D16 in state applied EA OSU Eng and was admitted in first round , 2nd Friday in Nov. Her scholarship came a month later. I believe the decissions for merit are based on materials, rank and transcript, submitted for EA. No updates are needed or considered for merit, in my experience. Good luck.
@Tigerwife92 - At least one of the schools my D applied to RD, have already said they want mid year report. Fairly sure the other will want it too. The EA schools only want it if she is deferred, and so far, she has gotten into all her EA schools. Waiting on 3 more in January.
@homerdog - too funny. I live there. It is beautiful, but not overdone with pools/lazy rivers. Iāve seen some that are really overdoing it, but I wouldnāt put Davidson in that category, lol.
@fretfulmother Thatās a nice community perk. But I doubt it cash flows. 
@homerdog Your husband has it right. These kids donāt care about the school-colored mums carefully arranged along the entryways. Do we think they stagger by them after leaving a frat party thinkingā¦ How beautiful is my campus! No. They could care less, until it comes to instagram. These things are mostly to impress the parents when they visit.
Itās nice to have nice things. But itās not always nice to pay extra for them.
@chb088 I agree about Davidson. Visited with D17 and actually thought it looked a little run down. The athletic complex was nice, as was ātheā cafeteria. The grounds were not great, IMO.
@inktopaper Regarding your S20ās stress level increasing, we have tried to talk about possible scenarios with our D20. Early on, while she definitely had a #1 school, we talked about all the schools she was applying to as good options. We tried to balance our comments so as not to focus on any one school. Also, we talked (and are still talking) about different scenarios as she waits to hear back from her #1 schoolās nursing program. In the 6-7 weeks since submitting apps, she has heard back from most of her other schools. As time goes on without hearing from #1, she feels now she has solid #2 and #3 choices, so the stress is reduced greatly. She has talked about how she would be very happy at #2. We arenāt rushing to look at portals anymore.
TL;DR: Donāt avoid discussing what will happen if a deferral/denial happens. Talk about it. What is Plan B? Let him know he has good options.
There is a school I know that posted exact date and time 12/14@12:14, but they are the best of the best?
@momzilla2D my understanding is the 3 relatively small merit scholarships (canāt remember their names), not the national buckey, morrill, etc., are pretty much automatic based on GPA and rank. Our HS sends about 70 kids to tOSU every year and those awards have been by the numbers in recent years. Might be different for OOS.
Because of that assumption, and the huge volume of applicants and enrollees, I doubt there is a scholarship committee. The question is when are the determinations madeā¦and can it be modified? If oneās rank improves into another category from one semester to the next? My oldest got his $ (1k) with his acceptance letter. But the kids last year, much later than that.
This is not a crisis but would be useful if son could pump the breaks for at least a little while.
After all of this lazy river talk, I went back thru and looked at my DS20 college lists and sure enough, 2 of the 5 have them. craziness
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Must be the Maximus(top 5%, $3,000), Provost(top 10%, $2,000), and Trustees(20%, $1,000)? Thatās great that your Sās HS is pretty much guaranteed. I guess thatās not the case for D19ās HS, bc I would swear by any ranking she should have been in the top 20%. (I know for a fact she wasnāt in top 10%, since there is an award at the HS for top 10%, and she didnāt get it. So much for ānot rankingā.) But weāre out of state, and Iām pretty sure tOSU doesnāt see a lot of applicants from her HS, so maybe theyāre just not as familiar with it.
I dont know, but I may call this morning , since D20 has been admitted and there was no scholarship in her offer letter. And her stats are even better than D19. If I do, Iāll ask about the timing of the ranking, too, since D19 is on the cusp of top 10% and is having a great 1st term.
This is what happens at our school that does not rank. I believe the military academies require class rank. In those cases, the GC will provide it directly to the academy but the student/parent will not see it.
@kandtgraf If your kids stop communicating with you while away at school, you could always just threaten to show up in the lazy river about 9pm on a Friday night, frozen drink in hand. In fact, I can see using this for all kinds of leverage. This is exactly something that I would tell my kids, and they would worry that I was serious.
Thatās it. Iāve changed my mind about the lazy river! I think they are good and every school should have them.
@inktopaper
Welcome!
Not a veteran parent as this is my first and only experience, DS20 got an e-mail too saying the EA result will be out next week, he is generally a very layback kind of guy but I can sense he is apprehensive. The saving grace is he is busy with swimming practice/meets which are good distractions. So I guess getting busy with school/ECs to get the mind off it (No matter how fleetingly) would be helpful. But it will be a difficult week no matter what we do. Best of luck to our kids!
@inktopaper I am not a veteran college app parent but I am a veteran worrier. 
