#165 How Small Academic Changes Can Mean Big Merit Aid Dollars with Brian Eufinger Transcript

THIS IS AN AUTOMATED TRANSCRIPT… PLEASE FORGIVE THE TYPOS & GRAMMAR! xo-Lisa.

Lisa Marker Robbins  00:58

Are you worried your teen might miss out on 10s of 1000s in college scholarships. Here’s something eye opening, just 38 more correct answers on the A, C, T could mean over $100,000 in merit at some universities for some students. And yes, you can even calculate precisely how many B’s your team can get in high school while still qualifying for major scholarships. I am thrilled to have Brian Eufinger from Edison prep joining us today to pull back the curtain on how merit aid really works in college admissions. Brian brings remarkable insights into how colleges award scholarships and what your family can do to maximize these opportunities. The landscape of merit aid has changed dramatically in recent years. It’s become more transparent, but also more complex, especially with the rise of test optional policies. In our conversation, we’ll explore how seemingly minor GPA or test score differences can lead to significant scholarship differences, sometimes worth 10s of 1000s of dollars. We’ll also discuss why starting academically strong from day one of high school is crucial, and why those test optional policies might not mean what you think they do when it comes to merit aid, if you’re concerned about college cost and want to understand how your team can position themselves for maximum merit opportunities, this episode is packed with actionable strategies and eye opening insights that could save your family significant money on college. I’m Lisa Marco Robbins, and I want to welcome you to College and Career Clarity a flourish coaching production. Let’s dive right in to a great conversation. Brian, welcome back to the show. I was shocked when I saw it was previously episode 42 and we’re well, more than 100 episodes since then, it’s

 

Brian Eufinger  03:01

great to have you back. Yeah, great to be here. Thanks for having me

 

Lisa Marker Robbins  03:05

absolutely. So this last time we had you on, we talked about great inflation, which is still alive and well

 

Brian Eufinger  03:13

correct it is very getting, getting more so by the day. Yes, it is.

 

Lisa Marker Robbins  03:18

And it was interesting when I was thinking about the topic for today, Merit aid, as it relates to, like, what you can do to get more and really know before you go possibly and and what you what choices you can make to impact that. And like, oh, they are like, you know, adjacent topics a little bit. So we were talking earlier, and I love your personal story about why this is a passion to empower families to earn more merit aid directly from the colleges. And I want you to share that, because I think it’s inspirational.

 

Brian Eufinger  03:56

Sure. So I we do my wife and I run Edison prePA as a T, A, C, T, tutoring company based out of Atlanta, but tutor people worldwide, and both of us paid for all of college, room, board tuition. We are happily bought not athletic. We were happily bought for our good grades and test scores. So I approach all my teaching and just my work in life from a place of gratitude, because I quit JV tennis is the story I tell our kids, and I spent just 1/3 of the hours I got back from quitting JB tennis, who’s JV, not varsity, the coach was not too sad, but just 1/3 of the hours of one sport for one season can transform your scores. And so a lot of parents, they love their kids, but sometimes they don’t believe in their kids, and they don’t realize, like, what we do is not, it’s not hard, but it’s not it’s not easy, but it’s not hard. It is commas, it’s rectangles, it’s pretty mundane stuff, if you’re willing to put the work in. So I will never earn more money per hour. I was earning 650 at Kohl’s in the stock room that summer.

 

Lisa Marker Robbins  04:51

650 actually, that’s fantastic, because I, you know, I’m a little bit older than you, and minimum wage was 335 when

 

Brian Eufinger  04:57

there you go. Yeah, but let’s just say, is that. 1000s per hour, but I earned on those 60 hours or so I studying for the SAT. HCT, so college is officially two my alma mater is 268% as expensive now as it was then. So there were a lot of reasons to study for the assess and get good grades back in 1999 and even more so today.

 

Lisa Marker Robbins  05:16

And so you’re so you’re saying these grades are translating into money.

