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November 3, 2025
November Program Tasks
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Priority: Double-check that your IT whitelist colleges’ and OHE’s domains so that students receive relevant info at their high school accounts. Ensure receiving bulk email sends is enabled as well.
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Priority: Use your tool’s roster to encourage students to take advantage of the program through their unique survey and connecting with colleges.
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Priority: If you have not done so already, finalize the academic review process, and be sure to send survey notifications to families after the response timeline for the FERPA/Tennessen notification has lapsed. An extension can be granted this month if you have yet to complete this step: please email the Direct Admissions Coordinator directly.
- Invoices can be sent to our agency if data has been sent to OHE. More information on how to do so below. Please complete this by the year’s end (that is, 2025).
- Data and metrics are found below. Our new program data resource is also due out soon.
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Optional: Plan to attend the monthly Just-in-time High School Mentor Check-in session on November 12th. Weekly virtual hours are available to you as well.
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Optional: Set-up the new FAFSA tracker tool.
Program updates for November follow:
Whitelisting domains
Please be sure to double-check that your IT whitelists colleges’ and OHE’s domains so that students receive info at their high school accounts. The document of domains is found in the Toolkit: Domains to Whitelist. The email to student school email inboxes comes from “MN_OHE - Do Not Reply”, or donotreply.ohe@state.mn.us. Please also double-check that your school/district can receive batch sends (your IT should be able to confirm this detail as well).
Direct Admissions Tool Access
Whether your program student data has been sent to our agency already or it’s still forthcoming, your program Tool (Direct Admissions) can serve many purposes to amplify the success of the program, ranging from a roster to monitor student program engagement to a real-time list for transcript sending. Multiple users from a high school can have access to the roster, and it is primarily meant for individuals who work most closely with students on the college search process and for folks who might evaluate macro level college-access data. User view access is explained in more detail on the bottom of the High School Staff Resource Guide Information within the tool includes:
- Your overall roster of students sent to our agency. This feature allows you to ensure all students who are on-track to graduate and who did not opt-out are receiving program information.
- Whether a student has made at least one selection to a direct admissions college. This feature allows you to monitor basic program engagement, and you can toggle by simple fields like “yes” or “no”.
- If a selection(s) has been made (“yes”), which college(s) the student has indicated interest in. This feature allows you to monitor students’ specific college interests.
- When a student’s information was transferred along to their college selections. This feature gives you a sense of when colleges received student info as a simple date field.
You can use the tool to more directly follow-up with and advise students about the college search process and their postsecondary options and interests. If you are seeing low responsiveness from students to the surveys, or you have a college event still this month or next, please let us know as we can certainly resend the surveys to seniors. We can also do so for individual students upon request.
Encourage students to complete survey fulfillment and educate around college next steps
Use your dashboard in the tool to monitor and encourage students to interact with their surveys and connect with their colleges of interest. Also promote the Student Center as the best resource in guiding students through the process.
Invoicing
Once your data has been received by the agency, you are able to invoice per your contract for program funds. More on invoicing can be found at the following toolkit resource: When and How do I Invoice OHE (2025-2026)_FINAL - Google Docs
Data update
It has been an incredible fall! Thank you for all the good work. At this time, we have close to 200 of the 255 participating high schools whose data is received or accounted for this week (in terms of survey sends). This is 80% of the program’s participants. For perspective, on 11/1 of last year, we had received initial data from 96 reporting of the 180 high schools in the overall cohort, or 53%. To date, we have had 31,361 surveys sent with 3,192 students requesting proactive admission.
Monthly check-ins
Our optional Direct Admissions' “High School Mentor Meet-ups and Community of Practice” gathering is on November 12th from 8:00 a.m. to 9:30 a.m.
The meeting ID and passcode is as follows:
Microsoft Teams Need help?
Join the meeting now
Meeting ID: 277 387 226 787 3
Passcode: fJ3eV2yH
Virtual drop-in assistance
Virtual drop-in assistance occurs twice most weeks of the fall through mid-November, unless falling on a holiday. They recur on Mondays from 2:30 p.m. to 4:00 p.m., and Fridays from 10:00 a.m. to 11:30 a.m. Details follow:
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Mondays, 2:30 p.m. to 4:00 p.m. (through November 17th, 2025)
Microsoft Teams Need help?
Join the meeting now
Meeting ID: 290 891 557 136 4
Passcode: YX6XU6vY
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Fridays, 10:00 a.m. to 11:30 a.m. (through November 21st, 2025, though canceled on November 7th)
Microsoft Teams Need help?
Join the meeting now
Meeting ID: 254 048 019 512 9
Passcode: pL3He7FK
The FAFSA Tracker is going live this week of November 3rd! This incredible tool, managed by the MN Office of Higher Education (OHE), allows high school counselors to track the FAFSA process for individual students at your school. Each high school is invited to enter into a Data Sharing Agreement (DSA) with OHE, which allows us to share private student data with approved staff at the school. From there, staff are able to view who has submitted a FAFSA, whether it is in-progress or complete, and if a FAFSA was selected for verification. Please visit the OHE website to learn more and to initiate the DSA process so you can being using the tool at your school next month. If you have questions, please reach out to OHE’s Outreach and Communications Coordinator Libby Fahrenkamp at libby.fahrenkamp@state.mn.us.
As you have time, please enjoy the following pieces that have highlighted the program this fall, and thanks for being such a valued partner in this work:
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