She is nice. We are all just navigating this the best we can and I think tensions are high on all sides. I am very grateful to everyone who has been on this journey together for the past 3+ years. We may have different politics, but I feel like we have supported and cheered on each others kids, even thought we don’t “know” each other. I am grateful for this community, which has seemed more balanced and caring than many other spaces recently.
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Looking at the super long list of apps sent, we are almost at the finish line with acceptances. We are not expecting any rejections but doesn’t mean they won’t happen (knocking on wood).
Somehow the wait for final financials seems to be more painful.
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When do the final financial costs come out if selected? I am a rookie with college financials, this is my first and only going to a 4-year college.
Sadly it varies. She has merit offers for about half the schools included with acceptances. There is a school or two where she needs to write additional essay by January to see if she gets more money. In our case, I work at a college and D25 has some potential reduced tuition benefit options but we may not know those till March or April.
She has a wide range of merit (as tuition costs vary, those more expensive give more merit). Basically all colleges will be around the 30k or less we hope. (Merit from 3500/yr to 23,000/yr).
D25 is 3.2 gpa and TO student. Merit is out there even for those average kids.
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For those of you with trans kids, you/ they may want to take a look at Ithaca College if you/they haven’t yet. We toured it with our straight cisgender son and noticed how inclusive they were to everyone. They bragged that they were rated #1 for LGTBQ friendly - for students as well as faculty/staff. It is a gorgeous campus and everyone was very kind and welcoming of all genders. 
I liked how it wasn’t like - “we have this resource for these folks” but more like “This is our gender inclusive accapella group!” My son applied!
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It’s a beautiful area too!
I don’t think it’s political at all to discuss where kids would feel safe or comfortable. Would you say the same to someone who was questioning if their kid would feel safe at University of Chicago or Penn because of the their locations? It’s simply a fact that some states have anti-trans laws.
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Thank you! Asking for help on this board about school safety should be one of the basic things we are allowed to discuss. Our trans kids deserve safety as much as any other kid. I hope this kind of question will not be blocked here.
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I’ve seen a few announcements directing students to resources.
UC Riverside - Post-Election Resources and Assistance | Office of the Provost
UC Berkeley - https://uhs.berkeley.edu/health-promotion/health-topics/stress-management/election-stress
UC Davis - Post Election Community Care Event
UCLA - Processing the Election
USC - Post Election Angst
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That makes a lot of sense at the college level. Though it was my high schooler lamenting the lack of services at our public high school. Our high school remains apolitical, teachers would never share their personal views.
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An old friend is visiting and we went for a hike yesterday. As I was starting to describe the list of schools our son is applying to, she brought up the thing I’m dreading: what if he gets into most/all? How are we – who struggle to decide which burger to order in a restaurant – going to decide where he should go to school? And why would we be so crazy as to put ourselves in that position to begin with? She reminded me of how I used to shop (Buy 8 pairs of jeans intending to keep one; bring them home. Try them on. Dither. Miss the return deadline for two. etc.)
So – she’s right. I’m setting us up for a crazy spring (partly because I’m risk averse and want him to be able to choose between two somewhere-with-engineering-type-schools and two liberal-arts-colleges-that-are-cozy-and-intellectual-type-schools. But maybe he doesn’t need to apply to 20. (I know we’ve already established this, above, but I’m just kind of grappling with the culling that needs to happen before anything else is due.)
Also – for those who’ve been down this route before – how many schools can one realistically visit in the winter/spring between the time we find out he gets in and the time when we need to commit? Probably no more than three or four, right? Does anyone have advice on how to navigate that process? We’re not applying for financial aid but he could conceivably get some merit scholarships (and the way things are going right now I’d be happy to send him somewhere that indicated they’d think of him as a strong student. He needs confidence.)
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I encouraged my D20 to apply to around 20 schools. One difference is that the majority were safeties. I was concerned about the recent unpredictability of CA schools. Once she got into a target school she liked it was easy to let go of the safeties she wasn’t excited about.
In the end she had 4 schools she was seriously considering. We made a “magic” spread sheet with every category she thought important- cost, major classes, surrounding area, school spirit, etc. I had her weight each category and then give each school a number from one to 10 in each category. This gave her an overall score and she was able to bring it down to 2.
This was during Covid and she didn’t get to do any spring visits, which did make it harder. I would imagine 4 visits would be the max in spring. Will he get any early admits? Maybe you could visit over winter break?
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We really struggled with finding a second of spare time spring of senior year. Seemed like D’s school had something major going on nearly every weekend that she didn’t want to miss.
I’d encourage having some kind of personal ranking system so when acceptances/scholarships come in, your son can let go of some of the other schools on the list he doesn’t like as much. Hopefully when everything comes in, there will just be a top 2, or maybe even a clear favorite and he can just do the accepted student days.
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My kid is considering a school in Canada for similar reasons. It was already on the list (in the middle) but has now been bumped to the top. It is actually the geographically closest school to us of all the schools on the final list.
I’m thinking similar — it would also give me a great reason to spend more time in Canada.
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Same here. We are at 22 or so schools I think (I keep losing track). A huge majority were free applications. With my employers tuition exchange benefit we had to cast a wide net (yet also include a handful of “regular pay” schools).
Her major has been tweaked a bit since she started applying back in Aug and Sept thus we had to add more. I think we have about 14 or 15 acceptances so far. Some are easy to cut due to change in major but I still think it will be really hard!
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Worth remembering: College tours/visits are not absolutely necessary, no matter what anyone might tell you.
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My two kids applied to 20 and 17 schools, my daughter visited like 30 schools with 12 sleepovers. She was really not having a good high school experience and was so excited to choose her next school. In the end she only loved two schools and the merit aid at one made the decision. My son couldn’t visit schools due to covid and other obligations, so we were planning a trip to visit a bunch of east coast schools in April, as I was planning, he was dropping schools off his list and I was having to reroute. In the end we visited 3, we were supposed to visit 4, but he decided he was really down to two choices. Those two were very close and in the end I pushed him over the edge with the school that would save us money.
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I’ve told S25 that he can choose 2 schools to attend for their accepted students day. Might expand that to 3 if there’s a big scholarship somewhere.
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This is correct, my best friend dropped her son off at Davidson having never visited. He was sure he was going to go to in state flagship until he visited and found out they only accept 30 kids at the end of freshman year into his major. So he went with the best school for his major even though he had never visited.
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Coming from Alaska, this must be a mantra you recite nightly, no? 
Seriously a) I think you’re right but also b) we find ourselves as a family potentially considering three buckets of schools (schools we’ve visited and liked, but which don’t necessarily have the major that kiddo now thinks he wants; schools he’s heard of because his friends are applying there, but which are possibly too big/too intense, and also we haven’t visited them! and finally schools that I suspect are the best fit for him, but which he struggles to envision for himself because we’ve mostly not visited them and none of his friends are applying there. GAH.)
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