Parents of the HS Class of 2020 (Part 1)

We are visiting the possible ED2 school tomorrow, just to make sure, in the event the news is not good from the ED1 school. But ED1 school is by far her favorite.

S20 is not sure about ED2. He’s considering two of them if his EAs don’t go the way he wants. But his tippy top reach doesn’t have ED, so it would be a shame to ED2 and give up on that. I think he’ll only do it if he gets too nervous.

My daughter did ED to her first choice. Close second choice doesn’t have ED 2. A few on her list do, but they are the ones we haven’t visited. I don’t see how there will be time to fly to visit them within a week between the ED notification and winter break. Oh well. Praying for the ED school to come through!

D got her first acceptance last night from Baylor with the President’s Gold scholarship of $21K per year. She was very excited and relieved to know she’s going somewhere! I understand why it’s at the bottom of her list—she wants to move out of TX, prefers an LAC, and wants to be able to continue to dance, which Baylor doesn’t offer. But she’s never visited, so if her ED school doesn’t come through she agreed to go take a look.

Question! On a scholarship app, my daughter is asked (with no instructions for reference), “Are you considered middle income?”

I don’t know. We don’t have Aunt Becky kind of money to influence. But we also don’t qualify for financial aid. What exactly is “middle income”???

I would think if you don’t qualify for any financial aid whatsoever, you are not considered “middle income”.

@Driverof3 congratulations on your D’s first acceptance and good luck with her ED school!

@amsunshine I agree. But I think it’s odd that they don’t offer some parameters on this question.

@Momofmanytoo - That is a pretty subjective question. The range for “middle income” is huge. I would say unless you’re pretty confident you’re high or low income to answer “yes”.

Pew defines the middle class as those earning between two-thirds and double the median household income. This Pew classification means that the category of middle-income is made up of people making somewhere between $40,500 and $122,000.Jun 4, 2019

Thank you @GirlMom01 ! I’m relieved that I seem to have done what I needed to do with all of the documents as her homeschool counselor.

How do you get fee waivers? Do colleges approach you with the offer or is there any other way of requesting for it. (We got one such offer email from a Texas university)

@AlwaysLearn We are strongly considering ED2 if the first choice doesn’t work out. He has a strong #2, however the school is not known for great merit aid, and while we can afford the costs, we will be having an “adult” conversation prior to an ED2 submission. We should have between 2-3 weeks to decide.

@pathtotruth I know this sounds silly, but try googling for a fee waiver. I know that, outside of low income, some colleges offer these as application incentives. If you have not gotten one in the mail, I have seen them floating around out there on the internet for certain schools. We took advantage of that a couple of times this year.

ED/ED2 sounds so stressful. Like, stress on top of stress.

We got many fee waiver offers via email, but only one was to a college to which our dd20 was applying. My guess is that a number of colleges simply want to get higher application numbers to appear more selective in admissions. Otherwise, one may qualify for fee waivers on the basis of low income.

Yes, and no. I think it boils down to managing your child’s expectations that its not likely they will get into their top choice college(s) and believing in the process. I think we all here on CC had our kids apply to a good mix of reach, match, and safety colleges and I’m pretty confident that all of our kids will get in to several of them and thrive no matter where they end up choosing to matriculate.

For my family, we have been telling D20 it’s highly unlikely she will be accepted to her ED college with a 18% acceptance rate (the best she should expect is a deferral) and that she will have other great options over the coming months if ED or a seconday EDII doesn’t happen. She is so busy right now and has a good attitude about the applications that she doesn’t have too much idle time to worry or be stressed.

With that said, just in case we are secretly buying her a t-shirt with her ED college on it to present to her IF she happens to get an acceptance next week. Anyone else doing something crazy like this?

@socaldad2002 we bought a shirt in prep of ED decisions last year, knowing I could return it without D knowing if she didn’t get in. She did get in, and it was a great surprise for her.

@socaldad2002 I think your approach is the exception, unfortunately. It’s not just this thread where the ED-tension is palpable. Look at the list of posts under the “Latest Posts” thread. Kids and parents are freaking out.

And then after decisions there will be the kids that were deferred (rather than denied) and don’t know whether to move on or wait. Oh my goodness.

Well, you did things right. Good luck to all the EDers and load up on that Maalox!!

We bought t shirts at lots of the colleges we visited junior year, and he wore them for as long as he was still considering applying. The one school he liked (Tulane) where we didn’t buy one (because the bookstore was closed) turned into the ED school where he was accepted. That date came up sooner than expected so we had to order one after the acceptance came. He was excited to finally wear it to school after Thanksgiving! Good luck to everyone, it sounds like more schools will be responding this week and next!