@parent2one Hopefully by 4/1 the weather is more normal, although we might still have snow on the ground. I probably will have 30 inches of snow in my yard after today,.
If you are going to apply to BU might as well apply to NEU too, as they are the same price and same level of difficulty getting in. Neither great with financial aid. NEU is literally just down the road from BU, so if you have an extra hour at least swing over park, and walk through the campus to get the vibe.
@evergreen5 the temperature could be 25 degrees or 75 degrees, so plan on bringing a winter parka with gloves and a pair of shorts for later in the day.
I like @dfbdfb introduced big**MAC/b here.
I would appreciate it if people can chime in their experiences with bigMACs out there.
We should also introduce the term, ** NFW /b colleges.
I removed a few UCs including UC Berkeley from DS19ās List as they are NFW.
We are not paying 65K OOS COA so that DS can play hunger games for getting into classes and housing.
It seems that U Wisconsin-Madison has a high side COA 52K.
I see GA Tech 45K COA (is this correct?) UWashington 51K (high too?) Purdue 41K & UPitt 44K are more reasonable.
His list is now down to 30. :)) I am hoping to get it down to 20 and to apply 8 (him) to 12 (me) schools.
@payn4ward In my experience, my son17 only received to schools that he described as " in the middle of the woods". Any school that did not meet that description son17 was not awarded any merit aid. Son17 did not apply to too many schools where he was in the 75th or above percentile though, he applied to more match types. So for us, āsuburban public HS decent student white kid not qualified for financial aidā did not win the bigMAC lottery. One school wowed us with us a nice package, but son just could not see himself living there for 4 years.
We have set aside money for son19 to go wherever he likes, so we donāt have any NFW schools, but it would be nice not to have to shell out another 70k per year. I donāt see him qualifying for any merit at the schools he wants to go to though.
I had signed up for Texas A&M tour this morning at 9AM.
That meant we would have left home 6:40 AM. DS wanted to cancel it last night, and is sleeping in past 10AM.
We went to Engineering info session at UT last week. He will apply, but we are keeping reasonably low expectations on outcome as he is not in top 6% and in-state.
We visited a number of colleges over the years mostly in the Northeast. S19 does not want to visit any more colleges as they now seem to blend and begin to look the same. So unlike with S17, we will not do big college trips but look at websites, talk to the school reps when they come out at fair, etc, and apply without visiting them. I have been to most of the colleges all over though so am familiar with the area, weather and transportation, etc. We will make one trip to midwest during summer and visit Rice at some point (maybe not in summer.)
I found DS a new dentist, and he now has a long list of fillings to be done. His previous dentist did not mention a thing during last visit. Maybe I should change his dentist. Burying head in the sand
@RightCoaster Heās not applying to BU - that and Northeastern are both āNFWā for us (I like that lol). Weāll be walking through BU for the Green Line T stop is all I meant :). Iām all about mass transit and walkingā¦ once we hit the hotel parking lot, weāre not driving again until we leave Cambridge! I hate trying to find (and pay) for parking in cities
@homerdog DS wants to visit Northwestern (reach) and Case Western Reserve (my graduate alma mater.)
I may add visits to Carnegie Mellon/U Pitt/U Chicago in there. We will fly to Chicago, then fly to Cleveland and fly home from Cleveland/or Pitt or reverse order.
Keep in mind that thread only lists full tuition. There are other schools (such as ASU and Alabama-Tuscaloosa), that are very generous, but not quite full tuition.
Our NPCs at the āmeets needā schools have all come in at an acceptable level (especially once student contributions and/or loans are included), so we are not in the market for bigMACs. Her stats are very good, but not the super awesome stats that would drive the cost down below the honors college at the local flagship.
And speaking as someone who didnāt have the college affordability discussion with his own parents until the day he received his thick Ivy-college acceptance envelope (no, my parents couldnāt afford the number), I and my wife are being very clear with D19 about what we can afford so that if she chooses to apply to some place more expensive, that extra cost is on her. Thus far, however, sheās not expressed any interests in NFWs. (If she did ask to apply to a NFW, weād have to talk about it. Iām inclined to be willing to pay for maybe 1 NFW application, but only if she literally signed something that said she understood what our maximum contribution to her college expenses was.)
And generally, given her interests and personality, we generally think sheād thrive in a smaller environment. (Her opinion on the matter might be a little less formed in this regard than ours.)
So basically the Venn diagram for bigMACs, NFWs, and less-than-good fits for D19 and us is mostly a series of very overlapping circles. In that regard, I guess weāre lucky.
