@itsgettingreal17 : I too would gladly work with them. I tried reaching out to the newsoutlets but didn’t get a reply. 
Ugh. I knew I should not have clicked on this one. The title was too tempting. It is ok to be a proud parent/student, but any of us could have done this too if we thought the outcome was worth the effort.
During the essay the student left out this when answering “Why do you want to come to ABC University?”.
Answer: “Well I actually do not know why, as I lost track of how many colleges I applied to. But in the event I select you over the other 100 colleges I expect you to feel lucky”
On the surface, I was ready to say this was crazy. After reading the article and reflecting on the feedback from others, I’ve changed my tune. This “overboard with apps” situation cannot be evaluated without looking at the motivation. If it’s to cast a wide net so as to maximize financial aid opportunities, how can we begrudge anyone doing that? This is what appears to be the case here. If she’s playing by the rules and is willing to put in the time and energy, how is this any different than cram schools for SAT/ACT test taking, or college admissions advisors (the honest ones, anyway)? Yes, she can only go to one school. No, she isn’t getting a million dollars (and that figure is just used in a very stupid way in this article). But if she has some excellent options and they are going to throw money her way, all of that hard work has paid off. Good for her.
I have also heard of kids doing it for pure ego, which is something different altogether.
@Undercrackers but that does not appear to be her motivation nor does she appear to have picked a school with a good aid package.
Not enough info. It would be useful to a lot of other people to list the schools and what she got in merit money. FInancial is more personal, and I don’t expect anyone to reveal that No idea if she applied to any schools that meet a lot of need. I would not trust headline reporting to differentiate between fin aid and merit anyways. I see the two mixed up all of the time.
The articles/videos posted early in the thread show a handwritten list of schools with financial numbers next to them. Not clear if that’s the award $ per school, though it looks like it, as in the upper right hand corner of the pencil-written page page is a number greater than $1M. So it appears to be a tally of awards per school.
THe list might be in the photo, but the info is not presented in useful form for everyone. I hope she has a full ride option in the bunch after all of the work she did.
She already signed with a school that left her, it seems, with a $10k gap. I feel so sorry for her. She should be in a much better position.
Is it a $10K gap, or is she fundraising for additional money? What school is she accepting?
With all the effort she put into this, I"m sorry that she did not get a full ride. It goes to show how difficult it is to get one. It doesn’t matter if a hundred schools give you a partial package if you need all your costs met. You just need one school to make that offer.
I can’t believe how many news outlets picked up this non-story.
@cptofthehouse : Penn State Beaver
She probably thinks all colleges are like this and that a gofundme campaign is the only way to cover gaps.
@MYOS1634 - no need to try to go through the media. Looks like people have contacted her, and you could too, on her Facebook page.
Thanks. That must seem dumb, I hadn’t thought of it (I’m not really on FB so it doesn’t really occur to me).
Looks like she has turned off messaging but it looks like, from a quick look, that her page is accessible.
Very hard to glorify but also, I’m not going to blame the student for working her butt off to get in.
It seems like the result of the uncertainty of the system.
Once again, why I support lottery* and common admissions.
*After, obviously, a basic cutoff.
It would be a huge step in the right direction if EVERYONE - students, parents. high schools, and the media - would just STOP with the absurd practice of totaling scholarship money across multiple schools. Why do we encourage the celebration of these meaningless numbers?
How would the world react if a person applied to 100 minimum-wage jobs, totaled up everything they were offered, and ran around giddily announcing that they had received 150K/year in job offers? Everybody would quite rightly tell this person that they’d lost their mind.
And yet, the people we pay to educate our children see nothing wrong with announcing a total of scholarships earned by the senior class, totaling not only each student’s mutually-exclusive awards but also the combined total of hundreds of students. Media outlets breathlessly report stories like this one, where a student with “a million dollars in scholarships” gets her 15 minutes of fame but not, in reality, the funding she needs to attend any actual college.
I mean seriously… shouldn’t people who value education also value the critical thinking skills that are supposed to come with it?
Her “go fund me” account has just over $400. Sad.
The problem is that the money she got in scholarship was heavily advertised so some people must be wondering “why does she need a GoFundMe?”
Thanks for following up. Will add some more.
Only 4 people contributed to her “go fund me” account. Two were her parents.
$1 million sure seems like a lot unless it was only one year totals and the four year total is more like $4 million?
I was curious, so I did a quick calculation for my DD’s seven acceptances. Four year grant total of $775,00 and even with that, only four of the seven are affordable for us.