“It would be tough to turn down Yale, if accepted, and not be able to go.”
And tough for us parents to say no, we won’t pay for it, even though you busted your butt and got in. We could probably stretch and make it work, but then we’d have set the precedent for the four other kids, one of whom is set on med school. $-)
It really does help that D likes the Canadian universities. Great value as a Canadian citizen.
I wish we had Naviance.
@ShrimpBurrito I’m sure it’s tough having a high stat kid who is very capable of getting into top 20 schools - with five kids, sticking to some kind of budget is probably a good move. Maybe just seek out which tier 1 schools have competitive scholarships that would make it worth the time and effort. There were a couple of kids on the 2017 forum that got full rides at some lofty schools - USC being one of them. I know not Yale . . . but in socal arguably better!!
With that said, it may be hard to beat your Canadian options in terms of value.
@traveler98 D Did the Python one week camp as a day tripper (her dad lives in the metro). She has done other coding camps there…JavaScript and Alice. She really likes UTD too.
Good conversation about “what if they got in Yale or MIT?” It seems to come down to what works for each particular family.
@ShrimpBurrito - with 5 kids (bless your heart) that you’re helping through the process, your plan sounds SOLID. And (like you said) if the 1st one did get into Yale, then guess where all of the others will want to go? Yikes!!!
I’d LOVE it if my D qualified for and then took advantage of one of he big NM scholarships, but she also has her heart set on “throwing a hail Mary app” at a few schools as well. She’s our last (of 2 kids) in the house so I’ve run the NPCs on the schools that interest her and just like @suzy100 I let her know which ones fit into the budget. If she gets in somewhere, then the school’s financial aid package will have to come extremely close to what the NPC predicted or else it’s a no go. She knows what we can afford & will move on to her other acceptances (knock on wood) if needed.
It sure would be nice to have a NM scholarship in the back pocket though just in case!!!
@my2caligirls
Yeah, we were thinking WashU might be that Top 20 With Merit Hail Mary school (and they LOVE her high school), but D didn’t like it when we visited. She wants a little more edge, is the most concise way I can say it.
She will apply to USC, and will visit in October. She’s spent time on campus for summer swim camps, so she has some idea of what campus life is like. We’ve already told her the half tuition scholarship she’s likely to get for NMF (assuming she is accepted and she makes NMF) makes USC financially doable. A full tuition scholarship would be better, obviously.
Our five kids have vastly different aptitudes, and not all of their career paths will include college, so figuring out what is somewhat “fair” is tough.
For anyone else applying to Alabama their applications opened today. Time to buckle up and hang on.
^:)^ ^:)^ ^:)^ @ShrimpBurrito Bless your heart is right! I just have 3 kids each two years apart and it’s pushed me to my limit. We are very much on the bubble for National Merit with DS18. DD16 took a good National Merit package at OU but just threw us a curve ball with a change in her intended career path and I had to tell her that she just can’t stay in school forever!
@ShrimpBurrito again feeling like your D matches my S. We also visited Wash U hoping for the big merit $$. While S will still apply, he didn’t love it. Says he isn’t sold on the “collaboration” they push. Since he is unlikely to get the merit anyway, I don’t mind.
Mine really wants to apply to Stanford, even though he knows we almost certainly can’t afford it. We let our oldest D apply to Columbia (and we so happy yet sad when she didn’t get in). It is awkward as a parent.
With the right attitude (“I don’t want to go there anyway!”) maybe some kids just want to be able to say to their grandkids, “Well, I got into Yale/MIT/whatever but turned them down.”
@ShrimpBurrito When we went to the USC roadshow, my D was told that the half tuition was not automatic for NMF. I have not called yet to see if this info was correct.
@ollie113 – it may not be officially stated but everything I’ve read say it’s a given. If you’re accepted to USC as an NMF, you get at least the half tuition scholarship.
Hi. I’m responding to the posts talking about your kids wanting to apply to schools they don’t intend to go to, just to see if they can get in. I can see 2 downsides.
One is for your family if your kids get in and you really don’t want to spend the money; it will be really hard to turn down Yale, for example, if your kid gets in and I can imagine a lot of anguish in the house.
The other downside is for your kids classmates. In an environment where the tippy top colleges receive multiples of equally qualified candidates and are seeking diverse classes, the top kids are all competing against each other for those few seats and colleges often have a soft limit on the number of kids they want to admit from any particular HS on any given year. So your kid’s acceptance may cause one of his/her equally qualified classmates to not be accepted. If your kid is sincerely interested in a school, he/she should go for it. But if it’s a prestige only thing with no intent to go, then please think of the classmate who really, really wants to go there and will if accepted.
