My understanding is that if you work for the right employers there is matching funds. At least that was the case in my generation. Tried a quick google search & State Farm has a matching scholarship.
@RightCoaster I know a girl that is at an Ivy thanks to her efforts and hitting the points system jackpot. I haven’t seen the scoring system, but she checks just about every box for diversity and hook (some of them multiple times). When we talk about my kids and college it is like we speak two different languages. She will tell me that S should apply to ivies because his scores are so much better than hers were. Being a white boy from the suburbs, it doesn’t work that way for him. (Luckily he has no interest and we can’t afford it anyway, so no diving down that rabbit hole of disappointment.)
@dfbdfb its not that there aren’t rich white kids from the burbs getting in, it’s just much harder to do nowadays.
The example in the book they used was an incoming freshman class to an Ivy. They took 17 percent kids from Northest, 21 percent from Washington DC/Virginia, 23 percent from west coast, etc. The percentages don’t change very much year to year, according to this author who studied it for 10 years. So when you breakdown the kids from the northeast, there were a few hundred admitted. They were not going to accept more than that, ever. Even if you were perhaps way more qualified than some other students applying, your geography/ses/color of skin was going to keep you from getting accepted. To be one of those few hundred kids considered was very competitive.
I just thought it was a somewhat interesting read. Your kids should have a huge advantage to certain schools coming from Alaska!!
Regarding the resume, the admissions people said it was nice to just to see info on a one page reference sheet vs having to scroll thru the common app data. I took a note of it during the meeting, and after reading more about it it seemed like it couldn’t hurt. Maybe if the read the resume they learn a little bit more about you and don’t just toss your app in the trash?
@homerdog Depends on the school. The top elite schools money alone doesn’t help, that is unless you have enough to get a building named after you. Or you have the $$ because you are otherwise famous.
Smaller private LAC’s the ability to pay can be a help. Many smaller LAC’s only have so much $$ for scholarships and when that money is already allocated will stop looking at prospective students that will need money. Ie… they aren’t really need blind. And a kid who is borderline but can pay has an advantage over when who can’t.
RE: resume. My son created one to take to his interviews. One school clearly states on their website that they cannot accept resumes or transcripts during the on-campus interviews. (Probably alum interviews also.) Another school reviewed the resume with him and provided the helpful suggestion that he add his AMC score.
He did a great job with his resume, capturing the awards and showcasing the full breadth of his activities. Hopefully no one will notice the lack of paid employment!
I have not looked at the CA to see if any of his schools ask for a resume to be uploaded, but I doubt it. I recall older son having the option to upload to some school, but he was applying as a business major, so slightly more logical. Younger son does have a couple of schools where he can upload samples of coding or something else. (Out of my element here, so unsure of the details. Slideroom? Maker something?)
On NMF—does everyone receive the $2500 one-time scholarship or is that only offered by certain colleges?
@flatKansas I know a few young ladies that were accepted at every Ivy they applied. And while these young women were outstanding students, with stellar EC’s. The fact that they weren’t white I’m sure made the difference between getting into one of these schools vs. all.
To follow up on above posts about the admissions advantage of being full pay…agree with everything above and will add that once a school moves to waitlist, even need blind schools may no longer be need blind. Not saying FA is completely out of the question if moving off WL, but it does seem that the ability to pay, and provide an immediate response, helps in clearing the WL.
Hopefully none of our students will be looking to clear a WL next May!
Resume: This was one of those questions I was trying to get at with regard to the “unwritten rules” question I posted a few weeks ago. It seems that most people assume you need one. With DS '17, it never occurred to him that one was necessary. Perhaps it depends upon where you apply, but for people going through process the first time, it’s probably not clear that you need one. He did interview for a couple of uber-selective schools, but didn’t include a resume. As pointed out above, certain schools, say Pitt and U Va, state that they will just bin them.
I would think that knowing about resumes and their need is a bit of an advantage for applicants from higher SES. I could have been sleeping, but I don’t think an activities resume has been listed at any of the “college info” nights that we have attended at the high school.
Mission Trips: These are so individual that it’s really hard to generalize. I suspect that for many privileged kids, it really is the first time they have seen poverty up close, although they certainly didn’t have to go far for that. That’s more on the parents than this kids, isn’t it?
Finally, for a college to say that “I don’t want to read another essay from a mission trip” seems a bit much from the home of “I, personally, have never felt unsafe on campus” and “we have xxxx clubs and if we don’t have a club that you want, you and y friends can sign up and create your own!”
I’ve said it before, but if 3000 colleges can’t come up with a unique story, how can 3,000,000 applicants?
We just got to the part on the Common app last night that says “will you be applying for financial aid”. I have no idea how to answer that. I know we won’t get any need based, but are we supposed to say yes anyway? Or is saying yes shooting yourself in the waitlist foot? More research!
@Dave_N – I was just toggling around Naviance, trying to figure out how they will handle teacher LORs and stumbled across a folder entitled Document Library. It has an entry for 10th & 11th. Someone uploaded a resume template in Jan 2015, so I am guessing that as part of the students’ guidance seminars, a resume may have been mentioned to them. I am logged into Naviance as my son, so I am seeing what the students see.
I agree with you that I do not recall hearing about it at those panel info sessions held in our auditorium. I probably found out about it here three plus years ago when reading up on interviews for older son.
I also stumbled upon this message:
“The Naviance team is hard at work this summer upgrading the letters of recommendation experience for the next school year. The new experience will enable you to request recommendations for specific colleges and will also tell you the number of recommendations required by colleges you’re applying to. Stay tuned!”
