You actually missed the entire point of my post.
Fwiw, Berkeley will cost $60,000 as an OOS student.
Fwiw, wo compelling awards, achievements, research, leadership, etc, I would make sure you have affordable options that he loves bc for top schools, stats only go so far.
Sorry- I didn’t miss it. I agreed with it. I had also addressed similar comments on loans and debt, so I responded mainly on the other comments you made. I didn’t realize in my original post that there was a much lower limit on direct student loans, and 100K+ of parent debt is not an option. Perhaps we can cover a much smaller amount from business equity or something, but as you and others have noted, that could also be an issue with the next children. If he does choose apply to financial reach schools, he is now very well aware of what kind of merit aid or third party scholarships have to be secured by the time his decision is due.
Thanks! So possible, but unlikely for my son, but I did send him some links to consider. Where is the best place to search Common Data Set information or is it subscription based? I just did a quick Google search but it wasn’t obvious if there was a master location with an easy search interface, rather than just going to individual school pages if they exist.
Large amounts of third party scholarships are VERY hard to wrangle. I would not let him think that is a very likely path to paying for college.
@intparent I agree. The best scholarships are from the schools themselves and competitive scholarships should not be counted on.
Perhaps instead of rankings, your son would consider evaluating the level of academic intensity/rigor? The downside is that’s more subjective and will require a little more research. The upside is that is a more realistic approximation of what you guys seem to be trying to achieve.
This is one reason why folks keep trying to tell you that looking at grad school rankings is misleading. You are trying to measure something with the wrong metric.
We ended up doing something similar with one of my kids for whom the traditional “urban/rural, big/small” types of questions were pretty irrelevant. He honestly didn’t care. We dragged around to a wide variety of campuses with his seemingly irrational reactions until we figured out that he was looking for “his people” in an academic way… and that as long as there was that core group AND a reasonably robust set of offerings in terms of classes and professors, he could make it work.
We were mystified that one minute he said he only was going to apply to universities with an engineering school, and the next minute decided that if got in to Chicago he’d major in math or physics. And this was not a kid who was prone to irrational thinking.
But we finally got it. And of course (wait for it) ended up majoring in something completely different from what he thought as a HS senior. And loved it. And found his people- close friends even though they are now spread out around the world. And had professors to write recommendations even though he did not go to grad school immediately (yes they remembered him several years later; yes they supported the path he took even though it wasn’t where he thought he was headed).
So yes- you sometimes find a kid whose path is set in HS and no amount of distribution requirements is going to budge that position. Or you find kids like my son who wanted engineering and then took a complete left turn (loving every minute) and never looked back. And of course would tease us, “if I knew back then what I would end up doing, I’d have been VERY happy applying to all those colleges Mom wanted me to apply to!”
Thanks kid…
Would son know where any of these schools ranked if he didn’t have the list in front of him? Would he care if Purdue was really #33 if the list incorrectly listed it as #3? And should it matter at all that a neighbor thought Grinnell was ‘really good’ but the neighbor didn’t think Harvey Mudd was any good because the neighbor had never heard of it? I think 17 year olds aren’t the best judges of what makes a good fit for college, especially the financial part.
If my child had come to me and said ABC is ranked #3 and XYZ is ranked #35, I would have said “So, what does that mean? What were the ranking factors?” Why is that school better for YOU (not the neighbor) and how will you pay for it?
However, it still would have come down to money.
Actually, you didn’t get my point. You are super, super focused on top ranked schools. My post was actually meant to echo @chowdycat’s post that ranking of physics depts is really not a the best measure. Physics curriculum is pretty standard from dept to dept. Look for core sequence classes to generally be offered as 2 semester sequence courses, etc. I would be far more concerned about the opportunities outside of the classroom than ranking. For example, one top program told our ds he had more direct research experience as a high school student than their UGs bc their UGs work for grad students and our ds had been doing research with a professor at his DE university and had attended SSP. That knocked that school immediately off ds’s list bc on campus UG research was a top priority for him. He loves research.
Since this is your oldest, it is also probable that you do not understand just how competitive admissions actually is. When you casually state,
it makes me think that you really aren’t aware of the accomplishments of kids around the country/world. Your ds has great stats, no doubt. But you say he has no real ECs, but considerable volunteer work. (That is a rather vague description. Does he have volunteer hours or has he significantly impacted your community?) Does he have significant accomplishments other than classes and test scores? Has he done any research projects? Entered national/international competitions and won?
There are kids out there with incredibly amazing accomplishments. And those same kids are going to have great test scores and high level courses. It would be a mistake to enter the process without accepting that any of those things that you classify as a reasonable chance are really only competitive possibilities.
My son (who was considered a math and science big shot at his HS) told us that the first day of college physics he sat next to a guy from a Third World country who was the top physics Olympiad scorer in the world AND had been studying physics at his country’s elite science school since he was 10. (I guess equivalent to dual enrollment type progression).
That sure put getting a 5 on bunch of AP tests into perspective!!!
Yes, it was discussed earlier in this thread a few times, and I even acknowledged this in the original post. I can’t force him to have the same criteria as I do. I can only tell him what is and isn’t affordable and hopefully influence his decision making somewhat over the next few months.
This is purely semantics. What’s a “reasonable chance” to you? 10%? 75%? I was just throwing out examples. Maybe he won’t get a good merit offer, but we can always hope. And the point was that the backup plan is still a pretty good option. Regardless, he’ll have to decide where to apply, knowing the financial reality. As I stated in the original post, I was hoping to add a couple schools with a reasonable chance at merit aid to his radar. If his stats make this unlikely, that’s good information as well.
10% chance of a really nice or full tuition scholarship at a school with a 13% admission rate? No, I would not categorize that as reasonable.
For example, Vanderbilt’s admission data is the following:
http://www.collegedata.com/cs/data/college/college_pg01_tmpl.jhtml?schoolId=1562
Merit $$ at top schools is incredibly competitive. If a student really needs scholarship money, going down in ranking opens up a lot more $$. Reasonable, from our family’s “must have merit scholarship” POV, means a likely chance of being awarded it. If not, they are considered as long shots and they can apply, but they know that the likelihood of being awarded the scholarship is low and not a reasonable plan for attendance. They can’t win it if they don’t try, but yeah, probably not gonna happen.
FWIW, you might want to consider joining the 2017 thread. There are a lot of wonderful, supportive posters on that thread. Lots of good discussion on the application process.
Not completely, but it is your money, and honestly – you may have a better grasp of the odds and options than he does. Teens are notorious out here for wishful thinking, and they don’t REALLY think they are going to end up at their safety or low match. Then they are crushed when they do. And the money thing, it isn’t real to them – they often just figure that it will get sorted later, no matter what parents say. You owe it to your son to get him on the same page, or you will have a bumpy spring.
That would be great, do you have a link please?
Stop on by!
Thank you very much!
Yes, do come and join us. You’ll find most of the posters have kids with similar profiles (though some of the kids have some pretty impressive accomplishments), if different areas of interest. The range of schools being applied to is diverse.
just google common data set collegename
Once you are in you can just enter college names into the search box at the top of the page.
Be aware that there is more detail for each category if you click through!
& best of all, it’s free / not subscription