 

Brian Eufinger  05:24

For sure, I applied to 19 schools back in 1999 and the evolution of merit aid is so different because I do not like the fact that the common app today means a lot of kids apply to 20 schools like spray and pray. It’s just mom’s credit card. But I’m a hypocrite because I did the same thing back in in year 2000 when I graduated, I applied to 19 schools. Because you would ask schools, hey, Emery, do you give up merit aid? Maybe just apply and find out there was no transparency. So we are living in a golden age of merit aid, if people are willing to put in some legwork on things. But Pete, we’ve gone from this era where we’re it was hidden and abstract. Now it’s published and concrete and transparent. Now, whether that’s due to magnanimity on the college’s part for being transparent, or exhaustion because parents keep calling and harassing them, yeah, so I don’t know, but I love that more schools are publishing real merit aid data on their websites. Okay,

 

Lisa Marker Robbins  06:18

so let’s back up for a second. You know, we’ve done some of our most popular episodes are those that are around, like paying for college, defraying the cost, how to do it smartly. They are among our most popular episodes because it is a gigantic investment. I just finished paying for my last child a little about a year and a half ago. All my kids are out now, and it just, you know, keeps going up. We have had, like, one of my favorite guests for paying for colleges, Dave, who Dave, the scholarship guy, scholarship GPS. He’s aimed at private scholarships, then the colleges offer need based and merit based scholarships. So private, we’re not going to really talk about those today that much, I think on your website. What? What was the stat you gave? What percentage of college scholarships are private? 90?

 

Brian Eufinger  07:12

Well, 90 plus percent of the money that’s ever going to come out is going to come directly from the school via their own Kohl’s cash style discount.

 

Lisa Marker Robbins  07:20

Okay, so 90% of discounts on that cost of attendance will come, will be granted by the institution, and then the other 10% is coming out in the wild that Dave’s talking to people about how to go find us. And his son went to college for free, for on private scholarships. And so there is a way to do that, but I it’s a lot of work, but there is a methodology to that. However, your argument is, there’s a bigger pot that the institutions have, but that institutional money, there’s, there’s two types. Let’s talk about the two types of that 90% of the the discounts, sure.

 

Brian Eufinger  08:00

So there’s need based aid and merit based aid. Need based aid is based on a lot of different numbers from your tax forms. There’s the FAFSA for public schools and the CSS Profile for some of the more selective private schools. But it matters how much your parents make, and a lot of people are caught in that messy donut hole middle where they’re told they’re too rich for aid, but they can’t write a random $90,000 check for University of Miami, which just actually crested $100,000 actually, as of this year. And on the other hand, Merit aid grids, you could be Arthur Blank son down here in Atlanta, and it wouldn’t matter like it’s, do you have this GPA? Do you have that test score? Therefore this is what we give you, no questions asked, and that transparency and the certainty is what parents like when in this because there’s so much confusion around the entire college application process, it’s one of the few touch points of just raw transparency.

 

Lisa Marker Robbins  08:53

Yeah, you know, I just finished doing we did a live version of our college list building tutorial. And what we do is we give a teaching video, short 10 minute teaching video and a worksheet to families to have a conversation each week for four weeks. And it’s we’re not building their colleges for them, but we’re trying to get families on the same page. And the hardest conversations, they always say the hardest ones to have. It’s not about social fit or how far away, or academic can we get in? Or do they have the right college major is on the is the financial fit? Is the paying for college. And to your point, earlier, you were talking about back when you went in the 90s, back when I went in the 80s, it was more of a crapshoot, like we can’t tell you if we’re going to give you money, so you would apply, and then it would just be a surprise. So there was no way really to to have a target to know if it was affordable, which I always say to parents, you do not want your kid to fall in love with the campus, to go do a college visit for a school that you can never afford because the tears and the. Crying and the gnashing of teeth that happens when you realize you can’t afford your favorite school is the cost of that emotionally is high. So what’s changed?

