@kt1969 I wish we could link as well. Actually there are a lot of things I wish on this forum, it is really archaic forum software and options compared to many. Oh well. I had wanted S to consider Willamette but it was a no go based on the location. It wasn’t great on the NPC if memory serves but since it never actually made it on the list, I have no real idea!
Thanks @“Queen’s Mom” @RightCoaster@smakl70@mamaedefamilia I am a little bit disappointed in the offer and hope there is some FA. Kind of sad when half tuition isn’t enough huh. However it does likely still make sense to visit and if he really loves it, compared to the rest, ask for more or leverage other offers if there are ones to leverage.
@RightCoaster my H and S19 cannot stand the name and think S shouldn’t even consider it based on the name. S19 in particular has issues with it. LOL! But to answer your question…
The name “Ursinus” (pronounced er-sigh-nus) is a Latin version of “Bear.” Ursinus was founded in 1869 and named for a 16th century reformer, teacher and thinker. Zacharias Baer (1534-83), took a Latin version of his German name and became known as Zacharias Ursinus.
@mamaedefamilia that is too bad they do not have a Dance program as they are so strong elsewhere in the arts. A bit surprising really.
I am thinking we could do it like this. If we have the accepted as one bucket at the top it would save a whole line. Leaning towards other factors as one line just for space. If we have students in the deferred and rejected lines we just duplicate the information layout from the top. To maintain this format though it would require adding in the BB Code each time. Which I can do if we want to have one person updating the main list. I think we can combine some of the lines though to save space and the selectivity is a single entry. Thoughts?
So using @“Queen’s Mom” as the example it could look like this (missing a few data points but you get the idea) AR = Acceptance rate lol. COmmon data is a bit goofy with SAT scores in terms of middle 50…
**ECKERD COLLEGE ** AR 73% Avg GPA 3.38, M 500-600, CR 500-610, ACT 23-28[list]Accepted Queen’s Mom’s D: EA Major/College:
GPA 3.3 UW, SAT/ACT: 1200 new SAT superscore
Other factors: 4AP’s, lots of honors, URM, founded and president of school club
COA:
NPC merit + need-based = Total: [e.g. $6,000 merit + $2,000 need = $8,000]
Actual merit 17K+ need-based = Total:
[list]
**WHITTIER COLLEGE ** AR 63% Avg GPA 3.51, M 470-590, CR 460-560, ACT 20-26[list]Accepted Queen’s Mom’s D: EA Major/College:
GPA 3.3 UW, SAT/ACT: 1200 new SAT superscore
Other factors: 4AP’s, lots of honors, URM, founded and president of school club
COA:
NPC merit + need-based = Total: [e.g. $6,000 merit + $2,000 need = $8,000]
Actual merit 24K+ need-based = Total:
@eandesmom, congrats on Ursinus and the merit award! It’s a school I was very interested in checking out and I don’t remember why we didn’t. Maybe S17 had the pronunciation issue (he also struggles with Juniata!).
I hear you about the interview. We had a similar experience with one of my S17’s favorites, University of Mary Washington. Toward the end of the summer we got an email encouraging applicants to interview, so we scurried to schedule one, drove 90 minutes in abysmal metro DC traffic, and the interview was, no joke, FIVE MINUTES LONG. I believe he and the interviewer emerged while I was still digging in my purse for my phone. I think the main thing the interviewer asked was if the school was his first choice. But as you said, it did give us an excuse to return and find he still really liked the whole feel of the campus. And he got in EA with merit aid, which we didn’t expect from a state school, so maybe it was worth it?
@eandesmom Congrats on another acceptance. Hope when you get the full financial aid package it will be more to your liking.
I’m very glad S17 doesn’t need to interview anyway. Although he’s probably do a better job than a few years ago. One advantage to only applying to large state schools.
As to the list of acceptances, I’m game. Although I’m not sure how we are going to do in well on this platform. Not much to say here yet…
@eandesmom congrats on Ursinus! Sorry the merit doesn’t feel like enough, but hopefully the FA will help.
@tacocat333 LOL about Juniata pronunciation…my D just took it off her list…one thing that really bugged her as a Spanish student was she kept wanting to pronounce it Who-niata like you would in Spanish and she said she couldn’t go there because that would be embarrassing if she kept saying her school’s name wrong.
