According to this 2015 report from NACAC, 36% of freshman applied to 7 or more schools (and that number was rising a few percentage points a year. Probably into the 40s now). In 1990, that was true of only 9% of applicants.
https://www.nacacnet.org/news–publications/publications/state-of-college-admission/
Meanwhile, we’ve looked at 17 schools in person and countless more in the Frisk book and online and we’re at 3 places D likes. :(( But then again, I suppose it takes just one (hopefully target or safety) school!
S18 will likely only apply to 3 schools He wants to study popular music as a singer/songwriter/producer
There’s only about 8 schools that meet his needs
He loves his safety school - which has rolling admissions and he will know in October is he’s accepted. No reason to apply to schools he likes less than that one if he’s accepted. So that only leaves a couple of awesome programs to apply to and see what, if any offers he gets.
of course kids have a harder time today. When I was a freshman state college was $25 bucks a credit My first semester bill was $330 for 12 credits and I complained about the extra $30 in fee 
I made $5 an hour cash flipping pizza 66 hours work paid the tuition. How many hours does a kid have to work today to pay for 12 credits?
Its $453 per credit this year including fees at that same college. That’s 543 hours at $10 per
I was on exchange my junior year, too, in Brazil. I had no clue about tests or college apps. I also had no clue about what I wanted to do with my life - aside from being a writer, which everyone pretty much agreed was a pipe dream.
I took the ACT the same week I got back from Brazil. I was still thinking and dreaming in Portuguese, and I was so fluent in that language that my spoken English didn’t always sound right. To do the ACT, I had to read the questions in English, think about them in Portuguese, figure out the answer in Portuguese, then translate back to English to see if anything sort of matched. I have no idea what I got score-wise.
I was a straight-A student aside from that, with ECs that would have been good for the time - lots of drama, including statewide competitions, Girl Scouts, the exchange year, I founded a mime troupe, etc.
I didn’t research any colleges at all. Where I lived, everyone either applied to U of M, Michigan State or maybe something like Calvin College or Notre Dame if you had the relevant religious affiliations. Me, both of my parents had gone to Central Michigan, and I spent some of my toddler years on campus in their married housing. When I visited, I actually remembered some of the buildings, a certain playground, etc., so it felt homey to me, plus it was closer to home than Michigan State.
I applied at the very last minute to both Central Mich. and MSU. Central accepted me right away, so we put down a deposit and figured that’s where I would go. MSU waitlisted me, probably because I applied so late. They let me in over the summer, but I was already set to go to CMU, so we left it that way.
It wasn’t bad by any means, but I was still sort of drifting through, not knowing what I wanted. My first set of roommates were all on academic probation, had alcohol and other things in the room, etc. I was a goody-goody honors student, so it was a horrible fit. When I applied to switch rooms, I asked the housing people why they’d matched me like that. They said they thought I’d be a good influence on the other girls. Oy!
The new room was better, but still not great - all sorority girls who were waiting for spots in their sorority houses. I was not at all into Greeks. One of them was Chem E, and another wanted to be a physical therapist, so they were academically driven, and that part worked for us.
Anyhow I transferred out after my first year to follow a boy in another state. The relationship didn’t work, but the school did.
I double majored in anthropology and philosophy, and went off to a top tier grad school for a PhD in religious studies - cognitive science of religion, specifically. I got orphaned (which means my thesis advisor left the school) when I was ABD, and ABD meant I was too far along in the program to follow my advisor to the new school. The entire program collapsed behind her, and I fell through the cracks, permanently stuck at ABD (all but dissertation).
I’d had other jobs in the meantime - teaching, curriculum development, etc. But then I started writing on the side for Yahoo!. Travel, gossip, politics, science. It was super fun, and while it didn’t pay a lot, it paid. Strangely enough, it was writing gossip that changed everything for me.
Writing gossip requires this campy, conspiratorial voice, and a certain playfulness with language. So if somebody gets busted for big-time embezzling at Disney, you write that Such and So went from the House of Mouse to the big house because those weren’t Disney Dollars he was stealing.
And that playfulness somehow connected with the sci-fi / fantasy stuff I’d been writing in high school. Story ideas started pressing their noses up against the glass, begging to be written. That was 2011. By 2012, I’d sold my first pro short story. So what am I now? An author, the exact thing I’d wanted to be in high school!
