We did another college visit yesterday to Hope. We had visited there her sophomore year and hadn’t ruled it completely out so we decided to go back. You really can’t beat the location of that school. We went to the beach afterward. Unfortunately, I think it will be too expensive as the biggest scholarship they give is $24K and that won’t even cover half of tuition. I think she’ll still apply and we’ll see what happens.
7 Likes
I’m not sure what your top cost is but Hope gave my daughter a total of 26k in merit in 2023. There were 3 separate scholarships. You might want to ask if she really loves it.
I adore Hope and would have been thrilled if D23 had decided to attend.
6 Likes
Yes, Hope is awesome. Hope here in GA covers full tuition.
That’s a different Hope scholarship. Also awesome. Hope College is in Holland, Michigan.
3 Likes
Ok, this was a new one for me: S25 got a snail mail invitation to a dinner at an upscale steak restaurant to learn about university of South Carolina’s scholarship and academic programs.
Is this common, or is it a new recruiting approach? Not sure how I feel about it, especially if the dinner winds up being free…..
3 Likes
New to me; D25 hasn’t gotten any invitations like that.
2 Likes
Well, 30ish years ago I was invited to a lunch at a local steakhouse (decidedly not upscale) by NC State touting their textile program. No one at the local high school here, to my knowledge, has been invited to any similar events by colleges.
What is your hesitation? Or, more particularly, your concern about the dinner being free? There may be an issue there, but I am not seeing any obvious moral or ethical issues, at least to my mind. Attending the dinner would not obligate him in any way to USC, would it?
2 Likes
Does anyone else’s school use Naviance? When do kids move schools to the “Colleges I’m Applying to” section. DS attempted to do that today, but all schools still have Fall 2024 admittance dates. Odd since the Common App is open.
I think you are right, going to the dinner would not obligate S25 to South Carolina at all. I guess I’m just put off by the idea of the college paying for steak dinners for potential applicants. And maybe that’s the wrong way for me to look at it, which is why I wanted to post it here and see if that’s a common approach.
My kiddo has never been one to be recruited for anything, so maybe this is much more of a common practice for athletes or artists. He’s a good student, for sure, but he doesn’t have any hooks.
The only other time I’ve seen a recruiting strategy to join a company for a free steak dinner is when financial advisors have been looking to sign up new clients. So, I’ll be curious to hear from other folks about it. Thanks!
2 Likes
For USC, he likely has more hooks than you think. Whether you are instate or out of state to USC, my guess is that he is a strong candidate and they would like to keep him if he applies. In their last CDS, it looks like they admitted about 77% of those in-staters that applied, but only 40% of those matriculated (~3,900 of ~9,600). For out of state, the acceptance rate was a bit lower, but still high, yet the matriculation rate plunged. Further, there are far fewer men than women that apply to and matriculate at USC.
An arranged dinner is likely a relatively cheap way to bring awareness to a select group of students to the many great things that USC has to offer. I’m assuming that there will be more students than just himself at this dinner? And, that it will be a mix of male and female students.
My breakdown above of the matriculation rates was just an indication that USC sees potential in your son and what he can bring to the university, which is a hook.
That said, be careful of the Amway, Herbalife, timeshare presentation at the end.
4 Likes
My vague recollection is that the student needs to match their Common App account to their Naviance account. First, the student adds at least one college in Common App. Then the student needs to go into Naviance and do some matching procedure (click things, maybe in a banner at the top; follow whatever directions are there). Then wait a day or more and the schools in the student’s Common App should populate Naviance’s Applying To list. At least, that’s how it was some years ago when my oldest’s school used Naviance. Disclaimer, I could be remembering wrong or the process may have changed since then.
My younger kids’ school uses Naviance but not for document submissions, so there may be variations among high schools.
My S23 was invited to a fancy brunch at a hotel while he was going through the admissions process. We attended, listened to the presentation, asked questions and that was that. He really liked the program but ended up being rejected. I don’t think free food obligates either the kid or the college to anything. If your kid is interested, go, have a meal and enjoy evening, I don’t think it’s any more complicated than that.
5 Likes
We lost access to Naviance on 7/31–school moved to Scoir as of 8/1–but the school has not sent out anything about it (including log in information). Our HS counseling is astoundingly bad.
But of course, as I posted a couple days ago, the school has said they won’t do anything with applications until after Labor Day.
Some of us would be thrilled to have Scoir, let alone Naviance, or in fact anything like them. Just sayin’.
6 Likes
Same (re: applications). Our school has one college counselor for 360 students and they have an out of office message when you call or email that says contact them after September 5.
2 Likes
We don’t have a college counselor per se–just the standard guidance counselor that covers the whole gamut of issues. Each counselor has about 100 kids per class so 400 total. During the summer one counselor is on duty a week Tuesday-Thursday only.
1 Like
We don’t have Nav or Scoir at our hs either. Thus all college research is done by yours truly.
Headed to Rider, Stockton, and Saint Joe’s for tours next week.
6 Likes
The admission’s guy we talked to said there is an additional $5k per year that they don’t advertise because it’s only for out of state students. So she’d get $29k going by class of 24’s awards. Tuition/room/board is over $51k. We’d still have to come up with over 20k per year. I don’t think we’d qualify for the Hope Forward scholarship.
1 Like
The Hope Forward Scholarship is not need-based (at least it wasn’t when I looked at it). I guess I don’t know if that is what you are referring to, but I would say it is definitely worth an application.
At least the year my daughter was a finalist, Hope Forward was only available to students outside of a 5 state region. If the poster lives in Chicago, I think they are not eligible.
1 Like