If your son is 100% certain he is not attending a school, then I would assume he has notified them already. If he isn’t that certain, then it would seem there is still a chance he may attend. LittleBlueHouse is correct, May 1 is the deadline and not a day before. We have all been held to strict deadlines throughout this entire process, and the same holds for the institutions as well. While it might be nice to someone monitoring a waitlist or associated funds if he were to move on early, your son has earned his spot, and the ability to hold it until May 1 or until he’s absolutely sure he wont be needing it, whichever comes first. It doesn’t seem like he is hoarding it….it may still be a viable option for him. That’s not selfish.
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Thank you so much for this perspective! It feels important for us to get it “right,” because he really clicked with the instructor at the 2nd choice, and hopefully their paths will cross in the future. It is helpful to remember that he has earned the spot and that we can take a deep breath and let this play out.
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I meant “tsbna44 is right” about May 1. YOU’RE LittleBlueHouse.
Still holds true though. 
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I think the one thing that would be great (which I’m encouraging my son to do as well) is once he’s fully committed somewhere to at that point let any professors he’s been in touch with know especially if they are still waiting on an answer from him. I’d much rather them hear it from him than for them to look at their studio list come May 2nd and see his name isn’t there.
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We are officially committed to IU/Jacobs. SO HAPPY TO BE DONE.
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Congrats! Join us on the Parents Page if you haven’t already. Be sure to answer the membership questions. It’s how we attempt to keep the bots and spammers out. https://www.facebook.com/share/g/1ExyQTtSJ8/?mibextid=wwXIfr
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Congrats!!!
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Still waiting on word from MSM. We did their financial aid zoom last night and there were lots of appeals questions and they said it should take 5-7 business days. Today will be business day #7 so I guess if we don’t hear from them today then we’ll be contacting them tomorrow to see if we can get an update. I’m honestly not expecting much because their presentation was very big on you finding a way to afford stuff, how they don’t stack scholarships, and how their “merit” scholarships were merit + need based (which I knew). But given that the merit isn’t fully merit based then I doubt they’d care about matching other schools whose merit was fully merit based.
awesome - thanks for the suggestion!
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Just for the future people’s sake, I really just think all of this would have been different if MSU had a smoother process. 1) it seemed like they did rolling admissions and rolling scholarship offers, so kids who auditioned sooner benefited. Like my son had a violinist friend that got a $17K scholarship offer who auditioned on the first available weekend, even before my child heard whether he got in. 2) no scholarship dollars seemed to be available for him. professor told him he was on the scholarship consideration list, but then when he emailed admissions asked whether all the scholarships had been sent out, he wasn’t told one way or another. it was strange. 3) IU was on top of it. heard when they said he would hear on admittance. scholarships sent out on a specific date. good follow up from Jacobs staff and timely responses to emails. asked IU prof for an urgent meeting on Sunday and she called him immediately. 4) so then the kid just thought he wasn’t getting anything from MSU, so one of his besties who had been leaning towards MSU but when he heard my son likely wasn’t going because of $$$, he then committed elsewhere. 5) then MSU a couple weeks later matched IU, but then gave him 24 hours notice of a deadline to accept said scholarship or it would go away.
in short, the experience you are receiving matters, and it definitely sends a message. it really changed where his heart was.
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I 100% agree that the experience you get matters and I do not like how they handle the scholarship process at all. My son was accepted a few days after his audition yet we waited well into March before we heard anything about a scholarship and even then it wasn’t even close to what we’d need to make it financially work.
Yeah, that’s not great. I really think it was poor form of them to tell him noon Sunday that he has until 4pm Monday to make a decision on commitment. I felt like it was coming though, and warned the kid on Friday, but still. Uncool.
That’s super uncool and I don’t think anyone would enjoy feeling pressured like that to commit. UNT tried to do that to my son and I had my son reply saying he was not able to commit at that time because he was legitimately still waiting on several schools to just let him know if he got in or not. This is a BIG decision to make and not one that anyone should just jump at unless you know its your #1 choice
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interested to hear what the end result is…my kid opted not to appeal since it was so close to the deadline and the amount that he would need to make it work (and make it competitive with his better offers) was pretty large–it just seemed so unlikely and he was ready to have a decision made.
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We were there. Floored when we heard “We are trying to get all finaid appeals by May 1…”
The fact that it sounds like they don’t even have the staff to get to it fast enough is just crazy. This happens every year, this shouldn’t be a surprise to them at all.
We could probably fill a library with all the “gripe” stories at the end of this thing. I will add that one of my daughter’s schools to which she was admitted got cut before she even closed the acceptance letter based on the audition experience alone. She was very excited to have the opportunity to audition and walked away disappointed by the entire day as presented by the program. She couldn’t believe it and neither could I. My oldest wisely said “That’s their opportunity to make their best impression on you too. If that is what they rolled out, you need to consider it.” Experience. Matters.
And just to throw some kudos at Jacobs since its currently on the table- you could make several lists on which schools did what the best through this process, and the merits of each program, and all of them have their plusses and minuses. But my daughter and I agreed on one thing, Jacobs just had their act together the most, procedurally and administratively, from the day we created the Artistic Profile to the day she enrolled and all days in between. As it relates to the “retail sales and customer service” of the thing, they just have it down. They made their case. They were timely and strong with their merit offer and left so little room to bargain remaining it made the process almost a moot point. It was very much like a litigator making their closing argument and meticulously laying the facts on the desk. Now that is just our personal experience. Individual results may vary.
In the end, she had it down to Jacobs and another similar institution which was very professional but was sort of tediously of dragging out the merit process as is being discussed. It was still a coin flip decision. And one night she came home from rehearsal and just said “Its Jacobs. I still can’t say 110% which one I want, but I know which one wants me.”
Experience. Matters.
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100%! My son felt completely wanted at Jacobs. That’s important. The IU prof even knew about his deadline, and followed up today and asked him his decision. And she already replied back!
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A little late, but we submitted appeals today. Hoping to hear by next week!
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Welp I think we are done. MSM came back last night with absolutely NO additional money on our appeal. They claimed they have no money to give and how they are a non-profit and blah blah blah. Yes I was bitter but honestly I’m glad they made the decision THAT much easier for my son. Granted he wanted to “sleep on it” before clicking the deposit button but it looks like he’s heading to Berklee. I assume we will officially commit this afternoon after school.
On another note this week has been a complete roller coaster for us. His band director has been out sick for awhile now and we just found out that things are not looking good at all. My son has teared up the last two nights talking to me because we just don’t know how much time he will be around for and I want to make sure my son let’s his teacher know just how impactful he has been for him before its too late. It’s just so incredibly sad because the kids are this mans purpose in life and they really do love him so very much.
So yeah rollercoaster of emotions happening over here.
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