Free College Planning
Resources for Every
Chancellor Family

Because Chatsworth High School is where his own story began. Trevor Mizrahi graduated from Chatsworth High School before building Premier College Guidance, the college planning practice he has run from Westlake Village since 2008. The path from Lurline Avenue to founding a statewide college planning practice required navigating exactly the same process that current Chancellor families are navigating now, but with less information, fewer resources, and no advisor who had walked the same road. Every tool and resource on this page was built to be what Trevor wishes had existed when he was a Chancellor. The consultation is free for Chancellor families specifically because this community is where the work started. It is not a marketing decision. It is a personal one.

Cal Grant A provides up to $14,934 per year at UC () campuses for qualifying California students. Cal Grant B provides a $2,010 living expense award for very low income students. Both require filing a FAFSA or California Dream Act Application with a verified GPA by March 2 of senior year. The deadline is absolute. There are no extensions, no appeals, and no exceptions for any reason whatsoever. For Chancellor families at qualifying income levels, missing March 2 means losing up to $14,934 per year (2026-27 amount) for four years, which is up to $59,736 in total financial aid that becomes permanently unavailable. This deadline is the one that costs Chancellor families the most money when it is missed. File FAFSA on October 1 of senior year, the first day the portal opens. Set a calendar reminder for March 2. Do not miss it.

Yes. The answer to this question is yes, and it is not a reassurance. It is a documented fact. UC holistic review is specifically designed to account for the school context and community circumstances a student navigated on the way to building their application. A Chancellor who has taken the most rigorous courses available at CCHS, earned strong grades, built genuine extracurricular depth in robotics, drama, athletics, the G+STEAM Magnet, or leadership, and written PIQ essays that are specific and authentic about their experience as a student at a large, diverse LAUSD charter in the San Fernando Valley is being evaluated in exactly that context. The gap between where a Chancellor starts and where they can go is not determined by the school's ranking. It is determined by what the individual Chancellor did within the school. That is a choice, and it is one that the Chancellor families who come to PCG have already made by seeking out resources. The path is real. It has been walked. Trevor walked it himself.

The most common and most costly mistake Chancellor students make in UC PIQ essays is writing about their community and their school experience in abstract terms. The San Fernando Valley in general. A diverse community. A school that prepared them for success. These statements are true for thousands of California applicants and earn average scores in holistic review. The specificity that earns the strongest holistic review scores is different. The specific street corner in Chatsworth or the Santa Susana Mountains backdrop visible from the campus that shaped a particular memory. The specific teammate or teacher at CCHS whose name the student can use and whose influence was concrete. The specific Team 22 robotics challenge and what the specific engineering decision it required taught this student about problem-solving under constraint. The specific production at the drama department and the specific character moment that the student played or helped create. The specific experience of being the first in a family to seriously plan for college and what navigating that process taught the student about self-advocacy and initiative. These specifics are everywhere in the Chancellor experience. PCG's Story-Mapping Framework, available through the What Admissions Officers Actually Look For workshop, is the systematic way to find them and deploy them in the right prompts.

The G+STEAM Magnet provides a recognized academic pathway credential on the CCHS transcript and in school profile documentation. For UC readers, a Chancellor who enrolled in the G+STEAM Magnet is a student who proactively pursued a specialized academic program within a comprehensive school, which signals intellectual initiative in the same way that elective AP enrollment or extracurricular research does. The School for Advanced Studies dual enrollment program with Pierce College is even more directly valuable: college-level courses on the college transcript provide verifiable evidence of college readiness that goes beyond high school academic performance alone, and the credits earned can transfer to UC and CSU campuses, potentially saving a semester or more of tuition. For first-generation families where college cost is a significant consideration, maximizing SAS credits during high school is one of the most financially productive academic decisions available to a Chancellor. AVID participation, if available and active, provides additional application narrative about deliberate college preparation that UC readers specifically recognize and value.

For first-generation Chancellor families where inherited knowledge of college planning milestones is limited, earlier is better. Starting in 9th or 10th grade allows the A-G course sequence to be mapped correctly, the SAS dual enrollment decision to be made with full information, and the financial aid base year timing (which is based on income two years before enrollment, not the year of enrollment) to be understood before the relevant tax years are closed. Starting in junior year is the most common and most productive timing for most Chancellor families and allows the Cal Grant March 2 deadline, the FAFSA October 1 opening, and the UC November 30 deadline to all be met with preparation rather than discovered under time pressure. Trevor's free consultation is available by phone or video for Chancellor families regardless of where they are in the process. For the community where this work began, the consultation has never had a cost barrier. It never will.