Parents of College Class of 2018 (A.K.A., "Is this the line to the poor house?")

[madge]

My DD is ranked 26 of 230. No scholarship for her. If she were in a less competitive high school, she'd have gotten a scholarship.

I've gone through many scenarios like that -- and ultimately, my DS will be the one responsible for the B that easily could've been an A & the choice not to retake the ACT to bump it up another point or two. He would've been a stronger student in a less competitive school, but it would've been a less competitive school.

Looking at the silver lining ... I don't think this school is DS top choice. It is in his top 4, but he's got other (better) offers to consider. Frustrating and disappointing, but not the end of the world.

 

[Bluestars]

My son got accepted into Rensselaer today. That was his number 2 choice, so if it hadn't worked out with Texas A&M, it turns out it wouldn't have been the end of the world. He was offered the ROTC scholarship to both schools, so either one would have worked. The only thing is that Rensselaer pays room and board if you get the ROTC scholarship, but A&M does not. That is a huge difference. I hope A&M offers him something.

Even though it doesn't matter now, it was nice for him to be accepted.

I guess all that's left of this year is prom, senior awards night, and then graduation. I can't believe how fast the time has flown and the kids are almost ready to graduate.

Good luck to everyone who is waiting on responses. Once the decisions have been made, it's a huge relief.

 

[scrapquitler]

My son got accepted into Rensselaer today. That was his number 2 choice, so if it hadn't worked out with Texas A&M, it turns out it wouldn't have been the end of the world. He was offered the ROTC scholarship to both schools, so either one would have worked. The only thing is that Rensselaer pays room and board if you get the ROTC scholarship, but A&M does not. That is a huge difference. I hope A&M offers him something.

Even though it doesn't matter now, it was nice for him to be accepted.

I guess all that's left of this year is prom, senior awards night, and then graduation. I can't believe how fast the time has flown and the kids are almost ready to graduate.

Good luck to everyone who is waiting on responses. Once the decisions have been made, it's a huge relief.

Congratulations to your son!! My daughter also got accepted at RPI, but she's not going. Maybe for grad school.

When can we expect to get official and specific financial aid package information from the schools where our students were accepted? I got the preliminary expected family contribution information online when I filed the FAFSA, but haven't gotten anything from any of the individual colleges except information about one scholarship from one of them. I'm waiting to see some kind of breakdown wiht specifics, but dont' know when that will come?

 

[TLuvsD]

It is frustrating to wait and wait for the financial aid packages...they will come in time to make a decision. As I recall, mostly they arrived the first week of April (most of the decisions for our D arrived the end of March).

Good luck to all still waiting....

 

[micheand]

Just finished reading here and am sorry I found this so late in the game. My daughter has been pursuing college athletics, division 2 and 3 schools. She has been accepted and offered spots at two private colleges on the opposite ends of the spectrum. We are thrilled that she is going to be able to fulfill her dream, division 3 schools are not permitted to give athletic scholarships. She is not at the top of her class or anything, but she has had decent grades. Since they are private schools, will the possibility of merit based aid be higher? We are rich according to her Fafsa... No doubt we will not see any help from that.

 

[IDoDis]

Just finished reading here and am sorry I found this so late in the game. My daughter has been pursuing college athletics, division 2 and 3 schools. She has been accepted and offered spots at two private colleges on the opposite ends of the spectrum. We are thrilled that she is going to be able to fulfill her dream, division 3 schools are not permitted to give athletic scholarships. She is not at the top of her class or anything, but she has had decent grades. Since they are private schools, will the possibility of merit based aid be higher? We are rich according to her Fafsa... No doubt we will not see any help from that.

Usually merit aid is higher at private schools because the schools cost a lot more than public universities. Your OOP expenses could likely still be higher even with merit aid. Last year, my friend's DD received an 80k four year scholarship (20k per year) at an in-state private university, but she still pays $18k per year on top of the scholarship. The higher her ACT score, the more $ she got. She took the ACT three times and went from a 28 to a 32. For every point higher, her scholarship went up 10k. In theory she could have maxed out with another 20k more, but she would have needed a 34 on the ACT. After 3 tries, she was done and happy with what she got.

 

[madge]

Congratulations to your son!! My daughter also got accepted at RPI, but she's not going. Maybe for grad school.