It appears that this will allow the student to control which LOR is sent to which school. Now, since the students will fill out the FERPA form, they won’t actually know which LOR is better, but sometimes one teacher knows the student better than the other teacher, so I think this is progress. My son says that his schools all want two teacher LORs, but I recall older son having one school that only wanted one, and I wondered which one was uploaded.
I hope the Naviance team finishes up their hard work soon! First app deadline is Oct 15th in this house.
I don’t know about shooting yourself in the foot for clearing WL and I don’t think you need to worry about that now.
Are there schools that will only award merit aid if you apply for FA? If so, that is more important than worrying about a WL that may never come into play.
If you are at the point of trying to clear WL in May, then you make a decision with your child about what you can/will pay.
By that time, hopefully you will have a reading of the tea leaves of your EFC, and if by May you know that you wouldn’t get any money anyway and are as able to be full pay at WL school as at whatever other school your D has been accepted to, then she contacts Admission at WL school and communicates her intention to go to that school if she clears WL and states ‘my parents support my decision financially’.
Does that make sense? In other words, if it turns out that you have not received need-based FA anywhere, and you can pay to send your D, then you communicate that to the WL school.
My slight understanding is that many schools, especially those w/o great endowments, will have exhausted their FA budgets by the time they move to clearing the WL. Now in theory, the fact that they are going to WL means that some students did not accept their offers, so again, in theory, that unused FA money should still be available…but I have heard that schools like to clear WLs quickly. They call home phone, cell phone, and sometimes the school b/c they want an immediate response.
This is not meant to be a blanket generalization as there are students who clear WLs and receive FA.
Hope that did not muddy the waters further.
@CT1417 - Not every NMF received the $2,500 from the NMC. Only about 5,000 kids receive that. Other kids get corporate scholarship if a parent works at a business that provides those (I believe that they need to apply). Other get school-based NMF scholarships. For example, OkU offer a very nice NMF package (many have talked aout it) that includes full tuition, a stipend towards housing, a technology stipend, AND a NMF award. The NMF award is $5,000 over a 4 year period. My S15 get a NMF award from her school that equates to $3,000/year over 4 years on top of her full ride scholarship. In general, scholarships offered by the school appear to be more generous than the one-time scholarship awarded by the NMC.
It does, thank you 
Just got the news that S17 is now in the club of students who’s counselor won’t be coming back this year. I had a feeling this was going to happen, although I’m not sure why. Annoying as she really did know my S17.
@curiositycat333 – I feel your pain. We just met our new GC. As far as I can tell, no history as a HS GC. Trying not to stress about this.
My son has been on the academic decatholon and over all he was in 7 place out of 150. Though he had different events that he was 2nd and 3rd place Science and Math Literature 3rd place. Art 2nd Science and math are his best subjects I feel like it is more important to mention those places since they are his major areas. The person said the 7th place overall was more important and to leave the others off thoughts
Looking back at some of the posts from March-April 2016, I noticed what seemed to be an alarming trend… a # of students with stellar stats, etc who actually got into elite colleges that routinely only accept less than 10% of all applicants but then they got denied/rejected from colleges that they were considering matches or even safeties… colleges that accept 11-20%, even colleges that accept 21-40% in some cases. Some of the colleges mentioned routinely were Tufts, Boston University, UVa and USC. Even worse, in one case, an applicant with a 2400 SAT, 35 ACT, 4.0 unweighted GPA, 7 5’s on AP tests, solid ECs, etc. got rejected by all of his reaches and all of his matches and some safeties.
The speculation seems to be that certain colleges are starting to engage more and more in the practice of Yield Protection… an attempt to better their yield results by not accepting students who they are confident will not go there even if accepted. In other words, if you seem over-qualified and bound for an HYPSM type school, we will not accept you because we know you are not coming here.
If true at all… this makes things even more complicated for some well-qualified applicants, as you now have to possibly apply to even more schools… versus just a set # of reaches, matches and safeties. If all of an applicant’s match candidates employ such a strategy, and if the reaches do not accept either, you could be left with only safeties to select among. It is hard to fathom that the example above had that happen to him.
In 2014, my D1 was fairly sure that she would get into at least 8 of the 17 schools that she applied to. In the end, 12 rejected her, and only one of her top choice colleges accepted her. She came very close to that form of a decision - choosing only among safeties. This of course has caused great concern for D2 who is starting to apply to colleges right now.
The Common Application and its easy means to apply to more and more colleges may also be impacting the Yield Protection instinct. With more and more students applying to 12+ colleges, clearly yield rates at most schools have to keep falling.
Have any other parents heard about colleges that may be practicing this form of Yield Protection? And if so… how else are these applicants supposed to convince colleges that they are truly interested versus only applying as a back-up plan?
We went to an open house over the weekend and my D had her big awakening into the numerous deadlines and essays she was facing. She has decided to accept the essay help her AP Lang teacher offered (this is a girl who refuses any help from anyone) and , most surprising has asked me to create a spreadsheet to track all her deadlines and deliverables.
I am going to call it The SOD, The Spreadsheet of Desperation.
@WWWard – I would love to know the answer to your last question, if you ever discover it! The scenario you describe is the one I fear.
I think you can layer in something about how a specific college views/treats applicants from your school. Princeton and Hopkins rarely admit anyone from our HS; they don’t even recruit athletes and every other school of their caliber does.
Tie your comments in with the earlier ones about point/ranking system and the entire process is unpredictable.
@CaucAsianDad, maybe you could put a positive spin on it instead…. something like Spreadsheet of Determination. Might work!
My son just realized today that while he is on top of everything at the moment, he has not budgeted in any extra time for him to have extended periods of fun. He is bit depressed about that at the moment. I told him to try to cram as much as he can into certain days, not to dilly dally. He’s reading an AP class reading assignment like a madman right now.