We are still waiting! Called CB today and they said not to worry until the 29th as scores are still being released on a “rolling basis” but it is hard to wait.
Congrats to everyone happy with their scores, I hope we get to join you soon!
Can use a little advice/support. I have a D19 who is a solid, very hard working student, with a 3.67 uw gpa at an academically rigorous private school. Her grades have been pretty consistent each semester, and I don’t believe she has ever had lower than a B or B+, even in her AP and honors classes. She got a 31 on her first try at the ACT. She has never been amazing at math, but solid and consistent, just like in every other subject. However, she is struggling in math this semester, is devastated, and is fearful that she will fail. I don’t think she will fail, but a C is likely. She has been meeting with the teacher almost daily for the last few weeks, has watched Khan academy videos, and I had her meet once (so far) with a private tutor, but she’s still not getting it. She doesn’t know what else she can do, and thinks her college dreams are dashed. I am far less than discouraged than she is, and hopeful that this will be a (humanizing?) blip in a holistic review of an otherwise strong high school career – especially since many of the schools she is looking at provide generous merit scholarships for students with her ACT and (current) GPA. Her “reach schools” were a gamble even before this episode, and are probably more so now, and that’s ok. Any suggestions of what she should do next? Any real-life experience that can confirm my belief that all will be ok in the end?
@Bubblewrap666, which math class is your D in? Poor kid! Of course her confidence is shaken, but I’m sure this is just a blip.
Khan Academy works great for my D19 when she doesn’t understand something, but D21 is a different kind of learner (and math is her weakest subject). The most helpful thing for her has been a high school senior who had the same math teacher and comes to the house to help D study. We found her through D’s guidance counselor who had lists of students for each subject. We pay her, but she is way way cheaper than the adult tutors. I think there may also be NHS members who tutor for even less (or volunteer?).
Extra help with the teacher didn’t help because he explained things the same way he did in class. This lovely 17 year old has been a godsend! The way they work is that D narrates her thought process out loud as she does the problems, and the tutor listens, and corrects/guides/suggests.
I’m sorry that there’s all this pressure surrounding the situation. It must be a relief for your D to see your calm, positive outlook, and I’m sure this will work out! She is learning a lot more important things than math as she handles this setback.
@Bubblewrap666 there’s another math site I saw recommended once on CC. It’s all tutorials and may not be any more helpful than Khan, but just in case it’s Patrickjmt.com
My kids have both found it helpful before.
@3SailAway thanks for the nice words, and for the great idea to look for a student to tutor her. Because of where she went to middle school, she is in Alg2/Trig while most of her classmates are in Pre-Calc or Calc so there’s no shortage of potential peer tutors. I’ve already talked to her and she feels way more enthusiastic about this path than continuing to bang her head against the wall with the teacher, or meeting again with the private tutor. In fact, just talking about it seemed to change her mood for the better!
@Bubblewrap666 peer tutors can make a huge difference and trust me that one C (or ahem, more) will not keep her out of college. It’s all about finding the right fit for your child and she has solid stats. Some kids do better with peers, other study groups, some online, some private tutor and some with the teacher. Don’t be afraid to test different options out. And know that many many kids only make it to Pre Calc and do just fine in college.
My S09 and D11 tutored their classmates. My D19 is also tutoring math now. A lot of time a top math student explains things better than an adult tutor. And peer tutoring is free or cheaper.
For those that are crunching numbers based on NPC’s and if it’s your first rodeo I wanted to offer a bit of my 2017 and beyond thoughts. For those of you who don’t need to crunch the numbers skip ahead! lol. Our first 2 kids had one college to chose from, so the costs were what they were (#1 applied to one school and #2 got in to her ED). The next 2 however, called for shopping. Or “call” really in the case of #4 which is DS19
When I’ve compared costs prior to application and then after offers come in, I focus on apples to apples comparisons. For us that means comparing
[ul][]Tuition + Fees
[]Room + Board
[]Travel
[]Books
[]Personal Expenses
[]Expected (and then Actual) Scholarships
[]Expected (and then Actual) FA if any
[]Subsidized versus Unsubsidized student loan offers (but did not include those in my net totals, it just let me compare gaps and what each school thought of our EFC).
[]Net total Direct Costs (tuition, fees, room and board only)
[]Net total Costs[/ul]
Personally, I assigned the same number to the bottom 2, knowing my kid, versus what any NPC predicted.
From an offer standpoint this worked well for me. It let me clearly see who gave a deal on room and board between who had crazy prices. It let me see merit offers as a % of tuition but not be swayed since higher %'s just seemed (for my B+ kid) to be at higher base tuition schools. It also let me see if fees were higher in places based on major or college. Those can be a bit hidden and not show in NPC’s, which are averages.
However there are other costs, especially year one, that can catch you and I like to have a handle on those as well. Things you may want to look at.
[ul][]Orientation. Is it before school or a separate time of year (spring or summer)? That can to add travel costs quite a bit.
[]Enrollment fee.
[]Room deposit, if any, when due.
[]Dorm set up. This may cost more than you think and budgeting for it helps avoid surprises. Can you drive things to the room that the kid already has or are you buying most things new at their out of state college to avoid shipping costs?
[]Move in costs. Will you need a hotel, a rental car and flights for yourself or can you just drive the kid with everything in the back of the car? Meals for 2+ for a weekend?
[]Tuition insurance and dorm insurance
[]Break travel. Will the kid need flights home or $ for other “fun” travel with friends over breaks?
[]Parents weekend or other. Will you be traveling to visit, will it mean flights, hotel, food or rental car?