When can we expect to get official and specific financial aid package information from the schools where our students were accepted? I got the preliminary expected family contribution information online when I filed the FAFSA, but haven't gotten anything from any of the individual colleges except information about one scholarship from one of them. I'm waiting to see some kind of breakdown wiht specifics, but dont' know when that will come?

sometime this month. not helpful, I know ...

of the 5 schools DS applied to, he's gotten award packages from 3. the first was an automatic award that came with his acceptance letter. DS got 2 letters last week, expects 1 this week, and the last school is behind by a week or so because of the weather. they posted on their website that awards will be out March 21.

I hate waiting. that is all.

 

[JeannieNM]

Micheand- Welcome, Congrats to your daughter

Bluestars and Scarpquilter to your senior's on their RPI acceptances. Even though they are not going it is nice to be accepted.

DD got another academic acceptance with a large merit scholarship which really surprised her. This school she applied to about 30 minutes before the deadline on a whim in case she decides to go to NYC instead of CA. She applied undecided arts because there was no way she could meet all the auditions deadlines at the last minute. She received a dance acceptance also this weekend. She also got a dance rejection which we did not give her because she was competing this weekend and we did not want her distracted but we will give it to her today.

Still waiting to hear from her top choice schools. Waiting......

 

[goingsouth]

What a wonderful thread! Found this last night and read way too many pages. Our oldest is a senior and this has been a very stressful, exciting, nail-biting, heart breaking year. DS is amazing, bright and motivated. She only applied to 3 schools because frankly, I wasn't going to pay for 15 application fees when I knew we were only willing to pay for in-state tuition. So, school 1 accepted her with some money (yay). School 2 accepted her with no money and school 3 said "we regret to inform you...". After much discussion, school 2 is it. The difference in money is not enough to disregard the better reputation, ranking, and offerings for her major (communication disorders).
We feel lucky that she knows what she wants to do. We're waiting for FAFSA to laugh in our faces and we're overwhelmed with this whole process. Honestly, between applications, essays, SAT and ACT retakes, school tours, preview weekends, housing choices, roommate searches, scholarship paperwork, etc- it's a full time job just to get into college. It feels like all we talk about is college. And most of it doesn't pan out. She has a fantastic GPA but doesn't test well, so we don't qualify for anything. Too much income for any aid and just shy of anything merit related.
I wish we had saved more for college. I hate the pressure that we feel as parents and the pressure that she feel every time we get rejected for any assistance. And this is all for relatively reasonable in-state tuition. I don't know how people cope with 40-50K a year schools.
So, nice to meet you all~
joanne

 

[Gina]

Micheand and Joanne -- Welcome!! Never too late to join the fun.

 

[clutter]

I have a junior, but with SATs and college tours and all that, I recently said to my dd "I feel like all of our conversations are focused on you leaving." Sounds like it's even worse next year!!!

 

[kkmcan]

I feel so behind. I have a junior who will most likely go to our local university ( University of Arizona) and live at home or maybe even the local community college. She takes her SAT for the first time in May.

We will have her apply to ASU and NAU but she's very much a homebody and not so outgoing so I really don't see her leaving town.

When we ask her what she wants to do or where she wants to go she just says "I don't know". She really doesn't know. She loves animals and has thought of being a veterinarian. And she sings rather well and has been in choir since elementary school.

The only thing she's spoken about doing is the Disney College program at Disneyland. That's fine with us but she still has to get a semester under her belt somewhere before she can apply.

We probably won't qualify for any financial aid and we probably only have maybe 2 years of tuition saved up. I guess that's better than nothing. During that 2 years we can save up some more to help pay for the last 2 years.

So we haven't toured any schools or filled out any applications yet. I feels so overwhelmed by all that's about to happen next year.

 

[TLuvsD]

kkmcan, just do one step at a time. If your D wants to go to the local college, find out the admissions policies, and proceed from there. Does she have all the required classes? How are her GPA/Test scores compared to admitted students? (this is all on the college website). Can she go in with an Undeclared major? (A few colleges don't allow this--you must declare a major.) If you search for the Common Data Set, you will find information about the GPA and test scores of the most recently admitted class. It might take a little time to find, but it's all there somewhere.

