This also was really useful. Thank you @dustyfeathers. I’m ok with taking out debt the size of a car payment. My husband and I both work so financial aid won’t happen here but it’s great to know that above the 75% is the spot where merit aid might open up.
Duchess – the money part is the trickiest but the most important/helpful to get figured out.
Just about every private school (from Whatev University to Yale) has a sticker price north of $50k. But the average net price of those schools is typically about half the sticker.
But you don’t pay the average net price. You only pay your individual net price, which is a tricky calculus based on your finances and your kid’s qualifications and the profile /finances of the particular school.
Think of the kids sitting in a freshman english class like passengers on a plane flight. They are all getting the same class/flight, but everyone is paying a different price. Some pay full sticker; some have need aid; some have merit aid; some have in-state tuition, etc. etc. etc.
@Misocat Here is what worked well for my oldest (now a college freshman). Sophomore year we did visits to relatively local schools to figure out what type of school he liked (urban vs. suburb vs. college town vs. rural; big vs medium vs small). So we visited Brown but we weren’t looking at Brown but rather an urban school with a defined campus feel. UMass Amherst and Amherst for college town (and big and little). At the end he knew he wanted medium to big and hopefully an urban setting though big enough college town was good.
We then looked at a map and he made those irrational decisions that kids make: nothing further west than Chicago (really west of Pennsylvania but Chicago was cool enough to be ok); nothing south of DC. He also knew (not irrational) that he wanted to study “business” which I expanded to include economics.
With those parameters, I put together a list with his GPA in mind. (He was a 3.5 kid.) That led to a list that was somewhat long but not bad. I also included two schools that I felt he could get into and were affordable…but still met his general criteria (e.g., our state flagship university). And, don’t laugh…on some schools we simply did Google Streetview to make sure there were enough shops (pizza places, bagels, ice cream, etc.) to satisfy him as having lots of stuff to walk to was critical to him.
He ended up with three reaches, three on target, and two safeties. Applications went in and answers came back (dinged from two reaches; the rest acceptances). He didn’t apply ED anywhere; we couldn’t gamble on the affordability; but he applied EA to all of the schools on his list that had it. Two were affordable without aid; two others became affordable with aid. Fortunately, one of the reaches was affordable and it was (he later said) his first choice all along. 
That said, he did understand that a couple fell off the list because the schools gave us $0 aid.
I think the best thing we did was figuring out the urban/rural thing and the size thing. That is really, really critical and is a great way to begin to make the list manageable. Sorry if my writing wasn’t clear; ping me if you have any questions. Best of luck!
You’d be surprised about where your kid might get need based aid, even if you both work. It is worth running the net price calculators on the college websites. If you are looking for merit aid, it changes the search parameters quite a bit.
OP, good news that your D is just a freshman. Mostly you should be thinking about finances at this point. She should take a fairly rigorous college prep schedule (but NOT every AP offered if her school offers a lot – leave some time for ECs in or out of school that interest her). We didn’t do any visits with our kids until a couple 2nd semester of sophomore year, then really ramped it up for junior year. That worked pretty well for us.
Start visits with matches and safeties. It is super easy to find reaches – the match and safety search is a lot more challenging for many students.
I really wouldn’t be talking to your kid about college much at all now except to encourage being on the higher level academic tracks, focusing on good grades, and trying out and working on ECs she likes.
Oh I would like to add ‘Don’t fall in love with one school’. It will be clear the further you go in this process. You just never know which school they will be accepted.
Great ideas within the thread. May have already been mentioned, but Fiske is a good reference book. The write up on the schools we focused in on is spot on with our takeaway from virtually each school.
Another thing I highly recommend at least for your top schools is schedule a one-on-one meeting with someone significant within the school or major of interest. We did this at several. In each case, I located the email address of the Dean of the department (In our case it was the business school). I reached out and let them know we would be on campus for the info session and tour and was wondering if it would be possible to meet with the appropriate person within their area to get a better feel for the actual major, it’s resources, , etc. (Yes, most of that information is on the web, but nothing like a face to face to get the real sense of a place.) Virtually all of the responses were quite positive and resulted in private tours of the business school, conversations with career services, student services, study abroad, etc. I recall a few even laying out what four yrs would look like assuming a specific major (sequence of classes, when to intern, likely companies to intern with, when to study abroad and with which program. It really showed the level of interest the school had in the student information gathering process and provided much more in depth, useful information than the regular tour / info session. Several of the folks asked my S to follow up with them personally if he had more questions and some wanted him to let them know if he applied.
In a few cases, it changed my S’s opinion of the place from “eh” to “wow that was pretty cool”.
Of course, to get to this point, you must have narrowed down your list substantially. Using the methods others have suggested is a good starting point.
Another takeaway from other threads on this list (some very amusing) was how to approach the schools that you want to tour.
If you can google-stalk the best approaches to the schools you think are perfect for your child, it may help. Letting your GPS randomly take you through the single crappy street leading to the school can ruin that first impression, even if all other 99 streets are gorgeous and filled with magical shops. Some kids have been known to refuse to get out of the car.
Extending from that idea, if your child is leaning toward X Wonderful School, and you want to cement that deal, you can plan your other school visits to cast that school in an even better light in comparison. You can do this by first going to a few schools that you know he/she will NOT like, and when you finally get to X Wonderful School, it will look that much better.
