@mamaedefamilia , Albright College in PA gives full aid based on FAFSA
@RookieCollegeMom Where did your daughter end up?
@mamaedefamilia - St. Lawrence is worth a look. I don’t know if they claim to meet full need, but they are fafsa-only and gave my son a fantastic financial aid package. His academic profile was a pretty big bargaining chip, though. I don’t know if they would gap students with lower scores. As a general rule, if you look outside the Northeast, you will find more fafsa-only schools.
I’m glad @Trixy34 speaks so highly of St Lawrence!!! My S19 will be attending. I’m giddy that they are simply a FAFSA school as I have a D17 at a CSS school (Smith) and it’s HARD to gather all the information each year!
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Avoid the impulse to steer your kid to the kind of school that you would choose. Yes, they need guidance because they’re teenagers, but it’s not about you, it’s about them. Let them feel they got to steer the ship. This leads to greater satisfaction with their ultimate choice. The only absolute rule for our twins was that no one was going into debt - us or them - for undergrad. We had saved in 529 accounts since the day the kids were born and we knew they could find a good fit without going into debt.
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Our twins probably applied to too many schools - between the 2 of them, we had 25 apps out. They both had great stats, so we really didn’t need to worry that they would be shut out. We could have whittled the list down.
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My kids were going for merit. We underestimated the amount of work that would be. Even after Jan application deadlines, they had to write lots of essays as they were invited to apply for “invite only” merit scholarships or travel to on-campus interview weekends. Of course, they were thrilled to have the opportunity, but we weren’t prepared for the amount of work.
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This whole process was pretty stressful. I think it was mostly because we were all new to this, and maybe, just maybe, I was a little too involved. Also, since they were high stats kids, everyone from teachers to friends to aunts and grandparents thought they could write their own ticket. Having gone through the process, I now know this is not the case. But there will always be well-intentioned folks who will say “you should be able to get a free ride” or “you should be able to get in anywhere”.
Happy result - Twin #1 wanted to go to a big state U with great sports. He’s there now with a full ride and loads of opportunities bco his status in his scholarship cohort, plus great football games to cheer at. Not what I would have initially looked for, but perfect for him and now I am completely sold (could it be he was wiser than me?). Twin #2 more concerned with serious academics (and tbh, prestige), ended up at very rigorous T10 school which will give her lots of new experiences with many different types of people and a fantastic education, but a college fund with $0 in it at the end of 4 years. Although the application process had its share of stress and crabbiness, now both are thriving and we parents couldn’t be happier/prouder.
@browniesundae Thanks for sharing your lessons!
Echoing @browniesundae, we underestimated the work involved with seeking merit aid for our S18. He had very high stats and, initially, a decent level of motivation to write additional essays. The motivation wore off and it became really hard to convince him to finish essays after a while (for example, he was accepted to WashU but did not write the essays to be considered for merit, so WashU came off the table).
In addition to the challenge of all the supplemental essays, he is not the kind of person who is likely to knock someone’s socks off in a competitive interview pool where kids need to sell themselves face to face. When he started getting invited to in-person weekends to compete for scholarships, we realized that many of the most significant scholarships were really not attainable for him. I don’t mean to sound defeatist, but it is what it is.
He ended up at a flagship in-state public and we thank our lucky stars every day because the scholarships he was looking at had grade requirements that could have made college life much more stressful for him and us. He is generally doing well, but has had some struggles and adjustment issues that would have been magnified if large amounts of $$ were on the line.
If we were starting over, I wish we would have gathered more information about the scholarship process school by school before deciding whether to put so much pressure on him to compete for merit. He did end up with a variety of merit offers, including full tuition, but I now believe we (and he) are lucky he didn’t go with those offers.
@pickledginger Thanks for your insights. There are some schools (and they are rare) that don’t tie a merit scholarship to minimum GPA while at college. Sounds like he’s done well.
@Theoden You are right. DS’s scholarship requires a 3.4, which was the highest we encountered (I think he will manage it - fingers crossed). DD’s merit at T10 has no GPA requirement. She just needs to “remain a student in good standing”. I didn’t see that for any of the other scholarships she applied for.
This article on the topic of maintaining a scholarship is old (5 yrs) but might be useful:
http://money.com/money/collection-post/3149027/dont-lose-your-college-scholarship/
Another thing about scholarship weekends with interviews, etc. Sometimes they are mostly just a recruitment tool. For example DD18 was invited to a weekend at St. Louis Uni. When we got there we found out they were doing the program 2 weekends in a row with 200 kids per weekend – so 400 kids for about 20ish full tuition scholarships. I had to foot the bill for travel, hotel, etc. Afterwards, I felt it was just a way to get high stats kids to visit campus and be “sold” on the school in person.
