Welcome to the College confidential community!
Things to do ASAP:
- your daughter will get all kinds of advantages with an IEP, starting with extra time on the SAT (and extra support in college). It levels the playing field with kids who don’t have her challenges. She deserves it. Think that some kids pretend to have all sorts of illnesses just to have these advantages and the guidance counselors have to keep them from doing it… She deserves it.
- you qualify for free/reduced lunch, so go see the guidance counselor tomorrow to aak what you need to complete to get that as well as fee waivers (even if she doesn’t want to eat in the cafeteria or feels bad about it) because it automatically unlocks 2 free SAT exams, 2 free SAT subject dates (up to 6 subjects), and 2 free ACT, plus automatic fee waivers for all college applications (up to 20 on common app and for Maryland public universities) and CSS Profile (the forms for the best financial aid at the most generous colleges). Your daughter may feel uncomfortable but tell her to keep her eyes on the prize: college.
- once the fee waiver issue is solved, have her register immediately for the September ACT. She can practice as for the SAT using Khanacademy.org and check out an ACT book from the library.
Her Reading score is amazing but that math score is oddly low (due to her emotional state). She needs to being it up working through the Khan academy website. An issue is that the August SAT was yesterday… And there’s none till October. So she needs to register and take the ACT in September to have a score that reflects her skills on time for Questbridge, the deadline of which is fast approaching. She can apply with her current SAT score and indicate the circumstances in which she took it, then add she took the act and will send the score as soon as it’s available - that should do it.
She’s just 40 SAT points away from being able to apply to Questbridge. Questbridge is a program that selects excellent students whose parents have not gone to college and whose family makes less than 65k a year then sends their application to lots of elite colleges eager to diversify* their student body, and if the student’s a finalist and “matches” with a college, they get a guaranteed 4-year full ride (it may even cover transportation to the college and books on top of tuition, fees, room&board IE rent and food.)
Has she take the August SAT? - Meanwhile she should read the Questbridge website.
- Google the following
“Mount Holyoke NPC”, "Connecticut College NPC “, “Dickinson NPC”, “Goucher NPC” “U Maryland Baltimore county NPC”, " U Maryland college park NPC”, “St Mary’s College Maryland NPC” .
What is the net cost for you at each?
(All of those would be possible colleges for your daughter but I think net cost would be different at each so you could cross out the unaffordable ones.)
Good to know:
That price listed by the colleges on brochures isn’t what you’ll pay. The expensive private colleges “that meet need”** often end up cheaper than public universities for families that make less than 50k a year. Many colleges are very expensive but are also very generous, so that you’d be expected to pay nothing and your daughter would be expected to contribute earnings from a summer job and take on a loan (for $5,500 max). Some Universities don’t even expect her to take on a loan. However they’re very selective so use this website extensively - lots of people here can help you/her navigate the process.
What does she do when she’s not in class? (Activities, job, watching siblings…)?
- that may mean : students whose parents make less than 75k/year, whose parents have not gone to college, who come from rural areas...
** only about 85 Universities" meet need" out of 3,700 so most private universities don’t “meet need”. Not all universities are equally generous but if the student has taken honors and AP classes with good grades and has good test scores, even colleges that don’t meet need make an effort to incentivize these prize students to come. And then you have colleges that just don’t have scholarships for students outside their state, such as UCs in California or Penn State in Pennsylvania. No point in applying there if you can’t pay.