This was the best thing someone posted https://www.washingtonpost.com/apps/g/page/local/college-grants-for-the-affluent/1526/ Iāve added onto ddās college spreadsheet a āimagine you get the avg merit awardā and resulting net COA if those stars align. So our small list of 9 colleges now has a NFW end and a NNFW (nearly NFW) end. Now, if I get employed again (big imaginary āif then whatā¦ā) everything changes. Cross your fingers people, I have a second interview next week.
@payn4ward our family has had good luck w Pitt for MAC. Itās a fantastic school for anything biomed related and engineering school has been perfect for my 3 kids. Research is huge and easy to get - like super easy, like email 10 people and have 3 labs who want to meet you easy. Merit is very stats driven - clearly ACT 33+, SAT 1490+ and top 5% of class are considered. We are OOS so it isnāt limited to in state. My kids also applied to some other schools well known for awarding merit - but net-COA at Case Western, UMiami, our instate public Rutgers, did not beat Pitt.
Our search is an odd one for S19 such that our initial filter has been Tuition Exchange schools as hubby works at a private college. Itās competitive but if awarded, itās from $36k to full tuition. He wants civil engineering so if he were a girl heād have his choice of schools I bet. I have no idea where he will end up GPA wise at the end of this year but it will somewhere north of a weighted 4.0. No clue on rank as thatās not shared until October of senior year but maybe top 20/250 really not sure. He took the February ACT and got a 34 but ājustā a 32 in math so not sure if itās worth a June retake when all topics in trig have been covered in precalc.
Our search is all over the place from Wentworth to WPI to Qunnipiac to Stevens. Next month Iām planning a trip to the philly area schools including Villanova, Bucknell, Lafayette, and maybe Drexel if itās not too cityish. Pitt is in the exchange too but itās super competitive. Iām feeling somewhat lost in the process and I work in higher edā¦
What is a ānormalā EC list for competitive schools? Since D19 has been in track/XC for the past two years, she has been unable to really get involved in other organizations. Half the year, she canāt participate in before school activities, the other half she canāt participate in after school activities, as well as having most Saturdays occupied for meets.
So sheās merely been a member of two organizations, with no leadership role. Thatās changed a bit this semester, as a foot injury means no meets, but also means she can do things with InterAct. Sheās also NHS and National Spanish Honor Society. She has a lot of volunteer hours though. Not exactly sure how much, but enough to meet the NHS yearly requirement in just a semester.
That may change next year. Sheās not planning on running track senior year (though she will still do cross country), meaning sheāll be free every afternoon. So she plans on running for an officer position in one of her organizations.
At first, I was thinking thatās pretty meager compared to what I see here. Then I realized that CC isnāt exactly normal. So what may be meager by CC standards is perfectly fine for most schools.
D19 isnāt planning on applying to any Ivies, but may apply to selective southern schools (e.g., Rice and Vandy). Even if admitted, she probably wonāt go for NFW reasons, but we wonāt know what they offer unless she applies.
@gusmahler I think your D19 is probably similar to my D19 re: EC, though substitute arts (choir, orchestra) for track/XC. She volunteers some, she works a couple hours weekly at a bookstore. She also has some less-standard ECs like teaching herself a language (in addition to the language sheās taking at school). My D19ās leadership roles have been slim, though I think sheāll have a couple additional leadership items by the time she completes her college apps next December.
Yeah, CC has a way of distorting expectations. I donāt think my D19 is point-y or awarded enough to get her into Ivies (and sheās currently expressed no real interest in applying there), but her ECs I hope are sufficient to get her into selective schools for whom the ECs align nicely (e.g., St. Olaf and somewhat more selective institutions). It does make thinking about the application more important ā how she crafts it to make clear that even though she didnāt lead something or win a national award, she will be an active contributor to the academic and non-academic life of the college/university while sheās there.
We were not in the merit chase from private schools for D16 because we were clueless. She got big merit at Montana State, her safety, via a high ACT score and WUE (western states exchange) and from Univ of Idaho (via NMF). She wasnāt terribly interested in these schools however as she wanted a LAC. She applied RD to St Olaf because it is one of the top LACs for mathematics and math was her main academic interest. We were not aware that they gave merit aid. All the other schools she applied to gave no merit aid. As I said, we were clueless. St Olaf offered her a big scholarship and she ended up loving the school on her visits.
