<p>PinotNoir – My D is taking one math class, one chem class. The math teacher likes to give multi-day tests. So math is 2 days of “regular” testing, 2 days of “group tests”, and then a 3-hour final. The science teacher is giving them one chapter test, one lab test, and then a 3-hour final. </p>
<p>Yeah, it sounds excessive to me, too. :p</p>
<p>@Stem,</p>
<p>I’m not sure if these schools all offer dual enrollment, but they all do offer online German courses.</p>
<p>Oklahma State [Home[/url</a>]
North Carolina [url=<a href=“http://online.northcarolina.edu/unconline/courses.php]Courses[/url”>Courses]Courses[/url</a>]
[url=<a href=“http://online.missouri.edu/coursesearch/search.aspx]Mizzou”>http://online.missouri.edu/coursesearch/search.aspx]Mizzou</a> Online : University of Missouri Continuing and Distance Education](<a href=“German Online Closing | Oklahoma State University”>http://germanonline.okstate.edu/)</p>
<p>Bocaterp- my d1 is a foundation fellow at UGA .Let me know if you have any specific questions and I would be happy to answer.</p>
<p>STEMfamily, has your son looked into the possibility of independent study with one of the German faculty? This was the solution offered to one of my kids when she maxed out of the language offerings at her school.</p>
<p>Bocaterp, I love your tour too. The VIP part sounds awesome.</p>
<p>Does anyone plan to visit safety schools? I am wondering if these might be more important than the reach schools. I’m hoping that D will start meeting some college reps when they visit her campus next fall so that she will be able to figure out what she wants in a college and even what she might want to study.</p>
<p>Mihcal, my D’s math and chem teachers did the same thing with multi-day testing.</p>
<p>4Cookiemonster, we’ve attended tours and info sessions on some occasions and on others chosen to go on our own. We’ve even left tours mid-tour when they were either too big or not informative. The nice thing about attending the info sessions or tours is that they sometimes offer you tickets so you can have lunch in one of the dining halls. I’ve always worried when the tour is especially bad or the admissions rep especially obnoxious that that will turn my prospective student off before she gives the school a fair chance.</p>
<p>Thank you Sally22…my son is very interested in the Fellows Foundation Program and we’ll certainly take you up on your offer if we have any questions…</p>
<p>We are planning to visit safety schools. I actually think these schools are very important to vist. I really want my daughter to have a few safety schools to choose from just in case.
Mihcal my daughter’s chem teacher has given them several two day tests.
We visited BU in March and they offered the kids lunch with a student. My daughter had a great time.</p>
<p>Visiting safety and match schools is, IMO, more important than visiting reaches. </p>
<p>This is especially true for financial safety schools – because you’ll want to know exactly what the tradeoffs are if you end up having to choose how far to stretch the family finances.</p>
<p>^ yes the goal should be to find a school that you love and is a good fit, one that you can pay for without any merit aid ( at least in my case because we did not qualify for FA with my older one), one that has majors that you like, and one that you are sure that you will get into. This is where Naviance comes into play, and this can be the hardest school to find for some kids. It’s very easy to fall in love with an OOS school, a private like Lehigh ( at $53,000 per year) or an Ivy. This brings me to my next question- I know that the Ivy League schools do not give merit aid. Does anybody know how generous they are with FA? The SAT tutor that we use claims to have " relationships with Ivy League counselors"- and he tells me all the time that IF you get accepted they do everything in their power to make it affordable. He also tells me that they are very very generous with FA if they think you have need, and their definition of " need" is much more generous than other schools. Does anybody know about this? I am not even going to get into it with him about how he has " relationships with Ivy League counselors"… My daughter is itching to apply to an Ivy. She knows it’s a crap shoot and is fine with it. MY issue is paying for it IF she manages to get herself in. Princeton, for example, is around $56,000 - way too expensive. My other issue is the intensity that these schools have- NOT a good idea for my perfectionist daughter. I think I may check out the IVY FA threads and get some info.i do not think that an Ivy is a good fit for her if she manages to somehow get into one. She needs a school with high academics and some " academic nerds" to hang with, but one that does not have the intensity of an Ivy. She loved Cornell and we can get the reduced rate as a NYS resident, but around here Cornell has the reputation of being extremely intense and stressful, and there have been several suicides in recent years. I just can’t see these schools being a good fit for my daughter purely from an emotional stand point. She will be locked in her room all day determined to be at the top- NOT a good idea and VERY unhealthy. Sorry for rambling.</p>
<p>What you are saying about visiting safeties makes a lot of sense…so maybe safeties and schools that track interest should be piority. We are trying to plan our summer vacation to include some college visits,but hadn’t decided where yet.</p>
