 All right. So, thank you everybody. We'll go ahead and get started. All right. So, for those who are tuning in and we have a couple of different live streams I'm not going on here. Apologies. I think one of these Facebook live streams will not have the screen share, but that's okay. We'll go ahead and do our best to post a recording of any of the slides afterwards in this specific page. But we'll go ahead and begin. So, my name is Sherry R. I'm one of the co-founders of Success Company and very, very grateful that you all have taken the time to join us for this presentation today. Ms. Miller, I'm wondering you, as some like and everybody, it is so great to be here. We are Bay Area Natives, SBI and Evergreen, our places that we frequent. We're super, super excited for you all having us today, even though it is digital, which is different from our in-person webinars. And we are really hopeful that we can share some things that will help you as you navigate through this process for yourself and your families. All right. Great. So, what are we going to be talking about today? We're going to be covering a couple of different topics. First, we're going to be talking a little bit about the overarching theme here is how to get into your dream college. And we're really going to be discussing how universities are approaching college admissions when it comes to COVID-19 and when it comes to the pandemic. We're going to be talking about what colleges are looking for in their applicants. And then we're going to be talking a little bit at a high level about the college admissions process. What is a college admissions strategy? How do you think about all the different components of the process from your grades to your extracurricular activities to your standardized tests to the actual college list that you prepare and a little bit about the college essays? This webinar is going to hopefully be beneficial for you if you are a student or if you're a parent. So, if you're either in either group, thank you for joining us today. All right. So, many of us are worried about a couple of big things when it comes to college admissions. We are worried about how we're supposed to plan for college in the time that we're living in because maybe SATs are not being offered. Maybe we can't take the same standardized tests. Maybe you're worried about the extracurricular activities that you have and how you're going to engage further in extracurricular activities just because COVID-19 has happened. You can't really, you know, go and participate in full clubs. Sports teams are different. Internships are not happening in person, right? And we're also focused on or worried about how we're supposed to even focus at school if everything is done via Zoom. It's so hard to focus and, you know, you're worried about this entire coronavirus in this COVID situation. So, we'll talk, we'll start with just talking a little bit about that. One thing to keep in mind with regards to college and college admissions in this specific cycle is that colleges are going to approach this cycle with unprecedented flexibility. They're going to be very, very adaptable and they're going to adapt just like they've expected you and me to adapt to this coronavirus situation. So, worry not whether you're a student or whether you're a parent about your extracurriculars, about your SATs being impacted, about your grades being impacted. And, Shelly, you'll have time in all of your college essays to actually talk through the specifics of how this situation impacted you. So, that's just kind of an overview of, you know, the impact of COVID just in, you know, in brief that we're going to talk and dive into what colleges are looking for. So, colleges are looking for human beings that are interested in their growth. They're looking for human beings that are intellectually curious. They are looking for human beings that are flexible and adaptable. So, when a college reviewer looks at your application, they're not just trying to check the boxes. They're trying to understand how has this person adapted to different life situations and what will those learnings and those growth opportunities bring to our campus. And that's the same lens that they were thinking about this through when it comes to the pandemic. So, just because your internship got canceled or you aren't able to get as many volunteer hours, doesn't mean that there aren't so many more things that you could be doing, right? So, I want you all to think, how can I take this time that I have and think creatively about the ways that I can add value in my community? And, of course, your intention is everything, right? Like, if you set your intentions to be positive ones, to be in service of others, then colleges will obviously be able to see that as well. So, like I mentioned, what's the most important thing is how do you respond to the way that your family or your community has been impacted? Maybe you have a member of your family who's lost their job and this has meant that everybody has to adapt to that new lifestyle. What do you make of that kind of situation? Maybe this means that all of your internships and volunteer opportunities got canceled so you decided to start your own organization. I have students that I personally work with that have started tutoring organizations that are now donating the money that they're making from tutoring to buy PPE for their local hospitals. That's what colleges are looking for. They're looking for you to be scrappy and to be creative. And if you think about it, many of us have the same amount of time. We've got 24 hours in our day. And so, you could have one student who is spending their time trying to think about how they can add value. And you might have another student who is spending all of their time on social media and binge-watching Netflix. And many of us have been there. There's no shame or guilt around that, but this is an opportunity to renew your intentions and start thinking about how do you want to be adding value in your community. So, let's talk a little bit about the college application process. The college application process, why is this important? This is the culmination of the work that a student has been working on for about three and a half to four years. It is super-duper important. It's an opportunity for you to highlight your achievements, to reflect and think about the story that you're trying to tell. It's an opportunity for you to think about what you'd like to learn and what you're passionate about learning further in college. And it's an opportunity for you to set new goals for yourself. And it can feel really overwhelming. We work with a lot of parents and a lot of families who are navigating high school and college applications for the very first time. Maybe you haven't lived in the U.S. or maybe you didn't go to school in the U.S. and the entire process feels really overwhelming. What we want to do today is break it down for you. We're going to talk to you about how to think about academics and answer some frequently asked questions there. But we'll talk about standardized tests, especially how you should be thinking about this in the era of COVID when many schools are test blind. We'll talk about extracurricular activities. So, these are activities you do outside of class. Leadership activities is another way to think about this. And then, of course, we will touch on college essays and what you can be doing to prepare for these. All right. So the first step, it's really all about strategy when it comes to college admissions. There's a quote, I believe it was Ben Franklin who said that if you fail to plan, you plan to fail. So just like you plan other parts of your life, maybe you'll plan out what you're going to do on the weekend or you're going to plan a vacation. It's very, very important to spend quite a lot more time in actually planning out your college admissions journey. What are the different components of this plan? First, start looking at schools early. So when you are a freshman and you're a ninth grader, or if you're the parent of a ninth grader, start to think about what types of schools do I want to apply to? And don't just do this based on rank. Don't just do it based on if a school appears in number one or number two or number three on a specific list by the