There are still a high number of students at my school who apply to 1-4 colleges. They just don’t make the press even if they get in to all of them with significant aid.
My lads applied to 3, 6, and 1 respectively. We weren’t full pay for any of them, but they all got decent aid. With the lad who chose one school we worried about finances, but he told us his Plan B was to take a year off and work if we couldn’t afford it. Fortunately, it did work out, but if he’d have needed Plan B it was there.
Applying to that many schools is crazy. This is the kind of thing that just adds to the frenzy and makes applying to college so stressful. That said, to each their own
@Postmodern - I do recall your feelings about when student posters seem to be “shamed” on cc. A quick review of this thread seems to reflect only a small number of critical comments ostensibly about the student’s choice to do this. In this case, this student, as the Val of her GA high school, is an auto admit to UGA and Tech (though it is unclear if she was interested in Tech), and while they don’t disclose her standardized test scores, she will get at least the HOPE, and perhaps the Zell Miller scholarship, she will get somewhere around 80% of tuition paid with the HOPE and 100% with the Zell, and these are certainly fine schools. She could have also earned additional scholarships (not sure if she applied) at these and other instate schools. So, TBH, its hard to understand the decision to apply to so many schools all over the map, though she said she plans to play volleyball in college. That could have helped her narrow her search.
We don’t know if this student is a reader of CC or not. I have less of an issue with posters (parents or students) venting about both the media sensationalism and the student’s decision to do this -here on a board where venting is part of the process. IMO there is a big difference between venting in a thread like this vs responding harshly directly to a student poster. JMO, FWIW.
DADof4- what financial aid match are you talking about? The ivies were taken to court over colluding over financial aid- they are no longer allowed to do that.
That’s not how financial aid works. Schools make more offers than they expect to have accepted, because they have a good idea of what percentage will choose the school. So, no. Money is not tied up and being kept from other students.
Look, I think this many acceptances is not something to be particularly celebrated, but to equate it to the recent admissions scandal, or talk about how those low income students have it better than middle class students, seems really silly to me.
Our D only applies to one college—she got in and transferred to that U. My friend’s D only applied ED to one U. She got in. She applied to one grad school and got it—just before her Harvard grad acceptance she started second-guessing herself and saying, hmmm maybe it would have been better to have had additional apps. Our S applied to 7 or so, got excellent merit (>50% tuition) at 3, and chose one of those 3.
Applying to dozens of Us is just too many imho. The student was not well advised to guided.
A carefully selected number of Us (preferably with academic and financial safeties) plus some matches and reaches really should be enough but that doesn’t make for sensational journalism.
Ah. A post pages back. That’s just the thing— there is so much misunderstanding about this process. Have to wonder how many people watching the news think she got $1M that she can somehow use in various ways. These news stories are so misleading.
This young woman goes to Lucy C. Laney High School, an almost entirely African-American school about which Wikipedia says “Female literacy rate of graduates is 63 %, whereas male literacy rate of graduates is 42 %. This is comparatively high for a high school in a deprived area.” Average ACT 17. Percent students at grade level in American Literature 7%, in US History 2%.
Let those students and that community celebrate the success of one of their own, even with excess. It’s not like they have a ton of academic success to celebrate. We’re not talking about a student at Stuyvesant or Palo Alto High here. All the sneering in this thread is unbecoming.
Wonder how many of the children of the 4K civilians working at, or the15K soldiers stationed at Ft. Gordon (a few miles away) might attend this high school?
And after all that, she’s signing a NLI for a volleyball scholarship today. Volleyball is a headcount sport, so if she’s going to a D1 school, it is a full scholarship and she won’t need or use the $1M.
Obviously it is wrong to shame a child. However, this news story is obnoxious, regardless of her race, high school, parents, income level - whatever. Folks are just reacting to how insane the application process has become when a kid can’t even remember what schools she applied and it is considered a success story.
Which story has the student not remembering where they applied? And @Leigh22 , did you read the information about how the Common Black App works? One application and one fee can result in 53 acceptances whether you want them or not.
Has she yet disclosed where she plans to attend? Many of the schools on her list (Illinois, Louisville, Penn State, Austin Peay, Michigan, Portland… and on…) are Div 1 womens’ volleyball schools.
I’m not sneering- and for sure, the community can celebrate this student’s achievement. But she STILL can’t spend the scholarship money from a school she does attend, and she STILL can’t attend more than once college. Those are just the facts.
Yes, Ivies with match ‘like’ Ivies, which means HYP will match each other, maybe Columbia, and Brown/Dartmouth will compare. They are matching need based aid, so the original offers are (or should be) close.