Yes, that’s something I was concerned about, but people said merit is merit and if you don’t “need” it, that shouldn’t hurt. Not sure if some schools required the fa stuff to be considered for merit, but that could have been the case. Didn’t seem to hurt to do it, but i guess there was little chance of it helping either.
You do not have to fill out FA info if your are not applying for FA. If you are not going to get FA, there is no sense wasting your time (and theirs) filling all that stuff out.
If should have zero impact on your merit offers.
@ColdinMinny if you want that $5500 unsubsidized loan, you need to complete the fa stuff, no? I’m not even sure what that loan is or if its worth it at this point though.
lexluther5, you mention merit aid many times so it sounds like you don’t think you’ll qualify for need-based aid. Have you run the online net price calculators on some of the schools you listed, just to be sure?
Two solid public LACs that you may want to consider are St. Mary’s College of MD and New College of Florida. Even at out-of-state rates, their prices would be close to your target (~$40K). My impression is that these two schools are comparable in quality to some of the private schools you’re considering, but for much lower sticker prices.
@lexluthor5, I cannot comment on the $5500 loan. If you do not qualify for FA, not sure why you would take out such a loan and pay interest to someone else, but your business of course.
Following your thread. Please post when daughter decides, so many choices! My son is 99% certain he will choose Denison. Living in Boston suburb and curious how many others from east coast attend. They were generous with aid and they have a substantial endowment. He is planning on a GAP year to study in Spain so he is deferring a year.
@firstborn – my kid likely attending Denison as well. We have been very impressed, have visited schools from Bates to Grinnell, Oberlin, Kenyon, Conn Coll etc. Denison seems a place where lots of different kids can be comfortable. Strong programs across the board, and a strong endowment supports merit, internship funding etc. And its just a gorgeous campus.
Ok, big day today.
Kenyon accepted but zero aid. Daughter is very upset as that was top choice in her mind.
But, Grinnell accepted and $25k merit.
Unless Kenyon reconsiders after a review request or Mac either comes up a bit or she just falls in love with it much more than Grinnell, it could wind up being Grinnell.
Think she’ll get over Kenyon and realize what perfect fit Grinnell is. They value fit more than most other places and obviously thought she was a great fit, so think the feeling will wind up being mutual.
Will definitely be going to Iowa soon. Trying to figure out if worth a trip to mn too.
Exciting news!
@lexluthor5 Wow! Congrats to your daughter. What an amazing number of opportunities she has, and the aid from Grinnell is particularly special. Just wow!
Great options. Congrats!
Excellent! Again, feel free to be in touch if you have questions. My D is coming home from Grinnell tomorrow for spring break!
You are blessed with wonderful options. I think you need to consider it to be Kenyon’s loss, if they don’t reconsider. There is no way Kenyon is worth full price compared to the other wonderful schools offering very substantial merit aid.
As long as you are going to Iowa, you should certainly visit Mac too.
Good luck!
Agree. We haven’t varied from the mission yet. Kenyon is off the table with no aid. Very disappointed. We worked them hard and had met the head admissions Dean at multiple events and she talked very highly of my daughter. Kenyon is the tightest with merit on our whole list, so we knew this wasn’t an unlikely result. Will call and ask for a review.
Would like to visit both accepted student days, just need to figure out how to do both without airfare killing us.
Plus I’m not sure how realistic Mac is at $11k/year more. We had hoped for the $18k scholarship there. Maybe they’ll reconsider after a review. Haven’t totally taken it off the table. 2 great schools with 2 campuses as opposite as possible. Visiting both back to back would be very helpful.
Great news! I think it will come down to whether your daughter wants to be in a rural area or in a city. I think Grinnell can give your daughter everything she could have gotten from Kenyon. She won’t be missing out on anything by choosing Grinnell, which sounds wonderful. Let us know how this all turns out.
Looking at the Kenyon rd thread, we are certainly not alone as being admitted as full pay expected.