US news or by some other fancy list that says that a school is ranked at a certain level. No, think deeply about what types of schools could interest me. So here are a couple of ways to do that. Think about what culture and values are important to you in your school. Think about what you want to get out of college experience and think about the type of major or the type of field that you want to study. I'll give you some examples for this. When it comes to culture and values, there are some schools that maybe are very, very accepting and they have a lot of students of color that are there. And so maybe their cultures are more inclusive versus other schools. Maybe that's not the case. Maybe it's very much a small environment that doesn't necessarily welcome students of color as much. That's something you would dig into. You would figure out. Their website's not going to say that, obviously. You have to kind of search and think about it, right? Same thing when it comes to what you want to get out of your college experience. Maybe some people want to get a lot of extracurricular activities. They want to be involved in activities. They want to get a very diverse campus. And so that's a different type of college experience versus somebody who just wants to go there for the school, wants to get certain grades, wants to come out, have a degree and then go and get a job. So these are things to think about. Also think about the major that you want to study. So some schools are really, really good when it comes to business. Other schools are really, really good when it comes to engineering. Other schools are really, really good when it comes to liberal arts. Some schools are great at all of those things, but not everybody's good at all of those things, right? So you want to actually say, okay, maybe I want to study marine biology. Well, let's say UC Santa Barbara, one of the world's best schools for marine biology. They literally have the ocean right there, so they're able to study that. But a school like in the Central Valley probably does not have a very good marine biology program if at all, right? So you try to weigh some of what you want to do and then start to make your list of colleges. And that's where the strategy comes in. You should also think about how we generally talk about very popular traps like pre-med or pre-law. So for example, I work with a ton of students who come to me and say, I'm a pre-med student. That's my major. Pre-med and pre-law are not majors. There are tracks to get into particular professional schools or particular career paths. The truth is that you can actually major in anything and still go to medical school. You can major in anything and still go to law school. There are other requirements that you need to take. So for example, if you want to be a doctor or a physician, you need to take the MCAT as a part of your application process. Same thing for law school. You need to take the LSAT. What are these? These are standardized tests. We're not going to go too deep into detail here, but my point here is to make sure that you fully understand what you mean when you talk about what major you would like to pursue. Because say for example, you'd like to be a physician, you'd like to go to medical school, but you are super passionate about history. I know a ton of people who majored in history and went to medical school. So think about all of the options. Get creative. There's not just one path that fits all. All right. So your academic roadmap. Your grades are very, very important. At the same time, your grades are not the only thing. So this is very much a balance. Sometimes we think and this is especially the case kind of in more communities that didn't, especially with parents who might have only seen grades as a factor back home, that grades are everything. No, grades are important, but they're not everything. Let's talk about how to make sure you stand out with your grades. Your academic roadmap is the second most important thing after you kind of felt your overarching as a, your overarching college strategy. A couple of things to keep in mind. Your GPA is influenced by the types of classes that you take. So your GPA stands for your grade point average. And if you take all what are called regular classes, you will have, and you get all A's and M's, you will have a 4.0. If you take all of what are called weighted classes, which are AP and honors classes, and you get all A's, you will have a 5.0. Let's say you take three regular classes and three AP classes, and you get A's and all of them, you will have a 4.5, right? So there's different ways to calculate those GPAs as I just mentioned. What you want to do is you want to choose classes throughout your college career. So sorry, that's your high school career, which position you to have the highest possible GPA, but something that's still a reasonable and manageable course load. You don't want to overdo it and then end up getting B's and C's in your classes. It's much better to get A's in regular classes than it is to get B's and C's in 18 classes, even though the GPA because of the weight might end up being the same, right? So that's something to keep in mind. The other thing with regards to your academic roadmap, make sure that when you plan out your four years of college, you are planning out all the different requirements that you need. So in California, for most of those who are planning to the University of California and to CSU schools, you will need to meet various similar requirements called A through G requirements more broadly. So you need to make sure you fulfill the math, certain math classes, certain science classes, certain electives, and so on and so forth, right? If you're a home school or you're taking community college courses, you have to do even more homework. You have to dig into it even deeper, right? You have to make sure that you have fulfilled those requirements, even though the school that you're going to or especially if you're going to a community college and you're in high school, they might not do it for you. You're going to have to do that yourself, right? You might not have a counselor who is helping you with that. The other thing to keep in mind, all four years of your high school matter when it comes to your GPA. It's not just about the first year or the first three years. Some people take it easy senior year. They stop studying and stop working. It's important in ninth grade, 10th, 11th, and 12th to focus on all of your grades to do as best of a job as possible. Do your absolute best to work hard throughout college. And if you do struggle, which many of us will, many of us will get a couple, you know, a couple of low grades, grades that we didn't want. That's okay, especially if you know you're struggling during the time of COVID or during the time of the transition. What colleges want to see is they want to see what's called an upward trajectory, meaning you are going like this, you're improving, right? They don't want to see somebody who is declining, right? They don't want to see you get all the A's and start to get B, C, D's, right? But if you get B, C, and D's, they want to see that you're on a path towards getting B's and A's, right? So put in the hard work in two areas. First, in coming up with your academic plan, here are the classes I'm going to take in ninth grade and in 10th grade and 11th and in 12th. Here are the AP classes and the honors classes that I'm going to take. And here's how I'm going to divide my time and schedule my time in order to ensure that I do the best job possible with my classes. So one thing I'll add here is that I know that many of you are probably in some sort of non-traditional high school situation. So maybe you're homeschooled, maybe you've taken a break, maybe you've taken the exit exam and you're doing community college and you're going to be transferring. We work with students all the time that have non-traditional paths and that's actually incredible because it makes your story unique and different. The big piece that I just want to emphasize here is that you just have to make sure that all of the classes that you are taking outside of your public school framework, because most of the time public schools do a good job of mandating that you take particular courses that will help