@STEM2017 Got the same letter from SMU too. 0% chance of applying. Why bother mailing mailing letters to kids from the east who have expressed zero interest in the school? It’d be like finding a needle in a haystack getting one kid from their school to even apply, let attend.
D got her 3rd fee waiver in the mail today.
It made me look at the college again…still not going to work for D.
We are still waiting for my son’s April ACT scores to be put on Naviance. Pretty sure that we won’t see his June SAT2s for a while there.
@vandyeyes and @RightCoaster – your successive posts prompted me to return to Naviance and I discovered that someone at the HS has updated the data for the class of 2016. I had intended to screen shot the scattergrams of a handful of schools in an attempt to triangulate who certain admits were. A crazy waste of time but since I am not creating spreadsheets or binders, I do have some time to waste. Now I am bummed I missed my opportunity.
SMU–we have had two to four attend each of the past three years, with # of applicants ranging from six to 17 and admits from two to ten. Admit figures are highly inconsistent.
Glancing quickly through the ‘Colleges I am thinking about’, it is a very dismal landscape. As in, son knows exactly who the four admits to Dartmouth were, which three turned down MIT to go elsewhere, and who the recruited athlete to xyz was. A couple of standout female applicants secured admission to a handful of schools, but otherwise, it appears many were admitted to only the school they chose to attend. Not a bad thing as one only needs one acceptance.
@RightCoaster – a well-intentioned friend ‘gifted’ me a one week trial of Blue Apron. I prepared the first night’s menu and ended up tossing out the next two. That killed me as I hate to waste food, but it seemed like so much more work than just regular cooking, and I am someone who makes marinade and salad dressing from scratch. Also, small protein portion sizes and more calories from starch than I like.
@CT1417 92Mbps??? Wow. Our 15Mbps is the fastest I know of around here, LOL. Rural area and all that. I can see why the fam doesn’t want you to mess with that!
DS will be working during the summers, but for his older siblings, that money went toward tuition rather than living expenses and I expect the same will have to be true for him. Not that they have been able to make a whole lot; we live in an area with a shortage of jobs for teenagers b/c so many of the classic teenage jobs (fast food etc.) are being worked by adults and retirees 
. (Sad face both for teens unable to find work and older folks having to work such jobs.) In the end, we’ll figure something out.
@mdcmom – I have asked the boys to ask their friends to run speed tests so that we can try to figure out what the regular level of service is. Probably too much time spent trying to whittle away at one bill, but they all accumulate. Could any of us have believed 30 years ago that we would be paying this much for cell service + internet, back when a long distance call was still somewhat of a luxury.
@rightcoaster thanks for the laugh, at your stomachs expense. I have to say I am a great cook which unfortunately for my D16 leaving for college will be a problem for her. When we went to orientation and tried the food that supposedly was good to entice parents to get the meal plan, we were both horrified at how bad it was. Luckily she got my cooking genes and she is prepared to cook in the kitchen on her floor.
My old high school uses Naviance so I tried my log in and it worked. It was fun to see the updated statistics from my class.
@greeny8 - I am not a good cook. My kids eat a peanut butter sandwich and apple for lunch every day. They also have had their share of college food at a number of colleges… So far there hasn’t been one college that they were impressed with the food. Either they have said that the food was horrible or bland. DS13 lost 15 pounds first semester at Georgia Tech because he hated the food and he was thin to start with. When DS17 went to a camp at Fordham he said it was so bad that after the first day he got up early and walked off campus every day to get breakfast…
I think that is why most colleges require that kids have a meal plan the first year. Because if given the choice the kids probably would figure something else out instead.
THANK YOU
Your post was the nudge I needed.
Saved today.
$50.00 a month with Direct TV
$28.78 a month with Comcast
Granted, $40 of that Direct TV savings will only last 12 months but still, for the year it’s $945.36!
The new price is about what a new promo bundle at Comcast would have run, without the headache of switching providers.
And I got rid of the land line which is nothing but a giant PITA to clear out all the telemarketer calls, it hasn’t worked in years anyway (allegedly due to an outdated modem that we never upgraded…I thought we did but whatever, they will come out with a new one next week which allegedly should improve our internet speed which at 75mpbs should not be as slow as it seems.
@RightCoaster that’s hysterical. I have a friend that uses that services (and a variety of others over the years). I always find it odd as I don’t think she’s a bad cook. I think your wife needs the fully pre-made option like Dinner’s Ready and the like used to do. Pull it out of the freezer and stick in oven. Blue Apron doesn’t seem like much less work than making your own, it just saves you a trip to the grocery store. My H hates those things, portion sizes are way too small on the protein.
I can send S17 over, he’s an amazing cook.
S19 takes after your wife. As does my H!
@MotherOfDragons I take it back, it’s only $21.95 a month with comcast and $6.83 with Sprint lol. Your post made me think about our cell phone bill which then reminded me I needed to buy apple care for S17’s new phone and cancel the sprint insurance on it. Which is a net savings of $6.83 a month. LOL!
