David Martinez, Ed.D.
Assistant Principal
Newport Harbor High School

The partnership our school and GetCollegeFunding created has been a huge benefit to those families that have elected to attend the various seminars they have put on at our campus.

The word is getting out among our families and communities that GetCollegeFunding is providing a great service in educating our families about financial planning for our students intending to go to college. The information shared is current and their resources have been excellent.

I highly recommend families to begin early and to attend one of their seminars to learn more about how to effectively plan for their children’s future higher education endeavors and understand what options and services exist that meets their particular needs.

Kristin Orloff
Assistant Principal
Las Flores MiddleSchool

My husband and I have been in education our entire careers. I am currently an assistant principal and my husband is a teacher and football coach at OCC.

With that said, I learned more about education, funding, athletic scholarships and the college system in one day ~ with your program ~ than I've learned in twenty years!

Val Zavalia
Anchor, SoCal Connected
KCET Channel 28, Los Angeles

So what financial advice do I have for today’s college-bound kids besides marry rich or learn to love the outback? Here‘s some tips that I picked up from doing the story about the Royal family - the ones in the O.C. not Buckingham Palace - who were smart enough to start early and go to a college advisor at a great non-profit called GetCollegeFunding...

Nancy Adams
Former PTSA President
Dana Hills High School

GetCollegeFunding is fantastic. We have held many of their workshops at Dana Hills High and everyone loved the free information they received.

GetCollegeFunding also held a Saturday College Fair at Dana with much success. I had parents coming up to me thanking me for having forums such as this because they are so valuable. Where else could people go to get this information?

Madeline Tucci-Tannehill
Parent
Mater Dei High School

In the 2006-2007 school year, when my daughter was a high school junior, I attended three college financial planning seminars. The last seminar was that of GetCollegeFunding. In contrast to the other two seminars Tom Bottorf provided one that was much more thorough, had a timeline and direction in preparing for my daughter’s college financial profile.

At the beginning of this school year, when my daughter was a senior, Tom & Lawrene’s assistance with the FAFSA filing was invaluable. Once the Financial Award letters came in from the three private colleges that accepted my daughter for the 2008-2009 school year Tom provided an analysis and great recommendations that lead to potential appeals for further funding.

As a result of Tom & Lawrene’s help, their guidance and assistance my daughter received a $30,000 funding package to attend Loyola University Chicago in the fall. I am so happy for my daughter, now the graduate and soon to be freshman at Loyola University Chicago. I have recommended GetCollegeFunding to college counselors and to many parents. I thank God for their services daily and don’t know what I would do without their help!!

Carol Hughes
Former IUSD Counselor
Dana Hills High School

For fifteen years I was a teacher and counselor in the Irvine Unified School District, so I have a knowledge base from "inside the school system" as well as from the parent perspective.

I first heard about Get College Funding last school year when they were sponsoring Dana's voice message delivery system for parent communication. So last spring, I attended one of Tom's workshops. I was very impressed with the wealth of information he gave...FREE, with no pressure in any way to "sign up" for his program.

Subsequently my husband and I met with Tom privately and he gave us even more FREE information, which has been a tremendous asset to us. What I learned at Tom's workshops gave me the understanding and the confidence that we could really afford such private college educations.

In this "there must be some string attached" era Tom and his wife Lawrene stand out as people of integrity, who have a passion to teach, assist and inspire parents (and their children) through the very stressful "college match" process. This is the true goal of education: teaching, assisting and inspiring, yes? I plan to continue to spread the word about Get College Funding and I want to compliment fellow educators in the Capo Unified School District for having the vision to make Tom and Lawrene available to us.

Patty Fabrizio
Parent
Capo Valley High School

Our 2 oldest children have both benefitted from the excellent seminars and individualized attention provided by Tom and Lawrene at GetCollegeFunding, Inc. The seminars, emails, and website helped to guide us to the many tools that are available at little or no cost to families learning about the college process for the first time.

Our daughter just finished her freshman year at Harvard. Our son is a Junior at CVHS, and we spent a valuable two hours with Tom at his office learning about our family profile. He truly cares about families and high school students. My son also benefitted from the eprep SAT online training course for 4 months.

I highly recommend that all families with prospective college students begin with the workshops and get on the email list.

P.S. Last year, we were concerned because we were trying to make informed decisions about setting up our finances so that we could afford Ashley's Harvard tuition and still afford to send Andrew to school in 2 years. Our income is about 200,000, which also put us out of the range of benefitting from Harvard's new aid policies, which has a cutoff of 180,000.

Tom gave us valuable advice, and I believe it made a huge difference in our situation. I wrote a letter according to Tom’s specifications to appeal our award. Today, I received a letter from Harvard. I nervously opened it, then was ecstatic to see that they lowered our family contribution to 35000, giving us almost 11,000 in financial assistance. What a wonderful school! I truly believe the letter made a big difference, and I want to thank Tom for his time, his experience, and his guidance.

Kushal and Pinky Dutta
Parents
University High School

I had heard Tom Bottorf speak at a seminar in Irvine, and picked up one of his cards. I am glad I made the phone call a week later, as I am sure we would not have been able to get our son to where he wanted to be without the help we got from Tom and Lawrene at GetCollegeFunding.

With me traveling on business half the time and my wife managing her own job and two other younger kids at home, we never found enough time to navigate through the maze of the financial aids process – and it is literally a maze if you do not know your way around, I can guarantee that! This is where GetCollegeFunding comes in – they know it all like the back of their hands. We never had to worry about the details, other than answering questions and emails. All the financial aid applications went in on schedule without us having to worry, whereas I have seen my friends running around with FAFSA forms and all that at the end of January, still trying to figure it all out!

One thing Tom said to us early on that stuck in my mind: there is only one guarantee in financial aids for colleges – if you do not apply for it then you will not get it. So no matter what you think about your eligibility, you need to apply, and you may be surprised, like we were! Of course our son gets the credit for keeping up the good work in High School, but GetCollegeFunding gets a huge share of the credit – without them this would not have been possible.

We are so happy with them that we’re continuing with their services through the college years, and we will definitely be back with our next child in a couple of years.

Brian and Lynn Runge
Parents
Tesoro High School

We definitely benefited from the information and services we received from Get College Funding. Our only regret would be that we didn't sign up sooner. We waited until the beginning of my son's senior year. Life would have been much easier if we had started with them when he was a freshman.

It was very exciting to see the financial awards arriving in the mail. Our son will be attending Harvard University in the fall on a generous scholarship.

Gail Spencer
Parent
Capo Valley High School

I had no idea how tricky the college funding process was. GetCollegeFunding and Tom Bottorf give comprehensive presentations that clearly explain the ins and outs of how the different colleges determine financial aid and what we need to do to maximize that aid.

Working with GetCollegeFunding has been both eye-opening and educational. I would not have been able to navigate through the process without them.