<p>mihcal, That was great advice about getting to know the profs! </p>
<p>bunheadmom, glad to see you again! </p>
<p>twogirls, until very recently my D hated shopping too. Now she is suddenly starting to get into clothes and shopping. At least she still isn’t into clothing labels ($). </p>
<p>Speaking of shopping…We also try to live relatively frugally…eating out is an area that we are really bad about…way too much fast food. :-(…anyway…every so often we convince ourselves we need things, and one purchase tends to lead to another. One thing I have noticed is that when we are thinking and talking about big ticket items (cars, college), suddenly something that costs ‘only’ $500.00 doesn’t seem like so much…in comparison. </p>
<p>I often find that I when I want to make-over my life…I am going to work on the budget, and organize and decorate and eat right and dress better…I want to do it all at once. Unfortunately, working on the budget doesn’t usually seem to match well with some of those other things.</p>
<p>Emory is on D’s list as well. I had a conversation with her over the weekend and she told me what schools she’d like to aim for. It was a little scary for me to hear the schools she is thinking hard about, because they will be be reaches and then super-reaches for any merit aid. However, I confirmed that the two safety schools that we had previously discussed would be fine with her. I need to solidify that with visits to those schools (one we visited informally already), but I have begun to lay the groundwork in a meaningful way that these will be long shots, but no harm in giving them a go. I’m taking that whole conversation as a victory!</p>
<p>D1 fell in love with Emory. She was devastated that she did not get Emory Scholars. She was offered a liberal Arts scholarship at $17K per annum. That door closed and another great opportunity opened for her and she is very happy.</p>
<p>D2 I doubt would be competitive for Emory Scholars, so we would be full pay. Not happening in this house, especially since she is talking med school.</p>
<p>Crepes…my D and H were at the Fordham Fall Preview yesterday as well. Wonder if they ran into each other at all :).</p>
<p>This was the first college visit that I was not involved in as I had to take my boys to their club volleyball tryouts. It was interesting to hear their perspective on things. H is much more outgoing than I am and parked himself at a table with some Fordham students during lunch much to D’s embarrassment. I probably wouldn’t have done that but it worked out great as D really liked them and they gave her a great impression of the school after she had her first not-so-great tour guide/tour.</p>
<p>Tour guide was a theology/philosophy major and was “out there” according to my family. He kept harping on the religious aspect of the school and it didn’t help that two other families kept harping on it during the tour. D thought the school was full of holy rollers until the lunch students assured her it was there if you want it but they don’t shove it down your throat. These same families during the tour kept talking about the substance free dorm and the programs there. Now I have learned about such things from CC and school websites but have never spoken to D and H about them at all. It was so interesting to hear their thoughts on the topic!! Now D has never had a drink (as far as I know) and is not a partier at all. But she and H were completely turned off by the idea and D had absolutely no desire to live in a place like that. Once a week at 10:00 the students perform a talent they have or have a debate and she was like “no way do I want something like that, that’s weird.” Ok then lol, I had no idea how she would feel about that kind of living environment but now I know!!</p>
<p>By the end of the day, she liked Fordham a lot. She liked that it had a green campus but the city was right there. She compared it to Georgetown in that regard. It is very high on the list right now. The only downside is it doesn’t have the ESPN factor and their club sports are very limited.</p>
<p>Someone mentioned shopping recently…D asked to go to the mall this weekend. I told her I would drive her and her friend there and give her money for some winter clothes (it’s always freezing in our HS) if she completed a full practice ACT test this weekend. Guess what she’s doing right now ;)???</p>
<p>Keepme- whatever works LOL!! We are going to visit Emory as well but she needs at least the 2/3 tuition merit in order for it to stay on the table. She knows the deal. There are schools on the list that will be easier for her to get merit from ( I think). Can’t hurt to try!!</p>
<p>D pulled an (almost) all-nighter last night trying to catch up with the missed work due to a school sponsored EC trip. She came back yesterday afternoon which meant she only had last night to catch up for 1/2 day of missed school (Friday) and her weekend HW/studying. She started as soon as she got home (5 pm) got it done at 5 am this morning, slept for an hour, and out the door by 630. </p>
<p>She is trying very hard but sometimes I feel like she is only 1/2 step away from crashing. Junior year is going full speed here. </p>
<p>I think, aside from ability to pay, we all have different schools that we are willing to pay for. The value proposition is different. There are many schools that, while perfectly good, fine schools, we (as a family) don’t think are worth paying more than our state flagship for, even though the college experience would be very different. OTOH. there are many schools that we think are a significantly better value proposition than our state flagship, and we are willing to pay for it.</p>
