was bummed and in denial when i saw in Target yesterday some college merchandise displays. no no no.
Scattered-S20 smiled this morning after cross country at his AP score of 5. (we are pleased as that’s a rare thing in our family) He’s taking 5 APs junior year; but not testing in all.
Last night, we mapped out jr yr for him with ACT tests. (Supposed to be studying/prepping for PSAT now, ha!) ACT in October, prep class/tutor over winter and then take it in earnest in February. In March, HS soccer starts so we dont want the ACT thrown in then.
Feeling quite thankful right now; I’ve sort of seen this kid as the weakest link as he was slow to develop and had speech issues and he’s so chill; yet in an overall view, things are going great for him right now. Had a save at lifeguarding, has so many boys/girls asking him to hang all the time, he won a national grant, and has this “golden boy” look to him right now. I guess i’m just appreciating this good season of life for him right now; trust me, with 4 kids we know it doesn’t always happen this way or stay this way.
Yesterday, dropped D20 off at UCSD summer camp. My first impression, La Jolla is beautiful and in a great location, everywhere you go has the smell of Eucalyptus trees, but the campus is fairly grey and industrial looking, spread out, with some construction projects. The college is big on STEM (but D is business/marketing) so might not be her ideal school in the long run? Her class is Media Matters and taught by PhD candidates. Has one roommate from Seattle and already met a new friend from Virginia. I think this will be a good experience for D but I think next summer she should get a job/internship. Her only work experience has been babysitting infrequently lol.
@hgtvaddict , I think you asked about colleges with early (late summer) acceptances. Schools like University of Pittsburgh, with rolling admissions accept applications in the summer and (at least in my S18’s case) have a short turnaround time for accepting students. It was fantastic for him to have an acceptance in hand so early. They also offered him great merit aid and honors college acceptance well before he had even submitted most applications. It was so nice to have that option in hand early. Also, for what it’s worth, Pitt was so organized, friendly, generous with merit aid, and easy to deal with that it continued as a serious contender for him despite him never having heard of it a year earlier.
@pickledginger It is really nice to have an acceptance in hand early in the game. For DS, the true safety will be our state flagship. But we won’t find out scholarship awards until late January. I have a question for Pitt’s merit base scholarships. Is it stat based or holistic in nature?
@whataboutcollege, the Pitt full tuition scholarship myOOS S18 was offered was primarily stats based (I think the minimum stats change annually - they are quite high but Pitt publicized them, which is helpful). Pitt uses its own application that includes some optional short answer questions that seem to be quite important for scholarship decisions.
Pitt also offers a full ride (tuition plus room & board) scholarship that requires a much more involved, competitive process. My S18 was invited to apply for this one much later, long after getting the full tuition offer, but did not apply. It would have involved a multi day visit to campus and interviews, and we/he did not think he would be likely to do well in that context.
The last thing I’ll say about the Pitt process
is that merit aid seems to be awarded early until it runs out, so taking advantage of the rolling admissions is a great strategy. The Pitt admissions office is also super responsive here on CC and answers to most questions can probably be found by searching the Pitt thread.
@pickledginger Thank you for the info!!! I will look into the Pitt thread. I am always curious about stat driven decisions. How do they compare GPAs? It can’t possibly be an easily automated process, or is it?
@makemesmart You are not alone! We have gone on 1 college visit so far for S20. In my early attempts at scheduling visits, I couldn’t find many that worked with our availability this summer. Hopefully, the timing will work out better during breaks and long weekends during the school year. I am not ready to face it anyway! I am still recovering from the process with D17. (Unfortunately, S20 didn’t go on any of the visits we made with D17. Their college searches will be very different in any case.)
@makemesmart Funny, I’m not super organized in most areas of my life. But, we had a substantial drop in our income last year and our college savings wasn’t huge to begin with, so I’m trying to get organized and ready for the big expense of college. I’m hoping that we can make it through the college process with little to no debt.
@pickledginger thank you for the information about Pitt! I’ll research that today.
We’ve done a few college tours so far. I’ve learned not to schedule 2 tours in one day. It’s exhausting!
^^ Totally agree about a max of 2 college tours per day!!
We did UDel and Princeton in one day (wasn’t too bad) and plan to do UNC and Duke later this summer in one day. Hopefully won’t be too exhausted. Anyone else notice the “sameness” in information sessions? I think we’ll be looking for open houses for our fall and spring visits or wait for accepted students days. He may be doing dual degree in music which will mean additional travel for auditions.
Thank you @pickledginger for the Pitt info. Pitt has been on the radar a few times but DS hasn’t seemed interested. He does like Carnegie however and I heard that sometimes you can take classes at both.
@SoccaMomma, yes, it’s my understanding that Pitt students may cross enroll at Carnegie Mellon and some other area colleges. I really can’t say enough good things about all interactions we had with Pitt, online and in person.
