Parents of the HS Class of 2019 (Part 1)

Parents of HS Class of 20xx
2281

“I” needed the spreadsheet to

  1. feel good chances
  2. feel that he had a balanced list
  3. determine whether or not it fit the budget
  4. track progress

I am a compulsive list maker and a data hound. S17 has only seen a very very VERY small fraction of the data. He doesn’t need, or want it. But I’m writing the bulk of the checks.

So yeah, for me it was worth it. Still is, I’m still using it for S17 and my H uses one for SD14 to plot out tuition and expense funding and payments.

I expect S19 to take a very different, and more active, approach which should be quite interesting. He is far more like me in the data collection/comparison/gathering front. I may well create him a template and we share it in dropbox or something. Not sure yet.

2282

It would make sense not to apply to some schools at all if they do not offer merit aids to avoid heartaches later. More research on our part is helpful to find out what kind of merit aids are available and how much effort DC is willing to put in with additional essays and interviews.

2283

There has to be some money to make in all of this. If I offered to make a spreadsheet for my friends’ kids, I think they would love that! Parents already pay $80/hour for a math or science tutor and $150/hour for SAT and ACT tutors. Mmmm. Maybe I could make a little extra cash for our kids’ tuition!

2284

Folks on the '17 thread found this useful.

Here is the link to the $8 scholarship database by Wendy Nelson.

http://www.mykidscollegechoice.com/full-scholarship-list/
http://meritscholarshiplist.com/about/

The idea is that after pouring through this list, if one can add a school to the College List, it is worth it.
I did not buy this one as I found out about it after we had already put together a college list.

In addition, here is a link to a brief table listing merit awards at small liberal arts colleges (LACs.)
http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/discussion/comment/19801988/#Comment_19801988

2285

@eandesmom thats the next step and thankful you brought it up. A spreadsheet for all the college expenses we haven’t even thought of. I better get hot on that!

2286

I’ve found the NPC"s to be quite good in predicting a lot of merit aid. I’ll also be referring a lot to the 3.0-3.4 results thread for merit. CDS can be misleading in this area I think because it may show merit as being need related due to being part of a package that might have had a small grant but a kid might have gotten it as non needed as well, which hits a different line. You can see overall school generosity on the FA side but the merit side is a bit more hidden. I’m a huge fan of published stats based scholarships BUT for the mid stats kid, mine has done better at the less clear holistic type schools.

@homerdog I did make a spreadsheet for a friend.

I didn’t charge though as in their case it was more of a “how are we going to pay for this? Can we pay for this” question.

2287

@rightcoaster, that’s my strategy: find places that offer merit and where D’s eventual stats & interests stand out. That’s kind of why the spreadsheet has 28 colleges on it now, and will probably have more: her GPA could rise a lot or stay stuck at 3.0; ditto with test scores; and she’s scattershot on possible majors.

Meanwhile, do any of y’all also have a diffident kid who has trouble advocating for herself? Maybe it’s just a 15-year-old rite of passage thing, I don’t know. Can’t remember me at that age. How do you parent for this?

Long story short - it turns out she’s being groomed to be stage manager senior year, but we only found out because of a somewhat unrelated confrontation last night that forced her to get in touch with the senior girl who leads the crew and directly ask about the issue. She’s been telling us all year that her advancement opportunities are over because of uncertainty around whether she’d be back at the school.

And if she’d freaking ASKED, she would have known this. I’m wondering what else she and we don’t know about because she avoids speaking up, showing interest, asking questions, when it comes to herself.

2288

I’ve started a spreadsheet as well. It’s not super detailed or anything. I wanted a list of all possibilities and will narrow it down over time. The funny thing is my 7th grader shows more interest in it. My d19 knows it’s there but doesn’t say much else. I probably don’t really need it for her. I will be surprised if she doesn’t end up either at a local university (would need a lot of merit) or the state university honors college that has her grandparents/aunt/uncle nearby and is less than 2 hours from home. My younger one, on the other hand, might end up across the country.
No matter where they end up, I want them to feel there were choices and options though, so the spreadsheet helps visualize it all.

2289

My S22 is also interested in a spreadsheet now! Last night he asked if he could be join D19 and me at a college fair on Wednesday night at a nearby state university. He has no school today, so he plans to go through the participating schools list to make a plan for who he wants to talk with when we go to the college fair.

D19 has narrowed down her list of possible college majors to just ten different ones :slight_smile: while S22 only has one possible college major.

2290

@eandsmom I have only found a few NPC calculators that estimate merit. Oberlin’s estimate seemed to make sense knowing what I know from other kids’ offers from our high school. Denison made no sense. Even when I put in 4.0/4.0 unweighted GPA and a 1500 SAT, I only got $6,000. That’s not even close to what some of the kids we know got from Denison. I still find that looking for merit (unless it’s from schools that are very cut and dry about scholarships for certain GPAs or SATs) is confusing.

I guess it’s just like need-based aid for some schools. You just won’t know until you get the package.

2291

No spreadsheets here. Limiting schools to instate options due to scholarship funds.

2292

No spreadsheet here either. At this point with D19, we are focusing on meeting the admission requirements for our in state universities especially the dreaded foreign language requirement (shoutout to @OrangeFish here). With D15, we used a private college counselor. She was a retired GC from our local high school who worked out of her home, so she was not one of these high powered super expensive Ivy consultants. But she kept D15 on a timetable and organized and kept me and D15 from strangling each other, lol.

2293

@Corinthian I hear you about using a counselor. That’s the only reason I would use one at this point - is to keep S19 in line so I don’t have to nag. Too early to know yet, though, if I’ll be nagging or if he’ll be on the ball. Plus, I’m learning so much on CC that I don’t want to pay someone for their advice. I think we should be able to handle it!