@tacocat333 lol. We had the same pronunciation issue with Juniata and I can’t recall why it fell off the list as it really looks lovely. I feel like it was maybe location combined with NPC? At least the interview was more than 5 minutes. I would NOT have been happy about that. She said it would be 20-30 but they chatted for a solid 40. You’ve got to love merit from an in state school when not expected! Congrats on that!!!
@curiositycat333 thanks. I think I am more bummed as I was hoping it would be one of the more generous ones based on the NPC. We won’t know of course until we see the final package. It’s not at the top of his list but I had hoped it could be more of a financial contender than it is. Which I guess is the real issue. It is entirely possible every single school will come in around this same price.
@eandesmom Hopefully the FA will sweeten the deal at Ursinus. As for us, there is this envelope from WWU admissions just sitting on the table taunting me. D is still at rehearsal…
We have a friend whose son is at Willamette. He is now a junior and extremely happy there. He knew as soon as he first set foot on campus that Willamette was home.
Great thread - Congrats to eande-son on acceptance to Ursinus, and hope FA comes thru. I also suspect that the various offers, at least from schools in same category, will all roughly be the same. @eandesmom – I’ve just looked thru everything thing we have from Allegheny - no promise at all on notification date. At this rate, 2 weeks + 1 day still waiting for Coyote-son’s ACT scores to get from ACT to Allegheny – there’s only a week + 4 days before break for them to review his app – so I think we’ll still be in limbo. So smart of you to have ordered the scores sent extra early! Fingers crossed that Allegheny will treat EA in a somewhat rolling fashion, and that you hear before break! @taco cat - Congrats on UMW acceptance – but grrrr - the traffic btwn DC and Fredericksburg was enough to take the school off son’s list…I would have been ranting the whole trip back after a 5-minute interview! But really great to have a VA school in the bag.
@ (sorry - not sure who) Thank you so much for reassurance that Coyote-son is not the only one getting “apply here” emails from Mason long after the application was submitted. At least today, son’s e-mail from Mason was from History department, praising him for applying. This is the VA state school we’re hoping to hear from before break, along with UVM. @snoozn – thanks for support, and noting that an “electronic to paper” check can be deliversed in less time than an ACT score. Sadly, Coyote-son’s school just dropped reporting ACT scores this year - Allegheny notes on its website that would suffice as an official score. @everyone - funny stories about Ursinus and Juniata pronunciation - fortunately Coyote-son’s high school Spanish didn’t stick that well, so he can pronounce the J. @eandesmom - do you want individual acceptance summaries one at a time? Or would it be better to wait until having say 3 outcomes to report in one message? Am hopeful we will hear back from 3 more schools by Dec. 15th, though not Allegheny…
D got her merit letter from WWU (the school that very unfortunately is no longer on her list due to big issues with the EE dept). She got the WUE scholarship we’d been hoping for, so kind of bitter-sweet. At least our new “database” will turn it into useful info for others. It did make her feel very good that the letter said the WUE is only awarded to the top 14% of OOS students!
I like @eandesmom formatting. But it stinks that bb code doesn’t copy! I’d say just bold and underline the name of the school, not usernames and italics are not necessary for the decision. It won’t look quite as pretty, but the school names only have to be bolded and underlined once each (yes spellcheck, I know “bolded” isn’t a real word!), while each poster will have multiple entries.
Also, since merit and need packages sometimes come pretty late, we could just put in
NPC: $24,000 merit + $6,000 need = $30,000
Actual: $24,000 merit + ? need = $24,000
for example and update as aid packages come in.
@eandesmom, congrats on Ursinus! That sounds like pretty nice merit, but I hope you get the additional needed aid.
My oldest D had a couple of on-campus interviews with students and they were absolutely awful. I think for kids with low social skills a professional interviewer makes a huge difference, but I don’t think that applies to your S. Luckily D17 had AO’s for all her interviews, even the one over Skype.
@kt1969, I hope your D never moves to Buena Vista, CO. From the Denver Post:
Congrats on the Ursinus acceptance, @eandesmom! Hope there’s more aid coming to make it a feasible choice. With our small n of 3 LACs we are that our COA is settling in between the high 20s to low 30s. Doable for us (and competing with our in state flagship) but so far the interest is low.
@tacocat333, way to bury the lead, lol! Congrats on the UMW acceptance (unless you already reported it and you were just commiserating over D.C. traffic).
