Does anyone know if zeemee is required when the common app supplement for a school has a place for it? It says: “Bring your application to life! Paste your ZeeMee link here. Don’t have ZeeMee? Get it now for free at (link).”
@KAMmom I don’t think it is. S applied to a couple of schools that had a place to paste your ZeeMee link. He doesn’t have a ZeeMee link and submitted the apps without it. His portals say his applications are complete at those two schools.
@glido congratulations to your D. That is great news.
@AmyBeth68 really hoping it all comes together with the FA piece for your D.
Honestly I go back and forth with worrying about will my D get accepted at her top choices and worrying about the FA piece and if we will be able to afford it if she does get in. Worrying more about the money this week because I just did the stupid CSS. We are going to fall smack in the donut hole of middle class. F anyone wants to share happy stories of getting FA more than predicted I would love to hear
Oh the relief when it’s all over. D was accepted into all 4 schools she applied to and has happily narrowed it down to two. We just need to sit back and see what happens with Round 2 of merit aid and they can make the decision for her. Her whole demeanor has changed, stress is gone, and she can work on outside scholarships now. It does end 
Thanks @gclsports! That is a relief. D has only 2 apps to go and this caught us by surprise. Neither of us had ever heard of it, but to me it just feels like another hoop to jump through on top of supplemental essays, which are already time-consuming.
What a great feeling @PAclgmom!
Congrats on all the acceptances and scholarships posted lately!
Re the recent discussion on FOMO, with S choosing in July to be one-and-done at a super-safe safety school I did wonder if he’d regret it later and if I should encourage him to apply to more schools. At the very least I thought maybe he should apply to UT Austin where he is auto-admit and pretty safe for CS (though nobody can really call UT Austin CS a safety). But in the end I’m glad I approached it the way I did. He spent lots of time on campus, he knows himself well, he isn’t taking the easy way out, and he wasn’t motivated by fear of rejection. He just found a place he loves and didn’t see the point in applying to schools he would never attend. So when he asked if H and I would make him apply anywhere else, I could tell him we would support him whatever he decided to do. I’m glad I didn’t try to force him to apply to more.
Best of luck to those with acceptances, those waiting on decisions and financial aid, and those still wrapping up applications (sigh)…
@AmyBeth68 I hope everything works out for your D. I saw on cc that Pitt will compare COA of similar schools. Have you applied to PSU and Temple? Even if the COA for your state school Is lower than Pitt, maybe using other PA state related schools for COA comparison would help get financials in a more comfortable spot. Best of luck!
Signed, tired parent who almost forgot tooth fairy last night!
@MPT3D, I have forgotten the tooth fairy! I had to grab some $$ and plant it in D’s bed and act like she must have knocked it out from under her pillow.
The FA piece can be a real challenge. Not all FA calculators are reliable. One never knows until the FA offer comes in. Prepare your DDs and DSs to receive FA offers that seem to make no sense. For our first child, she was admitted to a wonderful, highly competitive school that offered a small FA package. Another competitive school in a different part of the country offered a much more generous package: it was not close. Because she had three younger siblings, it really was no choice at all. She had some heartburn over it. We told her she was very fortunate to get the offer she did from such a tremendous school - matriculating there was a blessing. It can be a lot of reality thrust on a young person. It’s best not to fall in love with any one school, but that never works!
Lol @MPT3D & @suzy100 not only have I forgotten the tooth fairy, I once lost my D’s tooth that she handed to me to keep safe on our last day of vacation! We got home and she had nothing to put under her pillow! 
Fortunately we had been vacationing at Disneyland so her tooth fairy left her a nice note about Tinkerbell finding the tooth and delivering it safely. I’m not sure my D bought it but she got her money so she wasn’t complaining! :))
OH the tooth fairy woes! I am glad to see that I was not the only one who failed there a few times HAHA!! 
I may have used the “bad weather” excuse a few times!!!
The one thing that surprised when I started this whole college FA situation was that it went against everything I had always been told since my kids were born. I was told you better save your money early and often for your kid’s college education. So I set up 529’s and stashed away other money and now have a fairly significant amount saved. Of course over the years the tuition costs have skyrocketed beyond what I anticipated needed and beyond what I was able to save.