you get into California colleges. They bake it into their graduation requirements. But if you are on a different path, just make sure that you can take a look to see what those A through G requirements are. Are you mapping to those requirements? And then every single community college class that you take needs to be UC and CSU approved, which means that you will get college credit for taking those classes. So don't waste your time taking classes unless those are prerequisites to then taking the UC slash CSU courses. So if you have very specific questions about this for us, we will have an opportunity at the end for Q&A and also the opportunity for you guys to talk to us online. So you have your overall college strategy down, then you plan out your grades and your academics. Now you move on to your standardized tests. Standardized tests are very, very important when it comes to college admissions. This year, and for the next couple of years, the standardized test requirement for most schools, UCs especially, but for many other private schools is lifted because the nature of a standardized test like the SAT and the ACT is that you have to go into a room that's moderated with a lot of people in it and take the test. And so because of COVID, that's become difficult or impossible to do. And as a result, they've lifted the requirement. However, it's going to come back at some point. We would all wish they could just do away with standardized tests because they don't really evaluate how smart somebody is, but they're just they exist. But so they're going to they're going to bring this back. So here's a plan for how to create your standardized test strategy. You have four years, roughly in late eighth grade slash early ninth grade, what you want to do is you want to start practicing for your SAT or ACT, right? You want to buy the books. There is what's called literally something called the PSAT, the PSAT, which if you do well on, you can qualify for certain scholarships. And this is generally taken in 10th grade. But this is not the official test that you submit to exams that you submit in different exam or sorry, this is not the official test that you submit in your application, right? It's just something that you take. You can get access to some pretty impressive scholarships, but it's kind of to get you ready. It's a warm up exercise, right? So you start to do a little bit of preparation in ninth grade. What we recommend is people buy an SAT book or a PSAT book or an ACT book, whatever you test, you end up deciding to take SAT or ACT in ninth grade. And you start doing exercises, right? And it's important to start doing one to five pages a day or maybe five to 10 pages a week. These books are like six, 700 pages long. They're super thick. So it's going to take some kind of work through them. And they teach you all the different sections of the SAT. Then as you get into 10th grade, you want to start doing more rigorous SAT prep. Some people will choose to enroll in an SAT prep course or an ACT prep course. That's fine. Those courses, though, to be honest, are not necessary. They're highly overpriced, and all they do is just kind of force you to do the work, all the work which you could have generally done yourself. And sometimes they teach you some interesting strategies and tips along the way. So if that's something you want to do and you have the kind of the budget for it and whatnot, you can definitely do that. But it's totally possible not only to study, but to crush the SAT and ACT, just doing self-study, but it requires discipline, and hence the strategy in this plan is so important. So what you do is, in 9th grade, you bought the book, you started planning, you started studying. In 10th grade, you start doing more rigorous studying. You start going from 5, 10 pages a week to 5, 10 pages a day to 10 or 20 pages a day in this book. Then you increase and you start adding practice tests. Now, the SAT is a four-hour test. The ACT is about a three-and-a-half-hour, four-hour test. You've got a two-practice test, and you have to practice literally sitting there for four hours all in one go and finishing the exam. So start to carve out time on a weekend on a Saturday or Sunday and do a four-hour practice test. Then ideally, once you get closer to the day, you actually want to mimic the test settings, which will be an 8am test. They have to be there at 8 o'clock and you finish right around 12. So it's good to set that time, but any time you can take the practice test is a good time. You don't need to do a practice test in a fully-moderated test center or setting. You can just do it at home on your desk or on your dining table, whatever is easier for you. Then what you start doing is you start just gradually increasing the amount of studying that you do. So the plan we're outlining here is a high level plan. However, as you get closer and closer, you just say, okay, I'm going to add in 10 more pages, five more pages, a couple more pages here, one more test. If I'm doing one test a month practice, I'm going to add in two tests a month, then I'm going to do three tests a month. By the time you're in your sophomore year summer, summer after your sophomore year, and your junior or actual junior year, you should be doing one practice test per week, at least. And as you get closer and closer to the SAT date, you should be doing a practice test every couple of days. This will help you maximize the potential with regards to your SAT grades and your SAT. And then you get into 11th grade. Late 11th grade is a good time to take the test or early 12th grade. Just kind of depends on whatever is easier for you, but you need to have it done. You have the test done by November, let's call it, okay? So if you are applying to UCs, you need to have the test done by November. And if you're applying to private schools, you should have it done by early December. But realistically, because you'll be applying to both in most scenarios, you should have it done by early November, and then you use that same test to submit for UCs and for private schools. One thing to note here, and this is the best practice that we have all of our students follow, don't wait until your senior year to take the test. And this is if you're planning on taking the test, okay? So again, think about what the requirements are specifically for the schools you're applying to, but you should actually finish taking your SAT by the end of junior year. Because trust me, you will be so busy with college applications that you will not want to study or have the time or energy to study for the SAT or the ACT. So just keep that in mind. Don't budget to be done by November, December of your senior year. Try to do that a lot sooner. Yeah. Also, as you have questions come up, if you're following, if you're in the Zoom, please just put them in the Zoom chat. At the end, we'll go through them. If you're on any of the Facebooks, just go ahead and put them in the Facebook chat, inshallah, and we will address the questions. We want to make sure we get to those. All right. We're going to talk about the juicy stuff, which is extracurriculars and leadership. So one thing that I want to share first is that the American understanding for American universities of extracurriculars and leadership is a little bit different than many of the countries that our parents are from necessarily. So if you go back to places in the Arab world or South Asia or in some other places, you will actually find that your entry into university is mostly based on your academics. But when you come to the U.S., your entry into a great university is just as important that your extracurriculars are just as important in your entry to a good university. So one thing that my parents used to say all the time, they were always super supportive of all the things I wanted to do, but they would say, you're too busy, focus on your grades. But this is also part of the college application process. So just a note out there to parents who might be thinking the same. So what does it mean to have an extracurricular and leadership strategy? One thing that we get all the time are parents who say, well, my kid has 400 hours of volunteers, volunteer hours, like I think we should be okay. Or what are the good internships that they should do that colleges are