American University Mentorship program

My daughter was accepted to American for Spring 2018 with mentorship program in Fall 2017. Know anything about this and how they make the decision?

Link http://www.american.edu/spexs/mentorship/mentorship-curriculum.cfm

Spring 2018 Admissions with Fall Mentorship students have higher stats than needed to get into American. The application/resume demonstrates they would be able to manage an internship in the fall while attending classes, and a strong sense of experience and self that they would succeed right off the bat, even without being a part of the fall freshman class. It’s definitely not for everyone.

  1. Students have an internship abroad or DC and attend classes with “mentor professors”.
  2. Students are housed with other internship and transfer students, not in freshman living space.
  3. Students offered spring matriculation do not receive merit aid while attending American.
  4. Mentorship credits transfer into your American degree program in spring. Decide American is not the right place - credit for the fall mentorship is not recognized at other universities.
  5. Most classes offered to these students in the fall are not the regular classes for freshman.
  6. Mentorship students are not invited to local admitted freshman receptions. Mentorship students have a different orientation and a fall Welcome that are not part of the fall freshman admitted students.

Does the student want a traditional freshman experience or hit the ground running with an intership this fall? It’s about the experience the student wants and willingness to pay full tuition/expenses for it while having other options from other institutions that include merit aid. Read all the fine print about Fall Mentorship/Spring Admissions and ask lots of questions.

I believe American looks at these students as very desirable but knows that these students have other options. American is concerned with offering Fall admissions and having it not being accepted. AU may look at your fafsa for possible affordability. American has nothing to lose by offering Mentorship because it’s non-matriculating and will not be represented in admissions yield.

I don’t think that demonstrated interest in American is a big factor here. It’s the admissions yield.

Don’t sweat the spring admissions, your child will find the right place.

If we choose to reject the mentorship program due to financial matters, how easily will we be able to transfer our credits?

@lovingcollege So basically, American doesn’t want to give perfectly qualified students a chance into the fall semester because of their own insecurity with the admissions yield? Honestly ridiculous.

As I understand it - if a student attends for the fall Mentorship and the Spring and then decides to transfer at a later time, credits will not transfer from the fall non matriculating semester. It’s possible a student might be able to carry some over as electives but not likely as the classes are created for the mentorship.

While there are some attractive aspects of WMP, the fact is that they want you to pay and take classes but are unwilling to provide ANY financial aid. Calling it a “non degree program” is grossly misleading since they have forced you to join the program in order to study at AU. This fall the program will cost $30,000 (if you include room and board). That’s a LOT of money. And if you have financial need, your only alternative is to go heavily into debt.

This would be bad enough but remember that AU is not particularly generous with financial aid to begin with. Our “regular” spring financial package included more loans than any other university. We figured that at the end of the first year, our combined student/parent loans would exceed $40K which was just insane.