<p>Similarly, I’m not anxious to pay off our mortgage. Given our current mortgage rate, we are MUCH better off keeping that mortgage. There’s no such thing as free money, but our home loan comes very, very close, and it’s a lot better deal than any other I can think of. Then again, we’ve never had auto loans, and student loans are very small in order for D to have a stake in the game. (We intend to do the same with D’15. It’s a matter of principle, not finances.)</p>
<p>D’15 doesn’t really have a list yet. We have visited opportunistically and extensively, but I really think it’s too early to understand her ability to be admitted to any school until the end of this semester at the earliest. We don’t have PSAT scores back, we don’t have Junior year GPA, we don’t know how the whirlwind which is Junior year will actually treat her. By the beginning of the summer, we’ll (jointly) come up with an unlimited list, and start to limit over the summer. I could make up a list now based on visits, school reputations and obvious “safeties” but that would be a little silly now for the girl who seems to like just about everything. Looking back to D’12, whose interests and record were a lot more focused and straightforward (and better), first semester Junior year was not at all about thinking about college, and that was a good thing.</p>
<p>I do think that Junior year is an exercise in balance, and the year in which the student emerges from the teenager. Trial by fire?</p>
<p>I agree IjustDrive. I think if you can do tours while you are already in a location - that is great. The summer before junior year, we took d13 to 3 schools (one large, one small and one medium - one was also urban and another very suburban) so she could get a preliminary idea of size that she liked. This was on our way home from a vacation. This really helped because she decided that she wanted at least 8K students - that really narrowed things down a lot - you really have to start somewhere.<br>
It really can be overwhelming for the kids and junior year academics are so demanding.
Now, my s15 will be a recruited athlete so I have to learn how to do this totally different!!! But, so far it is a little easier because we can just research schools as the coaches emails are coming in - instead of starting from “every school in the country” like we did with d13. Only time will tell.</p>
<p>Thanks for your post IJustDrive. I’ve been kind of feeling the same way that it’s great to visit when the chance presents itself but that, at least in our family’s case, it’s a bit too early. (All you northeasterners have a tremendous advantage in this. For you guys, it’s a local trip…and why not?) In my D’s case, her interests are still emerging and even the type of school she wants is not yet in focus. That said, for those of you who are (1) gathering data on merit schools as the focus of your S or D’s applications or (2) getting a recruited athlete ready to apply–aren’t some of them already making verbal commitments? or (3) dealing with a specialized application as in theater or music, the timing is different.</p>
<p>Mihcal, a huge thank you for your post too. The one thing my D never fails to do is to go to her h.s. teacher’s office hours. So even though she’s not one who likes to speak up in class, this makes me feel much better about how she’ll fare going forward, wherever she ends up.</p>
<p>My uncle has 4 sons and a daughter who all received full-ride athletic and/or athletic/academic scholarships–football for the boys (DI) and track & field for the daughter (DI). They all received in-state tuition with scholarships on top of that. They began looking at possible programs the summer before 11th grade along with visits to said campuses. I know there are a bunch of “recruitment” rules set forth by the NCAA as to when couches & athletes can contact each other and the method of said contact based on conversations with my aunt & uncle. It seemed like a lot of red tape. </p>
<p>My uncle’s youngest son was recruited hard by all the Big 10 & Big 12 & Atlantic schools like Duke & UNC (applied & accepted to both) and a few others. He ended up this year with a full-ride athletic/academic full-ride scholarship to U of Iowa as he wanted to be close to home so we could attend games easier, but not at the same school as the brother right above him who plays for WI. Three years ago, son #3 ended up at U of WI with a 3/4 scholarship, the 2nd oldest just graduated from U of North Dakota on a full-ride athletic scholarship & is in grad school for his 4th year of eligibility at UND, and the oldest graduated a few years ago from U of Nebraska on a athletic/academic scholarship. Their daughter accepted a track & field academic/athletic full-ride scholarship to Texas Tech this year. She wanted a winning DI team that could lead to possible Olympic goals in warm weather. She was offered a ton of scholarships from midwest schools with excellent programs, but she wanted to train outdoors for the most part. I’m stoked and cannot wait to attend some of her meets. We relate well to each other because I ran track for the U of MN–still sad she turned them down. </p>
<p>Now my uncle and aunt put a LOT of time on the road checking out facilities, doing research on a school’s sports program, academic support, athletic health program, getting the kids in top programs the summer before 11th & 12th grade for national exposure in order to make sure each had the opportunity to get into DI programs with at least partial athletic scholarships, and sending sports reel DVDs to coaches. The kids were also invited to invitationals or to play football in national summer programs.</p>