interested in? The first thing is that a strong extracurricular leadership strategy is one that is specific to you and your goals and your passions. So there's no such thing as a right or a wrong extracurricular to do. So just because you do speech and debate doesn't mean that you're going to get into a good school, you might do it and hate it and not thrive. And that makes it a poor choice for you. They also don't have to necessarily take place in like the average school framework. So maybe you took some time off school, maybe you traveled abroad and you spent a year abroad like learning Islam or learning Arabic or traveling through Europe or Africa or whatever that might be. Those are all great opportunities to tell your story. So let's dive into what colleges are actually looking for when it comes to evaluating your leadership and your extracurricular skills. The first thing is that they're looking to see alignment with your personality, your values and your goals. So the way that you spend your time should be reflective of the things that you care about. Your extracurriculars are a chance to get creative and to explore something outside of the bounds of, you know, your average very structured school curriculum. So really lean into that. Parents don't force your kids to do things that they don't want to do, but students, you absolutely need to be intentional about what it is that you want to learn and how that aligns with your particular goals. So for example, when I started high school, I was super shy. I was coming from a private Islamic school, going into a public school system. I wore hijab, you know, now like, you know, being visibly Muslim is not as scary as it was like 15, 10, 15 years ago. And so when I started, I was a very quiet person. And so I enrolled in speech and debate, because that was something that I wanted to improve on. And that first year, I lost so many times, I was super embarrassed so many times, but eventually I started getting better and improving that skill that I wanted to grow for myself. So that was an alignment with my goal that might be totally different for you. So that's the first piece. The second piece is commitment and depth in activities. So what colleges are not looking for is you doing tens of thousands of things. It's not about the quantity, it's about the quality, which means that you should show commitment and you should show depth in all of your activities. What could this look like? This could look like you join a club, your freshman or sophomore year, and then the next year you run for a leadership position, you become the secretary or the treasurer. And then after that, you become the president or an advisor. And you start organizing the events and developing the strategy for the organization. So it's okay if you have one or two or three things that you've done very, very well. That's actually much better than doing many, many things, but not really growing in any of that. Unique experiences. I spoke to this just before this. There's no right or wrong answer text or curriculars. If you've done something that's super different, if you've started an organization or a club or a company, if you have traveled, if you've taken trips with your family, they could even be vacations or summers abroad. I know right now that that's looking like it's never going to happen with the pandemic. But say you spent a summer in Jordan or you spent a summer in India or Pakistan that was very transformative for you. That's a great extracurricular to write about. I have a student actually who went back to India with her family for a summer and volunteered at a hospital and had a really interesting experience at a hospital in one of the villages in India. So that's something cool that you could talk about. They're looking for passionate involvement. They can totally smell when you are insincere about caring about something. So make sure that you're actually passionate about this. And that means parents, you being open to things that might feel off the wall and different and not what your friends do, for example, right? Not where your friends, kids are doing. So be okay with something that's different as long as your child is passionate about it. And then colleges are looking to see how do you develop your intellectual curiosity during this very formative time in your life? So are there particular things that you want to learn more about? Are there particular ideas that you care more about? For me, that was political activism. I was really involved with care when I was in high school. I went to the Muslim Youth Leadership Program and their fundraisers and was thinking about what does it mean to be a politically active Muslim during that time. So think about what are those big, hairy questions for you and try to structure your learning outside of the classroom to help hit on some of these points. A couple other things to mention about extracurricular activities. As Sadia mentioned, it's about having a theme and about having depth. So you do want, you don't want to be scattered. Okay, I'm doing five hours here of volunteering and then two hours at the food bank and then one hour of speech and debate and then something here and something here just so I can fill up. It's not about filling up your profile or your resume. That's not the goal. The goal is to pick a theme and to go deep into the theme based on the activities. So you're in, let's say, a politically minded theme or you're interested in liberal arts or law or something like she mentioned, speech and debate, mock trial, motto, U.S. sports, but getting involved in things that will help you build that theme. The second thing is do not fake anything like nothing. I actually have students or I know people who are like, oh, yeah, maybe I'll get a certificate from my student that says he or she did this and I can show them all none of that stuff where it's not genuine and you will get caught if you do that. So that's not going to help. And the third thing is it's not about like, even when it comes to activities that you do, it's not about the name of the activity. It's not about the brand name of the activity. None of that stuff is what's important. It's not what you actually did in the activity. So just keep that in mind. So you don't want to say, oh, I volunteered at some place because maybe your parents had to hook up or something at some place and you were able to volunteer there or they know some senator or something like that. You're able to get some recommendation from that person. That stuff is again, if it's not genuine, colleges will see through this, right? Because there are millions of people who have access like that. They care about the sincere people who are actually doing things that are making a difference. So just keep that in mind and try not to kind of fake anything or come up with things that you may think are good. Be actually genuine about it. There was a question. We can do questions, I think at the end. Okay. But yeah, if you have questions, definitely put them into the chat. We see them and then we'll answer them at the end with Q&A. All right. Then it comes time to apply to college. Now, this is the whole process in and of itself and it's important for you to understand what is expected of you even before you start the process so that you can budget the right amount of time for it. So we're going to go over the two core applications. Obviously, there are so many universities in the U.S. But because we're based in California, many of the folks that come to us to work with us are really focused on the UC application and the CSU application, Cal State, and also the Common App. So we're going to go through the UC and the Common App and I'll also share a few things about the Cal State as well. So the UC application is due November 30th. So if you are a junior right now and you are planning on applying to college in the fall, put this on your calendar. The SAT and the ACT are required in non-COVID times. So something to note between now and 2024 is that UCs are test blind, which means that you could submit the test and they're not going to even look at it. So my advice is don't focus on it. Go focus on other things. Also, for some majors, you will have special requirements. And again, this is similar to, you know, we need to kind of like