Filled out a school specific Financial Aid Supplement last night. I’m guessing that it’s like a mini-CSS Profile. All that info should help when I tackle the CSS this weekend.
My D has 10 schools that require CSS and 3 with their own supplement and 1 FAFSA only and 1 not applying for aid due to getting full Tuition Remission.
To add to what @Mom2aphysicsgeek was saying about EFC and how the cost will vary by school, one factor that varies a lot is whether the school counts home equity. Some schools don’t consider it all while others will crush you for it. From playing around with the Net Price Calculators, it looked to me like Northwestern, which meets 100% of need, counts home equity a lot and Vanderbilt does not. Some schools like Stanford limit the equity to a multiple of annual income, 1.2x in their case.
http://www.thecollegesolution.com/will-your-home-equity-hurt-financial-aid-chances/
(In the above link, I have my doubts that Santa Clara doesn’t consider it)
Another UA family here. UA beat out all of our in state Texas schools as DS wants engineering and UA was going to be much less costly than any other OOS school he was looking at. DS is excited and has basically stopped applying everywhere else. Hope the reality lives up to all the hype but feel like for his goals UA is a great fit.
Well…I need to vent. My S is going to be the death of me this year. He has never been late to school or band practice in the past however this year he has decided to be late almost everyday! This morning was the breaking point and I told him that he needed to get to school on time from now on. I know some of this “not wanting to go to band practice” has to do with his band director crapping on the seniors and letting a junior be drum major this year. The sad part is the junior that is a drum major is horrible but his mom is super friendly with the band director. It has always been a right of passage that to be a drum major you had to be a senior. I have a feeling that my S is not the only senior not showing up for practice and class. This morning I had to put my foot down…it was not pleasant and I am not happy about having to do it. I told him that if he didn’t show me he could get past the issues and be an adult about things then he was not mature enough to go off to college. Broke my heart but I did it! Sometimes being a mean parent stinks! Vent over…moving on. :((
@RightCoaster I think it depends on the school. So even when you apply early-but-as-RD, you generally hear results on the scheduled date that the school gives.
When my D applied two years ago, her schools were almost all small LACs , plus one restrictive EA and one priority decision with a Nov. 1 deadline. While her friends were getting acceptances in December, she had to wait it out until Feb for her first acceptance (to the priority deadline school). Lots of stressful waiting but she did get an early write to one school which was non-binding.
So the answer is, I think, that it depends on the kind of school that one applies to. S will have a different kind of experience since he is applying to mostly bigger schools. Unfortunately we are still waiting on the transcript, GPA, and class rank, so he he can’t do a thing yet. He has three apps ready to go.
DS told us that the high school counselors were telling the kids that college isn’t necessarily the best choice for everyone. Technical school maybe a better fit and a plumber or electrician for example may have better job security than some college degrees. We told him that they were right. However he is not mechanically inclined so we think college is the right choice for him.
Congrats to your S @BigPapiofthree! D should have her IU app submitted this coming weekend She’ll be an SGIS direct admit.
We bought our house in SoCal 20 years ago.
Counting home equity would KILL us.
A bunch of University of Alabama families: Well, they admit pretty early (beginning of September) and auto-admit by stats, plus they have crazy merit aid if you have the test scores—so yeah, there’s a bunch of us here. Also, yesterday the housing lottery application opened, so there was a flurry of activity, especially since it didn’t go perfectly smoothly for everyone.
Alabama’s roommate selection bios: So after the discussion of roommate bios that included students self-describing as “white”, I took a look at the potential matches my daughter got. None of them use that descriptor, and as far as I can tell, none use any overt or covert racial markers, unless “midwestern” counts as a marker for white, but that’d be stretching it, I think. There were some interesting social markers—a lot of self-describing as suburban or country (which would have been an ethnic marker back in the day but isn’t so much now, I think), for example, plus a handful who self-described as Christian but none who self-described as atheist, agnostic, or non-practicing religious (or practicing in any other religion), which I thought was intriguing. The one thing that we saw a lot of—and which got her to go back and edit her bio to make her position clear—was whether they planned to go Greek or not. (And of course, a lot of the ones from Alabama said what their high school was, which presumably indexes a lot of social features, including racial/ethnic ones, but we’re not familiar with those.)
More on the roommate bio: Speaking of it, my daughter hated writing it—I mean, utterly hated. Initially she considered going with snark along the lines of “SWF, 17, enjoys candlelight dinners and long walks on the beach…” but (wisely) thought better of it.
Undermatching, cont’d: Since @Mom2aphysicsgeek talked about their son at the local directional, I want to say that (as someone who’s faculty at an open-access directional) professors at such schools absolutely love having bright, motivated young students in our classes. (Not everyone’s comfortable with high-school-age students even if they have such attributes—but that’s mainly because FERPA works a bit differently with dual-enrollment students, and because some classes deal with very adult topics.) It can also, depending on the class, be good for the other students, so there’s that, too.
@BigPapiofthree IU is now at the top of D’s list. She’s also applying to Kelley and will be a direct admit. Hoping for one of the diversity Kelley scholarships to top off the auto merit. We’re still waiting on submission of her transcript to complete her file there. Thanks for the heads up re: decisions. That’s more ammo if I need to call the principal.
UA Family here! D submitted the housing deposit yesterday and has had more fun connecting with girls on instagram. I wonder how many of our d’s our connecting and we don’t know it.
@dfbdfb - well that makes me feel better. when looking at the matches for my son I suppose it’s possible that one guy stated he was white and others just added that as part of their description too…
A lot of the guys put their city/state and or high school. My son put his city/state. Mostly because then if someone from around here is going then maybe they could be roommates.
There was one who didn’t want to here about churches…
@VickiSoCal We’re in the same club
Funny because there weren’t a huge number of matches for son but none of them stated his race several stated religion preference or no practicing religion.
@dfbdfb I wonder if you saw my daughter’s bio? She specifically said she would not be going Greek, but didn’t care what anyone else was doing (not those exact words, of course). 
Also, I don’t think you can ready anything into ‘midwestern’. =)) Remember, that includes states such as IL, OH, and MI, with large, diverse cities.
We are another family with UA on the list, in fact S17 got the Presidential scholarship confirmation letter yesterday. It is the farthest away of his three safeties, so I have been putting off visiting. I am afraid he will love it if he visits! He isn’t doing the housing deposit yet though, so if he decides to go there he will be scrambling to find someone to pull him into a room I guess.
@caroldanvers - That’s the good thing about UA. At some other schools if you pick a roommate you end up with an average of the two time slots.
@STEM2017 Is your S applying to a number of private schools? You will have much better luck getting special financial aid consideration at privates than a publication.
@Tgirlfriend, FWIW, I think you did the right thing putting your son back on track. You don’t want to mess up your senior year because you’re pissed off at the band director for his politics.
@itsgettingreal17 He is applying to a few privates. We knocked most of them off the list after looking at the sticker prices and comparing to the publics. Maybe it’s time to circle back but it will take alot of explaining and begging to get them on my side. We’re not exactly the type of family that wealthy privates are looking to help. And need-based financial aid is like the weather…very unpredictable.
We were really hoping for merit-based. There’s still a shred of hope.