<p>Shoboemom, that is my thinking too. I think it is a greater challenge to find and fall in love with the safety than it is the reachy schools. We will probably look at a mix of both. I took D2 to look at Muhlenberg and our visit happened to coincide with the visits of a bunch of kids looking at their full ride scholarship. You would never have known this was a safery!</p>
<p>Twogirls, FA from an Ivy depends on which one you are considering, how far out of their FA range you fall and how much they want you. (Athletes for example.) If your D goes into it knowing that she might not be able to attend even if accepted and is ok with that, why not let her try? As for intensity, I think it varies. Cornell does carry rhat reputation. But my friend’s D at Yale was placed in a higher level composition class because the cutoff was 700 on the SAT reading or writing. 700 is high but not absurdly so and apparently there were many who placed into the lower level class. There is room for different strengths and weaknesses. And many of the Ivies are really, really grade inflated. I imagine that helps to reduce academic pressure. I also think these popular schools have so many nonacademic priorities in shaping their classes that an academic star will be fine academically. I am more concerned that a certain more assertive personality type thrives in these places.<br>
Sorry, my turn to ramble!</p>
<p>3girls you bring up some very interesting points about Ivy League schools and how they have many non academic priorities etc. something to consider. We visited Muhlenberg recently and I was not aware that they had a full ride scholarship. I thought their highest award was $16,000 but maybe I am wrong.</p>
<p>It’s funny to see Muhlenberg pop up here. That is where my oldest attends. I totally agree with the point about visiting safeties. Muhlenberg was one of her safeties and she wound up falling in love with it and choosing it over higher ranked choices. Our pocketbook was thrilled. ;-)</p>
<p>They do offer significant merit aid but I am unaware of a “full-ride” option. I think about the most you could get is $24,000 if you received the maximum Presidential award ($16,000), were accepted into one of the three honors programs(4,000) and got a talent award on top of that. And they do stack so that is entirely possible. </p>
<p><a href=“http://www.muhlenberg.edu/main/aboutus/finaid/applyingForAid/merit.html[/url]”>http://www.muhlenberg.edu/main/aboutus/finaid/applyingForAid/merit.html</a></p>
<p>twogirls- We attended an recent info. session in our area put on by Adcoms. from Harvard, Penn, Duke, Stanford and Georgetown. Three of the five stated that if accepted, and if you make less than 100K, then you would not be writing a check for any of the four years towards your childs education at their university. All of the parents in the audience gasped in unison and said wow! Georgetown said the same thing, but with a 60K number. shoboemom-We visited our state “Safety” schools first in the spring, matches this summer (planned) and reaches maybe in the fall. Trouble with all of this is that all of this is such a fluid situation. Will my son continue at the pace (grade wise?) that he’s achieved so far with all of the pressure and distractions that the junior year brings? What will remain a “Match” or will some “reach” schools now fall into the match catagory? Luckily my son is a 40 yr old trapped in a 16 yr old body. He thoroughly understands the concept of graduating with little to no debt and it’s one of his top priorities when considering a school. Lots of things to take into consideration, sometimes way too many. Hopefully, our kids make it easier for us with due diligence and some direction on their part.</p>
<p>@twogirls</p>
<p>My daughter attends a full need school. Her aid is such that we have to pay almost exactly our Effective Family Contribution, which was on target with the school’s aid calculator. She does have loans, but they are of the modest Stafford variety. We don’t think it’s a bad idea for her to have some skin in the game. Beware of schools that say they will meet your need and then give you aid packages that include a high amount of loans, such as Plus loans. There is an annual limit–I think around $5,500 for Stafford loans–but no real limit on the other loans. Some schools–mostly Ivies–are not only are full need, but even have a no-loan policy. (Has it been mentioned here that full-need schools tend not to offer merit aid?Chicago is an exception.)</p>
<p>Even if a school is full-need, you may have problems meeting your EFC. I mean, the price of a new car–even a subcompact–every year could be difficult for a six-figure income. Recognizing this, Harvard has pledged to require families earning up to $180,000 to pay no more than 10 percent of their annual income.</p>
