Well clarified, then. “Need blind financial aid” would certainly be a novel concept.
@GnocchiB My school allows all grades to participate in SAT prep classes (free of charge, miraculously!), which are mostly juniors and seniors. They give us practice tests for the SAT I and the tutor also helps with SAT II subject tests. I was always familiar with the term “need-blind aid”, although I have seen “need-blind admissions”. The latter seems more plausible, but I am specifically referring to schools that provide the full demonstrated need to an accepted applicant. I understand that “need-blind admissions” just means that they don’t take aid into consideration with your application. Congrats to your daughter, however!
To be clear, my parents would be able to pay for my college, but I would still apply for financial aid (and merit aid, if it requires further application) as well as scholarships. Merit aid is an option as well. The point I was trying to make is that finances are not at the top of my concern list.
@codemachine, interesting that the SAT prep classes are free at your school - that’s a nice benefit that is probably not very common.
Is your sibling at Penn full-pay? How many years ahead of you is s/he - so will s/he still be in college when you start? Those two factors should give you some sense of whether your family would qualify for need-based aid. There’s no law against applying for need-based aid, but some parents prefer not to complete the paperwork if they are above a certain level of income and assets because of the exceptionally low likelihood of getting need-based aid and also because of privacy issues. You can run the NPCs on all the schools you’re interested in to see how your family’s situation looks. Note that it’s not very accurate if you have divorced/remarried parents or if your parents own a business.
Merit-based aid is dependent on your stats and/or what you bring to the table - it has nothing to do with your parents’ financial situation or ability to pay. Colleges use merit aid (AKA “merit scholarships”) to lure exceptionally well-qualified candidates to the school based on their institutional priorities.
Where have you seen the term “need-blind aid”?
ps - thanks, from my D.
My sibling is full pay and would still be there when I start, although I doubt I could get into Penn. My sobling, 1 year younger, however, would be entering college after me. Im sure when the time comes all will be considered.
A friend of mine at the local prep was telling me about Johns Hopkins (he was accepted ED). Can anyone speak on its preppiness?
@codemachine, Have you visited Harvard and Princeton? I’m not quite sure what you’re looking for in terms of “preppiness”. For instance, many of the schools which draw large numbers of prep school kids don’t have frats and sororities. I don’t mean to be insulting, but I wonder how much of your idea of preppiness is based on what you’ve seen in movies.
An additional word of caution. There’s nothing prep school kids hate more than a “poser”. My prep school kid, who attended a very preppy boarding school, has many college friends from public schools. The one kid on her floor she took an immediate dislike to was one who kept trying to ingratiate himself with the kids who had attended prep schools by dropping references to Vineyard Vines, sailing and “summering”, and hinted that he had attended a tony NYC day school. She and her friends all smelled a rat, and soon uncovered the fact that he was a public school kid from the Southwest. Had he introduced himself as a middle class public school kid from the Southwest who played JV soccer everything would have been fine and doubtless he would have developed many friends, with plenty of prep school kids among them, but his overeagerness to fit in with the prep school kids was very off-putting and it seriously hurt him socially.
I don’t mean to scare you, I’m just encouraging you to be yourself, not some idea of what a prep is.
@Sue22 Yes, I’ve visited both Harvard and Princeton a few times each, and fell in love with both. I understand what you’re trying to say, and wish to ensure you that is not what I’m trying to pull. I shop at VV anyway (I just like their stuff), but go to a public and am proud of it. My perception of “preppiness” is not a result of Hollywood, in fact I know for a fact its way overblown in movies. Friends of mine who attend(ed) Harvard didn’t even know what a final club was until they watched “The Social Network” and did additional research. Its more so a school type I’m attracted to. I doubt using the phrase “like Hogwarts” would help my case here, so the next best thing is “preppy” (as in similar to a prep school).
Any final suggestions, anyone?
@codemachine - I am still looking for the information you asked for…
In the meantime, here is an interesting initiative that sits at the intersection of computer science and international relations.
Harvard is preppy?
@codemachine @sue22 - Just for the record, amongst the “old money crowd”:
Nearly all “preppies” are “posers” - it does not matter whether you have a whale, a sheep, an alligator or a polo pony on your shirt, or a summer house on the Vineyard.
“Sailing” is only relevant when referring to crossing the Atlantic in the early 17th century
You need to talk like this 
Great advice.
My kids’ private school has a pretty sophisticated (but conservative) college counseling staff; and I was surprised when they STRONGLY recommended against the new SAT for the reasons @Lindagaf stated; as they rarely take an absolute position on anything - and the SAT had a stronghold there forever. They believe it is going to be a disaster; and this was before the confusion with the new PSAT results. I just heard a report on our local NPR affiliate that the new PSAT results are skewing high - our local private schools were reporting threefold increases in 99th% scores - which of course is not possible. It’s very confusing.
To OP, I would not fixate on top 20 universities and LAC’s until you get some standardized test results that place you at least solidly in their middle 50% AND a Naviance plot indicating you’re within the acceptance clusters, and even then I would proceed with caution and guard your heart. Best of luck.
You should check out:
Wheaton College in Norton, Ma. (not to be confused with the Wheaton in Illinois). It was an all female institution until the late '80’s, so it is not as well known or selective as other New England LACs. It is one of the few LACs that offers merit aid, so it should probably be on your application list. Small school with an amazing track record of producing prestigious scholarship winners given the selectivity.
Fairly preppy and has cross enrollment with Brown and a junior year exchange program with 12 colleges including Amherst, Bowdoin & Dartmouth.
http://wheatoncollege.edu/advising/year-students/cross-registration-options/
http://wheatoncollege.edu/advising/offcampus-study/
Don’t tell anyone else about it.
Outside of rush, I don’t find Northwestern to be that preppy. Yeah there’s a ton of students who waste money on those ridiculously overpriced Canada Goose jackets, but that’s hardly preppy.
@Mastadon It looks interesting! Any word on the type of grad schools they get into?
I just wanted to second what @arwarw and others mentioned about not being fixated on top 20 universities (“Ivy Plus”). Yes, try and hope for the best. But don’t assume that because your stats are good that you’ll likely get in—this applies even if your stats place you at or above their “average” SAT/ACT scores. For example, my daughter scored 2300 on SAT, which was above the average for all the Ivy-type schools she applied to (ie., Stanford average is 2210, Princeton 2250), and didn’t get into any of them. It’s really competitive these days with nearly all students who apply to those schools from all over the world also having top scores. So you have to have something else that sets you apart from the crowd, plus you need the luck of the draw. So yes, give it your best shot, but don’t pin all your hopes on school X so as not to be too disappointed, and remember that you’ll get an excellent education at schools not ranked 1-20 by USNWR. Good luck!
Miami University (Ohio) is a tad preppy (especially for a public school) and has a local reputation for being a party school.
I would add Davidson College into the mix. I would aliken it to a southern version of Princeton in many ways
@pcaornkqeurest Woody Woo (a Princeton guy) started there as well. I’ll look into it for sure!
No one knows anything about Tulane in terms of preppiness?
As someone mentioned Drexel is definitely not preppie. UNC-CH is preppie like UVA - just not as dominant with a large jock culture too. It’s also 2/3rds female so lots of Barbies or whatever you call them nowadays.
Have you added the cost of preppiness into your cost of attendance? These groups maintain their exclusivity by keeping the cost of belonging very high.