 

Brian Eufinger  10:11

What I mean, like I said, What’s changed is now school and the web has evolved. I mean, the web existed in 2000 but the web is much more mature now, and so it’s easier to publish data that may have only been privately disclosed via rules of thumb, in in person campus visits back in 1999 so it we are, it is nice if they’re doing that. But the other thing is, when I applied 19 schools, I knew I would get into most of them based on my metrics. But these schools, who were ostensibly peer schools, have such different levels of aid. They gave out Georgetown gave me $32 that’s a four year number. My dad climbed telephone poles for a living, but okay, Georgetown. But not to be outdone, Cornell gave me nothing, and then Emery gave me half, and WashU gave me three fourths. Now to your point about Dave earlier, I want to give him a shout out where I like to use the airplane analogy, like when the airplane is going down, you put the mask on yourself first, and you’re first, and your kids second. The merit aid from the school is the putting your mask on yourself. But after you’re done with that, if a kid has free time, definitely apply to some of the outside scholarships. Because I got three fourths of money straight from Washington University in St Louis, which is where I went to undergrad, straight from them, but the other 1/4 I filled the gap with Eagle Scout scholarship, local Chamber of Commerce scholarship, Rotary scholarship. All you know, they add up a little bit, but once you’ve secured the main source of funding from the school, then you can top it off and write some essays and see if you can get some extra aid from some of those scholarships that Dave talks about too. So there are some

 

Lisa Marker Robbins  11:38

schools that give no merit aid, they do not hand out merit awards. With nearly 4000 colleges and universities in the US, any idea like, what percentage of them just they’re not going to offer any kind of discount.

 

Brian Eufinger  11:52

I don’t have a good number on that, but I will say there’s a correlation between some of those who give out no merit aid and those who have very magnanimous grants, where at MIT, for example, if you make under 200k as a family, which 90 what percent of Americans families do not make 200k plus, then there’s like, Yeah, we’re good. And they give you full tuition at MIT. So my family was under that by a landslide. So I’m very jealous of some of these guarantee like Emory advantage. I don’t know the number right now, but Emory has a not quite as generous one as MIT has, but there’s a huge correlation between those who give the least merit. If you are in, say, the bottom 90% of the income distribution, you’re probably you get a standard chance of getting some money still.

 

Lisa Marker Robbins  12:38

So, so, and that would be like the what you just said over at MIT, like, that’s more neat, that is need based, even though that number is very high, under 200,000 it’s still a need based grant that is not going to need to be repaid. So if a family as they’re like, peeling the onion on this topic and trying to figure it out and really engineer this correctly as a first step. How could they and I don’t. I also so I didn’t expect you to say, Oh yes, Lisa, it’s this percentage of schools that offer no merit. And to your point, a lot of those will offer more generous need based not all of them where How would a family find out if this is a school that their kiddo likes or is on their radar. Offers merit or not. What would you suggest they do? So

 

Brian Eufinger  13:29

there’s public merit and private merit, and I mean that by transparency. So one thing I did this summer, it’s a passion project, I hired one of our former students to help us as an intern this summer to build merit aid grids.com so merit aid grids.com is a site where there’s 180 schools and growing that have these beautiful, transparent grids where there’s a graph GPA on the one side and then test scores on the other that promises you this money. And so it’s very neat. It has a map of the US when you click on there, and you can click on the state of Missouri and scroll down and pick Mizzou or pick SLU or pick whatever. And it just has the data. It links not on our site. It links directly to the college site. So over time, as the numbers change, it’s still up to date. And I’ve been gratified since we published it, we’ve had like 18 people submit new schools, often their alma mater, saying, Hey, you forgot James Madison or whatever. So it’s a living, breathing database. It’s free. It’s not associated with Edison prep. It’s just I built it because I’m grateful that we were able to pay for all of college. And my my same with my wife via these tests. And regret is such a hard emotion. And in our work with Edison prep, just dealing with clients we we tutor up and down the entire family tree, usually. And so when a mom finds out on her fourth kid that wait the same school the other three went to, I could have gotten this much aid and didn’t know. Like, you can’t come back from that. Like you the regret of like, I could have retired, I could have been an ER nurse for seven years less. Like, that’s heartbreaking. So. So, you know, I can spend a little money I’m not on food stamps, is fine, and build this, and then hopefully parents can, over time, save, you know, 10s of millions of dollars of avoided aid that had people just known to look for, look for it. They’re there. Now, I know you’re in Ohio, and this is so cool. It’s called this, I might be misquoting that the starlight diner or something. It’s in Piqua. And so some dad, the Mary agriz website has been picked up on Yahoo Finance and TV print, and it’s gone pretty viral. And some random dad in Piqua had been resigned to the fact that my kids just could go to community college. I’m screwed. I’m in that donut hole where there’s not enough money. I’m thinking he’s a car mechanic. And he said, If you ever go to the start, I think it’s the starlight diner in downtown Piqua. You tell him breakfast is on me. This is Randy and so, just some guy. So, I mean, that’s just one example,