Once you have that information, get the deadlines for the application procedures, so you have some idea for next year. If the school has rolling admissions (ie they admit students all during the process) you might want to consider getting your application in earlier rather than waiting till the last minute. That's actually true for most schools, that last minute app is not always the best. You might want to look at the actual application, if it's still available. Gives you some idea of what information to pull together.

It's doable, but it does take some time....good luck to you and your D!

 

[Pembo]

Another audition this past weekend at a school only 2 hours from home. We went down the night before. The whole process was easy and everyone was friendly. We will get a phone call tomorrow or Wed from the admissions on the results of his audition. Yes you read that right, an old fashioned telephone call. He has already been academically admitted and can pursue his major with or without admittance to the music school. It just changes a bit w/o the music part and he could still take lessons and re-audition next year.

DS is feeling uneasy. He got into a school he definitely doesn't want to go to, got rejected from the school he thought he liked and now he feels like he is settling if he goes to this third one. We have another audition next weekend but I think the school's expectations are more than he can offer plus it is an expensive school. I think we may cancel on that one.

Dh is going to take DS back to the school we went to this past weekend for an official tour, hopefully on Friday. We didn't do the official admissions rah-rah tour just a low-key one sponsored by the music kids.

ALL we talk about is college around here. I feel bad for the younger 2, they are being ignored. Hopefully a decision will be made soon and we can start thinking about all the details of a specific college.

Welcome to our new people!

 

[JeannieNM]

Pembo- I feel for you. I wish we had not gone the audition route. Not sure how we would have managed that but our D was torn between theatre and dance and could have applied to the same schools and applied in the one of those two that did not require an audition. I meet a mom at one audition and her D was auditioning for dance but was already accepted into the musical theatre program at this particular school because it did not require an audition. Good luck to your son and tell him he is ending up exactly where he is meant to be. Michael Jordan was cut from his high school basketball team, USC turned down Spielberg twice,...Another month (not sure I'll make it) and we will have heard from everyone. Good luck with the phone call and nice that they are timely. Our D has 3 more auditions to hear from one of which was over a month ago. Poor DH we do not get mail delivered to our house so he gets sent to the post office everyday. Until this college stuff he want a couple times a week or whenever we thought about it. Now I would send him 4 times a day if I thought it would make a difference.
pl
kkmcan- you have lots of time. It is stressful for some of us right now as we do not know where our kiddos are going to land yet. For others they are waiting on financial aide and merit money...some though have known for months where there kids were going. Each family has different needs and a different process. As an aside our D applied to U of A. The application was straight forward, there was an optional essay but not a mandatory one. She did receive a merit scholarship but I think that is because she is out of state which has a much higher tuition cost. She did not get into the dance program there and so the school is off her list. She also applied to ASU, and was just accepted to their dance program this weekend. That application is really easy, there is not even an optional essay. The arts application did have an essay. D was accepted with scholarship money pretty quickly, again we are out of state. I know with our state university if in state students applied by a certain date (I think it was October 1) the school even waved the application fee. So check that out. Since she is local it will be easy for to schedule a tour and get all this information from U of A.

 

[Pembo]

Good news - my son got the phone call that he has been accepted into the music program from the audition we went to last Saturday! He is not as excited as we are. He is going back to visit there this Friday with his dad. Hopefully that will up the excitement level. His only other option is to continue at the community college and go through all this again next spring.

 

[Bluestars]

Good news - my son got the phone call that he has been accepted into the music program from the audition we went to last Saturday! He is not as excited as we are. He is going back to visit there this Friday with his dad. Hopefully that will up the excitement level. His only other option is to continue at the community college and go through all this again next spring.

Pembo, that is great!! Congratulations to your son!

 

[madge]

Good news - my son got the phone call that he has been accepted into the music program from the audition we went to last Saturday! He is not as excited as we are. He is going back to visit there this Friday with his dad. Hopefully that will up the excitement level. His only other option is to continue at the community college and go through all this again next spring.

I hope he gets more excited on Friday! Congratulations!

 

[elgerber]

Good news - my son got the phone call that he has been accepted into the music program from the audition we went to last Saturday! He is not as excited as we are. He is going back to visit there this Friday with his dad. Hopefully that will up the excitement level. His only other option is to continue at the community college and go through all this again next spring.

That's great news!! A second visit helped my dd immensely when she thought maybe she was settling for the cheap state school.

 

[TLuvsD]

Congrats! I hope the visit goes well.