Happened to sign onto the Fordham portal to see if the financial aid award had been completed and was pleasantly surprised to see that my daughter’s merit scholarship had more than doubled since the initial communication in December. I had seen from old threads that this was a possibility but wow! There are so few pleasant financial surprises in this process and we are grateful to be the beneficiary of one.
Thanks @GoldenState99. This weekend D announced to H and I that “it’s probably going to be McGill.” She’s not ready to hit the Accept button or make a public declaration, but I think it’s a mostly done deal. The three of us spent a lot of time going over concerns associated with attending McGill (mostly having to do with their limited support services and the extreme weather difference) and how we can plan ahead to neutralize any potential problems.
We are visiting UBC in March. D is creating a list of questions for our advisor contact there, but it feels sort of like a Hail Mary pass. D is not optimistic that UBC can fit with what she wants to do academically.
She’s all but crossed off USC. With no chance now for a full-tuition scholarship, it just doesn’t make sense when she can go to Canada for relative pennies.
D says she will make an official decision in late March, after the Vancouver trip. I’m so proud of how she’s handling this stressful, emotional, and oh-so-important decision.
Hoping for better news for everyone this week. This ride is harder than I thought it would be. We weren’t shooting for any reaches since we were primarily focused on merit but we’ve had our share of heartaches along the way.
Had a “college summit” with DS18 this weekend and crunched the numbers. He seems to be on board with the realization that his #1 choice of Bama is in the NFW category unless March brings more merit money. He did receive the UA Scholar scholarship but that still leaves a large chunk. He did sign up for a band audition in April. By then we should know if this is a no go or not.
Ole Miss is the frontrunner being financially where we need it to be and the potential for more from the band and crosses fingers CME. DS has scheduled his phone interview for CME and we have a 2nd look visit scheduled at the end of the month along with his band audition. Wish we could have worked it for him to interview in person for CME because he has a gift for being charismatic in person. But there was no way to make 2 trips back to back and we already had the band audition and appointments scheduled for the following week. Everything seems to be falling into place here and the recruiter has been working hard to win him over. Thinking I may go ahead and put down the deposit here this week since it’s the strongest contender.
Texas Tech is still in the running but it might be hard to beat Ole Miss. They also don’t audition for band until August which is somewhat of a negative for us.
@bearcatfan Congrats! Knowing the decision is made lifts a huge load.
@MACmiracle OMGosh, that is a steal! I’m so jealous.
We’ve owned Honda’s as long as DH and I have been together - 33 years
I’ve never ever bought one new - Lowest miles was my first Accord (87) bought at 10K donated at 250K.
Currently driving my DD’s former Civic and while I enjoy the 5spd because its fun, I miss the comfort of my Ody - Love love love my Ody - I’m always keeping my eyes open for a deal like you got - Wow, 125K STEAL!
@RelocatedYankee you promoted me to login too DD’s Fordham portal…and I was pleasantly surprised to find that she had been awarded a Fordham Jogues Scholarship for $10,000. Fordham is still financially out of the game, but that was a change from her initial acceptance.
In my-other-kid news: We’re transferring our youngest to the school where my husband works. Smaller class sizes. Very supportive environment. He’ll finish out the week at current school and start Monday. I’m taking the day off, for his new first day of school.
@apraxiamom I hope your youngest has a smooth transition and enjoys the new school with dad.
I didn’t realize this thread existed until I saw a link to it under a recent question. My oldest daughter is a HS senior. She will probably end up at either Michigan State or University of Michigan. Both have her major (physics), we are just waiting for financial aid packages and scholarship competition results. I could see her doing well at either school, and they seem to be very similarly priced as far as COA. Is anyone else headed to either of those schools, or your kids?
The admission process has been really spiky for us. Big spikes for EA, REA, and RD deadlines. Then a lull until last week, with D18 going to three interviews and the disappointing USC news. There will be some news next week but basically two months in a holding pattern waiting for RD results. The end of March will be insane and then decision time in April (that decision will be either relatively easy or extremely difficult, depending on which colleges she gets into).
There’s a thread on CC today by a mom who’s college sophmore D wants to move into an apartment with her boyfriend next year. This definitely has me thinking that tonight I need to talk to my D and let her know that I expect her to live in the dorms all 4 years. I’m going to talk about it strictly from a financial standpoint and not even raise the issues of a romance or anything like that. I don’t want to take on the responsibility of paying for an apartment; landlord typically has everyone sign the lease so if there is damage or if a roommate moves out mid-year, you are responsible for paying everything to the landlord. Sure, you can spend your time then hunting down the roommates and suing them to reimburse you, but good luck with that.
I’m hoping that putting this out there now will set the expectations and avoid an issue like this mom is having.
Too bad for me that my D’s future college is renowned for bad dorms.
Yep, @melvin123 - that is a big NOPE from me, too. Thankfully for us, 98% of the students live on campus all four years.