While I’m thrilled if anyone else got anything out of this thread, I also can’t thank everyone who replied in this thread plus that part 1 thread enough. Without the advice we received, we never would have gotten to this point.
I was looking though earlier posts of mine, where i even dismissed Grinnell
Helping us target the correct schools was invaluable. Turned out that we obviously hit the correct set of schools that would give enough aid to meet our budget at the stats she had.
I also have to think that the money spent on sat prep probably was the best return on investment as anything I’ve ever done. Her hard work in prepping for the SAT and pulling a huge number was probably instrumental in getting some of these offers.
Just got to say, we have visited Grinnell multiple times with two kids, and it is a marvelous, special school. Campus is lovely, the new buildings (especially Admissions and the new dorms) are drop dead gorgeous in a modern style which is still reminiscent of prairie origins. Students are a range of all sorts, and seem to get along and blend well. My kid, back when he was a younger sib being dragged on the Grinnell visit, loved the study carrels which you have to climb, a la tree house style, to get to (not all of them are that way, just some). Faculty, staff, everyone we encountered was energetic, enthusiastic, and genuine. My kids turned out not to have the interest (S1) or credential (S2) to make Grinnell a real option for either of them, but it would have been a superb experience. For what its worth, both mine preferred Grinnell to Kenyon. Congrats to your daughter, she will have fabulous experience wherever she chooses!
@Midwestmomofboys good info, thanks. Looking forward to getting out to one of the accepted students programs in a few weeks.
Looks like it’s Grinnell vs Macalester. Mac is $12K/year higher COA and on the high end of the budget, but we’ll see.
We are not the only confused people in the Kenyon thread. The largest merit reported in there is $10K/year, which wouldn’t have been enough for us anyhow. There’s one person who, similarly to my daughter, got nice merit almost everywhere, also got nothing at Kenyon. Bunch of people who were waitlisted were surprised they didn’t get in. Maybe Kenyon just had a huge amount of applications this year and was being incredibly selective and was able to be tight with the money.
I noticed this chart on the Grinnell wikipedia page
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grinnell_College#Admission
How did Grinnell possibly go from 2969 applications with a 44.8% acceptance rate in 2011 to 6414 applications with a 24.9% in 2015? Test scores are up too. Double the number of applicants from just 4 years ago?
@lexluthor5 Very simple Grinnell dropped the supplemental essay requirement and applications increased by 50% that year.
Bucknell, Swarthmore and Colby have done the same.
This is the single most effective way to increase applications.
@onthebubble makes perfect sense. Same as some others have done by dropping the application fee. Union never would have received an application from my daughter if they charged a fee.
Kenyon also dropped its supplement a year or two ago…
We saw that jump in apps, and corresponding decline in acceptance rate, around when my older one was in the application process. I think part of it too is compression at other east coast LACs – when Bowdoin, Hamilton etc. are crazy selective, people start to think, “Iowa can’t be that bad, right?” If Grinnell were 1000 miles east, my guess is it would be a top 10 LAC, because selectivity would be on par with Haverford etc.
I find the town of Grinnell has a certain small town charm – on one of our visits, there was a community concert in the bandshell in the park, and families were out with kids on bikes, strollers etc., all heading to the concert. There is a wonderful organic and specialty grocery store 1 block from campus, great bike shop, pizza places, movie theater etc. Hardly a barren wasteland. So there is a lot more there than, for instance, Gambier, Ohio!
Faculty, resources, etc. at Grinnell are all top-notch. That amazing endowment (over $1B) generates plenty of income which gets used on campus. It is a genuine, open community of learners. The faculty my older one met with on his visits were phenomenal. It was a sad day for me when my younger one, who would have been an athletic recruit at Grinnell, got his scores back and we realized that they just weren’t budging and were not going to get to the minimum level the coach had said he needed for admission. Grinnell had to come off his list.
Good luck to your daughter, OP! Can’t go wrong with those choices.