Tony. Uh, back to you. Thank you. No, I I think financial is has always been a really awesome topic that many many families again, it's the one topic all of us kind of share in common, right? Some of us might not think about research. Some of us might not need this. But all of us need to figure out the money. So I also put Coach David's email by the way. I'll attach it when we send the freebies out. But feel free if you guys have a specific because again this is way more nuanced family by family. So if you want to email Coach David directly, David ate eagleock. Again, Eagle is the word college backwards. Uh he can definitely help you guys out there. Right. And with that, holy moly, we made it. It's 4 hours in total. Look at that number. We only lost 23 people which is insane. Kudos. Shout out to everyone here. Let's take let me take us home really quick. So a few quick final final notes for you guys. Number one again if you guys want to stay stick if you're free next hour feel free to stay for our college signing days for our coaching families uh as well too. We're going to have a student and parent interview. You can hear directly from our students and our parents. We're going to highlight our 2025 successes and even do a student panel you guys can take a peek at uh as well too. It's going to start at one this same Zoom. So just don't leave. Just kind of hang on tight. you guys can join uh as well there. Okay, freebies and goodies. Like I promise, we're going to give you guys all the stuff as well, too. So, if you guys uh registered for the event, we'll give you guys the full 4hour replay. All the slides got permission, all the slides and additional gifts that you kind of heard some people giving away like templates and this and that. We'll include it all as well too uh there. And uh if you haven't had if you're not sick of us yet, feel free to uh check out our YouTube channel. You can kind of see we have over 600 view. If you look at the timestamps, every video we have is on average, I think an hour long. That's the average time of each video. And each video is a tactical do this trading. So when people say, "Oh, information." Boom. Feel free to consume that. More free goodies for you guys if you guys haven't uh seen that yet. Okay. Again, and you might be like, "Oh, look, the the speakers are very familiar. We invited our four YouTube uh folks to to to be on this uh summit for us here today." Right? That being said, I do have a big announcement. We are we have been streaming this live to our UC group. So, if you're inside that private group, this will stay in there uh for you guys to reference as well too. But we have a big announcement as well too. I think we kind of talked about earlier, we kind of run a bunch of Facebook groups. Uh right now, basically for families with different kind of needs and and things they're looking for. So, the UC admissions group for families who are interested in UC schools. We have an Ivy League group because bunch bunch of our kids end up at the Ivy Leagues and Ivy plus colleges like MIT, Caltech, Stanford, those schools. And we also have Coach David runs the financial aid group. Again, Coach David alluded we have a training there every Wednesdays at 5. We also have trainings for the other groups Monday, Tuesday, Thursday as well too. So you guys feel free to join them all and more free trainings for you guys as well. But that being said, right, uh I want to call attention to our UC group. Our UC group currently as of today we have over 17,000 people in there and doing this over the last few years we've evolved. We've evolved a little bit each time and we've learned that the more and more we do it our families are not only applying to UC's, right? They're applying to other schools as well too. Maybe they're applying to Cal State schools and we we've been kind of neglecting that population. Maybe a lot of our families are applying to private schools in California, the Stanfords, the USC's, the Pepperdines, the Chapman, all these other private schools as well too. So something that we are doing and we are making official as of today we are going to be removing UC admission secrets effective immediately and in its place same group we're rebranding it we will be now the California college admission secrets so we will be you'll see the the change we've been doing it subtly with the trainings if you have noticed or not but then they'll be official uh the trainings there will be pertaining If you're interested in a California college, the Cal States, the UC's, the private schools, Stanford, USC, these specific things, these specific uh changes uh in the California system because California is a a a lot of incredible schools there as well. And you kind of notice our color change. Uh we're now dark mode as well, too. So, final thing. Thank you everyone for joining me here today. Again, hopefully we ended we ended a little minute late. Apologies for going over a minute for everyone. So, um, if you guys, um, you should be getting your freebies within the next 72 hours. If you don't see it in your inbox or text, text or email us again, 9497750865 to get a hold of us. Or feel free to email me directly, tony eagleock. Again, eagleock is the word collegebacks uh.com. I can get you guys uh, whatever you guys are missing as well, too. That is it for me today. Again, I'm going to go ahead and unrecord, stop recording. We're going to start our college a college sighting day in about two minutes. All right. Thank you everyone. Have a great rest of your day.