OOS students no longer eligible for Benaquisto
@Eddie0907 yes…I wrote that response a year ago….January 2021…when this decision had not been finalized. And again just before this was signed in May. Yes, I realize that has changed….And so does the OP.
So this poster needed to look at other affordable options. And they did….and have more than a few affordable acceptances already! Scroll up and read.
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Thank you.
MIT asks for an update from all applicants. They call it FUN. My daughter plans to complete that although she has nothing to add aside from being named valedictorian. However, at MIT, I don’t think that contributes anything meaningful to her application.
With respect to MIT, I cannot say whether she’s still interested or not. When she was deferred back in December, she mentally moved on. She applied early because she wanted a decision, and now it’s hard to even think about MIT when she’s making plans to attend interview weekends at other schools. I know that she would be thrilled to be accepted, but if I am being honest, it’s not really about actually attending at this point.
This brings me one of the things that I had planned on mentioning after my daughter made a final decision. So many parents “warned” us that their kids loved the schools that showed them love. It’s so true, and I cannot overstate how this affected my daughter’s search. There have been some schools that have been in contact with my daughter nearly weekly since acceptance, and those schools are near the top of her list. As someone who was seeking merit money and applied to schools where her stats made her a top candidate, my daughter has appreciated the schools that have made her feel special. This attention makes her feel as if she won’t just be one of many on campus, and it has opened doors to some opportunities that she would not otherwise have. As a parent, I have not decided if this is a good or bad thing, but it has undoubtedly played a large role in shaping where my daughter is leaning.
We are hoping by this time next month that my daughter knows where she will be attending in the fall. I think if she is selected to participate in the RRS program that she will be at Alabama. If she’s not selected, there are still a few serious contenders.
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So well put.
D21 was on nearly the same journey last year.
She had such great outreach and genuine engagement from several schools - private and public. After she made her final decision she wrote some nice emails to individuals letting them know she was going elsewhere. I even reached out to a couple to let them know what an amazing job they had done and that I would certainly recommend their department or program to prospective students where I work when they are applying to colleges in the coming years.
The colleges that did not care to connect on that level were quickly moved to the side for her.
And the FUN thing did not create a ton of FUN in the midst of other things. 
Good luck.
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@Dis3456 - Just remembered this thread and wondered if you could give an update on your D’s final decision?
@elena13 on another thread, the OP wrote this at the beginning of April. Makes it sound like Alabama was the choice.
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I don’t want to make any direct comparisons, but I will say that my daughter chose UA. At the end of the day, it came down to the fact that we were so impressed by UA’s facilities and resources. If you have a motivated student, there is so much that UA offers. My DD was accepted into the Randall Research Scholars Program, and that sealed the deal for her.>>
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Thank you for following up. Yes, my daughter chose UA. At the end of the day, Alabama was the clear winner, and she’s so excited to start there in the fall! The Randall Research (RRS) interview weekend cemented that decision. After that weekend, she knew that she would enroll at UA if she was accepted into the program. She loved the other RRS students and the program itself!
My daughter graduates this week so I will post a final update of all of her scholarships and some additional thoughts about some of the colleges the following week. Also, I want to address MIT since there was much discussion about her decision to apply there. In hindsight, it was absolutely the right call, and she has no regrets. Depending on the child, I would absolutely encourage students to apply to one or two “stretch” schools.
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That’s great news! Sounds like a wonderful outcome for your daughter and I’m sure this thread will be useful to others. Congrats and best of luck to your amazing daughter!!
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Sorry for the delay. It’s been a fun but busy last couple of weeks. My DD graduated from high school and is thoroughly looking forward to starting her next chapter at the University of Alabama this fall! She couldn’t be more thrilled and has already started building her social network.
When we started this process, we set a budget of having full tuition covered (after tuition, we assumed that would leave around $20K in expenses), and I am happy to report that my daughter ended up with 6 schools that met that criteria. In addition to that, she was invited to interview for TCU’s full tuition scholarship, but she ended up touring a different school on the TCU interview weekend. I am going to list the amount of her awards since that is how we viewed her potential offers.
University of Alabama - NMF package (covers 5 years of tuition, 4 years of housing, $3,500 annual stiped, and $500 annual book allowance). In addition to the NMF package, she was awarded an annual $2,000 Randall Research Fellowship. Her scholarship package will exceed our direct costs.
Mississippi State University - This was my daughter’s best financial package. Her package included 4 years of tuition and room and board. On top of that, she was awarded a $4,500 annual engineering scholarship. They also gave her a one-time $4,000 study abroad scholarship. She also received a $6,000 scholarship (spread over 4 years) for being her school’s valedictorian. This was her frontrunner for a long time, and if MSU had handled things a bit differently, she may have ended up here.