We barely fit one college visit in a day, and sometimes it felt we should have chosen an earlier info session than the ones we picked (10 am or noon). After info session/tour we visited each dept D is interested in double-majoring, an overseas studies office, admission office, etc., and just browsed the campus on our own - in one case, D totally ruled out a college after the “non-official” portion of the visit.
@pickledginger Congrats on S18 starting at Pitt in the fall. We are considering Pitt for D20, and you mentioned something above about Pitt publicizing the stats for merit – pr maybe you mean they publish the stats for the incoming class for those that received merit? I’ve looked through their website and can’t find it. Thanks!
@stencils - S19 is applying to Pitt and I do remember them having a posted min threshold to be considered for scholarships but I can no longer find it. If my memory is correct, only ACT 33 and SAT 1480 and above were considered? However I seem to remember an outlier or two. If you look through last year’s Pitt decision thread you will see that more merit is given to earlier applications with only the tippy top scores getting the full tuition or $25,000/year awards (OOS). The Pitt forum has some great posters if you want more specific info and the admissions folks at @hailtopitt1787 are amazingly responsive!
Best advice I can give is that if you have any schools on your radar, follow the decision threads over the next year to see how the $ plays out for schools without automatic merit. We will do that with S20. Limits unrealistic expectations which is especially important if you are chasing merit (which we are.)
Thanks @mountainmomof3. I definitely agree with being realistic about the possibilities. We learned that with D17. She ended up at Temple, which was generous for high-stats. For a couple of the schools D17 applied to we expected little aid, and those schools lived up to our (lack of) expectations!
On a different note, we’re just back from a vacation in Nova Scotia, and I highly recommend it as a destination. Halifax is one of my new favorite cities!
@stencils everyone seems to be headed there this year - know of two people just in my own small world. I need to add it to my list!
How does your D17 like Temple? I have heard good things about it but wonder about the campus feel, etc?
@stencils and @mountainmomof3 , here’s the information I was referring to (https://oafa.pitt.edu/financialaid/academic-scholarships/university-scholarships/):
"University Scholarships are awarded based on academic performance in high school. Criteria includes weighted grade point average, strength of curriculum, class rank (if applicable), and results of the SAT or ACT. Activities outside of the classroom such as athletics, community service, leadership positions, etc. may still be reviewed but given secondary consideration.
University Scholarship Recipient Profile
In recent years, scholarship eligible students possessed ALL of the following:
-Minimum SAT score of 1480 or ACT composite score of 33
-Overall ‘A’ average
-Challenging high school curriculums consisting of AP/IB/Honors courses
-Top 5% class rank (if applicable)
NOTE: The above criteria are provided for the purposes of guidelines only and not meant as scholarship requirements or guarantees."
My S18 didn’t end up enrolling at Pitt (after all of our cross country searching, he ended up deciding to stay in California!), but the Pitt University Scholarship amount he was offered was full OOS tuition. He was at the high end of grades, test scores, class rank, and rigor.
The website also provides information about the Chancellor’s Scholarship.
For both of these, the deadline to apply is early (I think November 1st). Many other schools have similar early deadlines for merit aid applications.
We have close friends who have family in Nova Scotia and visit every year. We hope to go one of these years!!
Since I won’t be bragging to my friends in rl unless prodded, wanted to share my joy - D got 760 on math level ll, which is better than I was hoping for (she’s a fuzzy). Yay!
@mountainmomof3 Temple has been great experience for my daughter. She’s in the honors program there and it has some great perks: separate sections of many her required classes like calc, physics, and freshman liberal arts, dedicated honors housing, early registration, and separate honors advising are the big ones. These are really helpful in a large school. The separate honors sections are really great because they usually have the best profs and the class sizes are kept small – maybe 20 or 30 instead of a large lecture hall environment. The average ACT for those in honors is 32, so it’s a strong cohort of students in those classes to work with.
Her experience is a bit different than most because she’s also an athlete, and the athlete perks at all large div 1 schools are a bit over the top; the small sports share the same benefits as the football and basketball teams.
Temple is also good with merit aid for high stats, although they don’t have guaranteed merit levels any more. The year my daughter enrolled, I think the presidential scholarship (full tuition + honors + one-time study abroad stipend) award was generally given to those at or above 34 ACT, perhaps some 33s as well. That’s based on what I remember seeing in the accepted students forum here, not anything Temple published.
She’s absolutely LOVES Philadelphia city life! She and her friends would occasionally take the subway or Uber to center city or a Philly neighborhood for a restaurant or festival. Temple does get a bad rep for its north Philly neighborhood. Going north out of campus especially there’s a high poverty level with all of the associated issues. But she loves it there and has never felt unsafe, but as with any city campus, street smarts and common sense are important.
@pickledginger thanks for the Pitt info – we’re probably visiting with D20 at the end of the month!
One more thing I’ll mention about our trip to Halifax. It’s the home to Dalhousie University, which even at full pay for international students with room and board is only about 30K CAD, which at current exchange rates is about 23K USD. It’s a nice campus right in the city with an enrollment of about 20,000.