 

Lisa Marker Robbins  15:46

nowhere near here, but if I’m driving up, I 75 to go to Michigan, I, you know, I probably will stop. No, but

 

Brian Eufinger  15:54

it’s a neat but, you know, that was a nice heart. I’m not super sappy, but that was a really neat phone call to get, because it does have big impacts. He has already resigned to gonna have to say, go to community college and live at home first two years, try and cut costs and then figure it out. And, you know, different states are different levels of generosity. But the thing is, the thing is important is a lot of parents assume it might be Podunk schools. It’s state flagships. I mean, we have Auburn’s on there, Mizzou on their Michigan State. I mean, it’s more public than private on the merit agriz website. And I have one intern, former student of ours, who’s going to be uploading a bunch of HBCUs, actually, so she is going to do a deep dive on that. So we’re going to keep building this out to try and help people.

 

Lisa Marker Robbins  16:36

So how many schools do you have right now? 189

 

Brian Eufinger  16:40

don’t quote me, but it’s it’ll be over. It’ll be over 200 probably by the time this episode gets

 

Lisa Marker Robbins  16:44

published. So, so first step would be go to merit aid grids.com and we’ll put this in the show notes, and look for your school if you don’t see it there then. And you know, I, just did with John durante, he’s fantastic the college admissions process podcast, and we did a live event this week. You know, his whole thing was born out of just like be a wise consumer, reach out to the people at colleges. They’re going to answer your question. So if they’re if the school’s not on your website, first of all, submit the school so that you put it on your website, but then shoot an email to the school and just ask, right, like, how would a parent word that email to say, are you giving merit? I mean, besides, I mean, maybe that’s all they need to say,

 

Brian Eufinger  17:31

You can say, Yeah, we’re trying to decide whether to visit or not, and just want to we don’t want to waste your time or our time. Are there any parameters you might give me to have a sense of what merit might be possible. And one thing I want to say, there’s more public than private on our on the merit aid grids website, but let’s talk TCU, SMU St John’s. There’s certain schools that will not publish a merit aid grids, but we have enough students from our company that we’ve sent to those places where kids who are slightly different in their numbers get offered, you know, different price tags and things. So I don’t have, there’s no way to have a large enough sample size for something like URI to reconstruct or reverse engineer the grids. But a lot of schools that don’t publish them still may have them. And the other thing is, it’s a lot of parents, as you know, on groups like paying for college 101, on Facebook are fashionably pessimistic. I’ll never be able to afford this stuff. You don’t have to have a top 1% score to get this merit aid. My sisters both went to Mizzou. It says great, journalism program, business program, other programs. You can get as much as $34,000 of after tax money from Mizzou with as little as a 23 on the AC T that’s the top 37% just two out of five random people in your living room have a 23 so yes, the most money comes from higher scores, but there’s a lot of very reasonable scores, including Mississippi Valley State who which is we know that because that’s where Jerry Rice went to school. Famously, you can have as little as a 24 and a 3.3 and get a full ride, and no one believes me. Like that. The most I could, I can track it, the most clicked school on the website is like, shut up. There’s no way. But yeah, I mean, there’s, hopefully that doesn’t get over fishing the pond and it goes away. But like, it’s, I mean, there’s different levels of deals. Even if your student is not Mr. Valedictorian you can still get some pretty good merit a to various places.