What I have now learned is that if you have a top achieving kid, you might be better off to not have saved because so many of the top end school won’t give merit money…but will meet 100% of need. In fact Brown and Princeton have both committed to meet 100% of need with no loans. UNC and UVA also do a good job with FA. So lots of kids will go to those schools for a fraction of the cost, yet I will be paying full rate if my daughter happens to get into one of those schools and decides that is where she wants to go.
Of course you basically don’t know if you have a top achieving kid until after the standardized testing starts. Quite the conundrum.
We are not making much progress here. D works day and night with few breaks on school work. She worked on school work through the whole Thanksgiving break. I don’t know how she will be able to finish all the supplements for the schools on the list. She’s submitted two EA applications and has two RDs due this Friday. I think those are in good shape. Just need an hour or so to fill in the last couple fields and proof read.
Then she has 6 more due January 15. They all have extensive supplements. One of them involves an interview that will take a whole morning (for travel) on the weekend before finals. Personally, I think she needs to drop a couple schools, maybe including the one with the interview. There is just no time.
With all the talk of the cost of college, I thought this article was worth sharing. An interesting peek into the Ivy League college prep costs for those who have money to burn:
http://www.businessinsider.com/how-much-rich-families-spend-on-education-2017-11
A preschool admissions coach…seriously? 
Here’s another interesting one about GPA and its correlation to income:
http://www.businessinsider.com/eric-barker-millionaires-bad-grades-gpa-2017-6
@burghdad exactly our scenario! We saved based on what were anticipated college costs 18 + years ago. Unfortunately college tuition and housing inflation was so much more than anyone could have imagined. While I’m so proud that we forewent upgrades to our house and fancy cars in order to save diligently for our children, we still ended up telling our daughters that some schools were off limit. Add in the fact that Fafsa says we can pay double what would be advisable, possible and wise for us. Therefore we ended up in a chasing merit scenario like so many others. With NJ being nearly impossible to achieve NMF with a 123 this year I believe… Those NMF options were lost to us as well. When people ask me why neither of my girls applied to reaches my answer is purely financial. With all that said I am aware that we are blessed to have finances available for our kids. We are thankful for state universities that are within reach. We know that our kids choices while maybe not the tippy top are still a privilege. So it’s all perspective and I’m trying to see all the beautiful silver linings.
I have had similar thoughts - that we are actually punished for saving!! It’s tricky. Our son did have the 223 for National Merit, but he’s not applying anywhere that will give a ton of money. He is applying to a few tippy tops, but we don’t qualify for the auto free ride due to income. Because we have saved, even though they promise to meet 100% of need, we won’t “need” anything either. Now we just pray that if he wants to go to grad school he gets that paid for by merit money then because we won’t have any money left for college expenses for him because we’ll need to pay for the two younger siblings!
You aren’t punished for saving – the reduction in financial aid for assets is minimal. The main factor is income. Having some savings, even if it feels like it’s not nearly enough, gives you a whole lot more flexibility to consider more schools than you would with no savings, and to have more certainty for how you will cover years 2, 3, 4 without having to worry as much about changes in aid from year to year.
@daffodilpetunia wow that’s a lot of work for a busy senior. If that interview school isn’t a top choice maybe worth easing the stress. These kids are stretched so thin… And independent scholarship applications and essays are starting up as well. I feel for the!
Agreed I can’t say we’re being punished. In so many ways we’re fortunate. And I also think it’s a good life lesson for my kids to understand that making sound financial decisions are an important part of growing up. In the end I trust that my kids will end up in the right place and will be wiser for having to work through all the intricacies and disappointments of the college process.
How much are changes in aid from year to year? Do they do a ‘bait and switch’ where they give a large amount for freshman year and then significant drop off? We have an adult friend who never completed his degree because they gave him less each year and by senior year he couldn’t swing it
I don’t feel punished for saving, and I wouldn’t want to switch places with someone who had income so low that their kids could go to Harvard for free.