<p>We = family decision. I have three kids, so we need to think of the younger ones too, and saving up for their college as well. We also applied at 10-12 schools which seemed like a lot. Our daughter is undecided on a lot of things, but has good enough gpa, etc. that hopefully it pays to shop around a bit, even if it is more time and money invested. I will know the process a little better for my 2nd child(16)two years from now we will be doing the same thing for him!</p>
<p>occdom, a little coptering doesn’t hurt. 
…as long as you’re not a black hawk. Plus I tend to think of “we,” as in he will be off at some nice college and we will get the bills.</p>
<p>Having a number of possibilities is good. One of my son’s “safeties” admitted him but has not sent any scholarship offers. His SAT qualifies for an automatic scholarship (per their web site), but I think the problem is that his high school doesn’t rank and the second stipulation involved being in the top 10 percent. I have not looked into it more – to see if there is something for NHS – because he doesn’t seem to be very interested in this school and I don’t want to be pushy about a scholarship at a place if he is really not interested. Also, another school much higher on his list has offered some merit and some grants. My point in bringing this up is that it seems difficult to predict how these universities will respond. I guess we will all know more in a couple of months.</p>
<p>While ‘we’ wait, advice needed. D has a couple updates to provide to colleges. What is the best format…an email to admissions or a snail mailed letter? </p>
<p>Looking back at the posts…it might be fun to compare all of our spreadsheets. Had an older relative suggest that I ought to push all that off on D, that I was too involved. I concluded there was too much risk of things going afoul–coptering needed to some degree. Woe, for the days of a 2 page paper app mailed with a $20 check.</p>
<p>I think you need to check each college website to see how they want updates. I know that one we have wants it FAXed only. </p>
<p>I think that a lot of people don’t understand all that is involved with college admissions these days, particularly when you get into the intricacies of early admissions programs, FA, merit scholarships, etc. Paying for college is a much more complicated and difficult process than it used to be, so I honestly think that parents should be involved in developing a realistic school list. </p>
<p>And as far as the nuts and bolts of applying, that varies somewhat with the kid too, maybe I did her a disservice, but I oversaw the process much more with D2 than I did with D1 who was more self-motivated. </p>
<p>As far as spreadsheets, I have 2 main ones:</p>
<p>College list - I order colleges vertically based on their relative selectivity based on admission rate and SAT 25:75 ranges. So, our IS public will be at the top and highly selective schools at the bottom. Horizontally across I list important information such as: size of school, location (rural, city, etc.), type of admissions (EA, ED, rolling, etc.), COA and scholarships. For scholarships, I list the name, amount (whether renewable), open to all or for URMs, and other information about application and selection. For D1 I also added columns for specific things she was interested in such as whether they had an architecture program or Portuguese courses.</p>
<p>With this spreadsheet, we try to develop a realistic list of admission and financial safety/match/reach schools.</p>
<p>Application worksheet - This is the working one that I use during the process to be sure everything is in on time. Each school is listed with the various parts of the admissions, scholarship and FA information that is required and deadlines in red. Each time a part goes in, I mark the date in green. I add notes as necessary, and when the school sends information about how to get into their web based application tracker, I keep all of the user names and passwords there too.</p>
<p>I have smaller spreadsheets with information about fly-in programs, summer opportunities, outside merit scholarships, and one where I keep track of all HS coursework taken, ECs, awards, etc.</p>
<p>One other thing that helped D1 was to have a word document with the prompts and word/character limits for all of her admission and scholarship essays. This way she could see where she could reuse ideas and themes and how much she’d have to cut down or expand for different essays. I think that it helped her see that she didn’t really have to write 20 different essays, but rather variations on about a half dozen themes.</p>
<p>I’ll tell you one gripe I had and that is character limits–the instructions NEVER tell you if their limit includes spaces or not, the only way you can tell is to write something, put it in the application and then review the application to see if anything was cut off. Since most essays that have character limits are relatively short, whether spaces are counted or not makes a pretty big difference.</p>
<p>You are so right, Entomom! This process is so confusing and so complicated. I thought we were being very organized by keeping tabs of due dates, items sent, responses, etc. Yesterday D tells me that she needs copies of my taxes because Villanova’s due date for W2 and Schedule forms is…yes…yesterday! Needless to say, we have not filed our taxes yet. So I guess we missed that due date. I did send our 1099 and W-2, with a letter explaining that the rest will be sent later. So we created another spreadsheet: including what each college requests for FA. Some only request 1099/W-2, while others request copies of everything!