play it by ear and see how the pandemic evolves. But for example, if you're planning on majoring in engineering or you're planning on majoring in computer science, which is highly popular right now, then you want to think about taking the subject tests in math and science. And these are standardized tests that are very specific to one topic. So you will go in and you will take the test on just math or just history or just a language. So there's something for you to think about. The actual application is essentially a form that you have to fill out with your personal information and your parents' information. And then it also asks you to list out all of your activities, all of your work experience, all of the volunteer work that you've done. So one thing that I failed to mention in the extracurricular point, which is my bad, because I actually experienced this, if you are a student that is working, that also counts as an extracurricular. I worked in high school. So if you're doing that and you don't have time for anything else, because you have to provide for your family or you have a job or even if you tutor, it doesn't matter. Like if you are earning and you're in that position, then that that's like a great topic for your application as well too. Don't discount that. That totally counts as extracurricular work and colleges appreciate that work ethic. Sorry, just sidebar on that. So the application will ask you to list your activities, your work experience, your volunteer work, any awards you've received, if you've received them. And then also they will ask you to select majors. So this is a really important piece to think about. The list of majors is really overwhelming. So make sure that you make some time to think through what do I really want to learn? What do I plan on studying? What am I passionate about? And then one thing to think about is that, and we can dive into this a little bit more with folks who are applying. So if you're an incoming senior and you need help with your applications, please reach out to us. But the UCs treat majors a little differently. So if you want to apply to a highly competitive major, like computer science or engineering, you will likely be applying directly into the College of Engineering. And that means that for some schools, if you get in, awesome, you got in. If you didn't get in, you don't get into the school. So that's the case for UC Berkeley, for example. Not something that you need to worry about in this moment, but if you are an incoming senior this year, just keep that in mind. And then for most of the majors, even though you select a major on the application, you're actually considered undeclared until you actually finish all of the classes that are required for that major. So even though you're selecting a box, when you enter as a freshman, you technically enter as undeclared, then you go and you say, okay, I need to take these five classes, you take those five classes, and then you formally apply to be that major. So again, it's a nuance, but something to think about. And then last, but absolutely not least, are your eight personal insight questions. These are the essays that everybody talks about. We have done separate webinars on how to write strong college applications. We've done boot camps on this. And we also work with students one-on-one who are working on applying to college directly. So what are the personal insight questions? These are the eight essay prompts, and you can choose four to write about. So you have to choose four, you have the opportunity to figure out which one you like, which one feels good to you. They don't change through the same year after year. So you can actually go look at them right now. I highly recommend you do that, whether you are a freshman or eighth grade even, just to get an idea of how do colleges evaluate their applicants. And then one thing to keep in mind is that the responses themselves must be 350 words or less. And that might feel like a very small amount, oh, it's easy, I can do this. But it is actually a very complex and intense activity to take all of the incredible work that you have done over your life and talk about it in 350 words. So this is not the kind of activity that gets done the weekend before the application. This is the kind of thing that I start getting calls about earlier and earlier every year. And students usually begin working with us like immediately after they finish with their junior year. So May finishes, they finish up their year, they take their AP exams, and then we start working for the next four to six months on their application. So just something for you to think about as you do your own planning. And then really quickly about the Common Application. So this is the Common Application is essentially one universal streamlined application that will go to every single college that you apply to. So outside of the UC system. So UC's habits on application, then there's the Common App. If you're applying to private schools, most private schools are using the Common App. So pretty simple, straightforward, create an account at commonapp.org. You can search the schools you're interested in. So maybe you want to apply to Stanford or MIT, you want to apply to Caltech or USC, you can search them, add them onto your application. And then for the Common App, there are seven essay prompts, and you have to choose one. And this essay is longer. So it's 650 words. And that's just that one, that's just the Common App personal essay, right. So the other thing to keep in mind is that most other private schools will actually need supplemental essays. So students can end up writing depending on how many schools are applying to can end up writing anywhere between five to like 50 essays, which I know that sounds wild and it is. So this is this is why it's important to budget time for this activity. Don't start too late. And then the last thing that I'll say is one of the tips I advise our families to do is to actually start with your UC questions first if you are planning on applying to UCs before you move to Common App. And the reason is that many writing prompts are really similar. So if you write four essays, you can then take those essays and repurpose them and reconfigure them rather than write fresh new essays for every single school that you're applying to. So just one thing to keep in mind. Before we move on from this section, just want to talk very quickly about the Cal State application as well. So Cal State application is actually super simple. It's much more based on your transcript, your GPA, the classes that you have taken, your grades. There's no essay requirement for that. And they've also waived the SAT and ACT requirement as well too. So if you're applying on applying to Cal Poly or Cal State East Bay or any of these schools, the application process is really simple. But again, don't wait too long to do that. So just a couple of thoughts as we wrap up the first part of the webinar before we share sort of, you know, what, what, before we start the Q&A and then talk about a couple of other things is college is a stressful experience. But if you plan and you will prepare and you are intentional, you can do really well and you can actually enjoy the experience. The second piece is it's really important to find a balance and prioritize your mental health. And this is something that we talk about in all of our webinars, but we know that rates of mental illness are significantly higher among teenagers and children. So parents, read up on what that looks like, read up on what anxiety looks like, what panic attacks look like, how is your child's educational environment informing their mental health and wellness. And don't promote an environment at home that's not that's that you may not realize that is actually, you know, really, really detrimental to your child's mental health. So grades are important, college is important, but those are not the only things and your health and wellness is really, really important. So no one has told you that we are we are here to tell you that. The third is there are tons and tons of resources available to you, it can actually be a little overwhelming, which is why we try to distill all of this information and share it in a simple and accessible way for you. And we're always posting