[]Summer Storage. Where will your kid keep their stuff all summer? Will you need to rent storage?
[]Clothing. Is the kid moving to a totally different climate and will need a significant amount of new items to be set up?[li]Off campus housing. Deposits on these can be due almost a year before move in. And you might have to pay for a years worth of rent versus 10 months of dorm. It may or may not be a “better” deal.[/ul][/li]Ok the last one is really a year 2 cost but you get the idea.
Sorry if this is stating the obvious but as our kids start to look at schools, and dream schools, and schools that might come in at the top of anyone’s budget…when stretching for me it was helpful to look at the entire picture as that second list was not an apples to apples comparison for us.
I also recommend that you factor in tuition and R&B increases over the 4 years. You can, of course, research the historical increases for your schools and some (not many) guarantee no increases) but for me a flat % across all schools was easier and again, apples to apples. I figured anything less on the increase side was gravy. In general scholarships are flat amounts and do not increase when tuition and R+B do so the net cost over all 4 years can and will change in most cases.
Thanks @eandesmom , this is great! My D wants to go far from home, so my spring break project is to figure out these exact comparisons and use it to help find more options.
@Acersaccharum so did 3 out of 4 of our kids lol. It’s helpful for the kid reality check. For us, I had a cap. My kids knew that there had to be at least a “chance” of the school coming in around the cap. With a full pay family and a B+ kid, it’s a challenge. But it did help cut out schools it really made zero sense to apply to and then one that made no sense to even visit.
I have not actually done the detail level of math on S19’s list yet but do plan to, soon. As he is the last we are letting him, if he wants, apply to a couple financial reaches (in our world anyway) as the reality is that we may be able to stretch a bit more in years 3&4 (but aren’t telling him that specifically). We will see!
My d19 isn’t really super interested in going far but we did talk about how if she is someplace under budget and doesn’t need loans, that she would have more dispensable cash for fun travel. If she goes someplace at or slightly above budget, where she will have loans and have to work to pay for school/books, it would limit travel for years even beyond college. That might be part of why she isn’t concerned so much with going far. She’s got big plans for a Disney world annual pass that she would get lots of use from!
Interesting that the discussion is about finances today. S19 loving Davidson today. We are full pay. Mr Homerdog MAY be ok with that but wants to see all offers first and not go ED anywhere. S19 is hearing of this today. And I just found out that the three kids from our high school at Davidson all went ED. Ugh. I should assume that competitive merit scholarships at colleges never go to ED kids, right? Or at the very least, he would have to commit without knowing. Sadly, I’m assuming that colleges keep those scholarships to woo the RD kids. Is it bad to ask their financial aid office? I want to know the answer but I don’t want to be on record as asking in case it’s some sort of red flag that would affect his application.
@homerdog We are thinking about Davidson, and saw that their Merit Scholarship FAQ page says, “Merit scholarships are offered primarily on the strength of your application for admission. No additional form is required. Early Decision and Regular Decision candidates are evaluated equally.”
Still, if you apply ED, you are notified by December 15th and you have to commit to Davidson without knowing what you could have received elsewhere. They also have ED2, but the same problem arises with a notification date of February 1st because RD decisions aren’t out yet.
(We also noticed that Davidson has some scholarships that require nomination by the high school GC.)
@homerdog better buy a burner phone for a little bit of reconnaissance!
@3SailAway and you also would not know if you got any merit when you have to commit, right? Those scholarships are announced in Feb.
My son got high merit offers from EA applications.
Hmmm . . . I didn’t know that scholarships weren’t announced until Feb. I don’t think I know enough about this topic at all! For example, if a student is not asking for need based financial aid, and gets in ED, would they would be committed no matter what? My understanding is that the only out would be if the school offered less aid than expected and the student was unable to afford . . . but maybe the same goes for merit aid.
I actually considered ED completely binding until I read some threads on CC mentioning the affordability out.
@3SailAway I will call them and let you know what I find out. 
18 parent here. Some scholarships aren’t announced until May. My S is still waiting on 3.
Let’s not mix up EA and ED 
What I have always understood is this.
- Merit Money, in general, is on a first come first serve basis with the exception of competitive scholarships that have separate application.
- EA has a much better chance of getting merit money, and admission, in most cases.
- ED however...has already said they would pay, by applying ED. So I do not know if ED is at a disadvantage in terms of what they might be offered by the ED school in relation to others but they certainly lose the option to compare offers.
- ED is a Admissions advantage, NOT a financial one. Basically you have no way of knowing if an RD offer would be better, or not.
Dates of merit offers vary tremendously, as do the dates of FA awards.
Others can weigh in but in our case for 2017 which was 7 applications to not terribly selective/competitive schools (50-100 range basically) we had the following results which may provide a general snapshot.
All of S17’s applications were sent in EA. In all cases he heard on his merit awards for all schools either at the time of acceptance or within a week. Competitive scholarships (music and theater EC) were notified separately in accordance with their published dates.
One college sent “fire sale” extra merit awards as it got closer to the enrollment deadlines.
FA (which was mostly notification of no FA) came in all over the board, some early and some very late.
We appealed at three schools and two came back with a bit more $$.
Now. I understand there are reasons not to apply EA, most notably if you want to show a strong first semester senior year. Which might help S19 but it may not. He has a very different kind of list and EA is not an option at 4/10 so we will be hanging in until the bitter end as we will not allow ED. Not only for the financial commitment but for the fact that kids really really can change their mind. Had I allowed ED, my S17’s final selection might have been very different. He didn’t really want to but it early front runners did not make the top 2 at the end of the day.