As I’m saying this, I’m specifically thinking of my niece’s rigorous private HS where one girl got into Harvard SCEA and yet kept her Yale and other Ivy applications open because she wanted to see how many acceptances she could “rack up”. The girl had many acceptances and ultimately chose to go to Harvard, which is where she wanted to go all along. By the time graduation rolled around, though, most kids in her school were not talking with her any more. These other kids were all fantastically high stats kids too, so it wasn’t a jealousy thing, but more of an acknowledgment that elite college admissions has become a game of musical chairs and once you have your chair that you want, you should take your hat off of the other chairs.
@daffodilpetunia I got into Cornell but turned them down, lol.
That was back in the Stone Age, however. Now, I don’t even think I’d get into my own school. @-)
Off to another college tour today, this one a day trip. This one is pretty close to a big pack of relatives, so if she goes there she’d always have someplace to go for Sunday dinner. 
Not Harvard or Yale but my DS17 got into some very strong schools & it was hard for him to decide - took several visits and hard looks at lots of factors. DS18 is not as academically strong on stats - won’t be applying to super reachy schools - it has been hard to get he motivated to look at many. We need to push it soon bc a number of good possibilities have EA.
Bearcat: I don’t think I’d get into my own college now either. I have relatives who live near one of S18 college choices too. It’s comforting to have family close by!
Today, I requested SAT score reports be sent to S18’s other 2 college choices. Choice 1 already has theirs. Scary how fast time is moving!
@melvin123, I hear what you’re saying but I’m not going to prevent my S from applying to MIT if he wants to, even though he says he doesn’t want to go there. If he gets accepted, we can afford to send him there if he wants to go. And if he were accepted, who knows, he might actually want to matriculate. He’s treating it lightly now because he knows his chance of acceptance is minuscule, but that could change in a second if he gets that acceptance. He’s not applying to a dozen elites, and he’s very clear-eyed about his chances at the one elite where he is applying. I can understand him not wanting to get his hopes up, and I suspect he is protecting himself against disappointment by keeping his expectations low and allowing himself to love schools that he knows he can get into instead of focusing too much on long shots. I’m not going to forbid him to apply, even if at the moment it’s just for bragging rights, because if he gets in I’m quite sure he’ll give serious consideration to attending.
I see that ^^ as very different than what melvin123 described at niece’s school. In that scenario, it sounds like the girl was purely trophy-hunting, which really bothers me too. I think the situation that you describe with your son, @traveler98, is different and a very reasonable approach to take.
AP scores come in next week. Fingers crossed for everyone waiting on those. Here, good scores are a nice to have but not a must have, so there’s not much pressure.
I hope everyone enjoys the long holiday weekend. I feel like summer is flying!
I agree that I’m not a fan of trophy hunting (good term). My son has wanted to go to Stanford forever pretty much (his dad went there so he’s heard about it his whole life). I just agonize about what we’ll do if he gets in!
If anyone knows a “Stanford-like” school that grants academic merit, let me know!
My D will likely be applying to Stanford, but I think she’d rather go to a school farther away from home. But if you get into Stanford, you gotta go, right? @-)
There’s an old local joke around here. Someone asks a Cal alum “Why did you pick Cal?” The Cal alum responds “Because I couldn’t get into Stanford.”
As I’ve mentioned before, my D has nearly “redlined” the entire country in terms of college locations, but I am hoping she’ll pick a few “elites” in the Midwest and Northeast to apply to this year. I keep telling her it’s about having options.
We all know that kids with 4.0 GPAs and massive amounts of extracurriculars routinely get rejected from the top schools each year. The schools themselves just love it when a zillion kids apply each year because all of those applications help their selectivity stats.
Every year I read about some kid who got into Stanford, but was rejected by Harvard or any other combination of schools. You just never quite know exactly what any particular school is looking for as they’re building their incoming freshman class.
My D’s good friend from last year’s senior class was rejected by UCSD, but was accepted by Stanford. You just never quite know.
My D (from her work income) and I are splitting the cost of her application fees, so if she has the desire (and funds) to submit 3 or 4 or 5 applications to the top schools it’s fine with me. From what I’ve read and witnessed over the years, I wouldn’t be surprised if she got into none of these schools (most likely scenario) but I also wouldn’t be surprised if she got into one of them or all of them.
She’s having a bit of fun with all of this because even though she knows it’s all a crap shoot getting into one of these schools, it’s still exciting to her (even the anticipation of opening a rejection letter if that makes any sense).
If by some miracle of fate she gets into a bunch of these schools it might look like a simple case of trophy hunting, but I don’t see it that way. I look at it like I look at outside scholarship submissions - if you put in for 5 of them, you have a better chance to get 1 of them.