Later I lurked on the ā3.0 to 3.4ā threads and discovered that with a better college list, D16 could have had a lot of merit options though I suspect she would have still chosen St Olaf for a variety of reasons. Honestly, I had looked at the ECs and stats of the ātypicalā CC kids and thought D16 looked pretty ho-hum by comparison, so merit aid wasnāt on my radar back then.
@gusmahler same problem here with S19. XC/winter track/track is every single day after school for the entire school year. Almost everything else worth doing (Mock Trial, Science Olympiad, Model UN, etc etc) meets after school. The coaches donāt let the kids miss practice more than once a quarter or they are off the team. The only exceptions are injury, sickness (and only if you didnāt go to school that day because of it), or a family emergency.
Soā¦S19 had to be creative. Heās been taking art lessons with a private teacher since fourth grade on Wednesday afternoons and he has to switch it to Sundays. She doesnāt usually teach on Sundays but made an exception for him since she didnāt want to lose him and knew he was in a bind. During the few times heās been injured, heās snuck off to grab a class wth her as well. He was sure to take all of the art classes at school to round out his art EC. He also picked up a few leadership positions for smaller clubs that met in the mornings before school. And he volunteers through our community center where he can choose hours that work for him. He refs soccer games on weekends when he doesnāt have meets. He has very little free time. When your main EC takes 15-18 hours a week, thereās only so much more you can do. He would have loved to do Model UN but he had to make a choice and chose running.
It will be even worse for our D21. Sheās in a ballet company and dances every day from 5:00-9:30 plus another 4-6 hours on Saturdays. And during November and December Nutcracker season, her ballet hours get up to about 40 hours per week. She canāt do anything right after school since she has four hours of homework every night and needs that time before ballet to get some work done. She will do yearbook or newspaper since those are classes during the school day and she can do the work expected outside class when she can fit it in. She will be a peer leader starting next year which is something kids do during the day at school to help the freshmen. And her volunteer hours are spent at our humane society since they meet on certain Sundays.
In both of the kids cases, we knew they would have a main EC and we figured out what other things were available during the times they were not practicing. Then, they each chose a few things that they could make work. They made a point of searching for leadership options and volunteering options that met when they had time.
Many of their friends also seem to have one main EC and then smaller other things they do. Iāve said it before but Iāll say it again. When I see kids posting on CC who have 10-12 ECs, I donāt know how they do it!
The common app shows how many hours kids devote to each EC and they know kids have homework. Iām sure itās ok for them to not be involved in a dozen activities.
Did anyone else get the email from ACT with subject line āOne point could be the differenceā ?
I think google is monitoring my CC posts and feeding that info to ACT >:)
It reads
"A single point might make a big financial difference.
For example, at Indiana University, the difference between one point on the ACT is either a $5,000 or $11,000 scholarship. At The University of Iowa, one point is the difference between a $34,000 and $74,000 scholarship.
There have also been cases where students have received full tuition after raising their score by JUST ONE POINT.
Your child may be only a point or two away from achieving extra support that could result in completing college with less, or even no, debt and more financial freedom. ā¦
@homerdog Youāre wondering how kids can list 10 ECs, that it sounds so unfathomable because your children both have such intense, time-consuming main ECs, and I get it. I was reading this thread just after my D19 was telling me about her long day - sheās talking, yadda yadda yadda, and then at lunch I sat with the Sign Language Club, yadda yadda. Whaaaat? Turns out, the American Sign Language Club meets Tuesdays during lunch, and sheās been doing that all year ā I had no idea! Not that sheās got a leadership role or anything, but hey ā Iāll take it.
Yep, my D19 got that one. I was annoyed, she rolled her eyes, both of us were aware that it was a transparent ploy to prey on peopleās aspirational insecurities.
I mean, if theyād been trying to be honest and helpful, theyādāve said which point could be the difference. Fārex, at Alabama-Huntsville, the one point between 29 and 30 makes for a massive differenceābut then theyād have to admit to the kids who got a 30 that theyāre pretty much set there and so donāt need to retake anything, and to the kids with an 18 that theyāre probably not going to hit that target anyway and so shouldnāt bother with the retake if thatās what theyāre after.
@JenJenJenJen hilarious! Maybe all of us should ask our kids what they are doing at lunch!
@dfbdfb have you seen the SAT ads? No joke. They exist. They go on and on about why itās better than the ACT -free Kahn Academy tutoring, no science section, a break between two math sections instead of math all at once, more time per question, etc. This advertising of ACT and SAT is a new low.
His previous dentist did not mention a thing during last visit. Maybe I should change his dentist. Burying head in the sand 
>:)