I find the back and forth interesting especially from the talent that is on this thread. With the student debt crisis at hand, I do think the schools have a responsibility to explain the process and make sure the npc, CS, Fafsa have been done. My kids schools did. Junior year major school wide presentation that you had to sign into. Plus several meetings with the GC… At least one but usually 2 or more.
My kid school was the top school his year in our state so maybe that is why we were better informed? Lots of low income minority mixed with private school kids and wealthier families. The counselors knew who was who but everyone got the same private lecture on affordability. When the counselor made his suggested starter list we were kinda insulted that few were in the top 20. He was suggesting schools down the food chain for merit. His comments were like “X” is a great school but at “y” they are paying you to go there… Etc… Only after getting acceptances did the light bulb go off.
Plus let’s face it, families apply to schools just to see if they can get in. A barometer of sorts. Many think the money will somehow magically be there. Their kids stats and essay were so great that the school will just come to their house and offer to drive their kid to the university in a limousine .
It’s also hard to judge a kid that doesn’t know or understand the process. The pandemic hit everyone even my very wealthy friends ability to pay full boat. Sure, who wants to.
Applications locally are up at just about every public that I have seen. This might alter college acceptances for years to come. Especially trying to go oos.
I do believe they do. They do it during RD to make sure ED admitted students have withdrawn their applications.
This is in the early decision agreement:
I wish to be considered as an Early Decision candidate at: _________________________________________________________________________________.
I have read and understand my rights and responsibilities under the Early Decision process. I also understand that with an Early Decision offer of admission, this
institution may share my name and my Early Decision Agreement with other institutions.
I am not an FA expert…If OP can’t afford CMU then he probably shouldn’t apply to many schools that do not give merit aids, otherwise he may be in violation of his ED agreement.
My daughter found out her email to withdraw an RD app from school X (after an ED admit at school Y) had not been acted on when she received an admit from them during RD. So maybe some do, but not all of them. Obviously she immediately declined the offer and panicked a bit but discovered “I thought I withdrew but…” was not a totally rare experience.
Our GC do not recommend any schools, even if you ask, and I’ve been through the process with 5 kids. They just say use Naviance to search. It’s almost like they are forbidden to even make suggestions. Since we aren’t really eligible for FA, my kids have to chase merit, I would’ve been great to have been given a starting point.
That is something that should be brought up to the principal. But it’s really amazing to me that every school is so different. Ours is a public school but even my daughters private did the same. We the parents made an extensive spreadsheet of tons of school options so we had a clue but when given schools to chase for merit that made us look deeper at the programs.
I actually made my kids make their list but it had to include one school in each level outside the T20. So a few in the 20-30, 31-40 and so on. What we discovered were actually great schools that gave decent merit… This is what the school GC was doing… Making us look at schools that had merit to boot.
My kids went to private schools. The one in the US was very involved with school selections. They didn’t send RD applications out until ED/EA decisions came out. Most kids were not eligible for FA, so they held students to their agreements. The school was responsible for sending out transcripts and LORs, so they held all the cards. I remember a kid in D1’s year wanted to get out of Columbia ED because she thought she had a chance at HYP, but the GC did not support it.
There are guidance counselors and there are college counselors. They have two difference roles. Our school has both. So college counselors are only work with juniors beginning second semester and seniors. Guidance counselors are for all 4 years. We have about 1700 students, 2 college counselors and 6-8 GC. It’s a tough job but terrible they provide no guidance to students or help. Ours has a meeting with every junior and family and sits down going over giving them a list of likely colleges and safeties based on what the student is interested in, size, private, gender, etc. and also reaches if student is interested based on their stats and gives a whole bunch of links to also have the student research schools in the field they’re interested in, etc.
Some find it helpful some useless some do their own thing and some just pay for their own person which basically gives them the same info. They also then help with the process of reviewing the applications, etc. It’s the GC that sends the school report, transcript, recommendation and more academic stuff to the colleges.
OP: you can’t afford it. That’s an acceptable excuse to back out if ED. Just tell them that.