like resources, tips, strategies, all of this kind of stuff across all of our social platforms. So you can find us on Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, we're also on TikTok as well too. So check us out there. And then lastly, before we move to the next piece, you know, if you have any questions, our email is right there. We also have the opportunity to schedule time with us to talk through your particular situation. So we can talk about that in a second. But this is our email address. So please feel free to reach out if you have very specific questions. Great. And the four or five main components that we talked about just so that everybody who joined late has a chance to remember, right, we spoke about having a strategy, right. So have a plan, have a college strategy. We spoke about having an academic plan, really plan out all of your classes, your AP classes, honors classes, regular classes, what it is that you want to take based on the goal GPA that you want, the goal grade point numbers that you want. Have an SAT and standardized test strategy, okay, the SAT versus the ACT versus your subject tests, which are a bit more nuanced, but plan out all of this information. And then your extracurricular roadmap and strategies that Saudia mentioned, you've got to have that planned out ideally. And by late ninth grade to early 10th grade, you should know what the different clubs and activities and sports and internships that is that you want to do for the rest of high school. You have a goal, doesn't mean you're going to do all of them, but you have a goal. These are the things I want to focus on, right. And then finally, your college, your actual college list, and then the essays that you're going to have to work on the one who plans all the stuff in advance. And students who start to work on these things early on, we've seen perform far better than students were just doing this as time goes, right. And as time comes, they perform a lot better when it comes to their grades, when it comes to their activities, and then of course, when it comes to actually getting admitted into college. And so just keep that in mind that your hard work will, inshallah, pay off. 40 years of high school are very intense. I get it. But college is an awesome place, very, very fun. Something to look forward to. And it's worth the amount of hard work that you do in high school. And so in order to help students do that, as Saudia mentioned, we help a lot of students with one-on-one coaching. We're also launching a course focused on helping you get into your dream college. This is going to be an eight-week live course, kind of like a group coaching model that is going to give you all of the different roadmap strategies and tips that you need in order to actually get into your college, the college you want to get into. And our goal really is to help make college admissions a lot more accessible and a lot more affordable. This industry of college admissions guidance is filled with like $10,000, $20,000 per three or four years of coaching by really, really premium and expensive college coaches. And that's just absurd. It makes it really hard to access. And so we're really on a mission to try to make this more accessible and more affordable. And so if you are interested, we'll talk a little bit about it. And then we'll do a question and answer. And I'm seeing questions coming. Please post them on either the Facebook comments or on the Zoom chat. Or if you want, we'll give some time to unmute yourself and you can ask the question live if you are in the Zoom. So this call, this course is going to be an eight-week live course. We're going to launch it in early April, inshallah. And it's really to help students, high school students. This is for students from 8th grade, 9th grade, 10th grade, and 11th grade. And if you're beyond that, then, you know, we talk about other ways to help, inshallah, to help you learn the skills, tools, and resources you need to really get into your dream college. So the six or seven things we'll cover at a high level here in this course, everything that we covered in the webinar, but going in a lot more detail, we'll be doing a number of 90-minute live sessions where we'll talk you through everything from the mindsets and the habits that you need to succeed in high school and college in your career, to the classes you need to take to distinguish yourself. We will actually develop this plan with you, your academic plan, to the college admission strategy you need to map out, to the extracurricular strategy and the extracurricular roadmap you need to map out. So what clubs should you get involved in? How should you think about leadership? How should you think about your internships? How should you think about projects that you should get engaged in and involved in? We will also be talking about how to write really memorable world-class college essays slash personal statements. And then we'll also be talking about majors and career options and how to set yourself up to success beyond college. Contrary to popular belief in most of our communities, there are majors and careers beyond just becoming a doctor, lawyer, engineer, and so we'll be talking about them. And so we'll be talking about the different majors, career options, and ways to set yourself up for success beyond college and the different breadth of majors that are available to you based on your passion and your skillset. And our goal is to really work with you in a small group setting to help you discover this about yourself. So by the end of this course, inshallah, the goal is to really have everybody walk away with a personal academic roadmap, including all the classes to take in every single term in a year. How to think about your grades and your AP classes and your honors classes and balancing those to walk away with this full extracurricular roadmap, including the activities and the internships that I was mentioning. Have a full list of colleges to apply to. So whatever grade you're in, this will serve you well, inshallah. So you reach schools, the schools that are like a little bit above maybe where you're at, but you want to reach and you want to try to get there. Your match schools, your schools that are a match based on your profile and your grades and whatnot, and your safety schools. These are called backup schools, which based on your grades and your SAT and your extracurriculars, inshallah, these will be hopefully you'll be able to get in at least once. The goal of the course is to make sure that you are doing all of this complex planning so that every decision that you make, whether it's the club that you want to go to, you want to get into, whether it's a particular skill you'd like to develop, whether it's a class that you want to work up to, you have a plan for that. So your parents are not scrambling every year to figure out what classes to enroll in. You know already, oh, in 10th grade, in 11th grade, in 12th grade, here are the classes I plan on taking. It's just a matter of filling out the form. And same thing, you'll know what college is to apply to based on your GPA, based on your interests and your majors, and we'll start introducing you to interesting and unique and important skill development, like thinking about your resume, thinking about your LinkedIn, and getting those things ready for submission for any of the professional related activities that you'd like to get into. So just please have your questions ready. Just a quick FAQ that all this can be found on our website and we'll link it. This is going to be an eight-week live course. The goal will be to deliver it in 90-minute Zoom sessions weekly. We're going to try to have cohorts of about 10 to 20 students, and we really want to make this a small group coaching type of environment. And if you just need help with like college essays and college apps, hit us up. Reach out to us with regards to our college essay coaching, which we can do for more like late juniors, early seniors. And this course, as mentioned, is really applicable to students in eighth grade, ninth grade, tenth grade, and eleventh grade. That's really the goal. So if you're a student or a parent in that kind of category, reach out and we're more than happy to kind of provide you more details here. And we are launching