3.5! Ouch.
Texas Tech does not stack scholarships because they provide 100% cost of attendance including travel and incidentals. I called and asked. And the student will be taxed on the amount of the scholarship above tuition and books (room, board, travel, stipend) and the Kiddie Tax will likely apply.
Re: stacking at UNM - I forgot to ask while we were there, so I sent them an email to ask. I’ll let folks know when they get back to me.
Re: difficult people - My philosophy on difficult people is that there will be difficult people everywhere, so I’m not going to let them stand in between me and something I really want. Maybe that UTD person was having a bad day or was off his game for some reason. Maybe he doesn’t realize how he came across. Maybe he believes that dealing with a challenging interview is a life skill that kids need to develop, so they start pushing and testing from the get go. For the McDermott, they want polished students who can handle themselves in a variety of social situations, both with peers and with adults / authority figures, so maybe this was an initial test to see if S was McDermott material.
Anyone who does the NMF tour will meet with the person we encountered, so the fact that no one else has said anything suggests we might have had an unusual experience.
Anyhow, S said that if that one person had been the only indicator of poor fit, that it wouldn’t have knocked UTD off the list by itself. Unfortunately, he noticed some unpleasant behavior in a few male students that told him this might be a larger, cultural thing instead of a one-off. One student was hitting on a girl and totally not taking the girl’s cues that she wasn’t interested, and another was walking with a friend or two and making comments that sounded borderline racist.
Please, PLEASE, don’t let S’s experience put anyone off from checking out UTD. Again, there will be jerks everywhere, and it might have been our bad luck that we ran into a couple in a row.
Re: UNM and GPA requirements - there’s one requirement to keep the OOS tuition waiver and another to keep the other half of the package. One is a 3.0 and the other is a 3.3, but I don’t recall which is which. We’re driving to Norman, today, so I’ll see if it’s in our literature once we get there. UNM said that if a scholarship student was struggling with GPA, they’d help them and work with them, They wouldn’t cut them off immediately.
I’m not sure what the GPA is for UTD.
One more thought on UTD, for those doing the NMF / McDermott tour, it’s probably not a bad idea to prep your kid that the interviewer might say something deliberately intended to rattle them, and they should be polite but persistent and just keep on chugging. If it’s a deliberate tactic, might as well be ready for it. 
Headed to Rice and its School of Music for tours this weekend. I will post a review. S18 got back his second SAT attempt and bumped himself up another 30 points (40 superscored) and improved the essay portion. He was underwhelmed but I figure every bit helps. He wants to take the ACT one more time but that will be it. Just not sure if he will take it this school year or early next. Meeting with his school’s college counselor in a couple weeks and will discuss with her. I hope all have a relaxing Easter weekend.
Oooh, Rice! It was on our shortlist before hubs got a large raise that stuffed us in the donut hole.
Rice may be on the list here too, so I’m looking forward to the report!
Nice write up on Tech. Texas Tech is on our list - though we aren’t NMF be we are in-state for Tech. He already does qualify for one of their merit scholarships. We plan on visiting Tech this summer. On paper it’s at the top of his list after Alabama.
DD’18 is visiting colleges in Boston today. Will post a report when I get one.
Here’s a scenario that I hadn’t considered:
My son has a friend on the NM scholarship at our state school. The verbiage in the President’s Scholarship contract states that it’s full cost of attendance for up to 130 semester hours or 8 semesters, whichever comes first.
The girl’s AP credits pretty much wiped-out her freshman year requirements, so she technically started school as a sophomore. I spoke with her mom & she told me that they never thought (and nobody told them) about how those AP credits would affect the formula. They thought she had 8 semesters & the school (because of the AP credits) was now only going to honor 6 semesters. But the family didn’t know this.
The girl explored a minor and took many classes in that, along with her major classes in mechanical engineering. So this school year (what the family thought was her junior year) the school sent a letter to the family stating that the scholarship would be terminated at the end of the spring semester.
