cptofthehouse

One of mine had to audtion, and it was a pain and very expensive. Are there any Unified type audtions where the schools will all be in one place for the sort she is doing? For my son, there was, as he was a Musical Theater major.

I also suggest that you look for local and state venues for your DD that can provide her with what she needs and are not as competitive. All of those kids were so talented at those auditons, and there were only so many spots. With so many contenders. getting fin aid or merit money is also difficult. Everyone should have a back up school which really should be the likely school in a situation where the chances are up there for the othere choices.

GolfFather

No point in wasting ED on a far reach.


True, S/T. I do see your point. Thanks.

my3gr8boyz

Gosh.... Soooo much to think about, and we've already been thinking for a while. Every time I see a thread like this, I become less comfortable with our family's decision to go ED. We are not low income, and by comparing several 100% need schools, the NPC's have shown us similar COA amounts. The aid packages include about $2000 summer work and/or student contribution, as well as $2000 work study and a $5000 student loan. I agree with the posters who thought it was fine for a student to work some for his/her education. (These numbers are pretty specific to our ED school, Duke, but were similar for other top schools). Also, the calculator gave us a "scholarship" which chopped 25k off tuition. So the remaining 30k or so is up to us to finance/pay somehow. We decided it is doable. If he were to get any small outside scholarships, those come off the loan first, then the work study, and THEN off the scholarship.

As a student mentioned early in this thread, there is no "similar" school for him. We have found that to be the case for our son, and I have a hard time feeling like we "should" have gone RD to compare packages. He will very likely be a NMF, so we know right off the bat that there are many schools he could attend completely cost free (Alabama comes to mind). There are other schools with good engineering departments who would love to have him and I'm sure would entice him with generous packages. But he doesn't want to go to any of those schools. They don't seem to fit who he is. It's not that Duke is a dream school. He hasn't wanted to go there for years. He didn't fall in love with it for its name or one single specific reason. There are many reasons why Duke stands above the rest for him. He has well defined academic interests and a major in mind (double major actually - ECE and CS), and from knowing him and his abilities his whole life, I don't foresee that changing much. He does not plan on Grad school, although he could do the 4+1 at Duke and get a masters in 5 years. So we are not trying to save on undergrad to get the "better name" grad school. And yes, of course it is easier to have it all done before Christmas, but with the Common App, applying to other schools if he is denied or deferred at Duke should not be that hard ("not that hard" does not take into account the emotion if he doesn't get accepted...)

So, perhaps I have hijacked a bit here, since the thread was really about low income families and ED, but posts headed into some higher incomes, and there seems to be some disagreement as to the levels of need in which ED would not be a good idea. I guess I just don't want to feel like we made a dumb or uninformed decision... I am completely aware of the options that we are giving up by picking one school up front. In a way, for me personally, I'm better off not ever knowing what could've been monetarily. I think those decisions in April would literally drive me to the funny farm!

emeraldkity4

My nephew was accepted to Duke for engineering, but money wasnt there, he graduated from UC Boulder ( instate) with an aero engineering degree & started @ Boeing a couple months later.

Crimsonstained7

my3gr8boyz, the similar colleges person was me. I feel the same way. I haven't loved it for years (I even use this fact in my essay) and I didn't just like one thing. There literally is NO other place like Northwestern in terms of what I like. I like football, and the Big 10 is my favorite, I want great academics, I love lakeside campuses, I like that it's in a suburb, but near a big city, I love the size, I even love the colors and the mascot. No other school has the same stuff that it does, so why not apply ED?

As for not wasting ED on Far Reach, I feel like applying ED would actually give a better chance at getting in due to the fact that it boosts yield. If you may not have gotten in otherwise, maybe they say since you loved it enough to apply earlier, and you're borderline good enough, let them in. Just a thought

cptofthehouse

If a kid really has a school heads and shoulder over all of the others that he prefers, and you, the paents are willing and able to take the risks if the aid package isn't quite what you want, go for it. For a school like Duke, some of the more severe pitfalls are not there, and you are an informed parent.

Be aware that just because the chances are a bit better in most series for ED, that getting into a school like Duke is still a chancey propostion. I strongly suggest that all of the other applications get completely set to go because if it's a no go, I've seen kids do go into a spiral of depression and the having to fill out other apps especially during a holiday season and with friends and classmates celebrating their acceptances, it can be a tough go. At least if those apps are set to go, all that has to be done is to mail them, and the kid can focus on feeling sorry for himself yet keeping the grades and other stuff going. Yes, i have seen ED denials send some kids into a tailspin that brought down grades and jeopardized other applications too.

GolfFather

Well said.

my3gr8boyz

Yes... I do agree... I am having enough trouble having him finish his Duke stuff... I would love to have him do the others, and I may be able to get him to do the ones that don't require him to put his heart and soul into a supplement for a school he doesn't really want to attend... We even got one school offering us a free application, so there wouldn't even be a $75 fee to do that one early. That is Case Western, and he has no desire to go there and for years has wondered why kids apply to schools they have no intention of attending (his cousin, for example). But I've been trying to promote that school as a good one for engineering AND merit aid. I think you guys have convinced me to get him to at least get the apps for other schools ready.