<p>Thanks for the info everybody! It looks like the Ivies give some FA to families who would not normally qualify. I do not think that we will get much aid from an IVY, but it is certainly worth filling out the paperwork. In the meantime we have devised a long list of schools that give merit aid, and she will pick 2 or 3 in-state schools that are very affordable to us without any aid at all. I already know that if she goes OOS there is the possibility that we will have to spend a little more than what our state schools cost, but I am not spending $50,000 or more given that both of my kids need grad school. I told both of my kids that for their undergrad education it will either be SUNY, or an OOS/private that gives them some merit to bring the cost down a bit. My older one chose a SUNY school and loves it. My younger one will cast a very wide net and we will see what happens. We visited SUNY Binghamton just in case and she liked it very much, so I am happy. We also visited Geneseo which is a great school as well, but not for her. The other SUNY that she will apply to is Buffalo. Her numbers would likely place her in the honors program with some probable merit aid, and an opportunity to apply to their early assurance med school if she wants. I am just grateful that she has 2 state schools to use as her safeties: she likes them, they have a variety of majors, she is comfortable, and I can pay!!</p>
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<p>I cannot speak in general, but I can point you toward one data point:
There’s a student, CPUscientist3000, who has participated in the HS2012 forum over the past several years. She was very frank in posting about her situation, and used the forum as a sounding board throughout her application and decision process. She was an outstanding HS student academically, an athletic star, and a URM from an economically-struggling single-parent family (EFC=0, or nearly so). She applied to a range of schools, prioritizing affordability. Some (UPitt among them, IIRC) offered her a full ride, many (Smith in particular) offered her generous aid. Others were significantly less generous, and expected the family to come up with impossible sums. Finally Harvard came through with an offer that was too good to refuse. IIRC her total out-of-pocket cost of attendance came out to something like $1400. </p>
<p>I have found it very interesting to watch her experiences and her developing thought process. She is an terrific writer, which makes it a pleasure to read her posts, as well as instructive. She still posts in the HS2012 forum once in a while. She has had some serious challenges in her first year at Harvard, but she’s hanging in there, trying to figure out what she wants out of college and from life in general. She is truly an amazing young woman, and very generous in sharing her experiences.</p>
<p>Re: Muhlenberg: This was 5 years ago and it is entirely possible my memory is off. More than possible, it is entirely likely. I remember that D liked this school a lot and that merit aid was generous and that interested students were impressive.</p>
<p>We visited auto admit safety schools first, and D fell in love with the quirkiness of a group of students at two of the campuses. One of the students even had a specific t-shirt for an action committee dear to Bunheadgirl’s heart. although, larger than she wants, Bunheadgirl knows she can thrive at a school with a 14K-20K student body and be happy. </p>
<p>Our fall and spring tours includes two safeties, but also match and reach schools based on her stats. If D continues her upward grade trend, many of her reach schools move down to matches, and matches to safety schools. She has no intentions of “upgrading” her list, as she loves all the schools on paper, and hopefully loves them all equally in person. </p>
<p>Our selection process began with, core/distribution requirements, fit, campus vibe, then stats, and finally, visits. We crossed 5 schools off the list after visiting. One of the schools I hoped D would love, but she said absolutely not after finding out about core and distribution requirements, which would not afford her the ability of a possible double major. All D’s schools require minimum core or distribution requirements.</p>
<p>We currently have 3 auto admits, 2 safeties, 3 matches, 3 reaches, and 2 HMFR based on current GPA through this year. With Bunheadgirl’s upward swing, we’ll end with 3 auto admits, 5 safeties, 3 matches, and 2 HMFR. She’s in contention based on test scores for all, excepting one of the HMFR. She wants to test in the fall to gain 2 points and end up with a 33+ ACT. And by keeping it real, D knows her HMFR schools are dreams desired based on statistical probability.</p>
<p>3girls we visited in March and were very impressed with the school. My daughter liked it but decided it was not for her- too small. The weird thing about her wanting a big school is that she is the kind of student who speaks up in class and develops relationships with her teachers. I would think that a smaller school would allow this to continue, but she wants a big ( or at least bigger) school. She does not have a problem with lecture halls- says she will sit up front in the center and ignore the 200 kids sitting behind her! I am not sure if the interaction that she is used to will be there for her in a large lecture hall.</p>
<p>@Twogirls: most large schools provide weekly mandatory recitation groups; thus, your daughter may still get a chance at discussion in a smaller environment.<br>
And, depending on the school, larger classes of 100 or more students is for general and introductory courses. Well, at least that’s how it is for a young cousin attending the U of MN-TC campus. My cousin’s upper level classes only contain 10-40 students.</p>