Well, more waiting for USC’s decision. Nothing in the mail today from them. I signed up for the USPS “Informed Delivery” and it shows nothing coming from USC. It’s generally believed that the acceptance packages do NOT show up in ID, so the absence of a package from USC doesn’t mean anything. However, some people think that rejection letters show up in “mailpieces” section of ID – and we don’t have anything there either – so is that an indication of acceptance??? No telling.
The portals start updating just after midnight tonight, Pacific time, or 3am here in ET, but drag out for hours. D18 isn’t staying up … but I imagine she’ll wake up earlier tomorrow than any other Sunday in her life so far!
@RelocatedYankee as much as I love Pitt it is an urban campus and your daughter needs to be comforatable with that. That said Pittsburgh is a pretty easy place to live and is not like being in NYC or even Philadelphia.
Also I must admit I could not get my daughter to apply to Pitt because she did not want an urban campus.
However, for any health care related applicant there is no place better to go academically and for research than UPMC as it one of the top places in the country.
DD woke up at 8am today to attend a 4 hour AP Calc tutorial. She surprised us when she got home at noon saying she ran into her English teacher who asked her to go to a UIL academic meet in the afternoon and compete in the Literary Criticism category with a test on Wuthering Heights, which she has never read. So we crammed the 3 hour PBS version with Tom Hardy. I am sure she was not a very effective contestant, but I was happy to see she was willing to give it a try on the fly!
We had an awesome visit to Rowan today, though admittedly H and I were more excited about it than D. Rowan is going places. As H said, you can feel the forward momentum.
Ironically, when we got home, D had exactly four pieces of mail. One from each of the last four colleges she’d been considering.
The first was a postcard written by a mom that said my kids went to XX University and got a great education. And I thought, good for them, but the facilities there can’t compare to Rowan’s.
The second was a letter from the college that did not award D the competitive scholarship and suggested additional loans as an option, confirming D did not receive the scholarship and telling her they wanted her to come anyway. Okay…
The third was an updated financial award letter from another college offering an extra $2,000. Nice, but not enough to make much of a difference.
The last was a generic letter from the financial aid office at TCNJ, breaking down the costs. It’s not bad with the merit award D got, but Rowan offered full tuition. But I guess we’ll go look again anyway.
I think we’re all starting to feel things are falling into place.
@SC Anteater we were at the UCSD session today. S heard some things he really liked. He is still not sure how to decide, but we did get the letter (rejection) fron USC so day is ending on a sour note.
@MACmiracle On the 3rd college, was there anything you did (or didn;t) that you think caused them to offer you more $$? For. e.g. let them know that Rowan gave a full ride or some such?
@yugefamily I called them a few days back to get an idea of what we might expect in financial aid when my next one starts college in two years and our EFC gets cut in half, so I would know if that might make the four year cost more manageable.
They said not to expect much because they don’t meet need, like maybe only a couple thousand.
Then we got to talking about our financial situation and … surprise, we got that letter.
It’s a very nice school.
We’ll have a big gap when our EFC goes down but it doesn’t seem like any of the schools will offer any significant help when that time comes. That is helpful to know now rather than later.
With Rowan, that won’t be an issue. No gap ever. Well, as long as the gpa stays high enough to keep the scholarship.
@lovespink My D’s review was “all they talked about was STEM”. She feels like the school is so focused on STEM that there isn’t anything there for non-STEM students.
D got the magical white box from USC today. She has already committed elsewhere, and we’d had a long day of traveling by the time she saw it, but she was still absolutely giddy. She really loves USC even though it isn’t The One. Fight on!
I am so sorry @droppedit I am hoping this am that our kids will love where they end up, forget about this process and maybe grow a little stronger? But it hurts.
@droppedit sorry to hear the sad news. However as you pointed out yesterday USC is so darn competive. Your daughter still has some great options and once the sting wears off she will pick the place that’s best for her,
My daughter is waiting on the inevitable rejections at Vandy Brown and Princeton that come out on Wednesday, Then the week after that we go to Clemson for visit including Calhoun honors admitted students reception.
This process IS really hard. The kids I know all perceive this as whether someone is good enough. I sound like a broken record about it not being about THEM because how can someone get to know about THEM in a 6 minute review. To me, if you are a match stats wise, then it’s become a chess game and it’s a question of whether you know how to play the game, not whether you’re “good enough”. And woe the kid I overhear mentioning another kid’s rejection if I hear a tinge of snark. They get a lecture about who are they to judge someone’s value, and an interactive talk about what is value.
I really love the excitement about where kids are making this next step in their lives, but absolutely hate it when kids get crushed. And absolutely despise how the kids are viewing this as The Great Culling.
D denied at Hamilton and wait listed at Conn this weekend. Hamilton was first choice so that was tough. I made her put Conn on because I wanted one on her list to be close to home, but she had no desire to go there so that one didn’t hurt at all.
My D also rejected at USC. Changing focus now to Boston University which has given her a decent financial aid package. We are flying up for their Open House on April 7. (Also accepted at Emerson but no news of financial aid so not focusing on Emerson at the moment though we will look at it while we are up there).
Don’t blast me for my naïveté or willingness to absorb debt, please (I say that because I hear myself doing that in my own head), but I’m wondering if it’s possible to use one’s home equity as a means to meet some of these financial challenges? Rather than student loans per se. I have yet to dig into the nitty gritty details (I mean, there may be stipulations on how one may spend home equity money that would prevent me from using it to pay for college costs; I’m definitely going to find out though!). But if the interest rate on that is lower than a Parent Plus loan (or private student loans that would require a co-signature), I am seriously considering going the home equity route. Is that completely idiotic and unheard of (boy, if it is, please find a kind and loving way to say it to me! Lol)? Along those lines, what I’m hoping to figure out is how to borrow at a low interest rate and not have “student loans” tied to it.
Sigh. I have a lotta lotta lotta reading to do, don’t I?
Any concrete specific Do’s and Don’t’s — beyond the obvious “avoid debt” or “don’t use your retirement funds (what little of those I have I promise I will not touch) — for this next phase of the process? I’m a single parent and have to figure this out on my own. Thanks!
@icbihtsu I don’t have any specific advice for you, just wanted to wish you well. It’s so hard to know the “right” way to finance an education, especially as a single parent.