I have contacted a few of the TE reps at different schools and run NPC calculators on a few schools, and it has only made things more confusing (to me).
Surprise #1: If it’s a really expensive school, it looks like we may qualify for some financial need-based aid (??), which I wasn’t expecting.
Surprise #2: Some of the more selective schools on our preliminary list(s) have slightly lower average GPAs than the more medium selectivity schools (i.e. Lafayette, Franklin & Marshall), and even if the average SAT scores of applicants are fairly high from those schools, they’re either test optional or test blind… (so, I’m not sure what’s making those schools more selective – just a smaller number of enrollment slots, perhaps?)
Surprise #3: Most of the schools, even the ones that I have seen on the TE threads as having TE awards supposedly in the 11-40% range seem to have a max of about 8-10 slots - even if there are 300+ students applying for those 10 slots… with this in mind, I feel like each selection needs to be chosen very carefully… or ignored (?) and just plan on a short list of public schools and treat the TE apps as more of a random lottery (?)
My daughter’s list and my list have maybe 5 schools that overlap.
I’m okay with her selections if we just go with her list, but the schools on my list that do not overlap are ones where her stats are above the average for the schools, so I’m hoping we can negotiate on some of these selections a bit more before we finalize the list. Her SAT scores are generally a little above the average for most schools on her list, but her GPA is a little below their average and I’m betting this is the more important number for most of the schools. Beyond that, her extracurricular involvement is significant, but she’s lacking in leadership roles.
Hi! I’m fine with sharing specifics if you think that would help in providing recommendations, but - I guess, I am just as interested (maybe, more interested) in understanding everyone’s approaches to compiling TE lists.
Most people I know at my workplace who have students using the benefit applied to far fewer than 10 schools, but the employee managing TE has said to “cast a wide net” as well as apply to a variety of schools.
Therefore, we were planning to use all 10 slots plus put 4 of those schools on the CIC list and use all 8 of those slots too.
I had thought that the set rate at some of the more expensive schools would make the schools still unaffordable (COA in the high $40s) - even if student is awarded the TE, but then I included TE and ran net price calculators at two of those schools and see that we would also qualify for need-based aid at both of those schools.
Immediately following this, at another TE school under consideration,
I saw on their web site that students awarded TE are not considered for any institutionally-funded need-based aid, so – now, I don’t know what to think… is this typical?
Maybe I should not have run net price calculators before applying because I thought we had an approach down, and I have learned a lot from reading the TE threads on this site. However, we are trying to continue visiting some schools & my daughter seems to like most campuses at this point,
so, I don’t want to necessarily have her tour those least likely to be affordable (unknowingly). Does this make sense?
Also, most schools I’ve contacted seem to award about 10 TE per 150 students applying for it, so – maybe it’s such a lottery-type situation and hassle that most students are better off not bothering? Especially if they’re still available for merit and need based aid rather than just TE, which might amount to less work in the end too?
In answer to this question, GPA is 3.71 UW/ 3.93 W and SAT is 1320; (she’s planning to retake it in August, as she didn’t prep much for the first one, but it could still stay around that zone, I would think). Intended major has changed maybe 4 different times throughout this past school year. She will definitely want to double major or/and have flexibility for switching majors. She is thinking Business, but she is interested in traveling abroad and other cultures, and is fairly creative & artsy, so she’s thinking Marketing & International Business, or Marketing & Political Science. She has liked large to mid-sized campuses or smaller ones if urban or urban adjacent.
She likes campuses with some green space and somewhat classic gothic collegiate architecture.
Current prospective TE list includes:
-Duquesne, Pitt (super long shot for TE, but we are in-state, so might work anyway if no TE, not sure about “wasting a space” due to how competitive, though), St. Joe’s (have heard similarly about St. Joe’s being super competitive for TE), maybe Ursinus, then Dickinson, Gettysburg, Syracuse, John Carroll, Baldwin Wallace, Wooster.
Dickinson and Syracuse are ED no EA, so - not sure how TE is handled with this added dimension; might need to scrap one or both of these from the list…
Others on my longer list (my daughter’s draft list consists of those already listed above), include Xavier U. (Cincinnati), Dayton, U. of Scranton, Loyola Maryland, Susquehanna, Elizabethtown, Lafayette, Shenandoah, St. John Fisher, maybe Franklin & Marshall or Bucknell.
