Parents of the HS Class of 2024 (Part 2)

That was exactly what i asked because you can apply to other public schools when you ED. You just have to withdraw when you got the acceptance.

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What? They came to the school to present the acceptance? That is really cool. What a wonderful first moment. UCSB invited my daughter to the chancellor reception (we were on spring break) and I understand when the kids show up, they’re told they got accepted and among top 2% of applicants. I thought that was cool, on top of knowing weeks before decisions were rolled out.

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Yes, and brought some swag! The only downside was that it was step-up day for the school, so it was an asynchronous day for 9-12, and all prospective first years in the building (plus a team of current students that were helping with the admissions programming) and she still had to text her friends about it! It was a very cool announcement (the school is an elite SLAC but only about an hour away so convenient for them!)

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I believe you can apply (non-ED or REA) to any school while you apply ED – public, private, international. It’s just that all of these apps need to be pulled ASAP after an ED acceptance.

My S22 was admitted ED1 to an LAC. At the time, he had 5 other apps already submitted. Two EA decisions came the same day as the ED1 acceptance; he hadn’t had a chance to pull those yet. But within 48 hours, he’d pulled the remaining three apps and declined the EA acceptances.

We all wondered what might have happened with the other apps, but that was the deal we signed up for with ED1. (Incidentally, his ED1 school is perfect for him and he couldn’t be happier.)

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You’re right. I remember S21 couldn’t apply ED anywhere else, but it was ok to apply to UCs since they had a 11/1 deadline.

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Some categories we’re using to help think about overall college cost/benefit analysis beyond COA include: availability of affordable, nearby off-campus housing shares for upper-level years; decent local minimum wage (we’re northeasterners, and difference between making $10 vs $16+/hour on campus when you’re earning your own spending $ is a lot of study time); availability of affordable entertainment/groceries/toiletries on campus or walkable nearby; decent proportion of non-wealthy classmates to hang with who also can’t afford going out every night :wink: ; ease and cost of travel to and from home; small class sizes and/or availability to work closely with professors to help with research experience, rec letters and internship/research placement guidance starting early on; quality of career services for summer work and post-bac plans, etc.

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LOL! Yes, I was talking about the Senior assassin game. I can certainly see lots of potential for drama and tension due to college decisions though.

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When we did this in 2021 and 2023, we created our own spreadsheet and chose to keep it pretty simple. In our case, the choice wasn’t going to be made based on price if the schools being compared had made our highly affordable threshold. For each kid, there was a school or 2 that did not. Luckily, they weren’t favorites so we took them out of contention and moved on with the spreadsheet of highly affordable options.

  1. all schools were going to require flights for us, and while some flights were a little more expensive than others, it wasn’t a big difference, so we decided to ignore travel costs in the comparison. It sounds as if yours are all in driving distance, so the difference in travel cost may be relatively small?

We did not find the estimates for travel provided by the colleges to be particularly accurate, so I don’t know that I’d base it on that.

  1. Neither of my college kids has spent a ton on books. One is finishing his junior year
his total at this point through 3 years is about $600, so about $200 a year. So much is free online, plus professor-supplied copies of articles, books/e-books rented for the semester and then returned, etc. My other is a freshman and has definitely spent less than $200 this year on books. So we didn’t include books in our comparisons.

  2. Our health insurance meets the requirements for us to waive the college plans, so we didn’t include the school-provided health insurance costs in the analysis either. If you might take the school health insurance, see if any school is offering a grant towards it - one of my D’s schools offered their health insurance at half the typical cost if you were a student getting any kind of financial aid. That would have been worth about $2000 a year if we’d planned to take their insurance.

Our kids are at schools where they are likely to be on campus all 4 years, so we didn’t consider costs of off-campus housing in later years, etc.

Same. My spreadsheet just included
Direct Billed: Tuition and Required Fees + Room + Board
Minus
Grant/Scholarship Aid that didn’t need to be paid back (I didn’t account for loans in the cost comparison
I wanted to know the bottom line amount that would come from us/our kids, and since loans need to be paid back, I didn’t want to subtract them from the COA for the comparison).

We chose to keep it simple in the beginning with plans to maybe get in the weeds more between finalists that remained later in April. In the end, we didn’t even get in the weeds more because clear favorites emerged that were in our affordable range and the weedy parts for us were not significant cost differences.

