@MACmiracle inquire about non music major scholarships and opportunities to participate in ensembles at Elizabethtown, Rowan, TCNJ too.
Some schools will let you send in a recording instead of auditioning in person.
Odds based on admissions decisions thus far. (nursing major)
UNC Chapel Hill 45%
ECU 25%
NC State 10% (only listing NC state in case my daughter changes her mind on nursing)
UNC Wilmington 20%
Not considering APP state at this time and still waiting to hear from Clemson
Just put deposit in for Clemson. others accepted to were Va Tech, JMU, Marlyand CP, Alabama
@mommdc - see I said I was no tax expert. Sounds like you know a lot more than I do. We assumed since her scholarships were covering all her pretty much all of room and board and more, we weren’t covering more than 50% of her support, she was. Therefore, she was responsible and could claim herself, so we didn’t claim her. Maybe flawed logic. Only one person claimed her- she did, we did not. We were trying to help her out by letting her claim herself. And also Because of the AMT, when we put her on our taxes, we actually get nothing for claiming her. Quirky system with the AMT, I’m glad the AMT is (mostly) going away.
I actually think you are correct shelleee.
nope, @mommdc has it right you can’t use scholarships to determine support for taxes.
DD is taking an “on level” Forensic Science class and loving it! She is one of 2 “AP kids” in the class. This week DD had a test on fingerprint analysis, she missed a question, which bummed her out, so she was talking with the teacher about her mistake and oddly her teacher told her to “Stop using your AP brain! Your and John’s (the other AP kid) biggest hurdle in this class is overworking. I am not looking for the collegiate level analysis, if it isn’t on the study guide it is not going to be on the test!” Apparently both DD and John had missed the same question because they had read further in the study materials than was required and applied some more in depth concepts to the test question. They’ve been assigned a presentation project that is due this coming Wednesday. DD finished hers last Thursday and John finished his on Friday. They had been given class time all week to work on it and she worked a bit at home on it. She was surprised that many classmates had not even started the project and were waiting until this weekend to start. She was amazed to have been given time in class to work on a project and “who gets 2 weeks to work on a project?”. It is unfortunate but there is definitely a distinct difference between the workload in on level classes and AP/honors classes at our public HS. Our experience has been that our on level classes really would not prepare our students to be successful in college. And this is a well ranked HS here in Texas and nationally. Anyone else feel this way about their HS?
@mommdc We have a visit scheduled at Etown so I’ll check into audition dates. They could coincide.
ETA: There is a date that would work at Etown and she has played some of the pieces suggested on there audition information sheet. So this might really work even if it’s short notice.
Thank you! 
Well I learn something new here every day. That’s why they have the 1040x!
@labegg No, our high schools are quite rigorous, even for “on level” classes. A big complaint actually is that the workloads are very heavy and that kids are under tremendous pressure.
DD18 is an IB diploma candidate so doesn’t take many “on level” classes but they are definitely not cakewalks. Semester long projects are not unusual.
DD14 graduated from a magnet school that is so his “on level” classes were quite rigorous. His freshman year biology class, which was “on level” used the AP textbook. In fact,he was returning a rental book while visiting a friend in Akron and the kid in front of him was also returning rental and he recognized it as his high school bio textbook.
https://www.journalofaccountancy.com/issues/2010/aug/20103019.html
Helpful article “Is your college student still your dependent”?
@shelleee I am not a tax expert either. The IRS has a support worksheet that might be helpful.
It is tricky and confusing. I talked to another poster on here before who has a son on full scholarship and he had no earned income and didn’t even live at home in the summer, so according to tax rules it seemed that neither the parent nor the student could claim his exemption.
@shelleee and it might well have been that she provided more of her own support, taking all of the scholarships out of the equation, it just depends.
I know that this year because my D took out a subsidized loan and paid some of her own housing costs, it is close.
We still provided more of her support, paid the fees, food, healthcare, most of the clothing, etc.
