How do we handle this situation - PSU?

Parents Forum
1

Thanks for looking into my issue.

His recent GPA is 4.01. He has scored 540 in Critical Reading, Math 600 & Writing 630 in SAT on 11/7/2015. His applicant rank is 36 in the class of 509. He has many AP courses with remarkable grades. He is in principal honor roll.

He applied for PSU and got the admission. We received the Financial Aid Letter that surprised us. The high school Counselor told us that, he will get scholarships from colleges. As we live in Maryland, we took a chance at PSU. We received the Financial Aid Letter that surprised us. We did not see any scholarship/aid. Total cost shows as 49K+. They want us to pay as one payment or 3 payments in Aug 2016, Oct 2016 & Nov 2016 with $45 extra fee. They are not committing upfront on waivers based on his AP grades. As out-of-state, we will be paying 74% more than their in-state student cost. They are not helping us to work on additional burden. We learned that subsequent year cost will be much more than 49k+

It will be out of reach for us without a scholarship/aid. Our son is not able to understand this situation. If we pay for 1st year and unable to pay following years, he will be a college drop out. It is hard to imagine.

Some of you in this forum may have faced this situation.

How did you handle this situation?

What are the work around?

2

Was he admitted to more affordable schools? Do you have any in-state public choices?

3

Do you live in Pennsylvania? If not, PSU doesn’t promise any sort of financial aid – they’re a state university* whose first priority is the students who live in Pennsylvania.

*Or “state-affiliated,” or whatever.

4

Sounds like your son would have other good choices. What are they? Even state residents find PSU to be expensive, so it isn’t surprising that it is so expensive for out of state students.

5

Most instate students at Penn State also receive very little if any institutional financial aid. Did your son also apply to UMd? At least he would get instate tuition there. I think your son’s counselor misled you, or you misinterpreted him/her, if you were led to believe that your son would receive financial aid from Penn State.

6

May state schools are stingy for OOS residents so this should not come as a shock. Your S will have to understand and you need to move on to affordable other options. Affordability has to be a factor in the college decision and many many students do not attend their first chose school for financial considerations.

7

As a PA resident, the only students who I ever hear of getting aid are the Honors College kids and even that is small at $5,000 a year. I don’t get why people pay tons of money to go to PSU and I am an alumni. Almost anyone can get into a branch campus and then go on to UP and earn a Penn State degree. I went all 4 years at UP, but there is no differentiation on the diploma. Classes were huge and sometimes even taught via video. Sure it is pretty and fun during football season and the town is nice, but not worth OOS tuition. Even for us residents, it is overpriced now.

8

I am sorry that you have to deal with this, but PS is not known as a generous school for FA or merit. Does your son have other options that are affordable? Here is how we handled it: My older D stayed in state because we knew she was definitely heading to grad school. Going out of state was not an option unless she received merit money. My younger D did not attend what was her first choice school- that school was more than we wanted to pay and would have been about $80,000 more than her current school over the course of 4 years. She will be heading to grad school, but her program is funded so we were willing to go a little higher for undergrad. She is at a school that was in her top 3 and honestly, she loves it and could not imagine herself anyplace else. I hope he has some affordable schools in the mix. Good luck.

I would encourage him to apply to some in state schools that are still taking applications, or start out at a community college and transfer after 2 years.

9

Penn State is rather poor for financial aid even for Pennsylvania residents, so it will be even worse for non-Pennsylvania residents. The high school counselor was negligent in not telling you to run the net price calculator and investigating each school’s merit scholarships before applying. You should have told your son what your price limit was before he made his application list.

Your son should attend a more affordable school instead of Penn State. If Penn State was the only school he applied to, you and he may want to investigate whether any Maryland public universities have late application deadlines and affordable net prices, or if starting at community college and transferring to a Maryland public university as a junior will be affordable. Emptying the college money on one year of Penn State will make the situation even worse.

10

Thanks for chiming into my thread. Here is more in-state story.

As UMD advised students to apply by the Priority Application Deadline for best consideration, my son applied for early action undergraduate application for University of Maryland before Oct 31, 2015 with all docs. He did another SAT on Nov 7, 2015 (After turning in the early action application). We received early action decision notification on 1/29/2016. My son did not get admission in UMD through early action undergraduate application.

He communicated with UMD before their decision, to turn-in the revised better SAT score, but they did not allow us to do so. Other colleges allow to submit revised/better SAT scores.

As we reviewed the accepted 2016 Freshman profile https://www.admissions.umd.edu/counselor/FreshmanProfile.php his recent SAT score aligns with accepted 2016 Freshman profile.

We communicated with UMD admission representative and presented the recent SAT score. He told us that as my son took the SAT after the Priority Application Deadline, UMD cannot consider his recent SAT for his application review/appeal.

The UMD regular application was closed on 1/20/2016. As UMD’s early decision notification showed up on 1/29/2016, we lost the opportunity to turn-in the regular application for him.