it, inshallah, April 4th. Over the next month or so people will be able to register. We are providing over 10 hours of live instruction, all of the road maps, strategies, the details, the handouts, everything that you need in order to actually have this full strategy developed. So this is valued at a couple thousand dollars easily. But we're going to be offering it for 750 bucks. You can get it at successcompany.co.com slash products. And if you did watch this webinar today and you are interested, you can use this discount code that's listed on this slide. And it's ES28 and you can use it at the checkout. And we're really committed to affordability and access. So like if the cost is an issue, just reach out. We will figure out a way and tell it to help you out. Don't worry about that, inshallah. So if you have questions specifically about the courts or about like your unique circumstances or students, check out this Calendly link right here. This is a platform where you can schedule a 10 minute session with us. It's a free consultation session. And we'll be doing these in 10 minute slots. I think we have a couple of slots available today after this session. We have a couple of slots available tomorrow evening and Tuesday evening. You can go to Calendly.com slash Sadia safe with the slash ES28 and I'll also post that in Facebook comments. And Sean, if you could post that in Facebook comments as well, that would be awesome to all these details that would be helpful. So that's kind of an overview and why don't we go ahead and open it up for questions and you know, we'll just kind of leave this page here for anybody who needs to access it. So I see a couple of questions have already come in. We'll go ahead and start with those and then we will get into anything. I came in on Zoom. Can you check what comes in on Zoom? Straight. All right. So somebody asked, what is the difference between the ACT and the SAT, which is better? The main difference between the ACT and the SAT is that they are, they have different sections. So you have a science critical analysis section that is in the ACT that is not in the SAT. The other sections are generally very similar. However, the science section in the ACT is not the science section in the ACT is not actually testing your like actual scientific skills. The science section in the ACT is testing your ability to critically analyze graphs and details and whatnot. So that's really the main difference. They're both like national level tests. They're accepted by all universities. So there's not really one that's better. I personally liked the SAT or sorry, I like the ACT more. I took the SAT a bunch of times and I finally took the ACT and I was like, oh, this is a better test. I scored better on it. But up to you. So I would take practice tests in ninth grade for both. Take some practice tests, see which one you like, and then go ahead and double down on one. Do not waste your time and take both officially. Just keep that in mind. Yeah. So we have a question on Zoom. Any tips for middle schoolers? Yes. All of these things apply to be thinking about to be planning for in seventh and in eighth grade. So think about what classes you would like to take and what prerequisites you need to make sure that you complete to take those classes. Start doing extracurricular activities. And if you can't register in a formal activity because of an age or grade restriction, start encouraging your student to think about what kinds of problems would they like to solve? Where would they like to get involved? There are tons and tons of opportunities out there. So encourage them to start thinking about the kinds of ways they can add value to their community. And that's always a good place to start. We have some students who start studying for their SAT and ACT in middle school. I think because they will likely be applying to college after 2024, that is something that you should be thinking about. If the SAT and ACT comes back, just acquaint them with that. And the most important thing, honestly, for middle schoolers is to really create a good work ethic and to create discipline. So making sure that they're sleeping on time, making sure that they're using their mornings well, making sure that they are reading and writing and doing something creative and thinking logically. These things sound really basic, but they're actually foundational skills that we found that most students don't have by the time they come to apply for college. And so if you can start cultivating those early on, it makes all of high school and college much easier. Great. We got a question here. How can I get an SAT study book? And you said it's a silly question. No, don't worry, it's not a silly question at all. So you can get an SAT study book, just go on Amazon, search SAT prep book, and you'll be able to find many SAT prep books. There's a couple of companies that are like the big ones, Princeton, Review, Kaplan, Barons that are very acclaimed. Those are good ones, but there's also a bunch of other small companies, smaller test book and test prep companies that have books available. And I would highly recommend if you are taking an SAT to get the official College Board book. And that is the book of about, I think, 10 to 15 real practice tests. Check that one out as well. All right. Other questions? Somebody just mentioned, yeah, faking and lying more than getting caught is, yes, is Haram, definitely, on the point about faking and lying on your apps. Of course, the first and foremost principle is that it's not something you should do with Haram. It's immoral. It's nothing that we should be getting involved in. But you'd be surprised how many times I see, unfortunately, Muslims who, like, exaggerate or tweak things majorly, and even though it's something we shouldn't be doing with the Barons for our religion. So thank you for mentioning that. See any other questions here? So yeah, please post your questions to somebody asked, is it required or advised for my student to take AP honor subjects over basic subjects? It's definitely not required, but it is advised. Yeah. So if your student is able to manage the level of an AP or honors course, it is more difficult. It's going to require more studying and it's going to require more discipline. But if you're able to manage it for sure, take AP and honors courses, they weight your GPA, you learn more generally in them, and they give you benefit when you actually get into college because you already have learned core aspects of subjects that you'll be taking in college. So I would recommend taking AP honors courses, but don't overdo it. Balance is the key here. Yeah. There is another question. How to register my kids for the class? So two things actually, you can register your students for the class today, tomorrow and Tuesday. You'll get that discount code. Just go to successcompany.cov slash products and you can just purchase and register right there online. You'll get a confirmation email once you've done that. If you'd like to register more than one child and of course, please email us and we will make sure that we give you a further discount to that. So if you have a student in ninth or 10th grade and then you have a seventh or eighth grader, this is a great opportunity for you to do that, email us. We'll make it work with you. Okay. So somebody asked, is there a way our children can manage the college costs without taking interest? Thank you for asking this question. This is very, very important. I'm going to touch on two or three aspects of this. That's fine. Yeah, go ahead. So first is scholarships. Highly recommend applying for scholarships. There are many community scholarships you can get access to and then there are major scholarships. Focus on the small ones. There's like big ones like the Coca-Cola scholarship, which is like $50,000. A million people are going to apply to that one. I would not waste too much time unless you really have a competitive profile on that one. Focus on the small 1,001 here, 1,001 here. The Islamic Scholarship Fund has some, your local community organizations will have some really spend time, make this an exercise, look into scholarships and we'll actually cover this, inshallah, as well in our course. The second thing is go for less, go for more affordable schools. I