<p>Baylor waives the fee for online apps</p>
<p>jmmom, Are they trying to increase the male population for any speciific reason, my s will definitly apply for the 06 year.For Santa Clara</p>
<p>I got the Tulane email app
no fee
no essay
no extracurriculars
just a couselor rec with transcript and SAT scores</p>
<p>I also got the Distinguished Scholars award from them</p>
<p>cym626 - </p>
<p>Ours was not need based. When we visited a college I always made an appointment to meet with an adcom. I would say "We were interested in the school, that's why we made the effort to visit. Would it be possible to waive the applications fee to offset some of our travel expenses?" Something like that. Three smaller private schools waived the fee while 3 larger state schools would not. So our experience was that the privates were more willing than the state schools. One of the public schools, Purdue, would not waive it but told us about a Women In Engineering day in the fall where they would waive the fee if we attended. Since Purdue is about 70 miles away (and gas was much cheaper then) it was worth the drive to get the waiver. Unfortunately my DD had an academic competition that day so we could not take advantage of it. My DD was a NMF but I know at least one of the schools gave us the waiver when we visited her junior year, before any of the NM info was available. My philosophy has always been "It never hurts to ask." Worst they can do is say "no" and you pay the fee anyway. Good Luck</p>
<p>We received a fee waiver code from Northwestern when S expressed interest by email. It came on a small card in an info pack and we nearly overlooked it.</p>
<p>Here is another possibility ....I have a friend who is an alum of a private college in Ohio...he gets two free apps per year and was asking me if I knew of any kids who might use them. I don't know if this is common in alumni associations but might be worth putting the word out or even checking with the schools alumni associations for leads.</p>
<p>Hmmm... I'm wondering if it would simply be good strategy to start out with an email to the admissions department of each college, asking "do you waive fees for online applications?"</p>
<p>jmmom- why would they send an app. w/ no essay? were they trying to recruit him for something?</p>
<p>Pouf, I had the same experience with my son, also with Tulane and possibly Rose-Hullman as well, and probably from other colleges. With my son it was his NM standing - basically colleges want to recruit certain types of students. A college doesn't need to see an essay from some kid with a 1500 SAT and 3.8 GPA if most of their applicant pool has weaker profiles. </p>
<p>But I was trying to assemble a list here that everyone could use, not something tied to any special offer. Nothing wrong with the special offers - it's just that is not something you can predict or control.</p>
<p>All Ivies will waive the fee based on financial hardship if you ask.</p>
<p>OK - I found something cool. Bryn Mawr has a $50 application fee, but that is waived if you contribute $50 to the charity or community organization of your choice. You just have to attach the receipt for your charitable contribution to the application.</p>
<p>Mods, could we make this thread a "sticky"-- the same topic seems to surface again and again.</p>
<p>This is a great thread but as a parent who just went through it, one caveat - someone above said it was useful to know schools one could add to the list "at no cost." But there are costs - lots of them - of the non-financial type.</p>
<p>Each app adds costs in time to the student, parent, GC, GC's clerical helper, teachers who send recs, others who send recs (coaches, EC advisors, etc.), as well as all the folks at the schools that process and read the apps. Often free apps are the ones that must be done online on the school's website, so the common app can't be used for that one. And each extra app just adds to the glut of overall apps we have bemoaned on other threads.</p>
<p>Probably most important, every app that gets added dilutes - at least to some degree - the attention that can get paid to all the other apps. No essay required ones are the most painless, but even one more essay or an activities list in a slightly different format adds more work.</p>
<p>My S's final list had only 6 schools and in the end he applied only to 5. Of the 6, four did not take the common app (3 state univs plus one private), and another sent a free personal app, so he decided it did not make sense to use the common app. Online apps are nice, but we found it was often hard to format the essay and activities lists as he wanted them, so we did a lot of stuff the old fashioned way. Dealing with 5 was plenty, especially when schools started losing apps and misplacing SAT scores. </p>
<p>So think seriously about the other costs, even if an app is "free."</p>
<p>bumping this up</p>
<p>Last year University of Pittsburgh's paper app was free if submitted by October twenty-something. It's a very straightforward 2-page app, and the essay is optional.</p>
<p>My daughter was surprised to receive a letter from Brandeis last fall inviting her to apply, offering to waive her app fee and notify her of their decision within a month. This was after she visited the school, and, though she liked many things about it, realized it wasn't for her. I recall other CC parents discussing several schools with similar practices (can't remember which ones, though).</p>
<p>I got one of those essay-free, quick, free apps from Albertson. And, if I hadn't gotten into Reed I would have applied too. I got it two weeks after apps were due (they said they'd extend the deadline) and I don't really know how I qualified. My PSATs were not that great.</p>
<p>chicago waives app fee for legacies</p>
<p>april:</p>
<p>your points are well taken....maximizing apps dilutes the ability to write high quality essays. OTOH, two schools mentioned here, Tulane and Brandeis, both accept common app. Since these types of schools are actively marketing (to boost their selectivity), I have no problem with the extra work load caused to them by them. But, an unfortunate aspect is the extra workload on local HS staff.</p>
<p>What's perfect is when one learns in time that colleges one's kid is applying to waive fees. Thus far, I see that 2 colleges that S is interested in do this.</p>
<p>Thanks so much everyone for this great thread! I just learned that we'll have to pour lots of money into our house ASAP for some major repairs, so we need to save all the $ we can!</p>
<p>I understand the "diluting" application rationale, but when my son took advantage of a free online app. 5 years ago, it was to a safety that was on his list of possibles... but he might not have bothered if it wasn't free. The school gave him a very strong financial aid package & my son visited. At the time, he got into other colleges higher on his preference list and didn't follow up, but now as a prospective transfer student this is the college he wants to attend, and he has suggested it as a good place for his sister. So I do see it as a potential benefit in adding another safety -- which is something that pays off in the end if the kid doesn't get into top choice schools.</p>
<p>The other thing I noticed is that most of the seven sister colleges (the ones that are still women-only) offer free apps. Again and again I have read about girls who swore they would never attend an all-female school, and then sometimes in spring of their senior year they fall in love with Smith or Mt. Holyoke after being admitted with a great financial aid package -- and usually they end up very pleased with their choice. My guess is that these school do a terrific job of persuasion with their admitted students. Also, the landscape in terms of preferences may change considerably in the spring after the kid has been rejected or waitlisted by their top choices -- at that point the woman's colleges may start to look a lot more attractive than the remaining choices. As the parent of a daughter who is reticent about the idea of a woman's college - but not entirely hostile to it - it seems to me that this seems to be one way to open the door. </p>
<p>I wouldn't encourage my kid to apply to schools she would never consider attending this way - and I certainly wouldn't expect her to work too hard on these apps. One generic essay should do for them all, for example. </p>
<p>I'd also add that since need-based financial aid is important to us, we've got a limit as to how many application fees we can handle, but at the same time a strong incentive to get applications into schools that may be generous in their aid packages. The bottom line on money can really change the picdture in April, too.</p>