re: # 339, Because he probably did not know about them. Most kids in high school don’t know about other schools besides their own state schools, local area LACs and HYPS. Most kids - and their families do not know where to look for scholarships and often miss the best opportunity for scholarships - applying directly to the school.
@“Ya Ya” he didn’t want to be locked into a tech school in case he changed his mind. Stevens tried to woo us for awhile and I just couldn’t get him to budge. As far as cyber security - his major has always been computer science and unsure what he wanted to do with it. but now that he got into UMD honors and possibly the Aces program he is sure that is what he wants to do.
Tcnj was not ever in the picture until we realized how expensive everything was after doing the Fafsa and getting our EFC. So we insisted he add one state school. He said Rutgers deadline has past so tcnj was the next best option.
Now that we are pretty sure of cyber security I have started looked into the government scholarships and most don’t start until you are a junior or senior in college. But I a, still looking and hope to find some.
Thank you.
@intparent not bad. But he is smart. He knows how to say what we want to hear. What he thought was the best option was to go to tcnj one year and then transfer out to a scoop that will accept his national merit finalist status and give him full ride or big discount. I just need to find that list of schools. Again back to GC it was never told to us exactly what it meant beyond the possible scholarship dollars. Frustrating.
In reference to the Slate article mentioned upthread, @aehshm wrote
Educating parents and their children about the financial realities of a college education would be a noble cause.
I understand that colleges push the grand quads and happy students on their webpages and suggest financial aid is available to all… but take some responsibility for your own future, people. In the end, it’s your decision and your responsibility.
The tone of the Slate article is one of victimhood. I find it had to believe that a middle class family with a child already attending the same pricey college didn’t understand their family’s financial situation. The party that dropped the ball in this instance was the parents, not the college. To me, the take-home-message of the Slate article is don’t let emotion overtake the college decision process.
Happy to see aehshm coming around to the financial realities before it’s too late for her son.
@lookingforward yes he gets that. Needs to be the right money
Merit scholarships are generally best for frosh, but much less common for transfers.
The NMF list is at http://nmfscholarships.yolasite.com/ . But be prepared to be disappointed when you look at the school web sites and find that most or all of them only give NMF scholarships to frosh. However, if he is willing to attend such a school as a frosh, and its deadline has not passed, that may give another low cost option.
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@aehshm wrote:
What he thought was the best option was to go to tcnj one year and then transfer out to a scool that will accept his national merit finalist status and give him full ride or big discount. I just need to find that list of schools.
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??? What?? there is NO LIST of those schools.
I thought you said that your son is NOT a NMF. If he is, then he needs a better strategy…there are schools that will STILL award him their big NMF award for making NMF…deadlines are not all passed. If he’s not a NMF, then what’s the point of that post?? He would have known that he was or wasn’t a NMSF last Sept.
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Tcnj was not ever in the picture until we realized how expensive everything was after doing the Fafsa and getting our EFC. So we insisted he add one state school. He said Rutgers deadline has past so tcnj was the next best option.
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You’ve recently learned EFC and then he applied to TCNJ…he would have known if he was going to be a NMSF/NMF at that point. Some of this isn’t making any sense.
Even if your son is a NMF, there are NO SCHOOLS that give transfers ANY money for having been a NMF. Those awards are for incoming frosh ONLY.
Is your son a NMF???
Are you going to have your son NOW submit an application to UAH??
This discussion started out as a general discussion but has morphed into helping one specific person in a very specific situation. Maybe a separate thread is in order?
“What I learned during my “college search and application” process is that you don’t let kids to decide what they want and do all the work. You have to do a lot of work yourself, or you’ll be in a lot of financial trouble .I have seen several financial disasters because of “shooting for the stars” with no financial means.”
^^ THIS^^
God, if we could ONLY require parents to read this when their kids were Sophomores in HS, a lot of fully preventable grief and angst could be avoided.
I’m pretty sure UTD stacks outside scholarships I know texas tech does not stack but provides 100% of expenses including travel and incidentals.
@ Ya Ya
“…What I learned during my “college search and application” process is that you don’t let kids to decide what they want and do all the work. You have to do a lot of work yourself, or you’ll be in a lot of financial trouble…”
Yep. We were lucky to avoid major financial trouble with kid #1, what with all of our ignorance about college costs and how to hunt down good options. We are MUCH better prepared with kid #2, thanks to CC.