For everyone else who feels the need to criticize: it’s obvious this student and his parents didn’t understand the finances. It’s not obvious whose fault it is, and it really doesn’t matter. As is evident from the posts here there is a wide range in the amount of financial and college advice provided by high schools. Our high school sent parents a link to a power point about finances mid way through junior year. I’m guessing there were many who missed it or didn’t bother to follow the link. Our high school did not have separate college counselors, the GC never suggested colleges to either of my kids, and there was no such thing as a parent meeting with a GC unless your kid was flunking out or a behavioral problem. There are way too many assumptions being made on this thread.
@me29034 That is the bottom line here. He/she can’t afford it, period and should pull out. This is not the first post I have seen on CC and there are more on reddit about kids who applied ED that did not get the financial aid they expected.
Either kids are applying just to apply to see if they get in, which isn’t fair to kids who are deferred as that’s a spot that could’ve gone to someone else, OR more likely, colleges are doing a crap job in explaining how financial aid works and what it means to meet unmet need and what the applicant really needs to have. Unless someone has a 100% merit scholarship, it’s rare that college is going to be completely free with financial aid!
OP stated “If CMU gave us even just around 5k additional in grant annually, I would consider attending”. Still to suggest that OP and/or upper middle class family doesn’t understand affordability is over stretch.
Also to relate our own too bad GC experience or too good GC experience with OP’s GC is unfair as we don’t know the facts. about OP’s GC or school.
I am also not fond of debt by any means.
I get it. Our 2 CC for 400+ seniors is definitely not enough. They messed up for my son and didn’t send out his Q1 grades to the college he applied ED to on time. He was ultimately deferred, which is better than a rejection, but no idea if it was their mistake since the grades weren’t received in time or what. The good news is he can send the semester grades and it’s not one of those schools that defer 50% of the kids, but bad news is it’s a long wait, and time to focus elsewhere.
It’s also not the first mistake they made this year just on him so I’ve soured on them anyway and am just happy this is my last kid but feel bad for the people who really relied on them because they haven’t been through the process before. We only needed them for administrative purposes and our one meeting but those who used them for more were set up for disappointment, especially this year when they’re 100% remote anyway.
OP explained this is their first go at apps and aid. I wish we could ease up on him/her. They’ve gone off CC, said they’d be working on other apps. I can respect that.
Imo, the 5k figure thrown out was just a number. Not enough to analyze the family’s finances, what they “should” know.
GCs aren’t paid, or required in their job descriptions, to advise or look after applicants’ finances, and most of them, especially those at large public schools, don’t, Unfortunately, most applicants and their families also don’t understand fully the pitfalls of ED. Primary beneficiaries of ED are the colleges, not students, despite what many of them have been led to believe. So the responsibility lies with the colleges that offer ED for their failure to warn applicants of the risks associated with ED. Among those risks is that colleges aren’t incentivized to offer their best FA packages to ED applicants.
You’re never contractually obligated to attend a school you can’t afford. $300,000 in student loans is clearly not affordable. That would offset any benefits of getting a bachelors degree in the first place…assuming you could get that kind of financing at all. Just move on.
I hesitate to join the conversation this late in the game, but I want to share what I have seen 2 out of 2 times when families tried to break an ED commitment. I will only give one example since the same thing happened each time. In each instance, a person was accepted ED and tried to move to another school after the fact. One example was ED to a top 20 National and the family tried to back out, for “financial reasons” and attend an equally competitive state school. The parent seemed to have a fine job, but that could be an illusion. The quick result was she withdrew and accepted admittance to the other. Unfortunately, for the student, guidance reprimanded the family for not withdrawing school 2 and taking a coveted spot from others in her class who did not get in early to school 1. The result, and I was not in the room, was that the student took a year off.
My point is that we have all read how a person can back away from an ED commit for financial reasons, but based upon what I have seen happen I am not so sure it is something a student can bank on.
Did the student apply ED to both the top 20 and the state? I thought that ED to a private and a public is “allowed” ? Or did the student apply to the state school with the acceptance to the top 20 already in hand?
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