But not all of them were like that. DS18 went to one scholarship interview weekend where they invited 70 to interview and they gave 25 full rides - and he got one! There were also a couple where the school paid for flights.
And please don’t pick a school based on being an athlete - I have seen way too many kids not like the program, get injured, etc and then they transferred because they didn’t even like the school - they were just focused on playing D3 football.
Excellent point, I couldn’t agree more. My oldest was S14, and many kids in his class sole criterion for selecting a school was whether they could continue to play their sport of choice in college. Most of these ended up transferring because they hadn’t investigated their school thoroughly. This included a boy who was the state Gatorade player of the year in football. My younger S20 is an athlete…he used to pitch in baseball until his shoulder started hurting. He made the decision to keep playing but to no longer pitch, and many parents thought we were crazy for not getting him surgery. In the end, he will pick a college based chiefly on its academic offerings, in fact, his first choice school doesn’t even have a baseball team. Don’t let the athletic tail wag the life dog.
@browniesundae & @pickledginger
Thank you for bringing up that aspect of the process. My D19 went through almost the same process you described. Luckily one of the “scholarship competitions” was local enough it did not require a hotel, but still took time. D19 did one where 300-400 kids got interviewed. The number of people doing the interview had to be 40-50 people from the university. I call it a luck of the draw situation. It only works if you click with the interviewer. We know all of them are not created equal. You are right about them being recruiting tools.
I think by the time D19 got to doing the T20 essays she was done. Also I think she could read the tea leaves that the money would not be there. The extra merit essays are tough.
My main advice is to have a very clear picture of what schools make the most sense by July of the Summer before senior year of HS. Narrow it down to 6-8. Understand the money and cost. That is important.
There are many athletes who use their sport to get into the college they really want to go to but can’t afford or can’t get into without a hook.
We viewed it as a three legged stool with academics, athletics, and finances being the three legs. If all are equal, the stool won’t wobble.
One of my nephews went where he was recruited for baseball. School 1 (junior college) didn’t want him to major in engineering because of the time commitment. His ACT was much higher than their average; they weren’t sure what to do with him. Transferred to School 2 (small private D-I), injured his pitching arm, never got back into their rotation and didn’t want to borrow money to attend after his scholarship was reduced. Was set up to transfer to School 3 (another small D-I), but his best friend passed away in an accident. They had played baseball together since T-ball. Nephew’s heart wasn’t in it after his friend died. Went home and got a job in accounting. Doesn’t have his degree. He’s married, happy and dad to two-going-on-three boys. Have no doubt as they get older, he’ll coach.
He had gotten interest from pro scouts and decided to chase that dream by pitching in college. As with most would-be professional athletes, a lot of things can get in the way of that goal.
I hope he goes back one day to finish the secondary math ed degree he talked about so that he can coach at his former HS.
tl;dr – consider the entire package. Be aware of tradeoffs. Make sure you want to attend that school if the sports piece doesn’t work out.
- My college spreadsheets had costs escalating 2.5-3.8% per year (3-5% per year for OOS public) based on 5-year averages. Schools like to increase room/board/fees more than tuition, and international/OOS tuition more than in-state.
- Discuss likelihood of taking longer than 8 semesters to graduate and agree on a contingency plan.
- Put in one app early to a safety school with rolling/EA admissions. Its worth the peace of mind to get one in the bank.
- Scholarships requiring a 2.5-3.0 GPA to keep are OK; those requiring a 3.5 should be viewed very skeptically, particularly for STEM majors.
Opinion a) Top 40 schools are now essentially as competitive (especially for engineering and comp. sci.) as top 10 schools used to be.
Opinion b) A 7% admit rate really means <2% for unhooked applicant (at $65-90 per app).
Opinion c) I expect litigation with schools to increase significantly in the next few years.
@MariettaDad litigation regarding?
@MariettaDad Good insights. I agree that scholarships that explode below a certain GPA aren’t so hot. Sometimes a 3.0 is hard to maintain if the school is super rigorous.
@Theoden @MariettaDad Let’s hope colleges are “super rigorous.” We need more grit, resilience, intelligence, and appreciation of the same.
Parents and students need to very carefully consider scholarship renewal GPA, but I wouldn’t automatically cross off a scholarship requiring a GPA higher than 3.0. Some of the best scholarships (mostly full rides) out there require up to a 3.5 to renew. Instead, ask questions of admin, parents and current students about the risk to assess whether it’s one that makes sense for your student.