Contemplating college? Applying to and paying for a college education can be an overwhelming process. We can help! Greene Education Foundation is the premier resource for high quality, customized student college positioning and financial planning. With comprehensive services designed to individually address the specific needs of you and your student(s), we strive to develop a personal relationship with families founded on trust and reliability. The specially trained college planning professionals at Greene Education will help your student stay ahead of the competition by positioning him/her in the way most sought after by colleges. We start with defining career possibilities and majors, identifying high-visibility extracurricular and volunteer activities, and assisting in attaining relevant work experience and career-oriented internships. Greene Education will streamline the complicated admissions process to maximize your time and efforts and increase your student's percentage of college acceptances. We give you significant guidance in creating a personalized school list tailored to your student. We then breakdown the complicated application process with consistent, step-by-step coaching, and give expert instruction on writing powerful essays and 'get-you-noticed' personal statements. Our experts know that many factors affect financial aid awards. We will evaluate and show you, regardless of income, how to position your financial structure to reduce the cost of college. Greene Education’s proprietary methods will also help identify the historically aid-generous schools within your student's reach to maximize savings opportunities. We will analyze award packages to calculate the actual cost of attendance for your student and give appeal assistance when colleges under-award or miss-award.

Yes, absolutely you can, just like you can do a lot of other things yourself. You can practice law yourself and make your own wills, be your own doctor by diagnosing things on the internet, be your own CPA and navigate the IRS codes yourself. The advantage to working with us is for our time and expertise, so that you don’t have to hassle with it. If you’re thinking along these lines, let me ask you another question: When was the last time you did something really good the first time you tried it? Do you remember when you were trying to ride a bike? How many times did you fall? Do you remember learning how to drive a stick shift? How many times did you stall during that process? By the same token, how much will it cost you if you miss just one of the many colleges’ deadlines? How much will it cost you if you fill out a form incorrectly and include an asset that shouldn’t be included or if you apply to the wrong type of schools in general? Remember, we’re talking about a decision that on the low-end will cost you $85,000 to $270,000 (University of Michigan's published rate for out-of-state residents is $67,802 per year) per child at a state school and can be upwards of $320,000.00 per child at a private school. You have to decide if it’s worth it to hire someone with expertise who can work on this for you, so you don’t run the risk of making even one critical mistake that can cost you thousands.

That’s a real common misconception. Most guidance counselors have, on average, 400+ students that they counsel. And in fact, guidance counselors have three basic duties - academic support, parental counseling and support, and individual counseling. Guidance counselors reported only spending aproximately 50% of their time reparing for schooling. Now, there is a ton of information available to them about the financial aid process and how to apply, but most of them are simply too overwhelmed and too overworked to ever have any time to actually read it or research it. Plus, even if they did, they don’t track the schools, they won’t give you information on how to lower your EFC, and they won’t fill out the forms for you. As far as the colleges themselves helping you, remember, their sole purpose is to get you to pay as much as humanly possible for the college experience and if getting your kid to go to their school requires you borrowing and being in debt for the next 30 years, they frankly don’t care; their only interest is getting their money. Look at it this way, would you go to the IRS to ask for help on lowering your taxes? No, you wouldn’t. Well, that’s the same as going to the financial aid office to ask them for help on lowering your college expenses.

No. In-fact, that’s the exact reason to hire us in the first place. Remember, our service includes a series of classes and private meetings that will guide your student through career exploration and matching, and a complete discussion of how to pick the career of their dreams, plus student positioning, and college exploration and matching - all the things that many parents feel that their students aren’t getting from public or private high schools. We will be working with you every step of the way and holding your hand all the way through the process.

NO! Well, maybe. In reality, even this is considered late-stage college planning. When did you realize that you would need to plan for college? When your child was born, right? You should start developing a plan to pay for college as soon as possible after your child is born. The longer you have to plan, the less of a commitment you need to make per year, so that when your student does finally explore colleges, the conversation is about academics and NOT economics. And a really important note here – Financial Aid applications, are going to base your Student Aid Index on the PRIOR PRIOR year. What does that mean? It means that the financial aid applications for 2025 – that’s right, sophomores – are going to be based on your income information from next year - 2023. This is why we recommend that you start 4-5 years prior to your student’s base year - in order to have the time to complete the analysis and develop a plan. Here’s the deal; every year we get several panicked calls around September from perfectly nice parents that we really would have enjoyed working with who meant to get back to us a year or two earlier, and just forgot. And, every year three things happen: 1. We turn some of them away. Why? Because all of our spots have been filled! Remember, we strictly limit the number of clients that we take each year and once we’ve filled up for that year, we are full. At that point, the best that we could do for you is provide you with basic, general information. 2. If we still have space left, but by the time that we get going, we realize that even though we’re helping you and you’re getting every value from everything that we do for you, we would have saved you thousands more by getting started a year or two earlier. Your procrastination literally costs you thousands of dollars. Remember, our program includes not just college advice and picking schools and things like that, but it also includes tax advice and planning strategies on how to pay for your share. Every day that you wait on that, costs you money. 3. The longer we wait, the more likely the student is to being “married” to one school or another, that means it’s harder and harder to get them to take a broad look at the total amount of schools that are out there, including schools that are an ideal fit - academically, financially, and socially.