Miscalculated yield… miscalculated how many are actually choosing their school? Interesting. How would you find out about which schools?
What’s GC? I feel like I need a decoder ring!
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Yes, some colleges end up with fewer students than anticipated. They will start admitting from the waitlists, but some may accept additional applications.
Some less selective colleges also accept applications for the fall term well into the summer as a normal policy, since they tend not to get filled to their capacities anyway.
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Yield management officers look at various variables to determine which students will enroll and have targets for various groups based on previous data.
Their calculations are only as good as the data. And then teenagers are fickle and can have a passion for a specific college en masse… or decide it has cooties… for no specific reason. Mix that with covid and I don’t envy yield management officers this year.
GC= guidance counselor
You’ll find the list on the NACAC website as well as on this website around May 5. We usually comment on the “best of the bunch”.
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Guidance Counselor 
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Thanks! The admissions counselors so far just refer you to the financial aid office who then refers you to specific scholarship programs who don’t know anything about scholarships outside their program. It’s been a dead end but that’s likely me.
So you have to commit by may 1 and pay your enrollment fee, housing fee, etc. But schools can offer more after that date? Or you could change schools altogether for a better deal and forfeit any fees you’ve paid?
For the love of all that’s holy…this process never ends.
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You are no longer held to the May 1 date. However for a large public university, sending the Housing deposit in March to insure a room can be necessary and is often returned if you dont attend - check with the university youre considering.
Then yes you can forfeit your $300 deposit if you get an offer that saves you $1,000s.
This is fascinating…thank you! I needed you as my guide all year. So it’s not that a school you’ve already applied to may give more money based on yield, but that a school you haven’t applied to might be more generous after May 5th.
Mizzou offered my kiddo $6500, half of his tuition. Less than 25% of the total cost to attend. It was his lowest scholarship, but because the cost of the school (in-state) is less, it made the greatest impact. It just seemed, to me, like his high achievements in high school didn’t really amount to much in terms of merit. I think what it really amounts to is that I’m not sure he applied to the right schools maybe.
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Bingo!
We can’t do what we don’t know. And unfortunately, this entire process is never fully understood by 96% of families.
BTW, I just randomly chose 96%, but I’m sure the truth is some similarly high percentage.
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Ok…I have another kid up to bat for college in a couple of years and I’m not making the same mistake again. How do you find the “right” college? I always assumed in-state public university was the way to go. But I was wrong. Small liberal arts private? He applied to Butler, SLU and Loyola with the exact same result…1/2 tuition scholarship.
Students with 4.0 UW aren’t getting full rides, and even though it’s TO. a 1600 carries more weight than TO (and mine couldn’t get over a 34 ACT). I look at unweighted because grade scales are all over the place (our HS tops out at 4.4). Who knows what going to happen with testing in the future.
Bingo. School B (“haven’t applied to”) realizes come May 1 that they’re short 30 students. They have a STRONG incentive if they have FA for 15 students… to offer it to the first 15 who apply and/or to try and snatch 20 with 10 FA+merit, then splitting the 5 remaining amounts into 10 “merit only” awards. You apply May 6, the day after they posted on the NACAC list. You’re among the first 10. You get the award.
I’m afraid he didn’t apply to the right schools indeed, but if your guidance counselor wasn’t helpful and you didn’t know how to go about it…
Butler, Loyola and SLU don’t meet need and do offer scholarships but I don’t think they have many full tuition merit scholarships. I would have thought Butler would have offered more though.
Did you know about Net Price Calculators (NPCs) and did you run the NPC on each college?
Options for your son (whose academics and profile are, indeed, very strong):
- Truman State is in some ways stronger academically than Mizzou (except for a few fields, and obviously Journalism).
- University of Minnesota Morris (especially strong in CS, if that matters, but one of the top Midwestern publics) would likely cost $15,000 all in (tuition+R&B) based on his stats.
You can still apply to both, so at least he’d have a choice.
What’s your budget?
Would you try and experiment and run the NPC on Skidmore and Whitman - is the result at one or the other or both affordable?
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@joshsmother IDK if you are opposed to the directionals, but a mid to high stats student can go to SEMO for about $10K. Missouri State gets down close to that too with auto merit. My DD’19 goes to NWMSU and it’s about $16K for her on-campus and less than that off-campus.
I know these generally aren’t first choices for high achieving students, but they are affordable. DD was a valedictorian, but not a super high stat, intellectual type. We were only looking at directionals because the price was right, they tended to be the ones that had her major, and they weren’t huge like the flagships. Being from Iowa, where there’s only 3 publics, two of which are huge, we felt like Missouri had a lot of decent options.
Oh, there’s also Truman State which looks like about $14K after top auto merit, and it has a great academic reputation.
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With or without room and board? I pushed like hell for Truman. To remote and too small. 
As opposed to where? Where is this mythical, wondrous city in the USA which has no history and no evidence of present racial segregation? Racial segregation in the rule in American cities, not the exception.
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Might he reconsider now?
It’s not small BTW. Smaller than Mizzou but other than that, medium sized (most students want 5-8,000 as their ideal, apparently, which is medium, up to 10,000. After that is large,and 30,000+ is very large, 2-4,000 small, and under 2,000 very small I think). It’s more academically minded and does have D2 athletes.
The level of racial segregation varies. For residential segregation, Chicago typically shows up in “most segregated” lists compared to others, even though some level of residential segregation exists in the others.
Tuscaloosa got in the news for resegregation of its schools.
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The funny thing is - if you asked 2 people in every state (100) about Truman State, maybe 15 or 20 would know it. Yes, I know it has a great rep…just like SUNY Binghamton…same thing.
My point is - it is a great option. When you apply for a job, no one will care if you went to Florida (yes, ranked 30), MIzzou, Truman State (#7 in the midwest), Colorado, etc. There’s maybe 30 schools in the country…maybe…where their name adds significant value. There are so many great schools - flagships, directional, and otherwise - that will get people great jobs or to a great grad school. We way overplay this.
My daughter has an affordable favorite - about $21K in tuition. College of Charleston. Yet she has a higher ranked school at $6K (Florida State). I know she’s going to choose C of C. Frankly, Florida State is ranked 58th but are people out there going to be like - wow, Florida State…gotta hire her. Of course not. It’s not Harvard.
We’ve all created this crazy system and our kids have bought into it.
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Thought it was my city…St Louis…no?
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Possibly? We can afford Mizzou and he won’t graduate with loans. We don’t NEED college to be any less exactly. It’s really just more that I thought merit was worth more especially since he didn’t apply to competitive schools.
And in reference to Butler, they were lovely in every single way. And they were quite generous without having to write a single pointless essay. They even asked about our pets. It would’ve overall been more expensive, but I do wish it would’ve worked out.
In the end, I think he’s comfortable (ish) with the decision. IU was his first choice but I have now learned OOS public is the worst, especially there. I’m going to peek at the list thats published in May just out of curiosity. And I will go into the college search with my eyes wide open when it’s time for my daughter.
Thank you all so much. It has been an enlightening thread.