Impossible that the cost is less. Quinnipiac at half price is more than tcnj
Quite a shame to not get in more of those schools with that SAT & gpa. But nice choices remain.
For anybody reading this discussion to get insights for applications in the next few years, I hope you notice that all of the colleges mentioned are in a relatively small area in the northeastern part if the country. You pay quite a premium for schools in this geographic area…harder admissions, higher prices, less financial aid. Those looking to get maximum leverage out of their grades & test scores, and minimize the costs can do so by expanding the geographic area you are considering beyond the densely populated & super-competitive Northeast. I graduated from high school & college in the Northeast, & am aware of the stereotypes people there have about other regions of the country. Before you write off entire regions of the country, at least visit them for a few days.
For future parents reading this, do not rely on your high school’s weighting method to look at GPA.
“Unweighted GPA: 3.6980 and Weighted GPA: 4.7915”
The vast majority of weighting systems do not allow an weighted GPA to be more than 1 point higher than UW and then only if every single course they took was weighted which is also not possible at most schools.
Above all look realistically at your kid’s unweighted GPA.
I don’t know how to reply to a specific poster, but tuition alone at Quinnipiac will be around $14,000 for my daughter after scholarship, tuition will be over $16,000 at TCNJ for my son (no scholarship). She has decided it’s not the school for her. Her other choices (UDel and Scranton) are also a bit cheaper after merit aid.
You put an @ sign in front of their user name like @Mjkacmom. As you start typing a list of names comes up and you can pick from the list or just continue typing the full name.
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A male engineering prospective student from New Jersey? Very, very hard admit especially in RD.
He has some great acceptances, it’s so tough at those schools which are looking for an equal distribution of male/female engineering students. And from the northeast, when those schools are looking for geographical diversity? Add in RD and that is a tough hill to climb.
I didn’t know Lafayette was need aware?
A related news story is at https://www.lafayettestudentnews.com/blog/2017/05/05/expansion-creates-means-for-future-need-blind-status/ .
The NYT study found that Lafayette students had a higher median income than did students from all Ivies and all of HYPSM… Fewer than 2% were low income.
I don’t see that OP mentions her S taking any science APs. For an engineering applicant, that would be a big red flag amongst the reachier schools on his list.
From the original post:
Sorry, missed the physics in there…though if he’s taking Calc A/B and Physics this year, the schools still may not have had a good handle on his ability to succeed in an engineering program. But if those are the top classes his HS offered and he could only take them senior year, then schools should review his application in that light.
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@VickiSoCal-There are many many schools with weighting systems that allow for weighted GPA to be 1 point higher than unweighted. My kids school was +1 for an honors class, +2 for an AP class. All of my kids had weighted GPAs more than one point higher than unweighted.
I don’t want to highjack the thread, just to correct the record for others who may be reading.
OP-your son has great choices. There are lots of anomalies college admissions. My son got waitlisted from U of Miami but was admitted to NYU.
I’m not assuming the OP is interested but just in case, Rowan will be accepting applications until May 1. I have no idea if they are still offering merit scholarships or if it’s too late for admission into the honors program, but it’s worth looking into.
If the OP is considering TCNJ, Rowan Honors offers more IMHO. And the stats of the kids in honors are not far off from the other colleges on the list.
@Proudpatriot I get that some schools do that internally but no college takes that as the weighted GPA to compare to students from other schools.
For my one son who applied to Bucknell, Lehigh, U of Rochester, and Lafayette along with others - the acceptance/wait list/rejection seemed to be from a random generator. I was told by one school admissions officer at an admitted students day that they almost didn’t offer my son because they thought he was going to school X. He was waitlisted at school X. I believe he could have easily been accepted to all, or rejected by all.
The average stats can be misleading, as special admits and recruits are a higher percentage of the ED pool. If you do not fall into one of these categories, you really don’t know if the stats are different between ED or RD, but they are higher than published stats. You should assume for all schools (Ivies included) that the bottom 25% have hooks.
The schools tell you not to work the waitlist, but from anecdotal evidence, it seems the ones who get off the waitlist have provided more information and shown continued interest.
When you look at a college and have a 1480 SAT and compare it to their average SATs, I bet it looks above average. I think probably the issue is that if you are applying to engineering, that the SATs of that subpopulation are higher than average for that school (esp. the math scores).