I donāt know if your son is questioning work he submitted like essays but I imagine that he wouldnāt have submitted anything that he wasnāt proud of at the time. I understand the second guessing of decisions and know the feeling of ācould I have done more.ā In my profession, and likely in most I imagine, I could always do moreāmore research, editing, preparation, analysis, etc. but at some point I run out of time and have to abide by the deadline. I used to beat myself up over what I didnāt do or whether what I filed was good enough until my mentor at my first job asked me if I was proud of what Iād done for our client. I agreed that I was, and that Iād done the best that I could with everything else I had going on for other clients, necessity of sleep, etc. He told me I had to just let it go. Over time I started seeing my work a bit differently. I still worry about the outcome because itās always in someoneās elseās hands but I know that Iāve done the best that I could. The second guessing is not as overwhelming for me as it used to be. Hopefully he can remember how he felt when he submitted his app and still be proud of all that heās done to get to this point. The anxiety about not being in control of the final outcome may be the hardest part. Hoping you can find some good distractions to keep him occupied and lift his spirits while he waits! Thatās what I hope to do with my daughter, who should get her ED answer early next week.
Switching topics to vent a bit: I really wish that schools could tweak their marketing email strategies to hit pause after a student has submitted an app. My D has gotten emails from her ED school talking about how great certain programs are (duh, thatās why she applied!), and she and I both have gotten similar emails from her EA/RD schools plus ones saying how glad they are that sheās applied. Acknowledging the app when itās submitted is one thing but touting the schoolsā programs or reiterating their excitement about her application feels a bit like taunting as she awaits the decisions. I certainly hope the marketing stops immediately with any denials!
I agree that Davidson wasnāt over the top manicured but my husband is very focused on what our full pay status is paying for. Good food? Nice dorms? I think those are worthy investments and make kids comfortable so they can focus on their studies. Some of the other things that just make schools āprettierā donāt add any value. And I think schools like Alabama have fancy amenities because they are trying to lure more OOS kids and kids are vulnerable to falling for fun stuff like lazy rivers and nice pools!
@cypresspat Ok, I called. With respect to timing of ranking, he said it is based on when the application is submitted and whatās in the school report. They can update the ranking, but it would have to come from the school, in the form of an updated school report from the GC, and it would have to come before they make a scholarship determination.
I also asked about why D19 didnāt get a scholarship when she seemed to qualify, and whether we need to do something different with our D20. He said not everyone who qualifies based on stats gets a scholarship. They just donāt have enough money for everyone who qualifies. So the determination is based on a number of factors besides stats. And without looking at D19ās file, he couldnāt say why she wasnāt offered a scholarship. Soā¦guess weāll just have to wait and see for D20.
@homerdog Well Bowdoin certainly has good food and nice dorms! The food sounds amazing, and I thought the dorms were beautiful when we visited. I hope your son is having a great first year!
I agree that those are things that do make a difference to kids so that they can study and focus. Years ago we stayed in a disgusting dorm at a school for a weekend competition (I was a chaperone). The school was tearing it down that summer to build a new one and it was probably several years overdue. I felt sorry for any students who had to live with the filth and mold.
@momzilla2D Wow! Thanks! i wish I had more people like you in my life!
So it sounds like I need to find out what was sent in his report when he applied. I know GC wonāt give me exact number, but I think he will tell me if my kiddo was in the top 3% (if so, S20 can chill a bit). If not, we can have a conversation on whether or not he is within range to hit that after this semester. I assume they must be tracking those kids closely as no doubt many of them are in this same boat.
If this were a ton of money this would be pretty anxiety-producing. Surely all of the kids are within .005 of each other. They all have all Aās, so the decision to take honors English in the 9th grade impacts your GPA enough to make you 9th in your class instead of 19th, and for tOSU, that is the difference of $4k. Not a deal breaker, but not insignificant amount of $.
Are you instate? Your daughter had the stats but didnāt get one of those $1/2/3k scholarships (Maximus, provost, etc.)? And applied before Nov 1? Seems really odd given they are in the NPC. That is frustrating!
@momzilla2D You are correct. tOSU does not guarantee these scholarships (example BUCKEYE) based on their minimum published stats and I am sorry to hear that your daughter did not get the Buckeye scholarship last year. Many students apply to these schools thinking they are going to get them based on the information that is out there. This happened to my D18 at Pitt. Disappointing to say the least. One of the reasons for this could be that as they are building their Freshmen class, they might have other considerations such as awarding these scholarships based on geographical or ethnicity or even something else. Many of these scholarships start to come out at the end of January. The first scholarship that seems to be awarded right about now is the Morril Scholarship.
@Bigmacbeth I totally agree with you. Once you have been accepted to say your number 2 or 3 and you have financial clarity, it is so much easier to get through the process. If number one does not work out for whatever reason, it is probably not a big deal (other than perhaps our egos). The other side of that is that the other schools on the back of the list are now afterthoughts. As exciting as they all seemed just a few months ago, it is now somewhat sad to think that they are not even options.
@momofmanytoo lol this is trueā¦ I have just the floppy hat to bring with as well!
@kandtgraf Forego the floppy hat. In fact, make a bikini that says āD20s Momā
@inktopaper
My pretty laid back S18 ended up funneling his anxiety into baking- we had many chirstmas cookies and pies that week before SCEA decision! He was never a big baker, but he said it helped to do something different with his hands. Plus we got to enjoy them!