Are there other EU schools that would be of interest that don’t have a residency requirement? I have EU friends looking at schools in the Netherlands and France and at least they believe there aren’t any residency requirements.
Help – with the search of safeties… and the top heavy list of a stubborn daughter and her increasing
If she has shown demonstrated interest, I think she should receive a nice merit aid offer from Rochester, that would probably make it more affordable. (My daughter with similar stats did.)
There are definitely schools on your daughter’s list that she will be accepted to, the question is whether it is worth going into huge amounts of debt to pay for them. There are any number of schools that can provide a great education, and I’ve always believed that the name of the individual on the diploma has a lot more to do with future success than the name of the school on the diploma.
My daughter’s best friend, coming from a competitive public in Illinois, had stats similar to those of your daughter (same ACT, slightly higher GPA, different, but good, ECs and slightly fewer APs), and applied to several of the same schools. Obviously competitive schools are looking at much more than ACT scores and GPA, and every student brings something different to the table, but of the common schools on the lists, D’s friend was rejected by Penn, Dartmouth, Brown, Cornell, Tufts and Duke and accepted to Boston College and Notre Dame. She didn’t apply to the other schools on your daughter’s list, but she was also accepted to Colgate, Bucknell, Villanova, Wake Forest and a couple more very good but not tippy top schools. As long as your daughter will be happy at any of the schools on her list, she’s going to have some very nice options from an academic standpoint. I’m not as sure about financial options, as going into huge amounts of debt or moving to a 3rd world country in retirement don’t sound like great plans to me.
My own daughter, who had stats slightly lower than your daughter’s (33 ACT, slightly lower GPA), is at Alabama. She’s there because she wants to be, not because of the big scholarships, as we could have afforded to send her to any of the schools she applied to. She participated in one of the competitive honors programs there (40 students accepted each year) and has had a great experience. But she was looking for a big flagship. Alabama has a lot to offer (including more personal attention for top students than you will find at some other flagships), but it is definitely not for everyone. However, it’s hard to know if a school is for you if you don’t look at it with an open mind. I say this not just with respect to Alabama but also with respect to many other schools that would give your daughter merit money and ease the financial burden on you (some of which were mentioned upthread). It may be worth having a chat with her and attempting to adjust her attitude toward colleges and which colleges are acceptable, because you don’t have to pay $60,000 a year or more to get a great education. That’s especially the case for a student as bright and accomplished as your daughter. She is going to shine and succeed wherever she goes.
You are restless because you depend on scholarship money to make it affordable or because you think she won’t get in?
Can you afford your EFC at University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign? If so, that is your financial and academic safety. If you can afford the others based on the NPC, I would cut them out. You may get merit at Syracuse. Would that be enough? Take NYU off the list - it is absolutely unaffordable. If she has missed scholarship deadlines at some schools (USC) then take them off.
How many children do you have? You need to create a 4-year budget for each one that won’t endanger your retirement.
I agree with @Mom2aphysicsgeek – she is here getting a wonderful opportunity, let her take GSLs for one, then let her find schools that will give her significant scholarships (Like BAMA – we said NO to bama for my SD because she didn’t do the test prep we told her she should do and as a result did not get the score needed to make it affordable). There are many others as well – I wouldn’t let a kid bully me either, my money.
Just to clarify, Denison does use merit aid to attract high achieving kids, but it does not have a business school. It does have majors in financial economics and also international commerce, and has a very strong career planning program.
@Midwest67 She doesn’t have to understand and she doesn’t have to like it – you tried and it is what it is… she needs to deal with it.
Her ECs:
"EC:
-4 y in DECA – 15+ medals in state level competition; Qualified for national/international on 4 events; President of the local DECA chapter for 2y and Vice president for 1y.
-Student Consul 2 y.
-Math team 4 years.
-NHS -with 120+ hour of voluntary work (although D decide to put/claim only 45h)
- 4 h /w volunteering in the “country of origin” school for 9 mo./year [D refused to put any info in the CA]
-some other not significant stuff like - 2 sports for 1 year each; debate /mock trail/ scholastic bawl [mostly left unmentioned on the CA]"
Unfortunately, these ECs are fairly standard and pedestrian for the level of schools on your list. You had better hope the recs carry the day, as well as some sparkling essays. DECA is nice, but you know what the adcoms really want to see are those sorts of skills translated to “caring” environments such as charities, etc. My opinion: get used to “Roll Tide!”
If you really did agree to pay for her undergraduate costs without setting a price limit, then it is easy to see why you and your daughter are having a difficult time, since trying to bring her back to financial reality will look to her like reneging on a promise.
@makennacompton I totally agree. I do not see anything extraordinary in her EC’s as well. She is truly special, but to me and her mam mainly.
And I myself am “Rolling Tide!” for a good several months now. Have never enjoyed college sport for example, but found myself looking for A’s game last Saturday. haha
For Alabama’s case in particular I hope an actual visit to change her preconceived believes. Also I have not seen her visiting a school and not liking it after the visit (well, Lake Forest college is the only exception probably)
OP, I agree with the above. It sounds like your daughter thought that you’d pay for college, period. No matter the college. And now she feels there are strings attached she wasn’t warned about.