personally do not believe it is justified in the time that we live into to take out loans and student loans and whatnot that accumulate interest from an Islamic perspective. And just in order to finance college education, there are many other ways in order to do so, going to more affordable schools, going to community college for a part of the time and then going into your college or rather into the full four-year university. That's one option. You can also take a little bit of a break. I know it's an unpopular idea, but there is no rush. It's not worth doing something impermissible or haram, just in order to get caught up with everybody. If we believe in principles of blessings and barakah and all these things, we'll know that if somebody does the right thing, they will be rewarded more so in ways that only God really knows. So do try to. If you need to take a little bit of a break to save up some money for college, do that. But try to have that mindset. And lastly, as parents, do your best if possible to plan early on. Okay, if I want to aim for this type of school, how am I going to afford it? How am I going to finance it? And what type of phasing do I need to do with my finances and savings and goals in order to make it happen? I think those are the main things that I would recommend. And lastly, just financial aid if you want to touch on that. Yeah, so I will, I'll share personally, I know it's not like a popular thing to talk about in the community, but my family was not super rich. They did not have the ability to like pay like full cost of college. I applied for financial aid. I received financial aid. I also had years where I did not receive financial aid. And so I worked throughout college. So please like instill that in your students to work. Also, if you apply for financial aid and they come back with, you know, giving you qualification for loans, you can actually convert a part of those loans in a work study dollars and get your student to work on campus and make money that way. And so we help sort of brainstorm around how do you make college more affordable? I went to college on scholarship and work and a number of other creative ways to fund. I think there's also an organization that actually offers like interest free like Muslim Islamic financing interest free loans to Muslim students and refinancing as well too. I can't remember the name of the organization off the top of my head, but I can also share that resource with you all, you know, as something to think about. AP classes, do I need to get an A in each one or wait the GPA so a C wouldn't count? No, every grade for an AP course is weighted, which means that you would still so if you got a B, it would count as an A. If you got C, it would count as B. The thing to note for AP courses is not just the weighting of your GPA, but also that you need to pass the AP exam to get college credit. So if you take the AP test and you pass it with a three or above, it's out of five. So three, four or five, you will get college credit on campus. You won't have to take a particular entry level course, for example. So make sure that you're getting a good grade and also plan to do well on the test so that you can skip one of those courses. All right, 529 savings plans are these a good way to say for college. So generally speaking, 529 plans are a good investment vehicle. The only thing is just keep in mind, you want to check what that plan is actually investing in, right? So you want to make sure that they're not investing in like weapons companies and highly leveraged debt focused companies, tobacco companies, alcohol companies, the standard ones that are immoral and impermissible. But otherwise, if you are able to come to the right 529 savings plan, from my understanding, it's a solid idea. Just from a financial perspective, I would consult with somebody else, with from a thick perspective, just in terms of all the details. I did not get the names of the Islamic organizations that can provide student allowance. May you please rename them. So if you email us, we can find the exact name or with slipping both of our minds right now. Can you put your email in there? Yeah, sure. Just treat me an email at this. All right, I'm seeing, let's see, any other questions via AP or we know nothing else. Okay, so if anybody has other questions, or if anybody on Zoom wants to ask like a question and unmute themselves, feel free to feel free to unmute or raise hand or if you feel or if you want to ask a question and you don't want to share it in the greater chat, you can also just send it to us directly so that you know if you don't want to, if you'd rather ask it honestly. So in the Zoom chat, you can send the question just to us if you'd like. There's a way to do that when you press send chat too in the Zoom chat. So we'll go ahead and just kind of wait here just in case anything else. But in the meantime, hopefully this was helpful. If you have other, if you want to learn more, you can go to our website www.successcompany.co. We have tons of free resources for those who are interested. And then we also have this course that we're launching very excited about it. So please, you know, check it out if you're interested and also reach out to schedule time with us on the calendar that was linked in this past slide. And I think it was also linked in the chat. And we'd love to have some time to just chat one on one. We're not seeing any private questions. We're not seeing any more public questions. And I don't think the Facebook groups have any questions. When will the course be scheduled? So the course will start at the beginning of April, the first weekend of April, April 4th, and then it will be eight weeks. It will be every week, inshallah, from the first week of April up until the last week of May. And we will be sending out more details once somebody registers. We'll send out the kind of full course packet, the information, the orientation information and whatnot. And you, somebody can register all the way up until about one week before the course at which point we will close the registration. So hopefully that answers the question to the brother who's asking. And the $50 discount is only applicable today, tomorrow and Tuesday. So you have to three days to make that decision and be able to use that discount code. What day of the week and time will the session be? That's a good question. So most likely we are going to do the sessions on weekends and it's going to be on Saturday or Sunday in the afternoon. The reason I'm saying most likely is because when we get the full roster of students, we are actually going to work with you all to make sure that the students are able to make the session times and that the cohorts that we have, if we have one cohort or two cohorts that everybody able to make the times, we will of course do our absolute best to make sure you're able to make the time. And if the time that everybody agrees on that is not a time that works for you, of course, you know, you'll get your refund for the course. So it will be, I think the goal right now though is to target like Saturday around like 2pm or so and in order to kind of make sure that it can work for people across all time. So it's yeah. And the only other thing I would add is that like we're also building in a little bit of flexibility because it will be Ramadan in April and a portion of May. So we will make sure that we're adapting to ensure that the scheduling works. Yeah, there will be breaks. So yeah, so TBD on timing, but the class starts in April 4th. Yep. All right. Great. Somebody said, yep. See if anybody else has questions. All right. Awesome. Well, thank you all so much. You're more than welcome to email us. You can email Sadia at successcompany.co or you can email me, Shariar at successcompany.co with any questions. Really, really appreciate you all taking the time to join. And we hope to be in touch and please do look more into scheduling time with us to talk chat more about your specific situation or your specific student who would love to help. And we really, really appreciate it. And thank you of course to the organizers at SBIA, the organizers at Evergreen Islamic Center. Really appreciate all of your help as well. I just knock on the chair and we'll see you all soon. As-salamu alaykum. As-salamu alaykum.