ETA: We got way more in the weeds comparing distributive/graduation requirements, structure of preferred majors at each school, study abroad options etc.! Now that was a spreadsheet. And that reminds me, one school gave much more financial support for study abroad in my D’s case than any other (would allow her to study away with financial aid more times than other schools and would provide funding for flights to get to the abroad location as well as for the program itself), so if yours is considering study abroad, that might be a category to look at in terms of the finances.

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I’m definitely gonna go read the recommended thread ASAP 
 but I looked at it w/ a three column spreadsheet. 1) Per-semester direct cost, IE, what’s the actual bill I actually have to pay or make a payment plan for. (Swarthmore helped, because they do it the same way.) 2) Per-semester books and supplies. About half of D24s schools cover this, and about half don’t. 3) Per-semester travel and incidentals, using a sort of average of their estimates as a constant, and then adjusting for schools far away. Two of D24s schools cover all of this, too.

This made an apples-to-apples comparison, with only three columns. A couple schools got cheaper through this perspective, a couple more expensive 
 but at least I could compare.

Finally, tuition goes up about 5% a year, so 
 food for thought.

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This made me laugh! Up until December, I watched a LOT of decision videos, then once decisions were actually happening for C24 I couldn’t do it anymore. But I am dying to know where my friends’ kids have applied and gotten in – we haven’t really talked about it and I don’t want to be the nosy parker who’s asking. But I swear it’s coming from a good/excited place, not a competitive one! I’ve gotten to know a lot of the kids (some from when they were infants) and it’s just really fun to see what they end up doing.

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Colby?? That’s VERY cool that they came in person.

Stickers! Great idea. Our Seniors always used water guns and such. Last year the school said they couldn’t use the water guns. I get it, but also, really?!? After a few days pause Student Gov agreed with the school to rebrand the game and use squirt bottles only.

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Its both fun and dreadful. Kids get too into it. There is always some heartbreak over some broken alliance or perceived betrayal.

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D24 has a school-wide “Splash” game (which is assassin re-branded) every spring. They have to splash their target, but squirt guns are not (or no longer?) allowed
Im not even sure how they manage to do it. Water bottles maybe?? Either way, they have a blast.

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Yes, water bottles. I agree its fun.

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I agree with books here. Most colleges have said $1k/year in books and S21 has spent about $600-700 the last 3 years. I feel like it’s more $1k/4 years, so that is a good thing.

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I wait til they share it with me but I really wanted to know. I did text D24’s bestie’s mom (class valedictorian) to ask because she knows I’m not competitive and when I could, I helped her son who was also valedictorian and S21’s buddy. We were very happy for each other so it was great to get to celebrate it with her.
Actually, one of the best friendships I developed on this platform is with a mom from HS Class of 2021. She’s been celebrating with me. UCSD and UCLA (I honestly didn’t think they would release info that Friday) came out and I was not at home. D24 said she checked it on her phone and tossed her phone across the room when she found out she got in and wished she had taped herself. I got a tripod ready for tonight no matter what and we are going to go out to celebrate no matter what.

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My home-grown spreadsheet has the following data points (1 per row):

  • tuition
  • room
  • board
  • books
  • travel
  • misc (personal expenses)
  • health insurance - left this off the list because D24 is staying on our insurance
  • total COA before scholarships, financial aid
  • total tuition, room, board AFTER merit scholarships, BEFORE rest of fin aid
  • total tuition, room, board after merit scholarships & fin aid
  • cost difference from D24’s preferred in-state public university
  • funding gap between in-state public U cost & private college (after merit scholarships, but also after assuming taking a $5500/yr fed student loan)

1 college per column on the spreadsheet

** edited to add **
cost of storing stuff over the summer was not a decision factor for us. Your mileage may vary. :slight_smile:

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I also highlighted certain spreadsheet cells in green or yellow to indicate what was cheapest, what might be more expensive, etc.

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:balloon: Our decision process is over! :balloon:

Tomorrow, I put up the dry erase boards and the selection process starts in earnest! My inner nerd is gleeful right now.

FWIW, 8 acceptances, 8 rejections, 2 waitlists. Aside from one really bad day in December, I’ve really enjoyed going through this process with C24.

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