@homerdog Last fall D21 went to a local west coast presentation by Tulane. (Got a free hat and pen! Whoop dee doo!) It didn’t increase her interest. What took Tulane off her list, however, other than the blah presentation, was the school’s safety report (e.g., 18 on-campus rapes in 2017) and the relatively high crime rate in New Orleans. These things may not be a big factor for your daughter, but they were for mine. FWIW.
There are many threads on this topic in the TAMU forum, they’re really helpful over there! My son will be a holistic review for both A&M and UT since he’s not top 10% and will be applying as a business major but I spend a lot of time in the A&M forum and you’ll get a lot of answers and and help there understanding how to navigate the ETAM process.
@TXStuMom , new for the Class of 2025 Texas A&M students (ie, this year’s high school Class of 2021 kids), the Entry to a Major auto acceptance changes to 3.75 GPA. I’m still trying to digest this new change and what it means for stress and pressure on these kids freshman year. It seems quite overwhelming to me; glad I’m not going to college next year!
Bucknell is starting in person visits again in July, if anyone has it on their list.
The vast majority of college scholarship money comes in the form of Financial Aid (merit or need based) from the colleges themselves.
In terms of outside scholarships, CollegeBoard, Cappex, Petersons, Chegg have search engines. I would also speak with your student’s GC to see if they have a list of local scholarships.
Many outside scholarships are highly competitive, require a significant time investment, offer small dollar amounts, and are non-renewable.
Further, if a student is awarded an outside scholarship, they have to report that scholarship to their college, and if the college does not ‘stack’ financial aid (many do not stack aid), they will reduce the amount of aid the student received from them by the amount of the outside scholarship.
So the student did all of that work and ended up in the same place, financially speaking. Some colleges even require any outside scholarships to be paid directly to them.
So, research the FA policy of the schools your students is applying to.
Before applying to a school, make sure to run the school’s net price calculator to get an estimated cost of attendance. Some schools include merit aid in their NPCs, some don’t. Make sure to have at least one affordable safety on the list. Note the NPCs may not be accurate if the parents are divorced, own a business, or own real estate beyond a primary home,
Thank you @ Chillycow. Why do you think they are making this change? Is it because, a majority of kids are able to maintain a GPA of 3.5 or higher or have the engineering majors become more competitive? Is there anyway we can look at the ETAM stats? Wonder if this is because of the fact that more and more high performing students are choosing A&M as UT keeps lowering its auto admit acceptance.
Lots to catch up on! The back to school in person vs hybrid vs whatever is killing us. We will see. Crossing fingers for as much in person as possible for these kiddos’ senior years! D21 had a great junior yr–4.0UW (close but didn’t get it the first two yrs), with 4 APs, and she is understandably proud her hard work paid off. She still needs an SAT…canceled March, May …June…like most everyone. Crossing fingers for the test dates to happen in the fall. We were lucky to tour 13 places 10th &11th, the last ones done right before the world closed down, so she has a nice list of 3-4 likelies, 3-4 matches and 3-4 reaches. Even better, Naviance and her college counselor both agree that two of her matches are essentially likelies. There is still debate over a few, and right now there are some she has never seen that have moved above others, due to some amazing virtual tours and programming, such as Davidson, Pomona. We will see what happens…she is our first and I think it will be a very looonnnng wait until next March…or May… or whenever it is all settled.
@TXStuMom I was just talking to my friend’s son who just graduated from engineering at TAMU and the competition is fierce there. Too many highly qualified kids wanting engineering these days, he said the lines to talk to companies at career fairs have hrs longs lines and there are so many top students to compete with, so I bet that’s why they increased the GPA.
@2Devils – Congrats on your D’s great academic year! My D18 is a rising junior at Davidson. PM me if you have any questions!
@TXStuMom , I’m no expert but from what I understand, computer science and mechanical engineering pretty much fill up on auto admits. They do not publish ETAM statistics anymore from what I understand. The theory I guess is that by raising the GPA to 3.75, there will be more room for holistic applications. I guess it depends on each kid if they are comfortable with going that route and potentially not getting their first choice major or if they want to go to a school with a guaranteed major from the start.
It was a big day over here. Both school districts set out their back to school plans. High School will be the “standard” 2 days on/3 days remote. Much better than the “go to your second period class and sit there all day” rumor. No word on which days my two HS kids will go to school. We’ll see. They got their class schedules today and everyone is happy. I had to pay the fees ($1,830) in order for them to see their schedules and was not that happy, lol. I forgot that Multivariable Calculus came with a $400 fee.
K-8 is going to go half days all 5 days a week (like AM/PM kindergarten days). Core subjects (Math, Literacy, Science) in person, complimentary subjects (PE, Music, Art ) remote. Social Studies and Spanish somewhere in the middle. People are freaking out over the childcare issues, but I like the plan - no one, esp 1st and 2nd graders, wears a mask longer than 2.5 hours/day, no one staring at a computer for e learning more than 2.5 hours/day. Kids all go home for lunch, so no cafeteria/recess issues, and with specials being remote, they won’t change classes. A good compromise with all the requirements, I think.
