<p>zoosermom, I’m with you on that. I felt much more confident about my son’s chances for merit aid until I started reading here and seeing kids who fit the criteria just as well but didn’t get any merit aid.</p>
<p>Is there a name for the catagory of schools that are matches academically but reaches for merit aid? Whatever that is, it’s where most of my kids other colleges fall so far; Brandeis, American, and Rutgers. He’s also shown interest in MIT, Princeton and Sarah Lawrence (first college he fell in love with) but they do not offer merit aid and so those are out unless something changes with our financial picture. And by “change” I do not mean the change thus far in the economy over the past months.</p>
<p>I feel very thankful that my son loves his saftey school. At first I thought UMASS Amherst was too big but they have an honors college plus they have an active GLBT student club, so those are two smaller communities he would belong to right off the bat. Plus, the campus is 20 minutes from my sister’s doorstep and that would go a long way towards helping me sleep at night. So far it’s the one and only college tour we’ve been on and I was inwardly thrilled when he gave it an enthusiastic review. Of course, it probably helps that my sister has been on a campaign to get him to go there since he was born!</p>
<p>zoosermom, do you really think Binghamton is a reach? - nearly everyone got in from our high school with weighted GPA over 90 and SATs of 1200+ (out of 1600) It looks much easier to get into than Barnard. </p>
<p>I think merit money is a bit of a crapshoot. Some schools you have to ask, others will court you. Both mathson’s safeties offered him $$.</p>
<p>Mathmom, we keep hearing that Binghamtom has deferred/rejected skads of people this year who would have normally expected to be accepted. When we went for the tour, the admissions people told us that their applications were up over 40% at that point, so I just assumed that a white, middle class, humanities girl from NYC would have a very hard time being admitted.</p>
<p>With DS, merit money was a complete mystery. Two schools that I regard as having no significant differences in tuition and with very similar pools of applicants offered widely varying amounts. </p>
<p>As I recall, School A offered 16,000 off of 42,000 and School B offered 2500 off of 40,000. Both schools used the common app, submitted in the same key strokes, so had the same info at the same time on DS.</p>
<p>I think it is nearly random (not exactly a comforting thought as DD heads into the same process with many of the same schools.)</p>
<p>Sometimes I think that if you try to figure out just how each school will do financial aid and merit aid, and your chances at each school, etc etc… you could give yourself a brain hemmorhage.</p>
<p>Exactly. And that’s the primary reason S will be applying to more schools than most GCs recommend. We can’t know what the real cost is without applying.</p>
<p>We had our college night last night and it was better than expected. There was a student panel which was a good perspective. Each kid got a binder with a bunch of papers, many of which are on the school website anyway, but there was a different school profile than the one I have seen, so I think there are different ones for prospective students to <em>this</em> school, and for students from this school going to college. This one had grade distributions for all classes taken during jr year and more stats on standardized test ranges (ie this one includes acts)</p>
<p>I was bummed that they aren’t entering the gpa data into naviance until after jr year closes, sounds like they will just do it once and then not update it. You’d think with a class of only 60 students they could do this more than once. test scores are also not in there. I expected they have had time to do this since Jan 1.</p>
<p>They will announce who gets assigned to which counselor next week and then we need to fill out papers, parents and students, and setup meetings. </p>
<p>There was also a good amount of humor thrown in. They read a Dave Barry piece on the process, it made me feel old as I remember reading Dave Barry when his son was little I no longer read him regularly. Also an article from a woman going through the process with her S2 and how it was different than S1. </p>
<p>All in all the night was good and looking forward to the next steps.</p>
<p>[Sometimes I think that if you try to figure out just how each school will do financial aid and merit aid, and your chances at each school, etc etc… you could give yourself a brain hemmorhage.]/</p>
<p>Yup, me too. I have the bloodshot eyes to prove it.</p>
<p>OK. So here is my dumb question. What do you use to determine what schools are reaches, matches, and fits?</p>
<p>jackief - glad you had a successful college night. Don’t feel bad about all of your info not being in Naviance yet - we still don’t have access to our Naviance data, and it was supposed to be opened to parents and students around Thanksgiving, and then in January. Not sure what’s going on with that.</p>
<p>WhirledPeas, your quoted text will look like this (only use square brackets instead of curly ones); you have to put the actual word ‘quote’ between the brackets:</p>
<p>DD’s list is now down to 17 (from a high of 33 at Christmas.) We’ll be visiting another school this Monday (Centre College in KY) and we’ll see how that goes. I think it will either be top of the list or she’ll hate it She’s also doing the Junior Day at UT-Knoxville in March. We plan on visiting a few schools over Spring Break, and then Princeton when she’s on her chorus trip to Carnegie Hall in May.</p>
<p>I wish that she had some test scores now besides the PSAT’s; I keep thinking she’s ahead of the game and then realize that she’s not. The state mandated ACT’s are April 22nd. She was registered for the SAT’s on March 14th but the state Mock Trials competition was scheduled for the same day so she had to push back to May 2nd. She will probably take the SATII’s then on June 7th (if she decides to take them; I’m pushing her to finish really looking at the 17 on her list to see who needs them, and then decide if she really, truly wants to apply to those schools.)</p>
<p>Here’s the list for now:
University of TN-Knoxville
University of AL-Tuscaloosa
University of AL-Birmingham
University of NC-Asheville
University of Georgia
University of IL-Urbana Champaign
Birmingham-Southern
Rhodes
Washington University at St. Louis
Northwestern
George Washington University
Princeton
Vanderbilt
Tulane
Centre College
University of Cincinnati
Xavier University</p>
<p>The GT consultants at the school say they want them leaving their junior year with a list of 10-15, and they want them walking back in in August with a list of 5-8 that they are applying to. DD’s list will probably be a <em>little</em> longer as she’ll be casting a net for some of the more selective NMF merit scholarships. </p>
<p>And all the events for parents of rising hs freshmen are next week so I’ll have both ends of the spectrum going on :)</p>
<p>Hello. I’m an '09 mom. Forgive me if this has been covered on this thread - I admit that haven’t read the whole thread. I just wanted to share a generalization that I have made from my son’s experiences. Son applied to 7 privates and was accepted to all 7 with merit aid. The list was carefully chosen - all were matches where, according to his stats, he would not only be accepted, but offered merit aid. </p>
<p>Son has nice SAT scores but is not a NMF. The lowest three merit aid awards came from the three schools to which he applied that offer free rides to NMFs. The highest three merit awards are very tidy sums and they come from schools that only give a couple of thousand dollars bump to NMFs. It makes perfect sense - there is only so much money, and some schools choose to put it into the NMF basket. There is nothing wrong with that. </p>
<p>But if you have a realtively strong student who is not a NMF who is applying to non-Ivy level private schools, make sure the list includes some schools that *do not *give free rides to NMFs.</p>
She’s also doing the Junior Day at UT-Knoxville in March. We plan on visiting a few schools over Spring Break, and then Princeton when she’s on her chorus trip to Carnegie Hall in May.</p>