This summer will be the test. I’ve set up an SAT studying schedule for S19 and we’ll see how he does with that. I’ve warned him. He knows what’s expected! Hoping for his good study habits to continue through the summer without nagging…

2294

For DS16 he took an SAT prep class and a one day ACT tips class. We did use one of the teachers privately for a one time consultation to prep him for interviews for scholarships . It was well worth the money, because DS16 was offered quite a bit of money and is attending his dream school on practically a full ride costing us less than a 1000.00 a year for school.

2295

@carolinamom2boys prep for interviews sounds like a great idea. If S19 ends up in a spot where he has to interview, I’d love to find someone to help with that. Our high school has an event to teach the kids good interviewing skills during junior year. The spots book up really fast. I’ll have to be on top of that one. It would be great to have an idea of what kind of questions are asked in those interviews. Being stumped would not be good.

2296

For S19, I currently have a plain text list of colleges with notes, but am converting that to a spreadsheet. Columns for soccer possibilities (DIII & club), majors, and merit. Right now I focused more on figuring out college tours. Time and $ are finite so need to be strategic. I’m trying to focus on target schools that would come out to be less than 40K based on NPC and merit estimates based on CC results (the 3.0-3.4 thread). D16 applied to a bunch of $$$ schools that don’t give merit aid (ug) and then DM’s Prestige Bias had an epic battle with Frugality in April. Frugality won by way. Fortunately, DD loves her school, so all ended well but I’m still wounded from that battle.

Of course being of data-geek, see for example
http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/college-search-selection/1883153-data-comparing-liberal-arts-colleges-in-the-sciences-p1.html
I have a lot of R code and .csv data files, sigh. These are not for DS of DD but my friends (also data-geeks and parents). We huddle together during dinners and talk about charts and tables and discuss things like ROI in the context of Gladwell’s ideas. Geeky and no under 30s allowed, lol. My latest data rabbithole (which I have not posted on CC) is the
http://www.equality-of-opportunity.org/data/

2297

We don’t have any extensive spreadsheet. D19 talks to her GC, friends, and visits the website of the college. If she feels comfortable, she asks me to find some details. She visits campuses for her ECs. If she likes them, we add them as well.

We are most likely to be full pay. Our budget allows us ~30-35k. I am focusing on mainly in state public universities because of the budget constraints. After reviewing D19’s stats last week, her GC suggested to look at some privates with good merit money. I think of merit money as a possible lottery but I am hesitant to take it in calculations to start with.

I am curious to know if you consider OOS, privates by taking into account the possible merit money.

2298

@collegeandi We are on the hunt for privates that give merit money for sure. Our EFC is something like $80,000 so we will get no need based aid. I’ve been working on it for a while. We aren’t looking at any schools with automatic merit, though, so we will have to manage expectations and tell S19 that, if he gets the merit, there’s a better chance of us agreeing to let him attend any particular school.

2299

That’s the only way to consider OOS & privates, at least for us.

On my spreadsheet I have the COA, the merit $$ averages, the need $$ averages, the possible scholarships, the 25%-75% range of SAT/ACT scores, the avg. GPA – all of those plus some other factors combine to give me a label of “financial reach” and “academic reach,” or match, or safety, again, in both the financial and academic sense.

It’s rough at this point, especially considering we don’t have many of D’s stats to plug in.

But it’s head-clearing to be able to point to big swaths of colleges as complete fantasies, others as likelies, and so on.

When all is said and done, I envision applying to two or three safeties (under both categories), two or three matches and two or three reaches. I think that’s fair to her, and likely to give good results.

Our EFC is still completely unknown, as we have ugh factors like wildly gyrating self-employment, royalties, a share of an LLC etc. Probably full pay in-state for sure.

After this tax year I’ll be able to plug in our EFC and we’ll have a much clearer picture.

And I’m not averse to targeting a couple of high-end (financially speaking) institutions that might find D an asset. I’m not holding my breath and I’ve warned her she’ll likely end up in-state at a “lesser” college than most of her friends (her senior friends have been accepted to places like Brown, Emerson, Tufts, Vassar, which are so far out of our biosphere as to be on the moon).

2300

@homerdog I would really really encourage you to make sure you are clear on what the budget is to your S upfront. Between the NPC, CDS and published scholarship info, you can get an idea if your child might qualify for anything and/or if the school in general gives merit aid. At your EFC, the CDS will work quite well for you, simply look at the non need merit line.

Don’t let him apply to any place you aren’t willing to pay full frieght or are clear on what the offer must be for it to be considered. Also make sure you have at least 2 schools you know you are willing to pay for either at full price, or with a known stats based offer.

It presents heartache for the kid. This time of year is FULL of kids whose parents let them apply with vague ideas on how the money will work but letting them apply anywhere they wanted and the kids finding themselves with literally no school they can afford. While I’m sure that will not happen in your case, kids can really get their heart set on a school if allowed to apply at all so it can be a slippery slope. There is enough hormonal and stress drama around the process that having the financial hard talk up front, sharing those numbers, saves stress on everyone later on.

@collegeandi we considered merit heavily in our calculations for S17 and did not allow any applications where there wasn’t a chance of a merit offer that would bring it in range. We had targeted 30-35 but the reality in his case was that the 30-35 schools were not places he wanted to attend, or did not make the final top choices even if they did make the apply list. We find ourselves debating in state super cheap, versus low 40’s with merit that would require him to do student loans for a small portion as he has exceeded the budget (which was his choice and one we allowed up to a cap). The bigger money out there is often in less desirable geographic locations or may be schools that aren’t a fit for other reasons (size, program, etc ). It also, certainly, depends on the stats of the kid. For this kid, the more expensive schools may well be worth it for a variety of reasons but we haven’t made that call yet.