How many was she able to visit?
It’s not about a number. 4 schools can be enough if at least one of them is guaranteed to admit her, be affordable, and she is willing and able to attend. This is called a safety school and is the ONLY essential school on any list. With that, a list can be 1, 2, or 20.
Your daughter was not red-flagged and you don’t get into “top” colleges in this country simply by checking off boxes. U of Denver is a private college and, yes, has very high tuition. They are under no obligation to make it affordable.
@lostParent,
You seem authentic to me-authentically angry, an attitude that will not help your daughter. I can understand how upsetting it must be that your daughter is in this position, but I think many of us have given you good ideas for ways to move forward. Stewing over whether unhooked white girls who need financial aid are shafted in the college application process is unproductive. Many parents here have kids in the same position.
As has been pointed out here repeatedly your daughter’s list was not well composed. Two high reaches, one match school with a perhaps incomplete application and an unaffordable private your daughter didn’t want to attend do not add up to a solid list. Frankly, you and your daughter need to take some responsibility for that list. No one prevented her from applying to additional schools. My D was a senior in boarding school this year too and we spent her junior year spring break visiting schools and concentrating on finding good likely schools.
It sounds like the college counseling office did a poor job advising your daughter, but how many times did you contact them? How many conversations did you have with your daughter about her college choices? How much research did you do about the cost of these schools and the statistics of the kids admitted to them? Why did you not take action the moment her college results came in?
What strikes me most in reading this thread is that it is the HS’s problem (you speak about being let down) or the college’s fault (they didn’t “see” her) but nowhere do you take any responsibility for yourself (as parent and advocate for your child) or your child herself. Anyone who goes through life waiting for other people to notice they are special is going to spend a lot time waiting.
What was/is your expectation for your kid’s college experience? Do you “only” want elite/selective/flagship type schools?
Its not about how many schools.
Its about making choices that are affordable & where she wants to attend.
One D applied to just two schools, but lots of kids apply to only one, EA or ED.
If you really need merit money, because you cant afford your EFC, then larger numbers of applications may be necessary.
Shes an adult now?
Youve labled her as being so shy she wasnt admitted to college, but now you want the next steps to all be on her?
What indication has she given that she doesnt need any help?
Based on our experience, I’d agree and advise other parents to prep the you-know-what out of their kids. If more prepping raised her SAT/ACT score, that could have tipped it. An admissions office doesn’t know or care whether you walked in off the street and took it or prepped for months.
“But she is an adult now. It’s all up to her at this point. Our role as parents has changed, but we will still do whatever we can to help.”
Why are you leaving it all up to her? Since you are going to be paying for her college education it behooves you to take a role - regardless if she is now an “adult.” Your role now (at it should have been before she turned 18) is advisory and you need to take that seriously - not throw up your hands and say it’s all up to her since she is now 18.
Also, in terms of McGill, engineering would not be cheap.
The cheap degrees there are the BA and B of Arts&Science (where you take 36 credits in a science major, which includes CS, and 36 credits in a non-science major).
OP, you still haven’t answered our questions about your daughter’s Illinois application; by most measures she should have gotten in. If we know more, we might be able to advise how to avoid whatever mistake she may have made the next time.
Also, you need to stop this business of blaming schools for not admitting your daughter, or giving her enough aid. Private schools are expensive, and they don’t OWE anybody financial aid. U of Chicago and Columbia are among the top universities in the world, and they turn down thousands of fabulous candidates. That’s life. Get over it. And focus on how to move on.
Actually, it’s NOT all up to your D alone. She will need to report PARENT finances on her FAFSA until she is 24, so your financial contribution will still matter when she decides to apply to colleges this summer or next year. As others have pointed out, there are still many good colleges taking applications for next fall. One of my D’s friends applied to one and got in and is now going there next year. She already had acceptances in hand but a teacher thought this one would be the best fit, and it was. It’s possible your daughter can still find such a school as well.
The point is to be realistic. My older D was a good but not great student, had good but not great SAT’s and is white and unhooked. She applied to 5 colleges originally, and added a 6th at one of the those “still accepting applications” upon her dad’s suggestion. She got into all of them. The reason she is that she was realistic about her chances at getting in and her dad affording them.
My younger D comes from very different circumstances and her list will be very different. But we started with a TRUE safety and worked up from there. It’s the only way to go these days, and the good people on CC are great at suggesting safeties if you don’t know how to find them.