@Crimsonstained - yes! It was your feelings toward NU. Those are the exact type of feelings my son has for Duke, like its location in the south, its opportunities for tennis, its excellent Mock Trial team, (these are besides the academics!) and it's a do-able drive for us (don't HAVE to fly) and the colors are great! (well, perhaps that is MY preference!) Everything I print from them prints in blue ink! I love it!! Almost every other school we've seen has red as its main color, which I could tolerate as well Except Lehigh... my high school AND college main color was brown, so I'm not so keen on that one!

cptofthehouse

You, know, you can fall in love with a car being offered for raffle. Free to to the winning entrant. Market value--more than a house. And you can dream how much you want it and what a great time you'll have driving it. The raffle might not just be your pull out the ticket one, but requires a story and some accomplishment. Real nice to spend the time on that entry, but I think anyone would know what the chances of winning that are.

In the meantime, if you are going to need wheels, you had better look in to other options More affordable, predictable ones. So, yes, it's all well and good to dream about something, but one has to also cover the other contingencies. You do know what the chances are of getting into Duke. So you do know that those other apps are very important as well as keeping up the grades. Not a school I know is going to consider depression over being denied ED as a reasonable excuse for doing poorly senior year.

my3gr8boyz

Perhaps I am confused... are you saying that the chances of getting into Duke are as good as winning a raffle? Wait, no I see that you are saying it's not like a "just pull a ticket" raffle... I have studied the stats of early decision admission to Duke, as well as to Pratt, and I don't think I would quite rate them on par with a raffle. I am well aware that kids with stats, etc., as my son's don't always get into top schools. I hear that all the time, especially receiving 2400 on SAT's does not guarantee admission anywhere (his are not quite THAT high!), but I do feel he is a very good candidate. But I will still work on him to have that back up set of wheels ready to go if/when the time comes!

cptofthehouse

I'm saying that falling in love with Duke is risky. It is one of the most selective schools in the country. When you start looking at schools with an accept rate of around 20%, it starts getting really dicey. Duke's accept rate is about 15%. In there are the Carolina quota--if you live in the Carolinas, which maybe you do, that's a whole other story, the recruited athletes, development, alums, and those with hooks. It's a tough go. I think it's perfectly fine for kids to dream and hope and apply to whatever schools that interest them. In your situation, I believe I said that ED seems to be reasonable as you are an informed parent, and you have other schools as well. I'm saying that, yes, Duke is a lottery ticket school and it can really hurt when a kid invests a lot of emotion in such schools to the point that s/he actually has it in mind that that's where s/he is meant to go. I've seen a lot of crashes of great kids that way, as some of them have never been turned down from much of anything as they are top students, wonderfully talented and well regarded, and so told my everyone. It hurts when that happens. Hurts us parents too as we share a nerve with our kids--they hurt, we do too. So, keep the focus off the school that is already getting so much of it, and try to keep the other schools in the picture. I hate it when a school that should have been a likely school is called a safety school and in the kid's mind is the loser school because it was always just the back up school. It's so much tougher in that regard for so many more kids now. When I applied to college, it was expected that I would go to a local choice where my dad got free tuition for me since he worked for the program. Everything else was a lottery ticket, so the expectations were not as steep and if it didn't happen, it didn't feel like a failure. Now some of these top kids really get to feeling that way when they do not get into the most selective schools.

KatMT

spunk61 you may not need the three days... a visit is often a part of the audition day.

If all of the schools are that far away from home, is she looking any of her instate public options?

For Music Ed you D will likely want to look at in-state public options.... they will be less expensive than privates or OOS publics.... generally speaking it is best to study music ed in the state you wish to teach when you graduate because of the teacher certification piece, but many states do have reciprocity for certification.

Talent merit is VERY competitive for Music School admissions. If she is looking for merit, she may want to look for schools that offer academic merit for her stats, and offer music education.

Have you run the NPC on the websites for the schools in which she is currently interested? Do any of them promise to meet full financial need?

If you have not already done so, you may want to check out the music majors forum for detailed advice.

GolfFather

Exactly.

Schools that are that selective - it's not an issue of taking the "best" 3,000 applications out of the 30,000 that they receive. There is no measureable difference between the 2,999th best applicant and the 3,001st best applicant.

It becomes a crap shoot.
I think a lot of parents and students don't realize that.
And it's not personal and it doesn't mean the student is a bad person or is not "qualified" if they don't get in.

cptofthehouse

There was a book written by a former Duke admissions employee, and it goes into a lot of detail as to how Duke selects its students. She coined the phrase "BWRKs" for many kids applying their, Bright Well Rounded Kids, a description that generally put them in the reject pile.

Crimsonstained7

CPT- That actually makes me feel slightly better about applying to a top school, if they're anything like Duke. I'm not involved in a ton of things like a lot of people applying are, I just did a few things passionately and for a long time.