Yes, there is a wide mix here; (hopefully, someone will say ‘yes, more safeties are needed,’ or ‘yes, sometimes adding a couple more selective schools works best,’ and input about either can help direct us to refine the list a bit. Yes, driving distance from W. PA is strongly preferred.
I’m thinking 10 on the TE list duplicating about 3-4 from the TE list for the CIC list, then adding maybe 3-4 more.
Are you getting the GPAs from the common data sets? If not, where? Unless you know exactly how those GPAs are calculated (unweighted or weighted, core courses only or all, etc.) and have your D’s GPA calculated in the same way, you can’t really use the GPA range/average from the college.
What is your budget?
Have you identified at least one highly likely/safety school that is sure to be affordable?
Hi - Yes, Kent State is my daughter’s main safety school (academic and financial). Our budget is $37,500 - this leaves room in 529s for her brother’s college journey in 3 years, is about the same as Pitt and Penn State, but hopefully, we can get a little under this if there is a TE pick that she likes that comes through. She is kind of on the borderline for stats for admission to main campuses of Pitt and Penn State.
I was getting mid GPA and SAT from the CDS for all the schools on my daughter’s draft TE list. I have not looked up all of the 8 or 10 additional ones on my list of other schools to consider - but some of them.
Pitt has a web page that lists the mid-range of students admitted last year to each of their schools, which is where I came up with that one.
She took two AP classes as a Junior this past year and scored 4s on both of those exams, and she will take two AP and one DE (college in HS) class her Senior year, so a good student, but not a high level of rigor. This is pretty consistent with most of her college-bound classmates. There are students that take 4 APs every year, but not many, and I believe there was only 1 AP class that they’re eligible to take as Sophomores.
You will have to take the GPA with a grain of salt sadly. There is not a set way that colleges calculate the average GPA on the CDS, if they even fill that field out…some take whatever’s on the transcript which can be a weighted GPA, some recalculate…like Pitt via the SRAR. So, again, unless you know how the school calculated whatever GPA you are looking at, I wouldn’t put much stock in it.
Does your D’s school use a program with scattergrams, like Naviance or Scoir? Needing TE does add a whole other piece of uncertainty to things, so I would treat most TE situations as if they were reaches…meaning the school may not be affordable if your D is accepted but doesn’t receive TE.
Yes, my daughter’s school uses Naviance. Honestly, it’s not of much help when it comes to any of the TE list schools, there is not much data about virtually any private schools except those that are extremely local.
I think we will add another public (or two) to our lists and maybe quit overanalyzing the TE picks…
I would still like to know how common it is that a TE award means no additional need-based financial aid consideration (that would make a couple of potential TE candidates unaffordable even with TE), if anyone has any additional insight about this, let me know.
Also, how does TE work with most ED or RD only schools … do you think it’s likely that all/ almost all TE awards are then made from those who ED?
The whole concept of ED is a little unsettling, and not just on the financial side of things.
I would contact each school where the stacking with other aid is a potential issue, as well as the ED question. They are the only ones who know what the current policies are.
I agree applying ED is unsettling if you are counting on TE. Even though one can back out of a ED acceptance if the money isn’t there, I am sure your D would rather not experience that disappointment.
You’ve likely already seen this, but there is a thread each year discussing TE. Here is the one from last year:
There is also a spreadsheet with users’ TE results from the last couple years.
That can give you a sense of how the process has worked out for different students here.
There is a big variety in how each school handles TE and other types of aid. You just have to find out what each does, by looking at past TE threads here, and by asking every school.
The NPCs can be helpful, but you have to add more context. In our experience, the NPCs helped us know how much merit aid and need-based aid a school offers in general. How they combine that with TE is unique to each school.
Our friends have twins who just finished the TE app process this year. They qualify for need-based aid at some schools. Their offers were all over the place. They both got several TE offers, and both got a number of affordable offers, including public safeties. One twin will attend a non-TE selective liberal arts college on a near full-ride (merit and need-based aid). The other twin will attend a TE school that also gave generous merit and need-based aid but did NOT give the student a TE award (the offered aid is equivalent to TE).
ED should only be done if the student has a clear favorite school that offers ED, and if you know it’s affordable based on the NPC. My kid is at an ED/RD only school on TE and he applied RD. He was also awarded TE at a different school that was ED/RD only.