 

Lisa Marker Robbins  19:24

So I You had mentioned, and I want to go back to this. There’s sort of this publicly published merit grids that are actually on the College website. Some of them have it. I recently was on University of Kentucky. They always have had this grid. It’s interesting. Miami University, here, right outside of Cincinnati, used to have a grid, and they did not. They did not put the they’ve changed how they do it since test optional happened. But with this, they’ve got Cleveland State. University. They also have a grid, I know I published it in a Facebook group that you and I are in for the National Test Prep Association. And so there’s publicly, but like you’re also saying, there’s also your reverse engineering, looking at the awards that people get, and you’re getting some ideas about this as well, right? Sure. I

 

Brian Eufinger  20:21

mean, and not to pick on a school, but if you want me to not pick on you, maybe you give out some aid to some people. Like there’s in the southeast, there’s a lot of money given out. Alabama gives out tons of money. So does Ole Miss, so does Auburn, etc, versus Clemson would rather do almost anything in the world to give a single dime to a single person for any reason. And so there’s just that. That’s how it’s always been. I hope they change that. But that is, you know, you should, no one should expect out of state to get a single dime from the Clemson for any reason, unless you’re Trevor Lawrence or something. But it’s, it’s, you know, so learning the culture and talking to some parents that are one year older than you who might have gotten some aid awards from various places, you can get a sense of the culture of aid or not aid at schools, even the ones that don’t don’t publish them, who historically is better and worse. Now I do want to mention it, since I just mentioned Alabama, one of my favorite stories of all of 2024 I hate when I love slash hate when moms put me on awkward group texts with them, plus me, plus the kid. And so what happened was mom and dad also hate that mom and dad both were college sweethearts at Alabama University Alabama, and the mom texted me roughly, hi, Mr. Brian, this is so and so I let my son know that I expect him to do the homework now. Thank you for showing me that Alabama data. My husband and I are both alums, as you know, and we can afford full price Alabama, but we, on principle, will not pay full price Alabama. And so I texted her back. I’m like, It’s okay. He’s really close. He needs to fix just 38 out of his 75 a CT errors half, and he’ll get $112,000 if you get a 30 at Alabama, you get $112,000 of post tax money. No questions asked. So I’m like, each question is three grand. If he can pause that job, he has some useless minimum wage job that was not useful and costing him a lot of money per hour relative to study for the AC T. I’m like, if he can cause that job, you mentioned this will pay a lot more per hour. And she replies the funniest line. She goes, Oh, my husband already saw that merit aid grid. He is pausing his job, and he told my husband, told him that he could either get the 30 on the AC T and get that money and roll tide, or he can just roll Kennesaw and roll Kennesaw. So Kennesaw stayed here locally. Kennesaw, they’re a great school. They have come way up these last 20 years. But, you know, free Kennesaw. You can live at home because they live right down the street from Kennesaw, but yeah, roll tide or roll Kennesaw. And he responded, your spotted Mom, stop.

 

Lisa Marker Robbins  22:48

But yeah, my point. No teenager likes it if their mom puts them in a group text. Even my 20 somethings don’t always, I still get pushback. Okay, so you know, first of all, figure out if a school offers merit, if they do, then what I heard was, you for the schools who, you know, kind of what the grid is. And I you just named Alabama. I have a child that went to Alabama full to, not only full tuition, he also got an engineering scholarship, and they were cutting him a check. So full tuition. And funny enough, he thought that check was his. I’m like, Dude, I’m paying room and board, which is, like, you know, 14,000 or whatever this was a while ago. It probably wasn’t that much. This is 2016 but I said that checks mine handed over. So you’ve got schools like that, and what I just heard was you then were able to reverse engineer how many more, how much this kid should be studying for the A, C, T, to get the award to make that school. I mean, in this family’s case, it wasn’t to make it in budget, but what they were willing to pay. I mean, there’s what we’re able to pay and there’s what we’re willing to pay. I always say, most of us, if we get pre qualified for a mortgage, most people that I know, they don’t max what they’re approved for on that mortgage. They do not want to be house poor. They want to put furniture in it and still be able to go on vacations. And so the bank will approve you for more but most people aren’t going to spend it. That family is a perfect example of that. They, you know, use my analogy. Were approved for more but they were going they didn’t want to be college poor. So how do you how do you do this reverse engineering? Or, how could a parent do this reverse engineering to know if their kid should pause their job? So

