Miami- read the OP’s post. It’s not that the D didn’t get into ANY college, the D wasn’t accepted to an affordable option and wasn’t accepted at Chicago and Columbia, two of the “lottery” type admissions colleges.
As far as the boarding school’s stats on admission go, it did do an acceptable job: the student was indeed admitted to decent universities. If the guidance officer there was unaware of the family’s specific financial limitations, it is very easy to understand how things went wrong as far as the student being able to actually enroll for the fall.
How did you come up with the college list? And was there any guidance given by her HS at all? I think you’ve been offered some good advice here, from taking a year off and re-crafting a list to looking at the colleges that are still accepting new applications.
I may be guessing wrong, but if I’m not, that’s not the sort of high school the D attended.
@jonri
Did I misinterpret this?
Any decent guidance counselor should be telling the students in junior and early senior year to “talk to your parents about what they will contribute to your college costs, and run the net price calculator on each college’s web site.”
Since the student was admitted to only one unaffordable school (that probably would have been obviously unaffordable in its net price calculator), it appears that the cost evaluation was not done until April, resulting in a financial shut-out.
I hope the OP comes back. There is a lot of really good advice here.
I’m also surprised that she did not get into UIUC, especially if that is their in-state flagship. However, if OP’s D is declaring for STEM, then I have always heard the admissions is more selective than LAS and Humanities…
IL State would most likely accept her, and she may even get merit aid, making the cost very low. Also, UIC in Chicago.
Some MSEP (Midwest Student Exchange Program) schools for IL are: Ball State, UW-Eau Claire, UW-La Crosse, Mankato State in MN, St. Cloud State in MN, U of Missouri-Columbia, U of Kansas. All of these would very likely accept your D, OP, from what I’ve researched, and she would be near the top of the applicant pile, meaning she may also get merit. All of those would also be cheaper than UIUC, even if she does not get merit aid.
Iowa State should be a safety for her, and the OOS tuition is only 19k/yr.
U of Minnesota-Twin Cities also has an affordable OOS tuition at around 20k/year. (That’s just tuition, not including R and B.)
Depending on what she wants to study, I would also look into the small Liberal Arts colleges, and other private schools, throughout the Midwest. Look at Knox College, Beloit, IL Wesleyan, Butler, Drake… Your D would very likely NOT pay the full sticker price at these schools.
Also, there is DePaul, Loyola, and Marquette in Milwaukee.
A 30 ACT is not a high enough score for U of Chicago or Columbia. Things have changed a lot since we parents applied to college, or even when my step-daughter applied, over a decade ago. More kids are applying to college now, and the colleges have become much more selective in their acceptances. But, like everyone else has said before, there are still many, many schools left that would accept her and they are good schools!
I am also wondering given the midwest intersection if she was not referring to Columbia College Chicago?
@boolaHI No; Columbia Chicago is practically open admissions. OP meant the ivy Columbia.
Then, perplexing on many levels–much of it being the inability to create a more strategic and balanced target list.
She would DEFINITELY have been admitted to Columbia in Chicago!
“I’m also surprised that she did not get into UIUC, especially if that is their in-state flagship. However, if OP’s D is declaring for STEM, then I have always heard the admissions is more selective than LAS and Humanities…”
That’s true, but LAS is no walk in the park. Yes, an in-state student with these numbers will generally get in, but there’s no guarantee. It’s possible that the student didn’t get things in on time, or that a lack of enthusiasm for the school was evident in her essays, or that a 3.75 gave her a pretty low class rank.
@epiphany, there are many, many boarding schools out there and not all are the same demographic as St. Grottlesex. Many serve different purposes and constituencies than the elite private boarding schools that may spring to mind. Like @jonri, I think I may have figured out the school’s identity given what the OP said about it in her/his first post.
I echo the hope that the OP will come back because OP’s daughter sounds like she has a lot of potential once she gets past this bump in the road.
@lostParent don’t despair. College isn’t the be all and end all. What is your daughter interested in doing? Does she have any career goals? If she doesn’t, she might be better off working for a year or two then go to college, she’ll have a better idea then what she wants to study. College is an expensive endeavor, she’ll probably incur debt to get a degree, she should be clear about what she really wants out of college before incurring such debt.
I know of many people who didn’t go to college, or only went to a vocational school or trade school and still do very well in corporate America. I also know of people who did go to college and end up unemployed for years and had to take jobs that didn’t need a degree. There are many paths to a good life, not all of them go through college.
"Miami- read the OP’s post. It’s not that the D didn’t get into ANY college, the D wasn’t accepted to an affordable option and wasn’t accepted at Chicago and Columbia, two of the “lottery” type admissions colleges. "
-How the OP list was constracted? Why to apply to Chicago / Columbia with 30/3.75? There are plenty of other places that would be affordable and would be more than glad to have this student. And I bet, that she may have fallen in love with few if she visited them and research them carefully.
Applying only to “the university of Illinois, the university of Chicago, Columbia and the university of Denver.” is very inadequate in number anyway. Why such a low number of colleges? Were they researched adequately and closely enough to esitimate the fit and affordability? All these questions make sense only if the applicant agree to apply somewhere else.
On the other hand, I do not know how to make a kid to apply somewhere else if she refuses. She is very smart, she must have her reasons which are totally unclear to me.
The correct list would take something like 2 years to compile. Maybe others are much more efficient in their search, but that is how long it took me. I did it for fun actually, I was not sure if D. will accept my list, I actually was surprized that she was happy to use it. It was both fun and tedeous as I considered only D’s criteria and nobody’s advice. D. had to withstand the push from GC to apply to Ivy / Elites. She had not interests attending there.
D. applied ONLY to colleges that would offer Merit scholarships, we did not qualify for needs based, not any close. D. did not attend boarding school, but she graduated #1 from the #2 private HS in our state. She worked very hard there and was shocked to discover that she had to adjust her efforts up considerably at in-state public college. it happened to be a perfect match for her. She spent tons of time researching and visiting multiple times all of the colleges on her list.
But again, anybody’s experience is only relevant if kid is considering applying to other places. If not, you may as well skip all of the above as totally irrelevant.
Yes, but…
Based on the OP’s description, shouldn’t it be expected to have reasonably good college application counseling?
Yes, a boarding school with a decent number of admits to the service academies and the others is likely to have strong college counseling. A neighbor of mine has a kid who wanted one of the academies- the boarding school counselor told them not to bother (kid would not be competitive ) and they ignored the advice; kid couldn’t get a Congressional recommendation so the plan fell apart.
I think the counseling might be fine but you actually need to take their advice (and share your parameters vis-a-vis finances, distance, etc.)
Here is where I take issue with the OP. The system generally works. It seems as though the OP is describing the college admission system. That works. IMO the OP should have been more involved in vetting the schools on the application. There are many appropriate choices out there. On these boards the #1 recommendation is start with your safety and go from there.
Even if the family does not want to reveal too much to the counselor, they could at least run net price calculators at home in private (and the counselor should at least suggest that to all students).