We talked with some other Maryland parents in students’ forum. They too complain that UMD did not offer admissions to their children, who had good grades/SAT score. I am not sure, whether UMD encourage out of state students to come into their system at the expense of Maryland (In-state) students.

We did appeal their decision, but the Appeals Committee has decided to uphold the decision that was made by the Admissions Review Committee that was made earlier this year.

The PSU’s under graduate Astrophysics/astronomy with research option attracted my son. He is so picky and not applied to any other Maryland in-state schools.

I am in dilemma to find a workable resolution. I look like PSU does not welcome out-of-state students on academic prospective, but they welcome them on monetary prospective.

Is there a way to recover from this …?

Thanks for your guidance.

11

I’m sorry you got bad advice. I think all the Maryland public university deadlines have passed. After May 1 a list will be released of schools how still have openings in the fall. UMBC has been on that list several times and I think I have also seen Salisbury. Frostburg is still taking applications, but you have missed priority housing and merit deadlines.

12

Has your son applied to any other schools? If not, you may want to check some Maryland schools, like UMBC. I believe last year, it was still seeking applications after May 1st (it was on the list of schools that didn’t fill its seats). It may be too late to get any financial aid but even at full price, UMBC would be half the cost of Penn State.

Another option would be to check out your community college and see if it has a transfer agreement with UMD-College Park. This would be a far less expensive option. This is a fairly common path where I live; I had a very well-respected colleague who did this 20 years ago.

13

After an effective shut-out (since the only admission is too expensive), the obvious backup plan is to look into starting at community college and transferring to UMD or other affordable school.

If he has very high stats and is willing to take a year off school and work (to earn some money for college), then he may want to do so and apply for the following year frosh entry to a list of colleges carefully selected for affordability, including through merit scholarships like those listed here:
http://automaticfulltuition.yolasite.com/
http://competitivefulltuition.yolasite.com/

14

Your son’s CR score is low for a student with his GPA. Is English his second language? A gap year to save money, pull up the CR score (or take the ACT) a bit, and re-apply might make sense. That could give him more options.

If your son is willing to consider starting at your local community college, he can learn more about transfer agreements and course equivalencies within the Maryland public system here: http://www.artsys.usmd.edu/ Happykid completed two years at Montgomery College before transferring to Towson. Several of her friends moved on to UM-CP and UM-BC. Everything worked well for all of them in the transfer process.

15

If you have no affordable options the two answers would be to start at a CC or to take a gap year (do something meaningful, earn some money) and reapply to a more realistic and affordable list of schools.

16

If your son can improve his sat score, he can take a gap year and work or volunteer, the apply to Umd as well as many other affordable colleges since he has a good GPA. A gap year would give him time to improve his English/reading, not just for the test, but for college. He could develop his interests and get inspiration for new essays.
Finally, he could build a reasonable list for z competitive applicant, including two colleges where he’s in the top 10%, three to five where he’s around the top 25% threshold for scores, and as many others (‘reaches’) as he wishes. Before a colleg is approved to go onto the official list, run the net price calculator and see if it’s affordable.
Penn State is not affordable and he wasn’t admitted to umd, so, he’s effectively shut out for now.
Beside taking a gap year to reapply to umd, he can look at the nacac list in early May (those are the colleges that miscalculated yield doe b that year, and thus re open admissions for the few seats missing. Many will have financial aid.)
I am guessing, since he wouldn’t apply to umdbc -one of the good tech schools in the country - that he won’t find community college acceptable.
You may want to buy, and read, the princeton review’s best colleges and ‘public honors colleges’.

17

OP’s son needs to be realistic : SAT scores are below the 25% for UMD. As others have suggested, he could apply for UMBC after May 1 if they have spots open. Or take gap year and prep for and take ACT and reapply. Students with a strong high school curriculum and good GPA sometimes do much better on the ACT. If reapplying, one needs a wide variety as outlined by @MYOS1634 .

18

Register him for prep for the act now. (I would suggest he study on his own then take a full act test but I don’t know whether he’d be willing; also, if he hasn’t attended American schools his whole life, he would benefit from a prep class.) Considering his GPA, I’m quite sure his scores would improve with better prep.

19

Thanks for your suggestions.

I did review nacac site. Where will nacac list shows up there?

We are researching on transfer options. As he is looking for undergraduate in astronomy/astrophysics, I am not sure what are the transfer options with our local community college (Anne Arundel Community Col-AACC). He too have lot of AP courses in High School.

Will he able to use these AP courses towards transfer credits?

If we pick gap year option, What are the potential colleges for following criteria.

Affordability and strength of academic programs (atronomy/astrophysics)
Offer merit scholarships

What will be the desired stats to get there?

Thanks for looking into my issue.

20

How much can you afford? How many and which AP courses.

You might still have some decent options now without a gap year