Lastly, I’d get off the “The only thing that seems to matter in the academic world is pedigree and credentials - and the number of significant digits in your parents’ bank account.” That’s just BS. D goes to a grade 6-12 school and we’ve watched many kids get into colleges without a pedigree or credentials, or a ton of money. The one thing they all have in common is that the school helps them choose APPROPRIATE application lists, with parent input. I guess your D’s school either didn’t do that or you thought it wasn’t important. But it’s really not “them against you”. There are nearly 4,000 colleges-there are plenty that would welcome your daughter.
@lostparent, on reading your opening post, I knew before I looked that you were a new member. You will soon see where things went wrong if you read threads on the College Search and Selection, College Admissions, and Financial Aid forums here on CC. Then - go to the University of Chicago and Columbia University specific forums, and read the statistics of the students posting there in this application cycle - the ones that were accepted AND those that were rejected. You’ll see your daughter has a LOT of company.
My son is an introvert - extremely shy. He has a 93 unweighted GPA and a mediocre/low SAT score (under 2000!). He wants to go into STEM but refused to sit again for the SAT. He applied to only 6 colleges in this cycle but we chose them carefully: two reaches for his stats (that’s information you need to know - have you heard of the Common Data Set?); two matches; two safeties. He was rejected from one reach and waitlisted at the other; accepted to his matches, and of course accepted to his safeties. He will be attending a college he is thrilled about (one of the “Colleges that Change Lives”) with an academic scholarship and substantial financial aid.
Use this year to educate yourself and your daughter and act accordingly next fall - she will have MUCH better results if you do.
Based on our experience, grades, reputation of school, recommendations, & essays made the difference, re: my kids being admitted to all their choices.
They didnt really prep for the tests, although one did get better scores on the ACT than SAT.
@lostparent “Would like to know why you think this list is odd. She developed it working with an academic guidance counselor.”
The list was too short and aggressive. I would apply to probably 8 to 10 schools for a student like this. If you only apply to 4 colleges, the situation you are in now is going to happen occasionally.
She is a very good student and can get admitted to better schools, get a better financial deal, or possibly both, depending on what you do next. It is true that colleges have gotten more competitive, and students and parents need to work through the application process very thoughtfully. The process and the level of competition have changed a lot since you went to college.
We could really use a bit more information to be more helpful to you in moving forward.
- What subjects is she interested in studying? Is interested in math or engineering? Humanities?
- Did she take any AP exams?
- Would she studying to try to raise that ACT a bit? For example a 32 could be helpful in admissions and in some cases it could also help with merit aid.
- Would she consider some of the University of Illinois peer institutions, such as Wisconsin, Purdue, Indiana, Penn State, or Ohio State?
- For lower cost, she should reapply to Illinois, and one or two more in-state schools.
- Would she consider any liberal arts colleges?
Action items If I woke up in your situation:
If you are happy with University of Illinois - Chicago, Bradley, Loyola, or Southern Illinois Carbondale, and the school is affordable, then there is not much that needs to be done.
However, if you want to be admitted to a better school, get more merit aid, or possibly both, you have a lot of work to do.
- Develop a preliminary application list based on schools. Do this now, it may evolve, but I would get it done now. I would post the list with a rationale for each school and get input. I would plan on 8 to 10 schools. Be sure they have subjects that she is interested in, that you can afford them and that the list is reasonable for her statistics.
- I would get her a Skype tutor and get her studying on a weekly schedule for the ACT and retake it this fall. Even a modest improvement would help.
- I would get a consultant to review her essays. They can always be better, and it is possible that the initial ones were the problem. College essays are not like school essays for English. Good English essays can be poor college essays and vice versa. An experienced editor can make a difference.
- I would also work with a consultant to use this gap year to enhance her Extra Curricular activities.
You don’t have to justify your position to anyone on this forum, but people are only trying to help with suggestions of where she could get in this year, or if she wants to take a gap year, where she could go next year with a lot of financial aid or merit money. What she needs to realize is that she can’t have it all - she might not get a big financial award at a highly ranked urban school but she might get a big merit award at a more rural school, or a lower ranked one. We don’t know how much you make. School might expect you to pay more than $5000 per year (or borrow the difference). You can make an estimate of that by looking at your EFC for this past year; if it was $25k or $40k it is very likely that most schools are going to expect a family contribution that you might find unreasonable (many of us have been there, been in shock of how much we are expected to pay or borrow). A full merit award for tuition would still leave you with $10k or so for room and board and other costs like travel, books, health care.
