Haha - nice! D26s list feels like a hodge-podge of schools that she “vibed with”, lol. And I did tell D26 about the big ED bump even for some of her other reaches. Not interested at all!
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Something small and kinda cute to add – dryer balls from Friend Sheep. I have purchased them as grad gifts in the past (along with cash or a gift card). I especially like the sprites set of three because they remind me of the soot sprites from the movie Spirited Away (iykwim).
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lol sorry - I replied to the wrong post!!!
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I looked these up – and they DO look like soot sprites! So cute! I’ll have to remember them for my kid who is a huge Studio Ghibli fan. 
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We have been regrouping over here, after an ED rejection at Dartmouth. S26 has been happy to receive acceptances at UVM, Bard and Pitt, which is taking the sting out of Dartmouth a little bit.
S26 doesn’t have the perfect GPA and outsized impact in his ECs to warrant spending a lot more time on more applications at highly selective schools. But he is very competitive and brand aware. I am trying so hard to change that mindset and I think maybe it is slowly working. But I am so worried he is setting himself up for more heartbreak if he works through break to apply to more T20 places. He doesn’t take rejection in stride.
I am grateful he has solid options and a bunch of applications still out. it would have been nice to be finished but it wasn’t meant to be!
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Oof. I’m sorry. This is so tough. 
Glad he has a few acceptances that he’s been happy about.
It’s such a fine line between encouraging our kids to shoot their shot, but then also wanting to protect them from rejections at unlikely T20s. There’s no right answer, really. Ugh.
Hoping he gets that perfect acceptance and lands at just the right fit!
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Sorry to hear this. And it is great that you are trying to encourage him to be less brand conscious. Though very different from one another, Bard and Pitt are two excellent options. As you know, folks on this thread rave about Pitt. And, if Bard were not in upstate New York (too cold for my CA kid, but I assume not an issue for yours who ED’d to Dartmouth) it would have likely been high on D26s list. But, the delta between the objective fact of having fantastic options and how a student actually feels about their options can be huge. Their feelings about where they go to school obviously matter a lot. Hopefully as the sting wears off he can start to appreciate how great the options on the table actually are (regardless of what happens with other schools from this point forward).
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With the $40k a year scholarship, how does the cost compare to your instate options? Even though I’ve known it theoretically, I’ve been emotionally surprised by the fact that we now have a couple privates that are cheaper than in state public for us due to merit. If I were giving advice to future parents, I’d tell them to pay particular attention to what kind of school their kid likes (big school, small school, certain major, etc.) and then to keep in mind that some privates that are excellent (possibly even better) fits, may actually be the most affordable with merit money and to research what students like them may get in merit from those schools. If they love one or two, shoot their shot at merit just like some folks shoot their shot at hyper-rejective schools.
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It’s pretty close! Just a little bit more and definitely worth it for us/D26. One of the things that I’ve specifically done is help build a list of schools for her to look at where the merit offerings are particularly strong. That’s helped her see that for what might be just a bit more, she can get a different type of school than the local in-state options.
That said, she likes every type of school! Tech school, sure. Small LAC, yep. Big research university, why not? Rural location, could do. Big city, maybe. So she’s not been able to narrow the list by a lot of the traditional factors. That said, she’s got a good list that she (and we!) are happy with. We’ll see how it goes!
Edited to add: She likes her in-state options too!
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That is fantastic. Sounds like you all knew exactly how to do it and she is super flexible which is great! I think I initially thought we were leaving something on the table when it became clear the in state publics were not a fit for D26. I’m now realizing how much finding foundational schools she liked that also have good merit completely dissipated my psychological longing for an in state public option that was a fit.
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We know a kid at Bard – a senior this year – who has had a really good experience. She was offered their “first semester abroad” option, so her parents had to take the leap of faith to send her to Germany (if I remember correctly?) right out of high school. My oldest was also starting as a freshman the same year, so I watched this process with apprehension.
But the kid got so much out of it, and I hear the rest of her experience on campus has been great, too.
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I don’t read much here that makes me envious – because everyone’s got a unique path – but THIS might have done so, lol. 
Dude, my oldest had the following requirements – “Linguistics major at a school that is bigger than 3,000 but smaller than 12,000 that has good choral opportunities that don’t require an audition plus theatre opportunities for non-theatre majors. Also, no Greek life, no gross sports culture but must have some sports and school spirit. Must be diverse. Must be easy to get to, and there must be private bathrooms in the dorm rooms for freshmen because I’m not using a hall bathroom. Also, it must be regarded highly but with NO elitist stigma. I don’t want to go to college with a bunch of people who peaked in high school or who killed themselves trying to get in (cough). Also, it has to be a beautiful campus in warm weather and not in the middle of nowhere.”