@2muchquan My user name actually would give identifying info so I can’t really share now But our class of 15 group did form a closed FB group once we got a bit further along in the process so we could share pictures and such which has been a real godsend. So maybe one day I can tell the story in a less public setting…
I saw the thread on Penn and it has gone from a likely ED to maybe not at all in the discussions of this evening. They would knock out 3 of my daughter’s planned EA options and though she really liked Penn she doesn’t want to sacrifice the EAs for it. If she applies elsewhere ED and gets in no more Penn. If she doesn’t get the desired results EA or ED she may ED2 somewhere. I think somewhere along the way she’s going to get into one of the reaches or get a great merit offer and bye bye RD Penn. Wasted some free test scores on them too 
QOTD: No allowance here but I cover the essentials. We have a joint credit card to charge books, school supplies, and the one meal a week the meal plan doesn’t cover. He buys any junk food, meals he wants to eat off campus, coffee, etc. We have a shared Amazon Prime account and if he needs clothes, gadgets, etc he makes a wish list and I send as much as I feel like but he really doesn’t ask for much. I sent him a package mid-year with refills of shampoo, toothpaste, shaving cream, etc from Walmart.com. He doesn’t really like to shop much and it just seemed easier that way. Both my kids have worked since they were old enough and save a good bit so they can cover their own non-essentials like concert tickets and fancy clothes/shoes on the rare occasion they desire them. All the grandparents sent bits of money here and there too for holidays and such so I think that probably covered most of his off campus food/coffee-bagel store-milkshake (on campus but not on dining plan) wants.
@mtrosemom How on earth is your DD supposed to pay for everything you are expecting her to cover on $100 a week including food & gas?
Until she graduated D12 got a monthly allowance (for extra food/snacks, most clothes, toiletries), and I covered her books/school expenses & approved extra expenses she vetted through me. (Like a new winter coat… or new hard drive for her computer.) She basically had zero money without her allowance. Her first and only job was last summer and it as part time and only paid minimum wage. Because she was so far away, I always wanted her to have a minimum in her account for emergencies as well. I kept her fairly skint, but she didn’t have a car. Lives on campus all 4 years…
I’m really not sure where everyone’s kids get money. Mine don’t get money for gifts. S17 has no time of a paid job. And the first paid job DD found was last summer.
Not sure what we will do with S17. He does get a tiny allowance he can use for going out with friends & buying his own clothes. He’s a very different kid and has a better idea how to handle money. He has never had a paid job, so at least at first we will be covering all expenses. I will probably start with a monthly allowance.
[bold] Cable [/bold] We cut the cord with cable when the only show we were watching anymore went off the air. Don’t miss it a bit. Now to consolidate Netflix’s accounts. Stupidly got DD her own when she went to college and we didn’t need to.
@RightCoaster My son got a student credit card as soon as he turned 18 even though he had a debit card. It’s been about 18 months and he charges $50-100 a month on the card and it autopays in full from his checking account but it shows his credit score on each statement and he has gone from a 700 to start to over 800 now which is really good and should make it easy for him as an adult to get a mortgage or car loan. He has the Discover Student Card which is free and gives cash back rewards. Capital One has a free student credit card that has very similar benefits. He went with Discover because we have used them for years so it was familiar to him. His debit card is Visa so the few places that don’t take Discover he still has a non-cash way to pay. I think his initial credit limit was like $200 and it’s maybe $500 now.
QOTD
With oldest D we just kind of played things by ear. She would let me know about any expenses of the type covered by Bank of Mom & Dad. I admit I would also give her extra here and there for meals out/entertainment, but not regularly.
Part of D17’s allowance will be determined by meal plan. We’ll pay for 3 meals/day however it works out. I do not want her to have a job freshman year so there won’t be yet another big transition to make (she has never had a job). Like a few of the other kids, she hoards her birthday and Christmas money and has a tidy little bundle for things she wants to buy or do. I think we’ll give her a “social budget” because I really want to encourage her to socialize and be able to go out with friends (without feeling like she’s using up her savings). That would probably be $50/month or maybe less.
We’ll pay cell phone, insurance, all that jazz. She’s lucky she’s going into engineering because she’ll need a pretty sweet laptop to run that fancy STEM software. I don’t think her laptop from 8th grade is going to be up to par.
@RightCoaster, I may be a worse cook than your wife. A friend of mine raves about Blue Apron, but I don’t see the appeal if they aren’t at least chopping the veggies for me. I remember my aunt once “complimented” my Mom’s cooking by saying “Well, that’s not bad.” I was angry on Mom’s behalf. At some point when H and I hadn’t been married long my MIL said of my cooking, “That’s not bad. Not bad at all.” :-S
@paveyourpath $500 a month does seem a bit excessive for an allowance. Perhaps you can talk with them about putting some of that money towards tuition or the meal plan. Or suggest to him that he start saving half of that so he can buy something big in the near further like furniture for an off campus place or a car. I have mentioned that we have gotten quite a lot of help from the Bank of Grandparent, but they have been paying a large chunk of tuition and letting me handle the spending money.
I think the EFC is really only realistic in areas with housing costs that are super low and people have been earning at the same level for their kids whole lives so they had the ability to save all along. We are super lucky that we can meet ours but a big part of that is that we still live in the house we bought pre-kids when our income was 1/3 of what it is now. If we had moved up from our starter home no way no how. We saved more in 529s each month than our mortgage for the past 10 years to be able to make our EFC and that’s with 2 years of 2 in college so theoretically a lot less per kid for 2 years but I’ll believe that when I see it.