There is a lot of advice on CC for kids looking for a lot of merit to go to Alabama or Temple. I advise people to ‘go cold’ to Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, Utah, South Dakota, especially for STEM majors. Most of those schools are rural, but have 10,000 or so college students so it is not like going to a really rural place like Williams or Middlebury. At Wyoming, for example, her tuition would be 150% of instate, or about $7000 per year. She might get even more scholarship money from the engineering department. Utah awards instate tuition after a year if you jump through some hoops. There are midwestern exchange schools in Wisconsin where she could attend for a fraction of what UICU would cost, with great programs in natural resources science. None of them are going to be $5000 or less.
Almost all of our kids made this same choice. If you want money, you have to give up something - ranking, location, ‘dream’, friends attending, perfect program. You can’t have it all, but what you can have can be pretty great. She can start at the local community college and save lots of money too. She has to decide what is most important to her, going to college or going to a highly ranked college. If it is to go to only a school on her list, she may not ever go.
Right, we relied too much on “experts”. I blame myself 100% for this and am working to move on. We didn’t realize how absurd the idea of getting into Columbia or U of Chicago was. I am, admittedly very angry about this crazy process - and straight up hostile towards the U of Illinois, I’ll admit it - and I’m doing everything in my power to not communicate this to my daughter. In fact it’s one reason I posted to this site. I didn’t want any of this toxic crap to come out verbally within our home. For my daughter’s part, she has proven impressively resilient and already has a summer job. She, and my wife, are doing better than I am.
I always recommend the University of Pittsburgh as a match/safer school for strong students. I am confident your d would have a good chance at admission, and she could know by mid-October, because they’re a rolling admission school. Their 25th-75th ACT percentiles are 26/33, so your d falls in the middle of that range. With $27K tuition for out of state students, they may be out of your range financially. However, if she could raise her ACT 2 points on the September ACT, she’d be eligible for the Honors College there, and be considered for merit aid as well. It’s really a terrific school, with strong academics and student body.
When I googled “30 ACT engineering merit scholarship,” Baylor came up as the first hit: http://www.baylor.edu/admissions/index.php?id=868559 These are for freshman applicants; there is less aid available at any school for transfer students, so your daughter will want to maintain her status as a freshman applicant, not a transfer.
Are you saying you think your daughter was at an admissions disadvantage because she is shy and quiet? I am curious as to how colleges know that about their applicants?
She may need some help, I realize. But first, I don’t want to do any more harm. I’ve done enough already.
Do you actually want advise- or just to vent? I really do understand that - sometimes you just need to put things out into the universe- esp if you don’t want to talk about it at home. (And I applaud you for keeping toxicity away from your kid) there has been a LOT of great advice offered- and you don’t seemed to have commented as much on that. Don’t want people to spend time offering of you just wanted a place to let go
This is completely untrue. My D worked her tail off, earned almost a full year of AP credits, had great extracurriculars, grades, and an ACT of 32. She was rejected by Duke - didn’t take it personally, knew it would be unlikely to be affordable if she did get in, as we don’t have need but also don’t have $250K to spend on college. She had one school that would have cost her $50k/year - which was well above our EFC. Crossed that one off the list pretty quick. But she then had several other schools offer her substantial merit money - so yes, her hard work did pay off, as did the hard work of finding schools where she stood a good chance of earning merit money. The key is to find a school that is looking for people like your D. Columbia, even if you get in, doesn’t need to offer substantial discounts to get top students to attend. But there are many mid-range, great quality private and public schools that WILL pay for a high-stats student. Blaming the system isn’t the problem - understanding the system, however, is the answer.
Help her find schools that offer merit money to students that look like her. They’re out there.
@Much2learn, those neighboring OOS public flagships are likely unaffordable for the OP without substantial merit money (possible from Purdue and OSU, though I’m not so sure with those test scores; I wouldn’t expect any from UW-Madison or PSU).
BTW, for engineering, NMTech and SDMines are cheap OOS options. High male-female ratio (as you’d expect for tech institutes).