Also Trevor Packer (AP guy) has started releasing percentages for AP tests. Even though the test was only 45 minutes, it was not an “easy 5” year for the tests I’ve seen.
So different kids go to school on a rotation of 2 days in and 3 days remote? What was their reasoning? Will each of the kids classes have fewer kids? Seems like that’s so hard to figure out! Glad the kids got good schedules. 
Why does MV cost extra money?
Not many AP tests have ever had a large percentage of 5s. I think we could dig up last year’s percentages. I know BC Calc generally has a larger percent of 5s because that’s a test most math-y kids take instead of AB or they take AB first and then BC and the BC test has both AB and BC concepts so those kids got two years of instruction for the BC test (which in college would be one year of instruction - one semester for AB and one for BC.)
Right on the kids at school. They haven’t said which kids or which days, but, for example - half the kids will go Monday Tuesday, half Thursday, Friday, everyone home on Wednesday. We were talking it through today and we think they will go A-L/M in group #1 and M/N-Z in group #2 in order to cut each class roughly in half. Might not be perfect, but it will definitely dedensify each classroom.
The way the elementary school explained it is that if you can maintain 6 ft while seated in class, then if there is a positive case, only the positive kid has to go remote. If you reduce the spacing in the room, then they have to have the kids within six feet of “positive kid” - so likely the kid who sits in front of, in back of and to the side of “positive kid” - quarantine at home for 2 weeks. That’s a lot of collateral educational damage for kids who aren’t sick. Plus, it could happen multiple times a semester. Better to just maintain the 6ft distance for now and keep more kids in school.
And Multivariable - I think the fee goes to UIUC, either for tuition, or for some special software or the book or something. I signed a document at some point in the Spring acknowledging that I knew there was a fee, I just forgot all about it! Maybe your high school just absorbed any cost. This year our HS started paying for the first AP test for each kid - that was nice!
@Suave123 no I just emailed his counselor because he was doing his resume.
@3kids2dogs – my S would like that HS schedule this fall! I don’t think we’ll know for another couple weeks what the plan will be. It’ll by hybrid or all online. Hopefully the former, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s the latter.
Our school board meet tomorrow to decide. Our community is VERY divided and some down right hostile. I’m staying off social media as much as possible.
S21 is almost done with his Essay for the Apply Texas app!!! I haven’t been allowed to read or see any drafts, that’s staying between him and his academic/college counselor we hired. I might have gotten my feelings a teeny tiny bit hurt lol but it is his ship to sail and his decision so I’ll respect it.
2 of his safeties opened up their apps on July 1 so he will start those applications next week to get them out of the way.
The other 4 applications he’ll submit after school starts, probably by end of August/First week of September. I’m kind of surprised that that he’s applying to Southwestern University, one of the CTCL schools…I didn’t think he’d want a small liberal arts college, but I guess he’s still thinking about the admissions rep we met at a college fair who really talked the school up. It’s all going to depend on the merit aid though…it’s going to have to bring cost of admission to in state public level for this to be an option.
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Thank you @Mwfan1921 ! I don’t think we qualify for any financial aid so have to rely on any outside or merit-based awards that are out there.
Makes sense. I don’t know your kid’s stats, types of colleges desired, or budget, but look at the typical high merit type schools like U Alabama, Miami Ohio, U Arizona, U Utah, Ole Miss.
If LACs are of interest, Grinnell, Dickinson, St. Olaf, College of Wooster, Union all seem to give higher than average merit. Of course things might be different this year.
If your student is high stats, look at the larger scholarships at schools (but those do tend to be highly competitive). Stamps (at a number of schools), Chancellors at Pitt, Vandy has a few, Rice, Morehead-Cain and Robertson (with Duke) at UNC, Johnson Scholarship at Washington and Lee, and more.
Posters will be able to give you good recs with more info. Merit money from schools > outside merit dollars.
Also read this thread for some good ideas: http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/financial-aid-scholarships/2154331-looking-for-advice-in-merit-aid-for-a-top-1-student-p1.html
Edited to add: Is your state flagship an affordable option?
Our school’s reopening plan is in person, trimesters with only 2 classes each trimester (12 or less kids per class), staggered times. Almost all classes are usually a year, so now they will do a year in the trimester. The intent is to limit each kid’s exposure to others and be able to contact trace.
Sounds kind of reasonable, but music kids who normally take music all year will have an intensive 2hr a day class for only 1/3 of the year; same with art. And, how does this work for college apps? They’ll finish the 1st trimester sometime in Nov I think. What if the 2 classes 1st sem are say art and language? No math, science, English or history? And, if they do have APs early, they’d need to re-study come May.
We were hoping S21, who doesn’t know what to major in (so doesn’t know if he should apply for engineering or A&S), might get a better sense of his direction in AP bio (he hasn’t had bio at all yet). But, that class might not be until his last trimester.
Oh well. I guess it will be an interesting year…