 

Brian Eufinger  24:39

there’s good news and bad news. So the A, C T the first thing I do in my tutoring sessions when I have kids goals is I say, what’s your goal? Because there’s, there’s no need for overkill or under kill what’s your goal? Score will Yeah, we’ll take the backwards, the back page of any A C T test has the score scale, and I show them if you can just fix eight gram or. Questions, five math questions, however many questions, then you can be done. Hope and prayer is not motivational for teenagers, but if you can show them the end zone, fix this many and I get to be done and move on with high school, then they work a lot harder. And so it’s very concrete. So that’s aspirational, where you build your a CT score up. What is also important, from a caution standpoint, is watching the GPA senioritis. I have a student who got his transcript, and luckily, his mom’s a CPA, and she calculated this for him. And he was really thankful because she didn’t have enough money to pay for Tennessee unless he gets the merit aid, and if he Tennessee, I think, at the time, calculated it through seven semesters of GPA, not six. And so his first semester senior grades, he found out he like, a 3.805 or something. And so if he got, like, based on the number of classes at his school, if he got two b’s, he would cost his mom 70 grand. Like, gone, no aid. He would drop off the cliff, like, because it’s a cliff, like, 3.79 oops, 3.8 yay. And so in his case, he’s glad he calculated. I’m allowed to have 1b otherwise I have to go down the street to local you. And so being very cautious and having students calculate their transcript to understand how many A’s and B’s, it’s not just satt, it’s S, A, T, A, C, T, but it’s also not losing the GPA front. Now I will say one thing, for whatever reason, most places have a GPA that’s so lenient. Is not funny, like at Auburn, all four levels of Auburn’s merit aid grid are at 3.5 which it takes a lot more than 3.5 to get in Auburn in the first place, right? So yes, at Auburn, the entire grid is essentially just your score. At other places, it’s a little bit more nuanced between GPA and test scores, do

 

Lisa Marker Robbins  26:41

you so there’s an impact of both test scores and GPA on this so and you can calculate both. I think, honestly, maybe it’s just because I come from previously the world of test prep in my previous life, but to me, it’s easier to calculate the reverse engineer the test score piece of this, I think GPA is very well. We kind of talked about this in our last episode together. GPA is very confusing to a lot of families. Did you find, as you were building merit agridz.com that most schools and you may or may not know this, but I’m curious you referenced like Tennessee used to do seven semesters on the GPA, so that would put you into the first semester senior year. Now it’s back to six semesters. Are most schools at six semesters as they’re calculating the GPA? Piece of this with

 

Brian Eufinger  27:41

I don’t have the exact number, but my spidey sense, just from entering the data and working in the trenches, is it used to be a majority back. A majority used to be seven semesters, and now a majority are six semesters, which makes sense, because now that regular decision is almost irregular decision, and early action is like only action at a lot of schools, it makes sense that they would just might as well calculate it based on the sixth semester. So that way, when that kid is all happy and they get in early action, there’s not some trap door that falls out after semester seven and makes them all sad.