But that’s OK. Once spring rolls around, your daughter will discover something surprising: not every star in her high school is going to an Ivy. Or even to a public Ivy or selective LAC. Many will be at the state U, or “inferior” schools that may have lured them with big FA offers.
Fast forward four years, and your daughter will discover the freedom that comes with graduating debt-free – as opposed to graduating with debt, a situation many of her friends will find themselves in. While she can fantasize about a big trip post-graduation, her friends will be fiendishly looking for jobs that pay enough to sustain them AND their monthly college loan bill that’s waiting just around the corner.
Fast forward to four years again, and nobody remembers where she went to school. Or cares.
But you, in the meantime, are looking at bills, retirement, likely political and economic uncertainties, and you’re asking yourself whether your daughter’s education really was worth 3 new Mercedes Benzes, especially when your neighbor’s kid – the kid who went to state U, maybe even transferred to it from a community college – is doing exactly the same job as your expensively educated daughter. And yes, that will probably happen.
Trust us. We’ve been there. We’ve seen this.
On a good note - USC app was just sent…catching the dead line for merit by a hair…
@toomanyteens wrote: “She doesn’t have to understand and she doesn’t have to like it – you tried and it is what it is… she needs to deal with it.”
Of course! That doesn’t make it hurt less that she is so mad at me, or console me when I think of her turning her back on us.
@jonri Sorry for missing your comment earlier - Rochester (NYC) is indeed U of Rochester (NY). I copied the list from a spreadsheet of mine. It was a comment to myself (meant to be NY State).
D and wife took a 12-15 day trip this summer and visited a ton of schools on the East Cost. I confess, I had no clue where Rochester (university and/ or city) was, so I put it in my spreadsheet as I remind to myself…then it lent on the CC site.
To all who suggested it - NYU is gone…it is indeed one of the most affordable choices for us anyway.
@Percent99 - I think you are caught between a cultural/familial expectations that parents must do everything for their kids – and the financial reality that it would be courting disaster to go into the level of debt you would need to pay higher end tuition costs.
Unfortunately, your daughter probably is stuck in the cocoon of long-term ignorance of her parents true financial condition and what it means in terms of college options. If she’s been raised in an environment where all her basic needs were met and the parents always seemed to be able to easily afford whatever came up … she probably has no clue. It is likely that she doesn’t know how much you earn, what you have in retirement, what you have in liquid savings, what your house is worth-- and really wouldn’t understand the significance if she did.
I think its time for a reality check where you provide your daughter with some hard figures: how much, in dollars, are you comfortable paying each year. And while you are at it, set an application budget of the maximum you can offer for application fees and the ancillary costs such as sending test scores. You’d be teaching another valuable lesson if you gave her the figures but put her in charge of making the choices as to how to apply that budget.
Don’t debate with her over choice of safeties or the possibility of community college – just make it clear to her that she needs to get into a school you can afford. If not, then she will bear the consequences.
“Unfortunately, your daughter probably is stuck in the cocoon of long-term ignorance of her parents true financial condition and what it means in terms of college options.”
So true @calmom, so true. And yet so illogical. She’s always known that her parents have been buying 3-4 year old second hand Toyota s all their life [just cause 3 y car is the best value for the money] and far less often than her classmates parents have been buying/Leasing new Lexus s SUVs. She has always know that her parents go to a “nice” dinner once every 2-3 moths (if that), while her friend’s parents visit the best downtown restaurants at least once a weekly. But then again she has never been refused anything that is even remotely reasonable - best dress for prom? Sure - a fabulous dress on the right person can be found for 70-120 bucks…no need to go on a $200-500 (choose you number) limp… anyway I for sure can go on and on with examples like these. But the truth is - she was never given even a hint she can think of us/her of anywhere close to high class or even upper middle class. But then again was never experienced any true hardship…
And then the annual trips to the old country for 2 to 3 mo. Every single year ever since she was 2 . They are just a given. Not that they are something tremendously expensive really [$700-$800 air fare, her Grand parents mostly taking the rest of the bill for her stay there], but the confidence that “My parents can fly me to Europe each year.” sure helped in building this cocoon of ignorance.
Absolutely do get straight with yourself about what your financial limits are. Then anything that comes in above that figure can go straight to the recycle bin. That is what we did, and a good thing too: the breadwinner was laid off halfway through Happykid’s junior year. If we had overstretched, she would have had to drop out.
Gap year activities can be anything. Volunteer work, paid work, travel. Think of all those Australians who do that kind of thing for a year or two between high school and college. It is not taken as a negative at application time. Students who take a year off generally enter college with better defined goals for their educations, and with stronger committment to the work needed to achieve those goals.
I have lost track of what you want/can pay, but just to keep it real, even with 1/2 tuition form USC (and frankly, sorry, I don’t see that with that UW gpa and those ECs, USC likes passion and difference in their holistic admissions for scholarship kids) the COA is still 44K and that only includes a $580 travel allowance. When you start going back and forth for holidays, orientation, and whatever else, $580 won’t go far. It and many like it have other costs to attend that aren’t on the COA, especially for a kid who apparently wants to keep up with the Joneses. I mean this kindly, good luck with that at elite schools.