<p>You could not be more correct, nursekay. We were in a roughly similar boat, except we had too much income for any FA but because of a setback in the 2000 recession, couldn’t really afford full boat at the privates. But my kids both had reasonable sized accounts that were set up when they were born.</p>
<p>We got lucky, though. My S picked a school that is one of those public LAC’s, and it is a great deal even for OOS. The tradeoff is that it is in the middle of nowhere, but he is incredibly pleased with the education and the relationships he forged with both classmates and profs, which he says the small town setting contributed to. He was able to get a great summer gig with the public defenders office for the rural counties area he is in.</p>
<p>My D got full tuition (merit) at Tulane, so in the end we were able to cover both with my income and save their accounts for grad school or possibly in my son’s case law school. I absolutely realize how very very fortunate we are, so I contribute what I can to the scholarship funds for each school.</p>
<p>How do people feel about Syracuse U as a safety school? I know it was good when I went to school. Is it worth seeing? We will be in that area on 8/30 and thought it might make sense to see it if we are there but we might need to choose between seeing U of Rochester and that since we have limited time. We will be seeing SUNY B and Geneseo, definitely. I have a couple of former students at Syracuse who can show us around, which would be interesting. There is also what looks like a good honors program…Any feedback?</p>
<p>I would suggest visiting U of Rochester over SU. It is a great school and is fairly generous with merit money. I’ll admit that I don’t know much about the honors program at SU though. U of R is generally ranked higher than SU.</p>
<p>You need better safety schools. I recommend a lower SUNY like Buffalo or Stony Brook, because these colleges are tough to get into, and if you don’t get accepted into a top school that you would like to go to or the school does not give you enough money, it is always good to have a less competitive school to go to as a last resort.</p>
<p>I was thinking of Syracuse at this point in terms of visiting since we will be a half hour away…I don’t think Stony Brook is a “lower” SUNY…I think it is pretty high up there, maybe just slightly below Binghamton and Geneseo. I am thinking that Muhlenberg, if she likes it, would be a good safety, along with the CUNY honors (if you don’t make the honors, you are automatically considered for the regular college), though with doing the summer program, I have a hard time believing she wouldn’t make it in honors (the cut offs are 90 average and 1300 SATs…no SAT 2’s…the big thing would be the essay). The honors, if she got in there would be a great financial deal…free tuition, free dorms (for some reason, that is only at Hunter but we could afford the dorm at any of the other colleges), a $7,500 stipend for an internship or travel abroad and a laptop. And the program is getting a really good rep. At the summer program, they were really trying to sell it to the students and my daughter got all excited about it (wasn’t willing to consider it before because it was too close to mom and dad). But there were some students talking about the internships they had and she started to reconsider, thinking that these kinds of opportunities would be more available in NYC than anywhere else…</p>
<p>It looked like on the SAT scores, that is true,…not so much on the GPA (at least with SUNY B…Geneseo is above them on everything). But I was thinking that if my daughter looked at SUNY Stony Brook, it would be for the honors program.</p>