I don’t regret the circuitous path or the unusual education choices at all. They’re all excellent training and material for what I do. I have to create people, cities, cultures, even entire planets, and thanks to all of that time spent learning pretty much everything social-sciency, I can do that. Anthropology, philosophy, sociology, psychology, religion - it’s all part of what makes us human, and my genre, even if we’re telling stories about magic and faeries or spaceships and aliens, is all about the question of what it means to be human.
Anyhow, I might have said all of that already, so apologies if I’m repeating myself. I suppose my point is that it’s OK to not know what you want to do at 17, third tier universities/directionals are just fine, and weird academic paths lead to far more interesting places than “Would you like fries with that?”
This is how no debt played out in my life:
I was self-supporting in college and got used to living without extras. So when I started working after grad school, I saved all I could instead of having to pay loans back. Because of that, eventually, I could put a big down payment in our house and that is really how we have been able to get by on one income.
When it turned out that a couple of my kids had special needs, I needed to stay home and we could manage it.
So here I am, twenty five years later and still benefitting from being able to get through school without debt.
Besides concerns for retirement, a big part of my motivation in hanging out here at cc and reading all these threads is to find the right colleges to minimize debt so my kids have options later, the way I did.
We have a rule: each of the kids must apply to one in-state.
No debt - this is huge. This is precisely why we’ve been strict about no loans and an affordable school for S for undergrad. Every now and then, I have this knee-jerk worry that insisting on NMF schools or places that would be under $10k/year out of pocket, that I’m limiting S, holding him back somehow. (Such as when someone in another thread said that UNM is the worst flagship in the whole country. wince)
Fortunately, that feeling doesn’t happen often, and it’s pretty much always after I’ve been reading threads here about families who think such and such school is worth the extra 20k/year -or more!- even if it means loans.
I’m not at all trying to cast aspersions on those families. Their money, their future, their choice. But me and mine? Debt is poison. We’ll take the NMF freebie because it means no limits down the road.
And you know, even if UNM is the worst flagship, it’s still a fine school that offers a good education and will get S to wherever he wants to go next. Ditto for Texas Tech.
@droppedit Not to worry you, but to make a long story short, bats poop and spit saliva and bats can have rabies. The family and I on our trip to Lake Tahoe last summer had some bats flying around where we stayed. Local authorities quarantined the residence and the family and I had to go through the series of rabies shots, which for my weight class was 7-8 shots, 4 of them of the vaccine and 3-4 of Immune Globulin over a 2 week period.
The bats tested negative in the end, but the results took several days.
YMMV.
@sushiritto – I wondered about that. Here’s the CDC page on rabies exposure:
https://www.cdc.gov/rabies/exposure/type.html
The last sentence on that page makes me think that we don’t need to do anything.
Maybe the local authorities over-reacted, I don’t know.
But what an experience. We had to travel an hour to Reno and get our shots started immediately. And the availability of the vaccine is RARE. We had to wait a couple hours for more of it to be delivered from somewhere.
To be honest, the shots aren’t really a big deal. About 7-10 years ago, the regimen was through the stomach and they weren’t pleasant. Today’s shots are less than a flea bite and in various muscles (butt, shoulders, thighs). But scary nonetheless to the rest of the family.
BTW, it’s “non-bite” you and we have/had to worry about. And as I remember, the mortality rate, if infected, is 100% or 99.99%. That info was what got me to say “oh, well, let’s do it.” We also had more than 1 of them flying around, during the night.
We had medical coverage, thankfully, but the whole experience ran about $75,000 IIRC.
@glido we have the same rule!
I guess I’ve been in my own little world. I had no Idea my kids have the 15th off (calendar says school holiday, no snow day, like they expected a snow day in Austin?) And DS18 informs me has NO finals at all but has to go to school for roll call each day so after next week’s APs he’s pretty much done.
He turned in his final paper for his CC American history class this week and the teacher has already graded and sent him a note about how much he enjoyed reading it and that he has an A for the class.
I can’t believe he’s going to be a senior soon!
:D/
Hi, Parents of my grad class! I’ve come over here to seek your wisdom and experience.
I’ve been accepted to several wonderful programs- but there’s a bit of a conflict. So, I got into TASP and MIT’s MOSTEC and I’m not sure which one to pick. I’ve also been selected to be one of the UN foundation Girl Up’s Teen Advisors, which has a six day conference TASP tells me I can only attend three days of. What I was thinking so far was to go with TASP if I get to miss half the conference and MOSTEC if I don’t.