 

Lisa Marker Robbins  28:14

Well, I think too. I think back to, like, 26 years ago, when I started doing this work. You know, college application deadlines were February 1 everywhere, not just, you know, not just at the like, a non selective school. And now those of all like we’re looking at October 15, we’re looking November 1, arguably, is the most popular date. So if you’re listening to this as a parent, you know, hopefully you’re hearing this even as a sophomore, a parent of a sophomore, or parent a kid who’s listening to as a sophomore, that gives you time. It gives you the whole junior year to kind of like, what do My grades have to be at the end of this year? How many more AC tier sat points do I need to get so that on this grid I’m able to qualify? So am I right? Yep, you know, it’s interesting,

 

Brian Eufinger  29:10

very concrete. Yeah,

 

Lisa Marker Robbins  29:12

it’s, it’s not that complicated. And your, your website does a fantastic job of walking them through what this looks like. You know, it’s funny. I wonder how much you see this when I posted that Cleveland State University in the group chat that we are in in the national test prep Association, what I pointed out was it’s interesting to me that a school that would be accepts most of the students who apply, far more than 50% of the students who apply, they actually were dinging kids on the their awards if they applied. Test optional. I see the same thing. I was looking at both of them together, but the University of Kentucky grid, which is not you know, as. Uh, is more selective than Cleveland State. It did the same thing. So how do you see test optional playing into this? Yeah,

 

Brian Eufinger  30:09

I mean, well, some of them, like Auburn, they’re test optional. Haha, their test preferred. 94% of people who get into Auburn set scores. But yes, or Alabama, test optional for now, at least, but there you have to have scores for merit. There are so many schools where you have to have scores for merit, but they are ostensibly test optional for admission. Or that’s the worst case scenario,

 

Lisa Marker Robbins  30:32

the best question everybody needs to be asking, right? The better case scenario

 

Brian Eufinger  30:36

is sometimes the very last row of the column is test optional, where it’s lower than the lowest level of the test scores. And so either way, it’s going to cost you, you know, at least four, often five figures, of money per year by applying test optional. And that’s the funny part. You know, you and I don’t tell you this, but your listeners might not realize so my wife and I were a two person company for the first 12 years we started, we ran our company, and I wasn’t looking to grow. And we started filling up a year in advance once parents found out that the test optional, other than the three Pacific states, at least, is not really optional. We’re now a team of 23 and I’m exhausted. I’m tutoring more than ever. So test optional, not so optional. And like you ever want to have an episode about test option, you know how I feel about it. I’m pretty mellow as a person. The dishonesty triggers me, because just be honest. Like, I have three NFL players that got into school, that I tutored, that got into the schools they got into with scores that do not match the schools they attended. Good for them. They’re NFL players for a reason. But if you’re just Sarah from Shaker Heights, Ohio, like, like, No, this is, like, test optional is not meant for you, like it’s and so I think it’s important to parents. I mean, Miami just swung. We’ve entered pendulum season. So every year, MLK Day, Miami just went right back to mandatory the next two, three weeks. Don’t be surprised if you don’t see possibly Princeton, possibly Emory, possibly a number of schools swing swing back.

 

Lisa Marker Robbins  31:58

Well, it’s and it’s fair to say, we need to say to our the families that are listening, that pendulum starts to swing in January, but in our discussions, there are plenty of schools that have said, we’ll get back to you by the end of June. So if you’re, you know, we’re going to put this episode out. I think it’s we’re, we are recording in February, but we’re going to put this out into the wild in March, but you could be listening to it right now, and a school that is currently test optional, if you listen to it when this goes live, could not be test optional by June. So don’t count on it.

 

Brian Eufinger  32:37

Or it was optional for admission. It’s still going to impact the price tag. So it’s still worth, still worth studying.

