And in 2.5 years the process starts all over again if DC is aiming for grad school.
climbing on board the weary, frustrated, tired train. Iâm spending the morning fighting FAFSA trying to reset ID/Password and getting locked out; DH is slogging through CSS; D16 is tackling yet another essay for some random scholarship that she wonât get. If only that powerball ticket had paid offâŠ
^^^^ same boat @dyiu13
Hopefully I wonât forget the things I have learned & weâll avoid mistakes made.
FAFSA on hold until we can figure out if we are going to do anything with an UGMA account- ugh!
Bringing some happiness to this thread since my sister and I got our prom dresses! Well technically she got her prom dress and I got the fabric and pattern needed for my mom to make mine. Prom isnât until June 18th-4 days before graduation. Our schoolâs prom is always the latest- itâs usually the day after classes end-around the 12th. But for some reason no one can figure out ours is one week later.
Prom! Well that is indeed a light at the end of the tunnel!
SO many weary parents here (I volunteer to be president of that club!)âŠI believe it should be mandatory at the virtual BBQ on May 1st that we include hammocks for all! Any of you newbies to this threadâŠeveryone is invited!
@labegg Harley Davidson - LOL! I too have seen many unique and strange ârequirementsâ for scholarships. I wish I had compiled a list just for entertainment value!
Many businessâs have scholarships for their employees , so Iâm not surprised Harley Davidson would have one. I also donât have a problem with Veterans receiving scholarships, theyâve earned them. My husband is a veteran, but my son is not eligible because my husband served and retired prior to 9/11. There are guidelines for everything in life. Just something we need to get used to.
@labegg I could have written your exact email, down to the Harley Davidson. Except that DS does attend a Jesuit high school, so he could apply for that award. However, a lot of boys from his high school apply there, so weâre weighing his chancesâis it worth it to write the essays to apply? I wish we knew if he was getting any other aid, because that would help us decide if itâs worth the effort, but of course the school wonât tell us that yet.
Definitely in waiting mode. And after much soul-searching (and number-crunching) - I made the decision to NOT have S try to plow through scholarship apps. Everyone in his senior honors seminar has a huge individual project due at the end of the month, and thatâs taking much of his time. Heâs close enough to burnout - Iâm not going to push him farther over that edge. Thereâs one scholarship for $4K thatâs sort of a slam dunk - from my employer - but he could only get it once, and no harm in waiting a year to apply. His option that offered the most merit aid is silent on the Honors program for a bit longer - invitation only, so nothing he can do - but as heâs looked at the rest of the curriculum, heâs realized that itâs just not that compelling without honors. So - we wait. Wait to hear about Honors, wait to hear from the 3 RD schools, all of which are in the âcrapshoot or near to itâ range. Depending on how things turn out, I could see him going to the local safety with very little aid.
So ready for this to be over.
D hit submit on one last college app and powered through a last minute scholarship app yesterday. Of course, the essay for this scholarship is her favorite one yet (used a book she just read about biomimicry as inspiration), and she wishes she had written it months ago so it could have been used for all those done and gone applications.
She has reached a Iâm-feeling-good-despite-the-chaos zen this last week. Iâm not complaining and was actually wondering if maybe a new fella was the reason, but I donât think so. I doubt the zen will last though May 1, so I should enjoy it while I canâŠ
D16 intended to apply for a number of outside scholarships, but so far has been sticking with scholarships offered by the schools. I think she is just essayed and applicationed out. One of her top schools might have another essay or two left for their enhanced scholarship level and she would do that, but the outside scholarships seem to be falling by the wayside. She has some very good offers and a bunch of merit awards to hear about from her schools, so I am kind of glad she is mostly going into waiting mode before we all get too burned out in the process.
Itâs almost as if the long drawn out process of college admissions is an endurance test. Congratulation! You win admittance if you can just cross the finish line!
