I disagree with the advice of one or two posters in this thread who have suggested narrowing your list of schools under consideration to three (3) after all acceptances are known.
In my opinion, it is most important to visit or revisit a school after one has an acceptance in hand. You may see a particular school in a different light once reality sets in.
P.S. I understand that advice if financial aid was a major concern: I also understand that advice if certain schools are clear safeties & the applicant has been admitted to one or more top choices. But neither situation applies here.
@Publisher I agree. He will revisit as many schools as we can get to once he receives his decisions. There will be reasons to visit all schools on the list if he gets in. He’s visited about half of the schools but would want to see them again. And, if he gets into any of his reaches that we didn’t visit, he should go to those as well. There are so many different scenarios that could happen with his acceptances/denials and he can’t really do much to put schools in order in his head since he hasn’t visited them all.
This could go two ways. One, he gets into just a handful of schools and we will be thankful that he applied to so many so that, in the end, he still has a few to choose from. Or, two, he gets into “too many” schools and will be traveling a lot in the springtime. I also think it’s very possible that, if he gets into one or more of his reaches, that he could visit them early on, fall in love, and then be done and not have to visit the rest. We really have no idea how this is going to end up. It’s nerve racking for sure.
@Publisher, I agree that revisits after acceptances is important, and that reality is very different than window shopping. But revisiting a lot of schools is often not practical, for all kinds of reasons. One of our collegekids had 8 acceptances- and there was simply no actual way to get them all in.She had to sit down, look at the colleges and the calendar and start to make some choices- welcome to grown up world. It took Herculean efforts to get her to the ones she did go to (2 of her top 3 were back to back Sat/Sun, in separate hard-to-get-to locations; the scars from navigating the traveling that weekend are still fresh…).
Of course, it’s individual, and there are lots of variables, and 3 is not a magic number. But ime, once they have a final list, most kids can knock several off their list pretty quickly. Shortlisting and the exquisite scary-sweet experience of telling all but one of the schools a definite ‘no thank you’ are part of the growing that the college admissions process can bring.
@collegemom3717 I agree with a lot of what you said but S19’s schools are pretty similar to each other and, with the exception of W&M, one Ivy, and one university, they are all rural LACs. He would need to see them to figure out fit.
I can think of four that would fall off of the list if one particular school is a yes. That would bring him to seven left and they are all reaches so he will not get into all of them. I’ve already started making a list of the admitted students days to see how the schedule could maybe look in April. Three of those reaches are within driving distance of each other and, if more than one comes in, he would visit them on the same trip even if it doesn’t match up to the official admitted students day. And he very likely will not get into any of them! Lol!
Anon is correct that the cost to educate each Amherst student is $96k per year. All students are subsidized by the college’s savings and alumni donations, some more than others.
I got the 96k figure from their annual report, which is where you will find a lot of answers to your questions about budget, by the way.
And Grinnell and Carleton around $56k per student and Williams around $80k. I’d like to be able to figure out those differences. From the Grinnell chart, it looks like academic support and auxiliary activities are the places where they differ the most. The activity number is important because, if one is going to be in a rural location, it would be great to have a lot to do. But Grinnell boasts that it brings tons of activities to campus so why the big difference? And I’m not sure what academic support means exactly except that Grinnell admits to having fewer professors than some other schools. Maybe that’s part of the equation? That also would matter most within one’s major.
Some of the differences in spending may be inconsequential to student life though. Wages and salaries is a big part of the budget, and it likely costs more to hire administrative staff in Amherst MA then in Iowa. Costs more in maintenance and heating to support a school that say has 20 more buildings than another school, or a bigger campus acreage wise. Schools that receive more applicants need more admissions staff. That extra spend is not going to impact student experience once they are enrolled. Athletic budgets is another factor. Schools with more teams and bigger coaching staffs spend more, but that may not have any impact on your student.
Regarding Kenyon, it is only barely an academic fit for a prospective physics major. It has all of the usual upper level physics courses, but all except for the upper level labs are offered every other year, so a physics major has no schedule flexibility (if the needed physics course has a time conflict with something else that semester, there is no way around it). https://www.kenyon.edu/academics/departments-programs/physics/academic-program-requirements/courses/
Note that having needed courses offered only every other year restricts exchange student / study abroad opportunities, since the school that the student will be at during an exchange / study abroad semester needs to offer the courses that the student will miss taking at the home school, and the home school needs to accept it for transfer credit toward the major.