You can also manage impressions by google walking around the neighborhood or city to find things your child likes. For example I wanted Child to have the best possible impression of Y school. City surrounding Y school turns out to have a museum devoted to a passion of Child. Before going to Y school, we stopped for a quick lunch next to the museum. Child was delighted, buoyed by the lunch and harmonious museum experience, and loved Y school that much more.
Another question for experienced parents. So is admissions looking for the SAT/ACT range in 50th-75th percentile. In other words, if son gets let’s say 27 on SAT the lower end of the 50th percentile range of 27-31 - is that then a reach or a match?
Hoping i’m explaining my question well. Does a school say “oh, this kid is in the upper band of our 50th percentile range or lower band of the range” or are they just looking for kids who score somewhere in that range?
I’m not sure if they are looking for above 50th percentile or within the 50th percentile range?
Schools generally want the highest GPA and test scores they can get. In addition to helping hold up the college academically, it helps with the USN&WR rankings. Colleges compete for the high-scoring students and they will do so by offering merit money (scholarships).
If your child is in the school’s lower range of acceptable scores, that would be a “reach”.
If your child is in that school’s top 25% of applicants, you can generally expect to receive an offer of merit IF that school gives FA based on merit. Some schools only award aid based on need–need as defined by them.
An example of a school that gives need-based-only aid is Barnard.–https://www.collegedata.com/cs/data/college/college_pg03_tmpl.jhtml?schoolId=119
A school that gives merit and need-based aid is Mt. Holyoke. – https://www.collegedata.com/cs/data/college/college_pg03_tmpl.jhtml?schoolId=255
Another school that gives a merit and need is Juniata. https://www.collegedata.com/cs/data/college/college_pg03_tmpl.jhtml?schoolId=441
I have two in college now and one a high school junior. The two in college are at very different places, one highly ranked state flagship, one medium LAC far away. Here are some of the things I didn’t think about in the first two searches that I now place much more importance on based on the experience of the two actually in college.
Location: It’s not just about the kid’s comfort level being close to or far from home. It is also cost of trips home or willingness to spend breaks at school. Is it a campus that clears out on all long weekends/breaks? Do you have family/friends nearby that they can go to? How will they feel about you being able to/not able to attend any performances/sporting events etc.?
Also, apart from the tippy top schools, internships and jobs both summer and permanent will be easiest to get in the area near the school. This matters more in some fields than others but pay attention to this. These are great questions to ask the career center.
What is immediately surrounding the school? Is it easy to walk to a drugstore, coffee shops, etc. Is there a good public transit system available.
How easy is it to get registered for the classes you want to/need to take? Don’t ask admin this question, ask current students.
What is important to the healthy mental stability of your particular student and does the college offer that? These could include good safe walking/nature trails, gym facilities easily available for non athletes, well kept lawns and gardens, beautiful architecture, faith based organizations, musical performance groups easy for non majors to participate in…
What is the level of diversity? Are you looking to be surrounded with people like you or different than you. There isn’t a right and wrong answer on this one. And because each person is multi faceted for most students at most schools they will be in the majority in some ways and the minority in others. Which of these matter most to you?
Lots of great advice. I feel like I need to map out all the questions to consider and criteria on another sheet of paper that I need to make sure I think about as we keep moving forward on this.
A couple of questions on financial aid and college drive-bye:
Wrt to calculating financial aid, I’ve been told from some people that sometimes with aid/scholarships private schools may end up being more affordable than public/state schools…is that true? How accurate do people feel the NPC is vs what they actual received in aid from that school? And do any aid/scholarships cover housing etc or only tuition?
On the college tours, I was thinking of using the upcoming winter break to start visiting some colleges with my D but not sure that’s an accurate representation of the school since won’t most kids be on break? Or does that not matter right now and we can get enough of a feel even during the break?
Some schools are notoriously accurate on their NPC’s- I’ve been told by a sibling that Princeton’s NPC was within $5 of the actual award (which went up every year as costs increased). Others are not.
However- this is both an input problem (your finances) and an output problem (what the calculators tell you). If you own a business, the NPC’s are not likely to be accurate. If you are divorced, potentially with stepparents in the financial equation, less likely. If you have complicated assets- a trust for example- not likely to be accurate.
But if you get a W2 and there is one or two wage earners in the household, both parents to the kid in question, and random money market account, a checking account, and some IBM stock you’ve had since 1982 when you worked at IBM you are going to get a more accurate picture.
re: winter break- depends on what you expect to see. If your D is trying to figure out whether Northwestern is close enough to downtown Chicago for her needs- visiting over New Year’s is just fine. If you want to figure out whether Middlebury is a pain to get to, then the holidays won’t change that.
If you want to get a “feel” for the place, then a small college is going to feel deserted. Bigger U’s have grad students and professional schools and more of a life of their own without undergrads.
So what do you hope to learn?
A log of aid/scholarships can cover the room & board, but be aware that that can count as taxable income for your student. This is usually not a huge deal since your student is a low earner, but it’s something to be aware of.
And yes, private schools often can be more affordable than public schools with aid, but every one seems to calculate aid differently. Often your ‘safety’ schools will try to tempt you with very generous aid packages so they can boost their averages.