Changing direction somewhat, my daughter’s small independent school offers a mandatory college admissions seminar that meets once a week beginning in January of the junior year. Parents and student are also required to fill out a detailed questionnaire, and those surveys include financial constraints and instructions to go to the CB financial aid calculator as a starting point. So far, the counselors have gone over a number of useful topics - including the distinction between merit aid and need-based aid, what is the FAFSA and the CSS Profile, etc. They also sent home a very illuminating handout that documented all of the MERIT based awards received by their graduates since 2010. The data was anonymous but for each award, the school indicated the unweighted GPA of the student and the SAT (M+CR) or ACT or both.
What I found encouraging was that there were a lot of B/B+ students with unimpressive standardized test scores that nonetheless got into regional LACs and universities with significant merit aid. There were also top performers who got awards at more competitive schools. It doesn’t seem that they are chasing prestige primarily, although I know anecdotally that a few students have gone on to attend Brown, Cornell, Princeton (no merit obviously). The majority, however ended up at the state flagship or CTCL schools (or equivalent) with merit.
After reading some of the commentary here, I am now even more appreciative that the school is devoting resources to in-depth counseling and setting realistic goals for the students, rather than pushing high-profile places solely to enhance the school’s status.
mama,
sounds like the school has a GREAT counseling center!
I wonder if the GC’s read CC? 
@menloparkmom The counselors have prior experience working in college admissions, so I think that helps!
We got off-track and those posts have been moved to a new thread, if anyone is following them.
My son was accepted at NJIT with a full ride and given a good merit money at Rutgers but would like to attend an
OOS school. He thinks that NJIT and Rutgers are all back up schools. Is NJIT that bad?
@DesperateMomDad What’s his chosen major? Can’t speak to NJIT but Rutgers is very good, even if people in NJ don’t appreciate it.
You might want to start your own thread on this topic as it is likely to get buried here and might go off on a tangent.
Good luck with your decision!
I, frankly, would cringe if I saw someone wearing this. You don’t have to tear down those schools to make yourself feel better about the school you are going to attend. It’s sour grapes, and it’s not authentic. If you could afford it you’d send your kid to one of those in a heartbeat. I would.
This whole tattooed social media share everything pithy t shirt society really astounds me sometimes. You don’t need to tell everyone your whole life or wear it on your sleeve (sartorially or literally).
Those are really awesome schools. They also entail really awesome debt for a lot of people. In my opinion, what’s smart is not the school you choose, but the lifestyle you choose.
I was sitting in a cafeteria this weekend with a bunch of other parents while their kids were interviewing for a slot in a competitive thingy (I’m being deliberately vague here). The amount of name dropping and one upsmanship was gagging. Harvard blah blah blah MIT blah blah blah. Someone made the mistake of ignoring my “go away” visual signals of earbuds, a book, and a hood pulled up over my head to ask me where my kid was looking at colleges.
I stared at him and said “do I know you”? I mean really. Really. What good can come of Jimmy Joe Bob data mining me for his own satisfaction?
I refuse to participate in the dog and pony show that uses ones’ kids to make them feel like they can check off a box on a success rubric. Sheesh. And don’t get me started about the whackjob prepping going on for the interview itself and the ludicrous rules in place to prevent the parents from following the kids into the interview (l’m appalled that they even need to have rules like that). I said to my kid, “have fun” and gave her a hug.
And you know what? She did. Even if she doesn’t make it, she loved the experience. Unlike the kids walking out the door sobbing because they felt like they missed something or forgot something or “weren’t perfect”. There’s no doubt that what the kids are competing for is a good and worthy thing (the thing this weekend, and college in general), but these kids and parents are trying so hard to control the outcome that they’re making themselves miserable.
Sorry, this is a little off topic, but wow, things really need to change. The competitiveness, the pressure, the price inflation, it all needs to change because it’s not doing anything good for our kids.
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My son was accepted at NJIT with a full ride and given a good merit money at Rutgers but would like to attend an
OOS school. He thinks that NJIT and Rutgers are all back up schools. Is NJIT that bad?
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I don’t know if it’s bad or not. I doubt that it’s “bad”, but it may not be the type of school that he’d want to attend.
What are his stats? Is he a NMF?
What is his major?
How much is your budget?
NJIT is a great school in a bad area. I have a friend who went there on a full ride and had much “better” school options. She’s happy and successful.