Some purchases are just not quantifiable. If you go to an art show and buy Painting A and you really like it, does it matter that you could have had Sculpture B for half the price? You LIKE the painting you bought. Even if you find out that you could have resold Sculpture B for more money 10 years later, will you regret the Painting? I hope not.
“It’s a conversation that full pay parents who I know do have - if we are paying full tuition, how much of our money is being used for need based financial aid for other students.”
It’s very reasonable concern, I know someone who had it and decide not to send their kid to top school and instead went to another school that gave merit. The friend was very direct about it, he told me, I’m not comfortable spending $250K of my hard earned money to fund four kids to attend for free. You should not be judged for that, but you will, considering this is cc and judgement and humble bragging are the currencies here.
Do not feel guilty or bad about what you’re feeling.
My kid is one who someone else’s tuition is funding- but I know it’s valid for the other party in that equation to find that frustrating. My kid is going to be getting a nearly $76000 a year education for almost nothing and certainly there are many others who are full pay. Her college grant covers everything left after Pell grants, work study, and a tiny amount from us- and that is in line with what we could afford, unfortunately. I’m not gonna lie, I’m just glad that either some people are ok with that or at least haven’t thought about it enough to be mad about it.
@theloniusmonk it’s just hard when we’ve saved for college so our kids could have choices. We had no idea back in 2001 what our S19’s options would be when we started saving. It didn’t really occur to us that we would be on the hook for full pay while others would be able to go to the same school for so much less. $300,000 is a lot of money for anyone. It definitely is for us.
And the reason we have been able to save so much is because we are frugal people. So, to spend that much money on anything is a big deal. We value education and want our kids to go to a school that best fits their needs. Choosing a different, less expensive school that doesn’t fit S19 as well defeats the purpose of us saving for college. It’s just hard to hear when people are sending their kids to a place like Carleton or Bowdoin for way less. We sit in these financial aid breakouts and the admissions people love to talk about the average price of what families are paying and my husband just cringes.
The system is just broken. If you’ve saved, you have to pay. If you haven’t, your choice will probably be limited or, if your student is bright, then you may be able to send them to a school that meets need which is a better deal. If we knew our son would have these scores and grades, would it have made sense to save so much for college for him? He could be one of the kids going to Middlebury for much less.
Actually, college FA is mostly based on income. High income parents who does not save will impose very tight financial limits on his/her kids – the high income will mean not enough or no financial aid, even if there is no savings.
Students in this situation of high income parents with no money to contribute to college will have to greatly “undermatch” in search of large merit scholarships (and not all “undermatch” colleges offer large enough merit scholarships).
So don’t resent the FA recipients, who mainly come from lower to upper middle income families who, even if frugal, may not be able to save up enough to pay list price at a private college.
You wrote that your EFC is $160,000. Many people who don’t get much FA at schools that meet need…have an EFC of $65,000 and have to impose the limits noted above if they have not saved enough. There are also families who can’t afford their $40,000 EFC despite scrimping and saving for years.
All understood. I think I’ve said a few times that we’ve been fortunate and I’m thankful for that. Our income is not super high but our savings is what makes our EFC so high. We had some good years when we were younger and socked much of that money away. And then we prioritized retirement and college savings for the last 18 years. If we didn’t have this savings, we would be in that donut hole where we’d get nothing in need based aid and wouldn’t have had enough money for a private school. I totally understand that.
We are frugal by nature and just want to make sure we are getting good value for our tuition dollars.
@homerdog I don’t mean this to be overly combative…
You have chosen to apply to some of the most expensive schools in the country and then complain about the costs and/or cost of potential subsidies to others. I don’t know if it’s true but as I mentioned some of the high endowment schools “claim” in their financial reports that their expenses per student exceed even full pay tuition and subsidize everyone from the endowment. (Amherst, etc…)
Conversely there are a lot of out of state publics that have near free merit tuition (Alabama) where the taxpayers are subsidizing YOU, but you didn’t seem interested in those. Even UNC in their financial reports suggests they are subsidizing out of state full pay kids about $5,000 per… So there are in theory lots of options, just many that for whatever reason you didn’t consider.
I think the problem is, if there isn’t a clear major and/or career path one can’t use universal consistent quantitative criteria to make decisions. An english major who for sure wants to teach high school students might be best off going to the cheapest in state option; an english major who wants to go to Yale Law would pick a very different school (money allowing)