Georgia Tech - Full tuition through Georgia’s Hope/Zell Miller program.
UGA - Full tuition through Georgia’s Hope/Zell Miller program. She also received an additional scholarship from UGA valued at $5,000 per year.
U of Central Florida - NMF package. Covered all direct costs and then some. It was about $3,500 short of full COA.
Small liberal arts school - My daughter received a full tuition package, their highest award. She was then invited to Scholars Weekend, which would have provided an additional scholarship of up to $20K. However, their weekend conflicted with something at her high school, and after agonizing over the decision, she decided to turn down her invite. We knew that they didn’t have engineering from the beginning, but this school was a contender. Ultimately, my DD could not overlook their extremely limited offerings in the applied sciences.
TCU - $30K per year. Invited to interview for the full tuition scholarship, but she turned down that weekend to attend a special weekend at the small liberal arts school.
SMU - $44,000 per year. She was offered a $30K Presidential Scholarship (I think that is the name), a $9,000 Dedman Scholarship, and a $5K engineering scholarship. She was invited to apply to become a Presidential Scholar (full tuition+), but she was not selected. She did not apply for the Hunt Scholarship. Also, she was heavily leaning toward UA and suffering from application burnout (it’s real!) during the Presidential Scholar application cycle.
Clemson - $10,500 per year. She was also selected as a Lyceam Scholar, which came with a $10,000 scholarship. She would have also received the NMF scholarship if she had named Clemson as her first choice (around $2,500 per year).
Notre Dame - Nothing.
MIT - Denied admission.
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Congratulations to her! She had choices, and that’s just terrific!
Congratulations to your daughter!!!
I wanted to address MIT specifically since many people had warned us not to apply there. I think that you have to know your young adult, but in our case, I would strongly encourage my child to apply to one or two stretch schools. MIT had been her dream school for so long, but what she came to realize was that she did not want to go there. There is significant value in going through the process, and most importantly, my daughter has full confidence in her decision to attend UA. Several posters shared similar sentiments, and I concur with their thoughts.
Having said that, I know my daughter would have been thrilled to be accepted, and that would have been a different kind of reward. However, somewhere in between submitting her application and early action decisions coming out, she decided it wasn’t the place for her (there were a number of reasons this for this). She would have pulled her application if she had not already expended all of her time, energy, and money into applying. Since she had invested so much into the application process, she wanted to know if she would be accepted. As she now knows, she was denied.
She much preferred the environment at some of the other schools to which she applied, and she also realized that she liked being one of the top kids instead of one of many, highly qualified students. She also came to discover that she doesn’t like the way that MIT defers a huge portion of the EA pool. She applied early to have a decision, and by the time that regular decisions were announced, she had already mentally committed to UA. To be frank, she felt strung along by how MIT handles deferrals. But as I frequently say, the application process has an uncanny way of matching students with where they are meant to be. MIT decided my DD wasn’t right for them, and my DD made the same conclusion about MIT.
If you have a kid who is on the fence about applying to a school that has a high probability of being financially out of reach, I would highly encourage you to move forward (**depending on your kid. If your child is the type who will be crushed, I would reconsider.) In our case, it was character building, and my daughter learned a lesson that none of us would have expected. At the end of the day, it wasn’t really her dream school. There is tremendous value in having her realize and know that. She has no hesitations about her decision, and if she has shied away from applying to MIT, she never would have known that. She would have spent time wondering, “What if I had applied?” I know that my DD’s situation isn’t typical, but by taking a chance, my daughter was forced to question what was really important to her in a college. And she came away picking a school that was the perfect place for her!
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congrats. UA and its opps - exciting for sure! 
that’s interesting about the UCF info. Maybe consider sharing that on the national merit 2023 thread; people have been wondering about NMFs and florida schools a bit.
happy summer planning!
Congratulations to your D! I’ve enjoyed reading this thread, and you post made me smile at a much needed time. Thanks! And enjoy the next chapter!
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I have been meaning to post on the NMF board. Also, I don’t recall seeing it on the NMF board that UCF hit their OOS scholarship cap of 40 students in mid-March. They subsequently offered a reduced package to NMFs who were still interested in UCF, and they are maintaining a waitlist for the full package.
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Congratulations to your daughter and Roll Tide. My S22 graduates today and will see you in T-Town.
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How exciting! RTR!
Quick update: My daughter has been on campus for about 1.5 weeks. Although she hasn’t started classes, she is absolutely loving it so far! She’s connected with several similar students, and she’s even meeting a coach tomorrow to talk about a potential walk-on opportunity. It’s still very early, but we couldn’t be happier for her.
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