@pkgny2022 May I ask when you heard from VT? It was my understanding you either apply ED there (and are required to then attend) or RD and Regular Decision results won’t be out for at least a couple weeks. It is not unusual for my son to miss something in his email or on the portals, so just checking to see if I need to poke him about VT results. It’s a top choice for him, so we’re very excited to hear!
Ok thanks. I guess all the exemption confusion goes away with the new tax law anyway when we file in 2019 for our 2018 taxes and we don’t get exemptions anymore.
@ labegg - totally agree - at our school, AP level classes are vastly harder. D has one regular class (Physics) this semester. She’s a STEM girl so It went against her grain but AP Phys is the hardest class at our school. With 4 other APs and varsity sports she didn’t want (or need) to bury herself senior year. In physics, I think she’s done little more than go to class and take the tests Year she has a 99%. Hope she’s learning something 8-|
@MACmiracle, you’re welcome. I hope she can continue to play in college, and even better if she gets some money for it!
It hadn’t even occurred to me before, because I wasn’t sure which schools were top of her list, and I didn’t think about mentioning music scholarships for non majors.
And I remembered reading something about it on the Susquehanna website.
@shelleee yes, no more exemptions.
But there is a dependent credit the parent can claim, and if the student is no longer dependent on the parent, then parent cannot claim education credit like AOTC for the student either.
I’m hoping to be able to claim AOTC for the fourth and last year for my D.
But my thinking is also that if she can take advantage of lower interest rates with subsidized loans, then she might have to borrow less in grad loans later which have much higher origination fees and interest rates.
So lots to juggle.
My DD18 is taking 7AP classes, 1 non AP class and 1 CCP (college credit plus) class at U of Cincinnati. We just heard from her counselor that the CCP classes are MUCH easier than the AP classes and were wondering if our DS21 should take a different route than DD18 and should take more CCP class and less AP and honors classes. The way our school does weighting for classes, CCP classes count double the weighting on weighted GPA towards class ranking vs honors or AP classes, so a schedule with 4CCP classes and 2 AP classes would count the same as a schedule with 8 AP/honors classes and 1 CCP class. It hardly seems right that a 6 class schedule should count the same weighting as a 9 class schedule and especially when the counselor says AP classes are actually harder than CCP classes! I don’t have any experience with how the CCP classes transfer to other schools but I know the AP classes transferred to UTD for my DD16- with 14 AP tests and 5s on all of them, she got 68 credits. DD18 will have 13 APs and 2 CCPs after this May and she expects to have approx 75 credits at U of Cinci based on their AP transfer table.
Does anyone have any experience on the merits of AP vs CCP and which is better for college credit and how hard they are (For what it’s worth- DD18 said the 2 CCP classes she took were MUCH easier than both AP physics and AP calc BC although both of which she happens to be taking online through northwestern university because our school doesn’t offer them!)? My DD18 is really burned out by taking 7 AP classes, 1 non AP, and 1 CCP class this year. It was her choice to take as many as she did, but if she could’ve taken less by going the CCP route vs the AP route, that would have been nice and maybe we can take some pressure off for DS21 and DD28 with less classes per semester.
Our hs dropped all AP and only does CCP now. TAG courses transfer to any state school in Ohio. We noticed some privates (like Case and Ohio Wesleyan) have started to change their policies (since 4 years ago when we were looking at schools with our D) with CCP since its growth in popularity. Private schools in Ohio are starting to offer steeply discounted CCP programs themselves and accept more CCP credits.
Our D had 60+ credits, but because she needed nearly all of them to fulfill hs requirements as well schools like Case wouldn’t offer credit for the ones used for hs graduation requirements 4 years ago. The state schools on the other hand were able to hold onto accelerated students like her by offering a faster path to graduation. Our principal thought CCP was a better value for families.
Rank is important for merit. My kids schedule their classes with ranking in mind.