I love that the University of Pittsburgh is able to maintain a very high academic standard and has the most uncomplicated admission process.http://oafa.pitt.edu/apply/admissions-process/freshmen/ School specific online app, send in SAT/ACT scores. self report your transcript, 3 short answer essays ( a 500 word cap for all three essays total), with a specific request to a please donât send any recommendation letters they really arenât helpful and we really donât need to know about your extra curricular (if you want to talk about them cover it in a short answer essay) all capped with a rolling admissions decision that they get back to you in very short order (2 weeks for D16). They automatically consider you for honors and for scholarship money and if you donât make a specific stat cutoff there will be no money that they tell you upfront. âHail to Pittâ!
@labegg I hear you! Very similar situation here. Due to diligent saving and just plain luck with my contract being extended over and over where 3-6 months has become 4 years, we wonât qualify for any need based aid. S16 has a great GPA and good but not outstanding scoresâŠso not enough to qualify for merit where he wants to go. Iâve limited scholarship applications to local ones since the odds are better (and I canât get him to write more than one essay), but he doesnât meet a lot of the requirements eitherâŠnot a scholar-athlete, not the right major, not the right ethnicity, not the child of a veteran, firefighter, etc.
@DSkates76 S16 is only applying to the school specific ones right now that have pretty tight deadlines. I do have info on 5-6 outside scholarships that are local/regional etc waiting in the wings to see if there is any time and motivation left. Some of those have deadlines that are into March or AprilâŠso perhaps there may be a second wind by then?
D14 did approx. 4 outside apps her senior year (again, local and regional only), and ended up with two - $2500 and $1150. When you look at time spent on apps, and return - she probably made approx. 200-300 dollars/hr! We will be targeting those again this year hopefully.
There are also a few colleges that stack scholarshipsâŠso at those schools the benefit is that our EFC would be reduced by the extra scholarship money (rather than the financial aid from the college being reduced). If it ends up that the colleges scholarships and the outside scholarships equal more than the bill for tuition/room/boardâŠthey refund the student the difference up to the full cost of attendance (which includes books, travel, miscellaneous).
@labegg D13 applied to Pitt and it was one of her final 2. Very impressed with the school itself - they do a great job during campus visits, admitted students day etc. She ended up at a great place, but wished we could have had Pittâs in-state tuition 
@labegg Now I wish S16 had applied to Pitt - their process seems so reasonable!
any nominations for the most unnecessarily complicated process? Iâd like to nominate UT-Knoxville-- 2 essays on the common app; then separate application for Haslam scholar (4 short essays) then 2 more essays for the Chancellors honors program. and the LORS that were included w/ common app- they needed to be resent to a separate address for the scholarship application. Really people?!
Pitt dropped LOR/ECâs this year and their short essays and practice of having students self-enter their transcripts saves them a ton of time since they donât have to do that in-house. It really gives them a strong demographics and numbers database right away for admission and merit decisions. I have heard of a lot of complaints on CC and from local parents with kids at Pitt about past slowness in putting together their final FA packages when the need based aid is involved. Hopefully the super fast and streamlined methods they devised this year for admissions/honors and merit aid will increase their efficiency on the back end of the FA process too. West Virginia was the only school we had that was faster than Pitt and their process for admissions and merit is completely numbers based, with a merit menu on their website. That the two schools are each otherâs rivals make me wonder if that isnât one more thing they compete at (-:
Our most screwed up admissions process was at Drexel, and in that screwed up process it dropped from near the top to completely off the list.
Hello! I just found this site and this is my first post. I read through the past 10 pages here and the posts have been very helpful. I wish I found this site sooner! I have a daughter graduating this year.
My question - is it true University of Southern Californiaâs scholarship deadline was December 1, 2015? They do not not consider scholarship eligibility if you applied by their 1/15/16 application deadline? Weâre so bummed. D was not ready to apply in December. Anyone have any experience with USC? Thank you!
Hi and welcome @mom2one98 As far as I know, yes, that is the deadline. My son toured USC and considered applying there, but ended up opting not to. We did receive a letter about that deadline though. I do not know if there is any leeway on that. It is certainly worth asking. S recently decided to apply to our state flagship and he also missed a deadline. It was for additional departmental scholarships and other special ones. The app was still online so I asked about it and they said to definitely apply and that it was up to the individual departments to decide if he might still get any of these awards. Good luck! Has she applied to many other schools?