So hooray D got off the waitlist which is exciting. However, no merit money. We are really struggling with Dream school vs the Excellent scholarship offer from U DE.
With the economic downturn we are facing I find it very hard to throw the scholarship away just to go to Clemson. Any advice??
Between those 2 schools, you need to weigh cost vs. whether youād be happy there and determine for yourself the value. Students do better at schools that they are happy at. So, you are more likely to do poorly or dropout of a school that youāre not happy in, which makes that a waste of money. So, up to you to decide. If youād be happy in both places, Iād recommend the cheaper one.
@mathgeek1414
Are you from Delaware? Have you visited UD? My oldest daughter is a Junior and she loves it there and for her it was her top choice school and she turned down 2 schools who offered merit money. One of the schools was in our home state(CT) and the other school is where her bf goes to school. As much as I would have loved for her to go to a school that offered money going to UD was better for her for various reasons. She would not have been happy at the other schools.
Iām in a similar situation with my younger D. She applied to 10 schools and was offered no money from any of them so her cheapest option is our state school. Next cheapest is around $45k and then the rest of the schools go up from thereā¦sheād be miserable at our state school so itās her choice but the others are so expensive for OOS. Honestly we thought sheād be offered something which is why I was ok with her applying to themā¦
@mathgeek1414. Back in 2018 my daughter was Invited to Disco scholar weekend at Udel. She got 24K scholarship. At Clemson she got the top 15K merit money which brought the cost down to our state schools, Pitt and PSU so I told her that for 9K a year I wasnāt going to make her go to UDel when she liked Clemson much better.
I can also say if she had gotten the full ride at Udel, it would have been a different conversation.
No doubt tough decision. I wish you both the best.
@burghdad
We havenāt been able to visit yet since tours are canceled and weāre in CT so not super close to just pop over and take a look but Iām wondering how a student from the Northeast would fit in there? Iāve heard that if you arenāt a conservative Christian from the South that you wonāt fit inā¦honestly I think Iām more concerned about that than the money.
I did not get that vibe when we visited Clemson. There are a fair amount of OOS kids that go there, too. I donāt think sheād have issues finding a pocket of friends with the same backgrounds.
@HokieCrazy
Thank you! I really wished we visited a long time ago with students there because you can definitely get a feel for it with the students around. We visited a school last April and we knew immediately based on the crowd in the room at the admissions tour that it was not the right school for herā¦
@jmsstb My daughter is a liberal girl from suburban Pittsburgh. Her roommate her freshman year and this year is a liberal vegetarian from Irvine California.
That said is it a bit southernā¦ sure about 60% of the students are from South Carolina. I think about 25-30 Greek. And yes politically it probably more conservative than were we live.
But remember it is a school of about 20,000 kids. Lots of folks for each of them to find ātheir tribeā. My daughter and I joke about āhey remember it is south cakalackyā¦ā.
My daughter got an internship where she is helping with a special 5 year grant Clemson obtained to help it retain and advance female faculty in STEM majorsā¦Something she feels strongly about.
She loves all that the school with big time athletics and school spirit has to offer. Football games in the fall, basketball in the winter and even baseball games in the spring.
The campus is really very nice. It has lots of trees and grass. And yet you can still get from one end of campus to the other in no more than 10-12 minute walk.
In terms of the finances, because of Clemsonās policy on AP classes my daughter went in a Sophomore so she intends to graduate a year early and use the savings for graduate school. I don think Udel gives similar college credit for AP classes.
I will say it is hard to get. It is kind of in the middle of no where. From Pittsburgh it is a 9.5 to 10 hour drive. We can fly direct to Charolette but it is a 2 hour drive from there. We can connect from Charolette or Atlanta to Greenville but then you are still 45 minutes away.
The other thing I will say is that although the little town of clemson is a cute college town, there is no walkable grocery and the box stores are 30 minutes away in Anderson and Easley. Her freshman year she felt somewhat isolated by not having a car. I sent her with a car this year it has been much better for her. Of course right now her car is sitting the parking lot of the Greenville airport and I donāt know when we are going to be able to go down and get it along with all of her belongings out of the dorm.
I hope some of this helped.
@jmsstb in looking at the Clemson fact sheet the top six states are SC, Georgia, New Jersey, NC, NY and PA. So decent amount of NE/Mid Atlantic
@burghdad
Great information. Thank you so much. About a week ago she said sheās leaning more towards Clemson so of course I started freaking out!
@burghdad it does concern me a bit that Clemson is not super easy to get to from Pittsburgh. Iāve wondered if flying is easier, but from what youāve described it doesnāt seem to be. Weāve done the drive in a little 9 hours. We live in the South Hills
@pghmom72
Weāre in CT and would probably drive 2 hrs to LaGuardia to catch a non stop flight to Greenville. Where can you catch a direct flight to Greenville which I think is the closest airport?
From CT, wouldnāt it be faster to get to Providence and take Southwest down to Greenville?
@HokieCrazy
Iād have to check out that option, too. Iām a fan of non stop and cheap as possible so it rarely works for us to fly anywhere from Bradley which would be nice since weāre 35 min away from thereā¦
We were told during our tour about a shuttle that CU runs to Atlanta and Charlotte at major holidays. Has anyone followed up on that to see if thatās true or how likely it would be for the students to get a place on the shuttle? Coming out of Atlanta would have to be cheaper than Charlotte.
Those shuttles always run at a pretty reasonable priceā¦they just happen to be free during the major breaks for students.
@āTheir Mommaā So the deal is that when you fly to Atlanta on Delta the flight is generally cheaper than Charolette on AA but the fact is the the Atlanta airport is south of the city so when fly to Atlanta you are south of the city so with Atlanta traffic it can take anywhere from 2.5 to 3 hours to get to Clemson.
If you fly to Charolette on AA the airport is on the south of the city and you are able to get to Clemson in 2 hours.
As @HokieCrazy says the shuttles work well although other than Greenville there are only 2 trips a day to Charolette and none to Atlanta for the traffic reason I set forth above.
Also the dates of the college sponsored buses are limited to certain specific dates within one or two days of the Clemson breaks. As an alternative I have paid some local car services to take my daughter to the Greenville airport when she was leaving on off times.
Also keep in mind on breaks the spots on these bused fill up fast so your student need to be on top of when the signup starts,
For those that were accepted off the waitlist, did it show on USPS Informed delivery?
@jakem01 I did not check. It just showed up and I was freaking out.
Our packet did NOT show up on informed delivery. I sent DS to get the mail and he came up smiling ear to ear. I hate that I missed the moment he saw it. Oh well, there will be so many more awesome moments at CU that it will make up for it.