Financial Aid Advice That's Too Good To Be True: Separating the Myths from the Truth

March 5, 2015
Hosted by Elizabeth Heaton

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Guest Information

Episode Description

Can you really reposition family assets to create more financial aid eligibility? Are there ways to hide assets and lower your expected family contribution? Is it possible to get colleges to consider your child financially independent of you? Former Tufts and Boston University senior financial aid officer Shannon Vasconcelos will stop by to address college finance myths and offer real, ethical tips that everyone can use to maximize financial aid eligibility. Kathy Ventura, who heads up the guidance department for Wallington High School in NJ, will join us to discuss how to get the most out of your relationship with your or your child's guidance counselor. Former Tufts University senior admissions officer Becky Leichtling and I will also talk through how the high school that students attend impacts their college applications. Don't forget to send us your admissions and college finance questions at gettingin.voiceamerica@gmail.com. We'll answer as many as we can in our final segment.

Getting In: A College Coach Conversation

Thursday at 1 PM Pacific Time on VoiceAmerica Variety Channel

Planning for college? Tune into Getting In: A College Coach Conversation for tips, techniques, and insider perspectives. Hosted by Elizabeth Heaton, a former admissions officer at the University of Pennsylvania, and featuring her fellow admissions and college finance experts from Bright Horizons College Coach, the show shares what colleges are really looking for and how to highlight your hard-won achievements for the best chance at success. New episodes air every Thursday at 4 PM Eastern Time, 1 PM Pacific Time on the VoiceAmerica Variety channel.

Elizabeth Heaton

Elizabeth Heaton is the senior director of educational consulting and strategic marketing at College Coach, the nation’s leading provider of educational advisory services. Ms. Heaton began her admissions career at the University of Pennsylvania, where she chaired university selection committees, evaluated potential athletic recruits as one of the school’s athletics liaisons, and oversaw the university’s portfolio of admissions publications. She also served as second chair in the selection committee for the school's flagship interdisciplinary Jerome Fisher Program in Management and Technology. A graduate of Cornell University, Ms. Heaton brings exceptional skills to the craft of essay writing paired with experience reading and evaluating thousands of Penn admissions applications. She is featured regularly in news outlets including Wall Street Journal, USA TODAY, Time, US News and World Report, Boston Globe, and ABC News, among others, and can offer expert advice on a wide range of college admissions topics, from colleges’ expectations for high school curriculum choices and standardized test scores to choosing the right extracurricular activities and essay topics. Prior to joining Penn, Ms. Heaton worked as a public relations professional and served for a decade as a member of the Cornell Alumni Admissions Ambassador Network.

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