College Financial Aid questions....

[StitchandPooh'sMom]

The AP courses comments make me roll my eyes. I was an all AP student in high school, really overloaded myself in extra work. It didn't negatively affect me because I was still able to keep my grades up, BUT I majored in engineering, and quite a few of those AP credits were wasted. I essentially wasted a lot of time and stress on credits that were useless to me in college. Between the mandatory classes for my major and the limited general education classes required, I had AP credits that transferred to college that did not count towards graduation or help in shortening my course load at all.

In short, not taking any AP classes is not the end of the world.

My DD17 is planning to major in engineering and her courses will be primarily chosen for her within her major, so many of her AP credits will not result in shortening her time in college. That was never the point for her. She took them for two reasons - to not be bored and unchallenged in on-level or honors courses (and so college rigor would not be such a shock), and to end up with a better class rank. At her school, As in AP classes are weighted 6.0 (on-level is 4.0 and honors classes are 5.0) - there is zero chance she would be in the top 10% of her class without APs. It is an unfortunate situation in many ways, but I think the top thirty kids in her class all have a weighted GPA over 5.0.

We know kids who put off taking PE (a required on-level course) until second-semester senior year so their class rank will be higher when they apply to college.

I do agree that not taking AP classes is not the end of the world. But depending on your high school and what other students at your school are doing, it can be the difference between appearing to have challenged yourself in high school and not, and it can be the difference between getting into a school that values class rank and not getting in. DD has a very good friend who has great ACT and SAT scores, but he has taken primarily on-level and honors courses. His class rank doesn't reflect his intelligence and most likely doesn't reflect his chances of college success, but that doesn't mean he won't be overlooked in favor of someone else with a higher rank.

 

[jt'smom]

Having not read the whole thread, I'll jump in and say fill out FAFSA, simply because that is a must to even be considered for aid, whether it's from fed, state or university grant, and don't assume that high priced private colleges are out of your price range. We are a normal, middle income family with one kid who is going into his sophmore year in college, and it costs us LESS out of pocket for him to go to a 58K private, liberal arts school that's fairly well regarded, than it would for him to have gone to any of the state universities here in Florida. He never took an AP course, but he did take Honors level, had an A- gpa, in the top 30% for class rank, average SATs, and he ended up getting a 23K, renewable for 4 years, merit scholarship, and a 10K outside scholarship awarded through his schools financial aid office, simply based on his application essay. That grant aid, combined with a several thousand dollar university grant aid, and then of course his basic federal loans (since we believe it's good for the student to have some skin in the game) made our out of pocket doable. Yes, we will take a small Plus loan ourselves, but it's way less than had he chosen to go to UF or Florida State.