I’ll add that some schools’ NPCs are quite good and others are not (irrespective of TE). I found that the more info it asked for, the more accurate the result was compared to the actual offer. But TE can throw a big wrench in that. Most of our son’s offers came in at or lower than the NPCs.
I know it will take time to skim the past TE yearly threads, but there is a real wealth of info in them so it’s likely worth settling in with your favorite beverage and a snack to do so (if you haven’t already).
You’ll see insights like: TE at Villanova is the longest of long shots, Delaware appears to be entirely stats based, Syracuse is holistic and will award up to full tuition while others schools never “stack” additional aid, Dayton often gives an aid package at least as good as the TE award would have been, Pitt might also but it depends heavily on major and financial need, etc.
There are some schools which receive a lot of TE applications. Some of these are more “prestigious” institutions and those award are super hard to get (e.g. Boston, Villanova). Some schools give out a lot of TE awards and others have very few. That’s not necessarily correlated with institutional prestige (e.g., Case Western is relatively prestigious but generous with TE awards and merit/need aid in general).
The percentages given on the TE site are sorta helpful, but the info you get here will likely be more helpful. Like if a school gives out 2 awards and has 10 applicants each year, or 2 awards to 50 applicants, or 20 awards to 100 applicants, the numerators and denominators matter as well as the percentages.
I think it’s rare that TE means no need-based aid consideration. Let’s say your SAI is $30K and the school has a policy of meeting financial need. They’re going to get you to that $30K whether that’s via TE or other aid. But meets-need schools are usually going to either be your in-state publics, or highly selective privates. Most schools that are not in those categories will give aid according to their institutional priorities. And that’s where each school is different. Perhaps a school which says it won’t give additional aid beyond TE is merely adhering to a normal practice in which they never give more than the equivalent of the TE amount in aid to literally anyone, no matter their need.
In our experience, our SAI was ~$25K and almost every offer came in between $20K-$30K. Our son applied to NO schools that claim to meet full financial need (other than our in-state publics). There were a few that were a small amount lower than 20K or higher than 30K, but they all got pretty close to our SAI via a variety of aid mechanisms (TE/merit/need) despite none of them officially being full meets-need. He did have good grades and test scores, and didn’t apply to super selective places, so I don’t know how that outcome would have been different if his stats were lower or had he applied to fancier places.
ETA: Some schools do TE waitlists and others do not. That is also an important variable. My kid got off 2 or 3 TE waitlists. One school’s AO told him in a meeting (before he’d applied) how many TE awards and applicants they had the previous year, how their waitlist worked, and that he was likely to get an offer. He also told him he wouldn’t get any additional MERIT aid on top of TE. It happened exactly like he’d predicted (got an offer after being on the waitlist for a short time). We were able to compare his non-TE offer to the new offer with TE. They gave him pretty good merit and need based aid initially. His amended offer with TE was even better (and still included some need aid). This will all vary by school.
Yes, plus right now with her changing ideas about size of school, different majors, etc., there is just less time available to be able to decide on things with the ED scenario. I think we should be able to see Dickinson before the Fall (just in case it’s a favorite to consider for ED?) For Syracuse, a visit before a potential ED deadline would be less likely, but I believe they generally award quite a few TE, so if admission happens with RD, there may still be TE as a possibility (?)
ED should only be done if the student has a clear favorite school that offers ED, and if you know it’s affordable based on the NPC. My kid is at an ED/RD only school on TE and he applied RD. He was also awarded TE at a different school that was ED/RD only.
I think it’s starting to settle in that - even with TE - this why the majority of people go with their in-state public schools; I had thought that I might “find a good deal” as our in-state flagships are fairly pricey (Pennsylvania), our kids are eligible for TE, and most net price calculators are saying that we can afford into the low $40Ks.
As I told my sister recently who said that her daughter would not be looking at any private schools at all, as she is a single mom and is assuming that she could not pay for private school expense… I’m starting to think that the cost of every college for an individual student is the price that your family can afford (or that the school thinks your family can afford).
That being said, a $5K-$10K variation in costs, annually, is significant over time, especially if the schools are a fairly even matchup for the student - all other things being equal.
Yeah Pennsylvania unfortunately has a complicated expensive public system compared to other states, though some very good schools.