My son went to the local university but we wanted him to experience “going away” so we did the following:
Yr 1: Dorm (by far the most expensive but provided security and supervision)
Yr 2: Off campus student housing - he had his own room/bath with shared common space, all tenants had their own lease and were only responsible for their room/bathroom - the common space was cleaned upon vacancy with the cleaning deposit we ALL paid. (not a bad deal for what it was, it was steps to campus and also came with some supervision)
Yr 3: Private home with 2 friends - this was the nightmare year. The landlord was senile, and violated rental laws up one side and down the other. He and I went rounds several times as all the other parents were not local. The kids fought like cats and dogs and to this day have never made up. There was never a worry of anyone getting stuck, I required all parents be on the lease in the event the kids flaked. The landlord was the biggest problem. The utilities were in my name and I sent a statement to the parents as a backup every month. We wanted to make sure they were never shut off because someone didn’t pay. This was not ideal but it was a huge learning experience and the house was directly across the street from the football stadium which gave DH and I access to free parking on game days!
Yr 4/5: Private home where DS rented his own room and shared the common space. The landlord was awesome, only rented to upper classmen/grad students. Lease was for son’s room only. All rooms were occupied by students, utilities were included.
All of these were within steps of campus and he had a great adventure. The private home with the room rental was by far the best deal but by then he was in his first senior year, had gotten a lot of the party out of his system and had learned to clean up after himself.
DD will be going into 4 years of dorms as her scholarship provides housing - the university is building a whole new complex for the upper classes and she is excited about the dorms as they really are quite amazing. I am sure that somewhere along the way she may express a desire to move off campus but unless she figures out how to get it comped, its not something we will be paying for.
Not all student housing is a shared situation where students have to rely on others - the whole separate leases etc. is very common in and around universities. Home/Apt owners learned that parents want security in knowing there is a roof over their students head and there are lots of housing options these days.
One of the schools under consideration for us seems to only guarantee freshman year. I’d prefer DS live on campus for at least two - but don’t relish dealing with the issues brought up ^^. My DH says he’s going to build a tiny house for him to live in…lol.
@SnowflakeDogMom thanks so much for sharing your experiences. It was really helpful!
@ChattaChia when my sister went to college in FL many years ago, her last 2 years my parents bought her a used trailer and she lived in a trailer park that was pretty much exclusively other college students. When she graduated, my parents sold the trailer to a family of a rising Junior, and my parents ended up saving a ton of money.
Re housing, at USCal my D15 lived in the honors/scholarship dorm freshman year. She loved it, met what are still her best school friends, and it was centrally located. Soph year she rented university housing steps from campus with several friends. She liked it well enough and it was convenient but expensive, so the next year she moved to her sorority house. By far the cheapest rent, and she was able to get full value from the mandatory sorority meal plan. For her senior year, she is renting a private apartment a block from campus with her best friends. She is very excited about it.
Funny the housing situation has come on here, my D15 will be entering her senior year in college Fall 2018…she is in housing limbo right now. Freshman year she lived in Honors LLC, it was a gorgeous 16 person apartment suite with a full kitchen, study room, etc. Her Sophomore year she lived in an 8 person apartment suite for music students, it was just as gorgeous. This year she is renting a townhouse with two friends who are both seniors; it is a great space and saved us almost $5,000 a year in living costs alone. Now her friends are graduating and don’t plan to stay in the city so she either has to find two responsible people to live with (which is proving difficult) or find a single apartment (which is proving expensive) OR live with her Grandma who is about 30 minutes from campus. She is leaning towards Grandma because she’ll be doing student teaching for half the year and thus doesn’t need to be on campus for anything. But she will be commuting half the year and that makes me a little worried about time management and just safety. But she’s looking at grad schools and feels the savings will be worth the commute. Plus her grandma could use the company quite honestly. It will be interesting to see what she ends up doing!
@amybeth68 that sounds like a great idea for a new sitcom, “Watch this fall as a college student moves in with Grandma; shenanigans ensue!”
Question: for those that are still undecided how are you handling orientation registration? We are basically down to two schools. One is more likely than the other but the less likely is still the top choice. I’m feeling pressure to register for orientations.
@AmyBeth68 how often does it snow where your older D goes to college? I’d think the biggest issue is having arrangements with friends in advance so if it’s bad driving weather she can sleep at a friend’s place (or even a hotel) walking distance to campus. Otherwise, this could be a rare opportunity for your D and her grandmother to spend time with each other. FWIW, my D drives an hour and a half round trip to go to HS, but HS closes in bad weather whereas colleges usually don’t.
@TexasMom18 what is going to be the deciding factor? When will that occur?
The only things I hear about orientation is the sooner the better for class selection. However, I would imagine there are going to be many in the same boat as you.
In our case, DD is in the honors college which is automatically awarded the first orientation and class selection. While the dates have been announced, her Univ is not yet taking registration, they have put the dates out but that is it.