SWIC's Uniqueness
Succeed Where It Counts, LLC. is an independent college admissions and financial aid coaching* company. We aspire to help parents help their students select the Right College, at the Right Price, to Graduate on Time with the Right Degree© without compromising their financial retirement plan.
* Coaching is making men do what they don't want, so they can become what they want to be."-- Tom Landry, Dallas Cowboys Hall of Fame Head Coach
College Admissions & Financial Aid Coaching:
- Independently owned and operated.
- Our loyalty is to our clients only; and not to any company, college or university.
- With an insider's perspective we help our clients achieve the greatest value for their higher-education dollars.
Our Values:
INTEGRITY: first from ourselves, and then from those with whom we do business.
CUSTOMER FIRST: we expect no opportunity until we provide value to the customer.
PRIVATE ENTERPRISE: operating in a free market, capitalism is the best economic system.
MONEY: a free market rewards honest work with fair compensation.
LIBERTY: the sacred stewardship of the USA and her citizens in the family of nations.
FAITH: we love, and are loved by God, to whom we are daily giving an accounting of our lives.
THE GOLDEN RULE: equitable, reliable and normative, "In all things do to others as you would have them do to you."
Our Process:
College is a consumer purchase. Colleges sell educational services to parents who want a happy graduate as the product. For our clients we facilitate the desired outcome in the most financially efficient manner possible.
The Right College: Colleges are very clear about their mission and goals. They are looking for students who match those. GPA, Class Rank, Test Scores all count. A student's character, personal qualities and future plans count, too.
The Right Price: Colleges admit students and award financial aid for their reasons, not for yours. When a student is well-matched to a college's purposes and mission, financial aid is leveraged as an incentive to matriculate.
Graduate on Time: The most expensive year of college is the one you did not plan for. Colleges track and report graduation rates over six years (not four!). How much do those two extra years cost? More than you expect.
The Right Degree: Focus on 40 not 4 -- have a bead on the forty-year working life after college.
Other really important stuff:
- Any parent who has forty hours a week to invest learning the strategies and knowledge-base of admissions and financial aid can do for themselves what we offer to do for a modest fee. Begin the forty-hour-a-week task when your student enters tenth grade, and keep at it through high school graduation -- or, hire SWIC.
- Your retirement dollars cannot double as college dollars.
- Colleges and the U.S. Department of Education consider loans to parents as "financial aid." We do not. Loans pay current expenses by obligating future, after-tax, take-home pay -- not a winning strategy!
- The first question every high school student needs to answer is, "What will I do the day after I graduate from college?"
- FAFSA (Free Application for Federal Student Aid -- www.fafsa.ed.gov) is the gateway to all financial aid. If you do not ask, you will not receive.
- What your high school counselors do, they do well. But they do not do what SWIC does.