42 LONGISLANDPRESS.COM • SEPTEMBER 2020
FAMILY & EDUCATION
COLLEGE KNOWLEDGE 2020 WEBINAR
ACADEMIC EXPERTS WEIGH-IN
BY ALEC RICH
For high school students, the coronavirus
pandemic threw a wrench into a
college admissions cycle that is already
stressful, but four Long Island experts
in navigating the process recently
shared their advice at a Schneps Media
webinar.
The webinar, titled College Knowledge
2020, was hosted by Schneps Media
Vice President Elizabeth Aloni, and
featured private college advisor Andy
Lockwood, test preparation and
academic expert Tom Ehlers, clinical
social worker Catharina Kleuskens,
and college counselor, advisor, and educational
consultant Patty Ziplow, who
noted that it is still important to show
interest virtually.
“Many schools do track demonstrated
interest and they have very sophisticated
ways of finding out who has opened
emails that have been sent, who has
attended virtual information sessions,”
Ziplow, who is the co-founder of A2Z
Admissions Consulting Group, LLC,
said. “But schools will tell you that the
most important way you can illustrate
your demonstrated interest is to apply
early.”
Lockwood, who is the founder of Lockwood
College Prep, added that despite
the constraints of the pandemic, students
can still avoid paying full tuition
in many cases through merit-based aid
or by negotiating financial aid.
“There’s still a lot of money out there
and I think anyone can afford college,”
Lockwood said. “Paying full price is
a choice; only about 25 percent at any
given college pay full price or are
subsidizing the other 75 percent of
families who are getting some sort of
discount.”
Tom Ehlers, president and founder of
Method Test Prep, said even as more colleges
are transitioning to test-optional
admissions amidst the pandemic, it’s
still important to take standardized
tests like the SAT or ACT because many
schools are not “test blind,” meaning
that they won’t look at test scores.
“Most students … have such a fear of
these exams because they just don’t
know anything about them,” Ehlers
said. “And they actually can be successful,
so they just need to put in a little bit
of time.”
Kleuskens, a clinical social worker
based in Merrick, said the inability
of most high school seniors to finish
their semesters in person this spring
also changed the course of many
discussions.
“They kind of got shorted and didn’t get
to graduate in person, didn’t make that
start of that big transition phase, and a
lot of them show a lot of anxiety towards
what’s lying ahead,” Kleuskens said. “So
we’ve really been addressing how we
can adjust the initial plan which we’ve
been working on for possibly two years
and change it into something that can
work.”
COVID-19 has made college admissions
tricky. (Shutterstock)
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