<p>Chocolate:</p>
<p>I don't know anything about JMU except that many posters like it a lot. I also second Indiana. I really liked Bloomington when I visited many years ago, and it has some great faculty and programs. So your S should apply to JMU by all means but also check out Indiana and a few others.</p>
<p>Chocolate: (makes me hungry just typing that!) I don't know if your school has this or not but check out previous years students' results. Our school tracks SAT scores, GPA, class rank and where the kids applied and the results. If you've got that track record available you can see where your son fits in relatives to other's stats and where they've gotten in.</p>
<p>By the way, I live in Indiana and am pretty familiar with IU - since 1/2 my daughter's graduating class goes there. Everyone of my daughter's friends is really happy. Fun place, neat town, pretty campus (but big!), school spirit, some classes are tough (kelly school of business, music), others aren't. Any other questions, ask away.</p>
<p>I have some question on IU-Bloomington if you don't mind:
Is IU a heavy party/drinking school?
Does IU offer good finicial aid to out-of -state students?</p>
<p>Flatlander...our son's guidance counselor told him NOT to waste time applying....to the school at which he is presently a sophomore. It was one of two reach schools (he got accepted at both). GC did not consider the weight his music audition would have at both places. Of course, this GC was clueless about college admissions for our kid in general, and was a poor advocate for him anyway. When he got his letter of acceptance (also with a $10000 per year renewable merit award), he copied it and handed it to the GC who didn't even have the decency to say "congratulations". The good news is dd does not have the same GC.</p>
<p>Thumper, our kids had the same GC because the GC's were assigned to the kids alphabetically.</p>
<p>Our GC staff in general was as clueless and helpless as your son's GC seems to have been. At an info session near end of junior year, their considered advice was that no student should apply to more than 2 or 3 schools, because if they were admitted to several schools they might deny a placement to one of their own classmates.</p>
<p>If the better and more academically ambitious students had all followed that advice they'd all be going to the nearby state college or community college.</p>
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<blockquote> <p>Thumper, our kids had the same GC because the GC's were assigned to the kids alphabetically.>></p> </blockquote>
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<p>Ours are also assigned alphabetically. They switched the assignments when DD began her freshman year. YAY!! I honestly think it is because families were complaining about having the same incompetent person over and over again (and the GCs were probably sick of dealing with folks like me who wanted them to do SOMETHING). The GC our daughter has tries harder. He answers calls very quickly and finds out answers to questions quickly. He resolved a scheduling issue in five minutes (the old GC NEVER dealt with my son's schedule...it always took the principal to tell her she had to do it). I'm not sure this new GC will be more helpful with the college process, but he sure is a lot easier to deal with. If I showed you the list of colleges they handed out...the ones that visit our school...you would NOT be impressed. The school sights are not very high, and when students ask for more, it is hard for them to deliver. Bottom line...parents need to be very vigilant, and do a lot work for their kids. Relying on the GCs would be a huge mistake.</p>
<p>When I lived in Pennsylvania, many kids looked at James Madision as a college choice. And it seemed to me that they were excellent students. That is not to say that they were the midrange of what JMU accepts; but I do know that the grade range of kids applying to colleges has become very narrow at the high range. If you flip through any college guide that give you the profiles of the colleges, you will find that the range of students who are in the top 10-25 % of the class are scrunched up right at the top. I tried to do some charts with a 25-75% midrange in the grade spectrum, something easily done with SAT1 scores and found that it is far less meaningful with grades or class ranks. </p>
<p>If your school has had a lot of experience with kids applying to JMU, your GC could be giving you valuable info--that you should be looking at some safety schools that are less selective as well as JMU. It could also be the situation that your GC is hedging her bets. It's really hard to say. I know with my boys, their profile was so erratic that the highschool counselors had difficulties assessing their chances at schools. So we covered the low range a lot lower than we ended up needing to go and also hit the high range just in case. Heck, if you get in everywhere you apply, and left out some schools just cuz you thought you would not get in, you did not shoot high enough, in my book.</p>
<p>About IU: I can't answer about out-of=state financial aid because every kid I know there is in-state. As to drinking/partying: I think there is a fair amount there as there is as a lot of schools. I really believe (perhaps naively) that kids today - and I cannot believe I just wrote that, I sound like my mother!! - are very tolerant of drinking/not drinking. I think that if a kid doesn't want to drink, it's perfectly okay. And if they want to, they will find a party somewhere. </p>
<p>I know a few kids in the honors college at IU and they're having the same initial reaction: the more "academically-oriented" students are generally in upper level and honors classes. There certainly are lots of them around but with such a large student body, you have to look a little harder. There may appear to be more partying during the week because there are more "laid-back" students. I know this is not coming out right and I hope you understand what I'm trying to say.</p>
<p>There's also plenty of studious kids. I know several freshmen who will be applying to Kelly School of Business and they are busting their butts off. It's a very rigid curiculum, even before you're admitted and they know the competition is stiff and there's little room for error. Because of a scheduling snafu, they have mid-terms tonight, yes Sunday, from 6-8:00 and then tomorrow morning at 6:20 a.m. So, believe me, there's no partying for them this weekend!</p>
<p>Wolfpiper-
You asked about out of state aid to Indiana. My daughter applied as a double
major last year about this time as an out of state student. She was awarded $8k annually shortly after she received acceptance--which came very quickly after she did the online application.</p>
<p>She was invited to apply to the Honors College who subsequently awarded her an additional $5k annually, for a total award of $13k annually. We were surprised that their Honors program also awarded scholarship money. We would not have been eligible for need-based aid at this school.</p>
<p>Her stats: top %3, 98.1 GPA, SAT 1380, SATII 800, 710, 660. She didn't attend but was very impressed with the campus after visiting for audition weekend at the Music School. An amazing facility for performing artists!
And a great overall campus environment and terrific college town. She had some concerns that it wasn't in a larger city though.</p>
<p>A common problem...what is a safety given the competitive climate nowadays? I would think any selective school is not a safety in general regardless of the applicant. The selection process is too quirky to predict. Your state schools are the "safest" and easiest to predict.</p>
<p>Consider as others have stressed applying to rolling admissions to lock something up ( and early action ).</p>
<p>Chocolate.....kids around here often use Indiana, Kansas,Arizona and FSU as safeties.</p>
<p>In addition to early notification, there's another benefit to choosing a state school with rolling admissions as a safety: The acceptance sometimes comes with an invitation to the school's Honors college, making the safety that much more attractive.</p>
<p>Chocolate: it's so tough to see a sensitive teenager (and they almost all are) deflated by a thoughtless remark. Concentrate on the idea that it's a match, not a bubble.</p>