<p>Depending on the sport, DI & DII schools can only offer so many scholarships, and most do not offer too many full rides in order to “spread” the scholarships around.</p>
<p>BHM - Thanks for your post. My s15 is a swimmer and so the rules are a little different. Coaches could not contact him directly until Sept 1 of his junior year. He got stuff through his coaches before that date but they couldn’t contact him directly. They can’t call him until July 1st before his senior year! Swimmers do not commit early and male swimmers do not get full rides . We know this - ha! Each d1 school gets 9.9 scholarships for male swimmers (female teams get 14.9). Most teams hold 25-40 guys on the team - so the odds are small to get anything over 1/2. So, my son has to make the decision of “big fish in a little pond - with lots of scholarship money” or “little fish in a big pond with little scholarship money”. We don’t have to do all of the videos etc that other sports have to do - there is a national database of times - a time is a time! And there is a national ranking system too. And the coaches do come to national meets to watch - but they can’t talk to juniors at these meets - the only place a coach can talk to a junior is on their campus! </p>
<p>Sounds like you have a very athletic and smart family! We keep telling our son to keep his grades up so he can combine athletic with academic money!!! We can only hope!</p>
<p>I go back and forth between thinking I am jumping the gun on visits and think we won’t have time to do them. I think I am just obsessing (could be…just a bit lol) and it starts to feel like I need to hurry up and figure all this out. It’s really not even possible right now to have a true list, as we don’t have test scores (other sophomore PSAT and PLAN) and GPA can change a lot this year. I tell myself to relax and let it be for a while, but then I think of that one more thing I want to check on.
I am sure I have used this analogy before, but I keep looking in the same geographic area for that one, perfect school, that doesn’t exist…like I sometimes keep looking in the pantry for that perfect snack that isn’t in there. Maybe if I look one more time…
I am anxious to get the SAT scores later this month, and my expectations for that are up and down. She refused to study, so, of course I expect a low score, but she felt good about it…so of course I expect a good score. </p>
<p>I have now also realized (I think) that the prepaid program we have may not pay as much as I thought for OOS or private schools…I need to make a phone call about that tomorrow to figure out those details. </p>
<p>We also just really need to nail down what we can/will pay. I’m a little afraid that what we first thought we could manage might not be realistic, and I am just becoming more aware of other expenses that are likely to come up, and we don’t want to be so strapped that we have to worry about paying for trips home, or other opportunities.</p>
<p>Shoboemom I am feeling just as stressed as you sound. We have visited a lot of schools so far ( about 10) and have trips planned for February and April- not sure if we are jumping in too quickly. My kid can’t narrow anything down- size, urban, etc she just says " when it feels right I will know." How can we narrow this down? I also don’t want to visit a school that she ultimately won’t be able to attend because the finances won’t work out. We are visiting Emory and I am not overly concerned about her getting in ( it would almost be easier if she did not)- I am concerned about the price tag. I keep telling myself that if she casts a wide net up and down the east coast that things will work out. My fear is that she will get money from schools that don’t thrill her, and the schools that she loves will give her nothing or not enough. That’s why I stress the importance of these tests. Her GPA is stable, which is a good thing. I suppose that if she only applies to schools that she likes then really any of them will be fine, but there will always be favorites within the list. </p>
<p>Well, the good news is that DC#2 (my 15er) has visited 11 of the 14 schools we toured with DC#1 (my college freshman). The bad news is that he’s only interested in one of those 11 schools so it looks like the SOG Travel Agency still has some work to do this spring.</p>
<p>My D15 tagged along on our college visits for D12- she was only in 8th grade. With the exception of one large state school, my D15 will not apply to the same schools- very different kids. Whenever we visit my older D, my D15 says " I won’t go to school in a one horse town." When I ask her if we can cross " rural" off the list, she says " I don’t know." What’s with that? </p>
<p>She just took a practice ACT science test- I was shocked that she agreed to take it this evening. I am looking forward to having the first round of tests over with.</p>
. We know this - ha! Each d1 school gets 9.9 scholarships for male swimmers (female teams get 14.9). Most teams hold 25-40 guys on the team - so the odds are small to get anything over 1/2. So, my son has to make the decision of “big fish in a little pond - with lots of scholarship money” or “little fish in a big pond with little scholarship money”. We don’t have to do all of the videos etc that other sports have to do - there is a national database of times - a time is a time! And there is a national ranking system too. And the coaches do come to national meets to watch - but they can’t talk to juniors at these meets - the only place a coach can talk to a junior is on their campus! </p>