I have a student at Lafayette that is excelling. My son applied and was waitlisted despite having SATs above the 75%. However with two students we would need financial aid. I wonder if that was a reason he was waitlisted.
There are certain programs at schools that get far more applications than seats and really are far more selective than the overall acceptance rate at a given school. Want to get into the Computer science program at Carnegie Mellon? Acceptance rate in single figures. But, say you apply as a Humanities and SOcial sciences major? The years my kids applied there the accept rate was nearly at the 50% mark. So it is with premed , and engineering, and some schools of business. Getting accepted to those programs is a whole other story than to other more general majors, particularly the Humanities, for instance.
This is not new, though it has become even more accentuated… Back in my day, one of the top students in the country,certainly the top in Florida, was rejected from the UF engineering program. All he knew was that he was rejected from UF, a school that a large number of class mates had gotten acceptance letters, including my brother, his best friend. THey still joke about it to this day; my brother was rejected from MIT, which was no big deal,and pretty much expected, but, “dude, to be rejected from UF and accepted by MIT!” It was a combination of the program (engineering) and the timing (not early in the season) that resulted in his denial from the school. To this day, engineering spots fill up fast, and Einstein couldn’t get accepted once those seats are filled.
Lafayette, Lehigh and Bucknell are well known for engineering, and competition for those seats is fierce. Hindsight is 20/20-- I would have advised he pick one as ED, or if he didn’t feel comfortable committing so early in the process, applying to schools that allow transfer easily between as a different major or even undecided major and engineering. Rice is a school that comes to mind in that category. I don’t know those policies at the schools you have mentioned.
Also, yes, if any of the schools are need aware in admissions, it could make a difference too.
This process is so hard…my son is on 5 waitlists including Lehigh. His latin teacher wrote his LOR because he has had him for three years…he certainly had other teachers that would have been willing to write him one. Wondering if that is what was missing? But this teacher and him have such a special relationship my son did not second guess asking him. Some of the wait list schools will allow for a new LOR and some do not want another one and have said do not sent. most of me just does not want to play the what if game in my head…its so hard not to…but I want to support this process that he pretty much drove himself - he made his own list of schools to apply to…I look back over the last 4 years of high school and sure he could have joined more clubs or volunteered more…but then I tell myself he is also a child who has autism…was non verbal until he was 4 1/2 years old…entered elementary school 24 months behind academically and physically…the social drama of 7th grade and 10th grade near about killed us both…but here he is facing the last marking period of high school with three out of state acceptances that would all offer him unbelievable opportunities and he finally has a spot on the Varsity baseball team and quite frankly I have told him I would not want to change a thing. We spent our summers and weekends traveling and playing rec sports…together as a family. He has had a few jobs but other than that just a kid trying to survive the pressures of being a teen. I am so damn proud of him and this class!! I am hopeful he will embrace one of the schools that also chose him too and we can start gearing up and preparing for all that lies ahead!! so grateful to you all for sharing your stories…its helped heal this Momma’s heart!!!
This is so fabulous! Celebrate this and forget the wait lists. There is something special about going to a school that wants you so badly that they are willing to throw money at you to come. This alone can be a huge ego boost to a kid starting college. Don’t rethink the past four years and wonder if he could have done more. Who cares? He did great and he could have done more and gotten the same results. Or, you could have pushed him to do more and it could have backfired. In any case, what is so wrong with following your heart in high school? He had a good time and has great college choices. Who could ask for anything more?
@Regretful we had a similar feeling from Lafayette for our son last year. He was waitlisted there while admitted to peer schools. The difference? Lafayette is need aware and we have a fair amount of need. In fact, he was waitlisted at all need aware schools he applied as was our eldest 4 years before him. Both excellent students but not tippy top stats so not quite as attractive For what it would cost a full-need school to enroll them.
It worked out fine (they went to need blind schools) and I don’t harbor Ill feelings toward Lafayette or the others for not wanting to pick up the tab if it’s not in their means to comfortably do so. I thought it was nice they got waitlisted instead of rejected lol. But yes, at least for us, the need aware aspect seemed the difference between a “yes” and a waitlist for a strong but imperfect student.