We did a walk-through of the UW campus with D16 - so pretty! She didn’t apply and never really considered it (it would have beyond a reach), but we happened to be in Seattle during a west coast road trip. Part of me wishes S19 were interested in schools out west because I’d love to have an excuse to go back. D16 visited schools from southern Florida to Vancouver.
The only college preference S19 has expressed to date is that he doesn’t want to go more than a 6 or 7 hour drive from the DC area. Once you take out LACs, elite public schools, super pricey/selective private universities, and schools with over-priced OOS tuition and no merit aid (cough Penn State), the final list should be pretty small.
Keeping track of it all: I had a spreadsheet for D17 that was overly massive (98 columns!) by application season, which I called the Spreadsheet Of Serendipity. I suspect D19’s will be smaller, as she’s less picky (and less data-driven, too). I had lots of tabs in it, as well, since every time there was a major cull I copied the pre-cull data into a new tab (I don’t find the Google Docs previous state view particularly intuitive), so no idea what the maximum on that is, @OrangeFish. I also built tabs for the application process and scholarship awards (which made full use of Google Sheets’s insanely-clunky-but-ultimately-better-than-Excel’s conditional formatting), as well as a few workups of curricula.
I’ve started one for D19, but it’s basically just a list of all the schools that are ABET accredited for industrial, manufacturing, or systems engineering, and/or that are listed by IDSA or NASAD or [I forget any others] for industrial or product design—it won’t get any real use until this summer, I figure.
@dfbdfb Did you find that doing a massive spreadsheet was worth it? In the end, did it really help? Are you looking back and thinking is was a good use of time? I know I’ll make one to keep track of some things but I’m afraid it’s going to get out of hand. I could totally see myself spending hours and hours on it.
I think it’s a good idea to wait to go crazy with a spreadsheet. I will wait until I have S19’s SAT score (hopefully this fall) and he’s visited a few schools (again, this fall). I don’t want to have massive information he won’t use!
I had a large spreadsheet for D16, though not as large as @dfbdfb . It included all factors that were important to her and to us for each school that was of interest. Some schools popped up only briefly and their lines never got completely filled out after we realized that it was out of reach or not right for some reason of the other.
Right now for S19, I just have a list that I’ve been developing based on comments from him about what he would like and where I think he could get in. I’m not going to do the work of actually filling out a spreadsheet until probably winter of Junior year. At that point we will have PSATs and 5 semesters of GPA to work with and will have a much better idea of what could be realistic.
I bow to you @dfbdfb ^:)^ as your Spreadsheet of Serendipity sounds fabulous! We have Hermione’s Bag (a Google Doc) and the spreadsheet portion is only 44 columns right now. D19 knows all sort of techniques with the Google Doc so she has research notes included, plus photos of elements she saw on campus visits and such. (She is documenting portfolio requirements as she goes, too.)
I am an outlier who does not use a spreadsheet or chart of any kind.
I kept a list on my phone in notes. I would go in once in a while and mark down a due date or important fact, but we did not track any particular data points. After getting all of the results, son basically eliminated 1/2 of his list. Then it was down to a handful and was easy to compare by just talking about it.
It’s coming down to apples to oranges for us. Wicked expensive name brand city school, or smaller inviting university in the middle of the woods that offered him a very generous merit package.
At this point, it’s leaning towards expensive city school.
Son19 is our last hope at saving our bank account with some sort of merit scholarship, otherwise we will flush well over $500k on schooling costs. LOL. Totally insane.
@RightCoaster , yeah we are hoping for S19 to get merid aid or stay in state. i am pretty sure he would qualify for the Univ of Alabama free ride based on where his test scores are now as a sophomore, but that is such the wrong school for him.
D right now is getting all "you told me last year that i could go anywhere, and now you are complaining about $). Well yeah, when the schools are approaching 70K a year. I figured 40-50. I just had no knowledge of how it all worked until it was too late.
@sdl0625 exactly, a crazy process. I figured all along we would be full pay so planned for it. Actually having to pay it is a bad feeling though, ha. There are lots of kids getting that same talk right now, about not being able to go to any school they want. I think it’s a bit depressing for the kids, and also disturbing for the parents. I’ve seen this with a few of my older son’s friends in the last few weeks. The kids do seem to get over it, especially if they have a decent plan B to consider.
If you all are looking for merit$$ to offset the costs I would suggest compiling a list of schools not ranked in the top 50 where your kid’s stats fall into the top 10-20% or higher, or if they have some sort of skill set the school desires.
I didn’t keep a spreadsheet for D16, but I feel like I nevertheless ended up doing too much of the research for her. If I had shown her a spreadsheet, she would have had me committed for helicoptering. She didn’t realize that she still expected me to find schools for her - I just had to be really low-key about it, haha. Fortunately, there were a limited number of schools in desirable locations that offered the one or two majors she wanted.
I’ll encourage S19 to do more research on his own, but I think I already have the beginnings of a mental list based on his geographic preferences. If he ends up wanting an engineering major, I’m guessing he’ll need to submit more applications than his sister did - there’s not exactly a shortage of white male engineering applicants and it feels like it might be a crapshoot to get into even a less selective program.
@OrangeFish that sounds awesome. She should give me an inservice on it. God knows I need it. I think it will really help remind her of things she has forgotten when making her decision. I also have a D19, I will share with her this info.
@carolinamom2boys, yes, Clemson has an ABET-accredited industrial engineering program.
As for whether keeping the SOS for D17 was worth it, I don’t know that all of it was useful for my daughter (read: I’m certain some parts of it were pointless for her), but if nothing else it gave me something to do to keep from meddling too much in her part of the process. Also, some parts of it ended up coming in very useful by surprise—I’d pulled in a bunch of climate data at one point last summer, and then my daughter was diagnosed with seasonal affective disorder this past winter (explained a lot, really!), and suddenly measures like the average daily hours of sunlight in September, December, and March became important. Also, some things were totally at her request, where she asked me to research something (like certain types of information from accreditation reviews—she’s the child of an academic, she knows way more about university governance than she should) but didn’t have the time to go searching for it herself, and knows that I like to poke around uncovering data.
But I repeat: …it gave me something to do to keep from meddling too much in her part of the process
@RightCoaster We will be full pay but we will look at schools that offer merit for sure. I need to have the talk with my husband about what he would be comfortable paying $65K for. I don’t want S19 getting excited about any schools that we think aren’t worth it (obviously). Not even sure what would make it worth it, as he should be able to get a great education somewhere that does not cost that.
But…if he got into a place like Middlebury, or Brown, or Carleton, would we pay? I would be fine with that. Not sure about my husband though. If he says absolutely no school is worth it, that makes it a little easier in some ways. Otherwise, I think I’ll have to come up with a list of reaches for him to consider and see if he would be willing to pay. I think I’d have to present quite a case.
In my mind, if we would have to pay $50K for Wisconsin, would we pay $65k for Carleton? It’s not comparing zero to $65K. We are really talking about what the difference would be.