What is it even like to have a flexible kid, lol?
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I feel that (not the private school part specifically) but with three kids, between Undergrad and either Grad or Prof schools for each, my wife and I are thinking we’ll be in somewhere between $ 1.1-1.25M NPV. I believe we’re going to have to rethink our retirement going from 60 to 62.
Currently, just cash flowing it so we don’t touch our other investments..and it was a bit tight last year with UT-A and Purdue both OOS … so admittedly it’s gotten tighter than we’ve been in awhile and then the question floated from our oldest (as she’s finished up at UT Austin) over the family dinner table on Wednesday was “Hey Dad, since I’m not going to have tuition payments for the spring… what would you think about a (new) car?” presented an opportunity to drive that point home to the kids…
Without missing a beat I quipped back " You know that’s along the lines of what I was thinking" turning to my wife “what do you think we should buy ourselves as a congratulations we’ve paid for an out of state UT education present…”. My wife and I were giggling like lunatics after that. The kids were not amused.
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Oh no, wait. I’ve misstated this. Her number one requirement is vibes!
For example, we went to see Vassar, which should have worked well. She didn’t “vibe” with it, so off the list! So many colleges were seen and discarded. We’re lucky to have 12 colleges on her list. Of those, 4 she’s applying to sight unseen per my request. If she went to look, she’d just throw them off the list! All I’m trying to do is to get to the end of the process with her having a few choices she likes that she might consider. And I’m quite delighted that RPI made the list, we went to see it, she really liked it, and now she got in. At least there’s ONE!
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Since our kids were born when we were in our 40s, we are now going to have 2 kids in college during our 60s. It intensifies the donut hole situation because we are now at peak earnings with peak savings (so no aid at the majority of schools), but retirement is on the horizon very soon… It would be so different if we had kids in our 20s, and still had 20 more years of working life ahead of us!
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Hahaha! I hear ya! My kid’s criteria were really specific…
- ‘not cold.’ What does that mean? ‘Anywhere I have to wear more than a heavy sweatshirt in the winter.’ Um ok, how flexible are you on that? “We’ll see.”
- Far away is ok, but not too far away." What the heck does that mean? Learned it was nowhere east of Texas.
- ‘Nowhere in the South’
- ‘Nowhere in or near NC’
- Greek life is ok but not if it dominates all of campus social life
- ‘somewhere I can find a bunch of nerds to hang out with like me.’ How does one figure THAT out? ‘I don’t know…I’ll know it when I see it.’
- cybersecurity major that’s not a subset of a comp sci major
- cybersecurity major that doesn’t require 2-3 semesters of calculus
- cybersecurity major that doesn’t require linear algebra or differential equations
- “cybersecurity major that isn’t in a college of business where I have to basically get a business admin degree + a couple of technical classes. I don’t want to take a year of econ & a year of accounting.”
- general ed requirements that don’t require any chemistry or physics
- ‘some place that has some cool WW2 classes’
- ‘big college football & basketball is ok but there have to be other people there like me who hate going to sports stuff so if it’s a place where that’s all anybody cares about, then forget it.’
Plus the obvious ones like a college that’s affordable. 
I found about a dozen potential options. That got narrowed down to 5 and she applied to 4 of them. Waiting for the last decision on 1/15!
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We don’t take it for granted that cheersport is home turf for us.
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Hope she lands at just the right place!
My D26’s requirements have definitely evolved as we’ve been looking over the last year – she originally wanted a small school with a small marching band in “under five hours” of driving distance, and she didn’t care what she studied as long as it was vaguely creative – a studio art major was fine.
So the early list included Furman, Elon and Mercer.
That changed a LOT over this past year, when she decided she definitely didn’t want a school that was too small, she liked the vibe at tech schools, she definitely wanted a major that was directly related to working in UX/UI but not too coding-heavy (art + tech combined, and bonus if there was some digital storytelling or game design offered), and now a flight away was okay – but nothing west of Texas!
(Oh, and we’re still having angst over marching band – she doesn’t know if she definitely wants to do it, but she doesn’t want to go to a school with a marching band and NOT do it. 
)
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My D23 is a 3rd year at Bard if you have any questions!
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How to justify that we pay more to one kid and less to the other? I read many posts here to be aware of that situation. Our kids haven’t brought up the topic, but it is in my mind.
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