This sent the girl into a panic, as she still had a year’s worth of engineering courses left to complete. The parents submitted an appeal and also flew-in to speak in person with the engineering college dean. In the end, the dean took the family’s side & advocated for them. The last two semesters of the scholarship will be honored.
This is something I never thought about either, but I’ll keep it in my memory bank and be sure to ask potential NM scholarship schools their specific policy on how AP credits affect the scholarship so there are no such misunderstandings when D18 starts college.
Thanks for the heads-up @LMHS73. I’m trying to go back over our visit to UTD in my mind now. I know they talked about how most NMFs come in with a lot of AP credit and that the scholarship can be applied to graduate level classes. They even mentioned the possibility of an accelerated masters degree being within the scholarship limit if the student wants that and can handle the workload. I can’t remember if they explicitly said the scholarship was good for eight semesters regardless of AP credit though…something to confirm for sure.
@DiotimaDM I hope your drive to Norman went/is going okay. Weather’s kinda rough today. Welcome to spring in Oklahoma! :>
@traveler98 - If you have a contact name from your visit to UTD, perhaps you could get a concrete answer regarding whether AP credits affect the overall length of the scholarship they award. And also (like you said they mentioned) if the student could stay on the scholarship to complete some master’s work if they’ve already completed their undergrad work in under 8 semesters.
THAT would be some VALUABLE information to have !!!
Made it safe to Norman! The young woman who checked us into our hotel had a cute Pixie cut in various shades of bright purple and Kool-Aid blue, and a Harry Potter marathon was playing on the TV in the lobby. 
Just back from our PNW tour:
Willamette, off the list. His words: it’s a really nice campus but I’m not coming here. I found this a little bewildering because I thought it was great. Much more updated and well-kept facilities than many schools. He was so sure that we left campus for lunch and he threw away his folder on our way out.
University of Puget Sound, stayed on the list, but second from bottom. He thought more highly of it than he did at age 13 when we toured with D15. Then we did the music tour, which DH and I thought was great, but was a big turnoff for S18. Who knows why?
Lewis & Clark moved into the number 2 spot behind College of Wooster. Phew! We can see him there and so can he.
LOL @1518mom our kids had polar opposite reactions to the Oregon schools! Willamette is at #1 for now with my D and L&C off! Same reaction to UPS, down but not out…
It’s fun to see “fit” really come into focus with these visit reports, one kids perfect is another’s no way!
So true. A friend told me that she took two of her sons to visit WashU a couple of years ago. One of them loved it, the other hated it. Same day, same tour guide, same info session, same weather!
@1822mom I realized two things that might have turned him off Willamette: he runs cross country and track and field. He is not a star performer in any way, but is contemplating trying to walk onto a cross country team when he gets to college. Willamette does not have either sport. I also thought that most of the kids didn’t “look” like him. He tends toward very long, unruly hair and hates shaving. But, when I suggested to him that this might be the case, he said he doesn’t care about that. He tries to imagine himself on campus and he just couldn’t with Willamette.
He ate lunch with students at Lewis & Clark and thought they were funny (good way, not weird) and several of them reminded him of his friends at his HS. Bullseye! That’s what he’s looking for.
DD’18 has been twicking her college list, just had me register her for 1 more SAT and 1 more ACT in early June and opened a Common App account (since it supposedly will roll over now, although I am not sure I trust it, lol). On a Common App note…I did notice that the general CA essay topics that popped up did not yet reflect the essays for the 2017-2018 cycle. She has firmly decided on Sociology.
Some changes the her college list…
- Auburn
- U of Colorado - Boulder
- Loyola Chicago
- High Point University
- Texas A&M
- Clemson
- Florida State
- College of Charleston
- University of Tampa
- University of Washington Seattle
Still Considering: Seattle University, Gonzaga U, U of SC, University of Miami (super reach), LSU (safety), UTSA (safety)
We are no where close to a “list”. Work in progress for sure. All I know for sure is Oklahoma will apply, Trinity U will apply. Beloit definitely not.