Sal Khan's story: College admissions

- Hi, I'm Sal Khan, founder of the Khan Academy. I just wanted to welcome you to this resource on navigating the college of, I guess, application, admissions, and paying-for process. You know, for me this is a super-important thing. College was a big part of my life. Obviously, we all know you learn a lot at college, but it also opens up your mind. You have, it's important to be in a community that really challenges you, between your peers, your professors, I met my wife in college, many of the same people that I worked with in college, I remember I was in a entrepreneurship competition my junior year, and many of the people who were on my team then, I'm still working with now, 20 years later, on Khan Academy. And I think it would be fair to say if I hadn't had that experience, Khan Academy might not exist. And because college can be such a mind-expanding, an eye-opening experience, it's really important that everyone realizes that it's actually more accessible than most people think. When I was a kid, my mom raised us as a single mother and I just assumed that we would never be able to afford a selective, private four-year university. But my sister, who was three years older, when she applied to college, she got into actually several really good schools, and her first choice, when she applied, you know, when I looked at the actual dollar amount for the tuition, there's no way. That was actually, the tuition at that university was more than my mom made in a year. But they gave my sister a financial aid package, some was contributed by my mother, but my sister had to take on a loan, do some work study, but they made it so that she could go. And that opened the possibilities for me. When it was my time, I applied where I thought that I could thrive the most, and I applied for financial aid, and like my sister, they made it possible for me to have that very rich and important experience in my own life. So my biggest hope is that, as you go through these resources, you look at it from your own lens, and it opens up the same type of possibilities that I was lucky enough to have in my own life.