Congrats @tacocat333 and @snoozn ! D got a WUE award at WWU also, which made her/us very happy as it is 1) now very affordable and 2) out of state!!! It would be no hardship for me to have to travel to Bellingham periodically! What a nice area!
@snoozn That is hilarious. Yup, def not moving there! We have in-law family who lives in Ruidoso, NM and they appear to pronounce it Ria-dosa, which makes no sense. Oh well.
In our even smaller n, the final numbers (and I am counting total cost including books and travel) are coming in at about the low to mid 30s. I’d really like another $10K or so in financial aid to make it doable. Patiently waiting and biting my nails.
Great to hear of all the acceptances - Congrats to you all. A recap of acceptances may help others. Its funny, I was just spreadsheeting my S’s information this morning. So far, of the 5 acceptances he has - we have 1 PSSHE school, 3 privates and one out of state public U. Three of the five are approx 30,000 after merit, one is $38,000 and the PSSHE is $22,000. This confirms what I saw with my daughter, which is that the private/public/out of states were all relatively the same or pretty close at the end of the day. My son has now received a yes from his top 3 schools. He has an overnight set up with St. johns in March (his #1). I offered him accepted students day at # 2 and 3, and he politely declined. I think he has his mind made up. He says he does not even care about the other apps. However, we will have him wait until after the overnight to accept.
I can maintain one word doc that I update with the formatting as folks report acceptances. It absolutely does stink that the bb code formatting doesn’t copy
Too funny on Buena Vista. We have SO many names around there that OOS folks can’t pronounce or just aren’t attractive sounding names it can be amusing. Perhaps that is why Ursinus isn’t terribly bothersome to S. S19 has issues with Allegheny as a name as well but I don’t get the issue there at all.
I am counting total cost as well, including books and travel. Unfortunately S’s preferred geographical area is a large part of the issue. He is not interested in many of the schools where the COA would be lower (merit maybe the same but the starting price tag is lower). As a general rule, all NPC’s for the schools on his list except his in state safety seem to “magically” put the merit awards where our NPC comes in, high 30’s or low 40’s. Our data set of one so far puts it in the low 40’s (high 30’s if I deduct the “value” of AP’s to date for that school), or almost twice as much as his in state option (low 20’s). Which isn’t unexpected but still disappointing. I’d really like to see things at 36 or under to justify more than WWU and I am not sure we will see a school that hits that. It is the nature of the game. He wasn’t willing to compromise geographically or school type and I’m not willing to go lower on the quality of the school so that he’d be higher in the quartiles. But, all we need is one to love him just a little bit more.
Specific to Ursinus I think he was actually hurt by their new Gateway scholarship, which I honestly kind of expected when they announced it. He doesn’t meet the stat cutoff but it’s a number I think a lot do and they very clearly want to up their middle 50’s with that program. However, I do wonder as things get closer if a lot of kids don’t enroll that were offered it, if more might be tossed his way towards the end. I had still hoped for 2-4K more than was offered though, but as it was a free app in an area he was interested in, it was very low risk to apply. We will see what the FA package brings. There are a couple on his list that I may be willing to consider stretching the budget further but I do not think Ursinus is one of them. The problem with FA is we will get a very different result for year 2 when his sister graduates so I hate relying on that versus the merit awards. Years 3-4 “should” match whatever he is offered for year one. Ish.
On the positive side he has been very very careful not to have a top school or a favorite as he knew what his list meant and that this was a real possibility, it was discussed ad nauseam that he only had one financial safety. He has been pretty clear that If none on his list are affordable, WWU will be fine and he didn’t see the need for more than one financial safety.
@eandesmom So your talking about keeping a master & updating occasionally. That might work.
Not sure how I feel about post $$ though. S isn’t likely to get any significant aid anywhere. But that’s because of where he is applying and where is stats are. I was pushing academic fit over where he could get $$. If we went with where he could get $$, it would have to be a small LAC that was impressed by his SAT scores. And none of those schools had the least bit of appeal to either of us. Hopefully he will get into one of his lower price point schools.
But that’s because of where he is applying and where is stats are. I was pushing academic fit over where he could get $$. If we went with where he could get $$, it would have to be a small LAC that was impressed by his SAT scores. And none of those schools had the least bit of appeal to either of us. Hopefully he will get into one of his lower price point schools.