 

Lisa Marker Robbins  32:43

Well, did you come across many schools where test scores were optional for admission but required for merit? Are there any cases a

 

Brian Eufinger  32:52

huge an absolute, dozens and dozens of the schools on merit, agriz.com, Alabama, most famously, you know, they’re not the highest bar to get in, from an undergrad perspective, for just getting in, but their entire merit Grid is based on just scores. And so you’re making

 

Lisa Marker Robbins  33:07

it for making it super inexpensive. They are, you know, the bar is high. You got to go out there and for sure,

 

Brian Eufinger  33:15

yeah. But there’s 31 flavors of Baskin Robbins. You know, test optional where, oh, not. Test optional for direct Indiana business school or honors college or sliding scale based on you, on GPA or not nursing or nursing not or homeschooled kids like the odds that someone could build a list of 12 schools that are air quotes test optional that are fully no fine print. Test optional is very tiny. I agree, different flavors,

 

Lisa Marker Robbins  33:43

absolutely. So parents start@meridagrids.com to see if Brian’s got your school in there that you’re looking at. If not, he’ll add them to he’ll put it on the to do list. I just I heard you promised that Brian, and then send an email to the colleges. You know, do you offer merit are, how does test optional impact this? Can you, do you have actual data or a page that you can give me? And then step three, reverse engineer that GPA and that AC, T or SAT score to know, what does the final like when you hit the end of your junior year, what is the GPA and the test scores have to look like to earn you money, right? Did I? Did I hit it in the right order? Brian, I was taking good notes. I think I don’t

 

Brian Eufinger  34:33

know that well that, and I would be, I would be remiss if I did not mention this at least once, as good as good as it would be for my pocketbook, if all that mattered is sat and a CT scores, I wish I could get in front of more audiences of eighth graders as they’re signing up for class, math classes, and hopefully taking a ambitious route. GPA is serious from day one, because the at you at UGA, not at Harvard, the average. Number of b’s in core classes at UGA the first six semesters is 3.3 at UGA, not Harvard. Like in the 90s, C’s were a thing, and so test scores matter once you’re a junior, like, go study for the test once sophomore year is over, but staying on GPA as parents like, trust but verify, check that homework, log into the grade book, because so many people, I mean, unfortunately, a couple dozen a year at least, I turn away, ethically, in case Hell is real, I have to turn them away, because if you have a two point if you have a 2.7 and a cold 30 on the A, C, T, I can’t take your money, because anybody who’s okay with a 2.7 will be thrilled with the 22 much as a 30. So it’s not gonna open the doors. So parents, please stay on your student from day one of high school on GPA. Well,

 

Lisa Marker Robbins  35:43

what I also just heard is, if you’re a parent of a high schooler who’s college bound, and you’re listening to this and you have a younger child, Brian would be willing to give a blog or a talk or something to your school’s parents of eighth graders, we need to get this out into the world. I just obligated you to do a whole bunch of work. You probably don’t have time

 

Brian Eufinger  36:02

today I speak to scout troops in ymsl and NCL and all that kind of stuff all the time. So you’re

 

Lisa Marker Robbins  36:07

willing. Okay, so we will put Brian’s contact in the show notes. Where do people find you? I mean, obviously we want them to go to marinategrids.com and I assume your contacts on there, but let’s put it in the show notes too. Yeah.

 

Brian Eufinger  36:18

So Edison prep.com, Edison, like Thomas Edison, edisonprep.com, and then edisonprep on Facebook, we publish a lot of really helpful stuff, everything from FAFSA to other common app stuff on our Facebook and our Instagram pages. So happy to have you indulge in those resources. Just follow or like our pages. Okay,

 

Lisa Marker Robbins  36:37

thanks, Brian. Appreciate it. No problem. I hope today’s conversation with Brian opened your eyes to the significant merit aid opportunities available for your college bound team. As we discussed, small improvements in GPA or test scores can translate into 1000s of dollars in merit scholarships to help you take action on what you’ve learned today, I’ve created a free resource you can access at flourish coaching co.com forward slash merit. There you’ll find the email template we discuss that will help you get clear answers about merit aid policies from any college on your teens list, and don’t forget to check out merit aid grids.com where Brian has compiled merit aid information for over 180 colleges and growing I might add, it’s an invaluable tool for your college planning journey. Thank you for joining me today on College and Career Clarity. Remember understanding merit aid opportunities early in the college planning process can make significant differences in your teens, college costs. I’m Lisa Marco Robbins, and I’ll see you next time you.