Have you done a FAFSA estimator? Is your predicted SAI in the low 40Ks? Our finances aren’t very complicated and the FAFSA estimator is quite accurate compared to actual FAFSA for us. The NPCs we ran mostly came in above our SAI, while our actual offers were mostly lower than the NPC (and thus closer to our SAI).
Some privates offer amazing need and/or merit aid. Yes, it can be hard to beat in-state publics for price but a lot of privates basically “buy” students they want by offering them a lot of aid. You just have to figure out which schools are going to offer your daughter generous aid packages. You might be surprised (for better or for worse). And yes, with the exceptions noted upthread (in-state publics and meets-need elite privates), it’s mostly whatever an individual school decides it wants to do.
A $5-$10K annual variation does add up, and only your family can decide how much that matters to you. Our child could have lived at home and attended one of our employers for free. We collectively decided that would be acceptable, but we all really wanted him to go away for school for many reasons. So he got excellent aid, earns wages that he contributes to expenses, and is taking out federal loans. We’ve decided that’s worth it since we know paying back the loans won’t be a problem at all for him (YMMV). He was having trouble deciding on a school and was going to literally choose the cheapest one (other than the home institution) without regard for anything else. We had to tell him to disregard any price differences in the $5-$10K range because he was unable to correctly prioritize price differences due to his youth. So trying to balance all the factors to make a decision can be tough!
You know your kid, and you’re doing the right things to try to figure out the budget ahead of time. Do the FAFSA estimator, do the NPCs, read the TE threads, ask the TE schools some questions, talk to your spouse and your daughter, cast a wide net, participate in these forums, make sure she’s happy with her financial/admit safeties, and you can’t go wrong! Although that list sounds intimidating, it’s very do-able and you’re in the right place.
I’ve looked at the TE spreadsheet before, but I just did a little more clicking through awards of individual students whose profiles are similar to my daughter’s, and I think she should maybe subtract a couple of the more selective schools from her list, add in a couple of less selective schools, and keep the TE expectations fairly low.
Most of the students’ stats throughout that spreadsheet are quite high.
I have no idea how I know so many colleagues whose children have applied to maybe 3 TE schools and received 1-2 offers. Maybe even though our TE person is saying to “cast a wide net” that it doesn’t always work this way in practice. Perhaps a student letting a school know that it’s one of their top choices and they’re not applying to 20 different schools goes a long way too…
Any thoughts about TE chances (or just general opinions) about any of these? I think we’re deciding to eliminate Ursinus College due to its size, which opens up another slot Xavier U. (Cincinnati), Dayton, U. of Scranton, Loyola Maryland, Susquehanna, Elizabethtown, Lafayette, Shenandoah, St. John Fisher, maybe Franklin & Marshall or Bucknell, Gannon University, Moravian University?
Thank you for the suggestions of doing the FAFSA estimator, not just the NPCs, and figuring out the policies of the schools in terms of if they’re able to add any other aid to TE too.
I can only speak to the schools we explored, others can chime in about the rest. Once someone (you?) starts the TE thread for next year, you could ask about them specifically in that thread and you might get more responses.
It’s not easy to get TE at Dayton. My kid (3.99UW/1510 SAT) and some kids on CC with pretty high stats were denied TE there. However, he was given an aid package equivalent to TE, which made it affordable for us. We know other people that have had the exact same thing happen.
Lafayette and Bucknell have admissions rates in the low 30s, which makes them pretty selective. I’d imagine that getting TE is difficult at either one, but my son decided against applying to those schools for other reasons. My predictions for his TE awards/denials were quite accurate. Had he applied there, I would have predicted that he was accepted probably 1 of those schools with some decent need-based aid, and denied TE at both. I wouldn’t have been surprised if he was accepted at none or both of them, but I would have been surprised if he received TE at either. Take that for what it’s worth.
One kid was denied TE at Xavier and Dayton (and we are FACHEX as well). He was a 3.3 35 ACT kid. My other 3.3 TO kid was waitlisted at U of Scranton.
My 3.3 35 ACT kid did get TE at Syra cuse back in 2023 while other 4.0 plus kids were denied TE there that year.
My 2025 3.3 TO kid got TE at Mercyhurst, U of Indianapolis, Lindenwood (was waitlisted then received), and Wayne State U. In the end she chose a less urban non TE school that either was same or less cost than any of her TE options.