Do you guys have any advice about these programs or any experience with your older children?
I expect that S will come close to maxing out the Common App at 20 because his acceptance chances are not at all predictable. Plus he has almost no idea what he is looking for in a college and it will probably take every bit of the next year to figure it out! So, he will be casting WIDE net. So far there is only one school on the list though…baby steps.
@arinuma Congratulations! My S 15 was in the same situation. Does the long term aspect of MOSTEC appeal to you? With your Sr. schedule of classes, ecs, college apps, ect. do you feel like you have time to commit to the program all the way through January? Do you like that it is more or less a self directed program? The conference itself is only four days and your Girl Up conference is 6 days so if you stay home do you have additional plans to fill the summer? How important is Girl Up to you-I’m not familiar with it. Do you want to go away to TASP for 6 weeks, or would you prefer to be home? Are you excited about your TASP topic?
My S went to TASP because MOSTEC really didn’t appeal to him at all, but it’s an individual decision and you have to weigh your own priorities and interests.
@DiotimaDM, I think graduating debt free is an incredible gift and will serve him well. Not to mention that your financial security nest egg is kept intact.
Wow! So many things covered in the last two pages! Number of applications, bats and debt! I’ve got opinions on all three!
First – number of applications. When go2girl (2014) applied–she had 3 matches, 3 safeties, 5 reaches. All of her reaches were “double reaches.” Not just because they were selective, but because she would also have to get their highest merit scholarships to attend.
One thing I should add is that two of the schools were EA so she knew right away that she was 1. going to college 2. received merit $$. The reach schools that had the specialized scholarship component let her know in January that she was a finalist and she typically found out by April whether or not she received it. That allowed her to release some of the schools that were also considering her for merit $$. (For example, once she got the all-tuition scholarship at Vandy; she said no to the interview at USC because she knew she preferred Vandy to USC.) I highly recommend this strategy so that kids don’t get into the mode of "bragging rights.
Go2boy probably won’t be going for these types of scholarships but will need to have more merit $$ schools on the list (including a couple he’s not crazy about) just so that we have something to negotiate if he does get into one of his more highly-sought after schools. I only see it worthwhile going for 2 reaches.
On to bats–we have had several in our house and my husband has become a pro of getting them out. It usually happens when it’s warm and he has the basement and attic windows open. They can find their way through a crack and respond to the air flow.
Finally on debt. I couldn’t agree more with @DiotimaDM . I’m a real estate broker and I see how student debt prevents young adults from purchasing their first home–even with well-paying jobs. They simply cannot qualify for a mortgage. Our kids do not understand money. It’s out job to make sure they don’t do something that will affect their credit for the next 20 years! No school is worth it. Period.
And I also worry that too many parents are compromising their ability to retire. We all have to be aware that illness, divorce, death, job loss can affect our ability in the future to take on an enormous college education bill. It’s important to stick to a number. Explain over and over and over and over again to your kid why you are doing it this way. I have seen families fall apart because they get caught up in the hype. Don’t do it.
Full disclosure: go2girl goes to Vandy–a VERY expensive school. She has her tuition covered and received another scholarship so it is affordable to us.
For go2boy, we have $30k/year planned that we would pay for. So unless he gets some scholarship money, his safeties will be in-state or WUE. I still feel we are being extremely generous by now allowing him to go into debt.
@planner03 Thank you for the well wishes!
The long term aspect truly does appeal to me for MOSTEC and I don’t think it would be too much of a commitment throughout senior year. Girl Up is a program that focuses on gender equality and I get to lobby at the US Senate twice in the next year, as well as meeting people who are as passionate as I am about social advocacy. I could find things to do over the summer, if it came down to it- like perhaps continue my research at Mayo Clinic, take a fun film class at my high school’s summer school, work maybe, volunteer and other stuff.
On the other hand, school closes for me May 10th and doesn’t reopen till August 25th, so I don’t want to spend most of my summer at home. I don’t think I’m going to be headed anywhere else. I’m really interested in my TASP topic.
I also want to choose the program that has more benefits to me as a person and a future college applicant. I’m a low-income, practically first generation college student and there is no one I know personally who has the same kind of aspirations I do. I get a lot of ‘whatever you choose, you’ll be set’ from people around so I feel like I won’t mind too much choosing one over the other, but I want to make an informed decision.