I can’t wait until this is over. However, I hope this experience will be helpful when D2 goes to college in two years.</p>
<p>I’m impressed with all the spreadsheets. Wish I could be that organized – it seems that every time I sit down to check on something I have to remember the schools to which my s applied. I’m sure with devoted parents such as all of us on here, our kids will be fine. But as I go through this, I worry about all the kids who do not have a support system. I am particularly concerned about Latino kids, particularly those whose parents are not familiar with higher education or even those whose parents may not speak English. I was very impressed with schools that offered help to families in Spanish (e.g. Pitzer and there are others). I know there are some programs out there to help, but I’m sure more could be done.</p>
<p>Was wondering if anyone else’s kid’s online portals for application status still says FAFSA incomplete/not received. CSS shows up as received. I’d venture a guess that admissions are swamped and don’t have time to reconcile the student info. D sent FAFSA in early Jan, has the records of which colleges were on the receiving end and ditto for the FAFSA update.
We wait. We hope. Good luck to everyone.</p>
<p>I haven’t checked portals recently for FA forms, probably a good idea. Since they receive FAFSA and Profile electronically, I’d assume that schools just haven’t caught up with posting everything yet.</p>
<p>One of D2s schools just now sent her portal information. What’s interesting is that even though the main CA, supplement and 1 LOR have been marked as received, the second LOR and SSR are not–and this is with an electronically submitted CA that I double checked and everything was submitted in early Dec! I also found that we had failed to submit two items, 2009 tax returns to the school directly and a Supplemental SSR that they require. I called them up and it’s not a problem, but just goes to show that you have to check every school’s website and not depend on the CA to show everything a school wants.</p>
<p>Hi everyone. Been kind of quiet here. Guess everyone’s waiting for letters. I have no idea what is going to happen in the next two months, either in terms of acceptances, what my s is thinking, or (the latest development) – my better half is lobbying for a school in our state. I started a thread on the FA forum about a form I received asking for expenses and income beyond the FAFSA, profile info and tax return. They wanted to know how much we spend on food, car payment, credit cards, etc. I’m still curious whether other universities request this form as part of the regular process. Has anyone seen anything like that? Entomom?</p>
<p>Copter, the waiting for letters is just not fun. Waaa. I don’t know if you rec’d responses to your questions on the FA forum but it sounds to me like this particular college is trying to boil down a financial aid package for your S. Perhaps this is a smaller private college with an endowment that is not huge, hence the look-see at the detail?
Good luck!
D wants to email admissions counselor at her #1 school. I don’t know if that is a good idea at this point or if it would be an annoyance. Any opinions? She sent an update already.</p>
<p>Jrnmom:</p>
<p>If your D has a question to make to the university it should be answered. It is not an “annoyance”. These people are paid to answer your questions! Plus you paid an application fee, don’t you have more of a right to inquire about something? Hope this helps :)</p>
<p>Entomom is so legit! I wish she was my mom! Hahaha</p>
<p>Naw, no question, D wants to restate her interest in attending in that email, that’s all. Entomom IS awesome. Calling entromom…</p>
<p>Hello all, thanks for the shout outs! I just got back from 3 days at the State meet for downhill skiing where D2 competed. It was fun, I did some XC skiing with a friend and watched lots of great ski racing. D2 turned 18 during the trip so I arranged to get her an ice cream cake and we all celebrated together!</p>
<p>Now I’m back and realize that decisions will be out in less than a month, yikes! </p>
<p>CG, I’ve never heard of such a form and haven’t read your thread on the FA forum yet, but I agree that it does sound like that particular school is trying to refine a FA package for your S.</p>
<p>JNR, I suppose it kind of depends on what the update is and which school. Although, if it’s a quick email, I doubt the AO is going to feel that it’s much of an intrusion.</p>
<p>Hi everyone. It will be a long month. The rest of my D’s schools will begin notifying the last week of March. The number of applications has dramatically increased this year, while the number of students applying to college has not dramatically increased. In other forums on CC, I have seen students applying to 20+ schools. This certainly must be a challenge for admissions and I think, a sign that the college application and admission process has got to change somehow, along with the skyrocketing costs and tuitions. Students legitimately want to “shop” for the best deal and fit, but in the case of excessive applications to 20+ instititutions, may end up denying interested students acceptances to colleges and unversitities the college shopper has little or no interest in attending. Best of luck to students and parents!</p>
<p>So far: Deferred-Ivy
1/4 tuition, OOS Private
OOS Public-In-state tuition, Health Science Honors</p>
<p>stillwatermom, you are so right about the craziness of this process. The schools try to generate a lot of applications, and their marketing operations are remarkable. It appears some of these places have hired marketing agencies. I weighed all the mail my son got and it came out to more than 21 pounds. The financial matters can be so unpredictable that students and families are responding by applying to a lot of colleges. Part of the anxiety has to do with the cost of college going into the hundreds of thousands. Attending one university as opposed to another can mean a difference of tens of thousands of dollars. What bothers me is that the academic part, which should be the most important part of college, becomes less important when all the other bells and whistles come into play.</p>
<p>Not happy. Was very happy that D finally had a clear 1st choice school, and one that might be affordable, as she had a 19k merit scholarship, and they were profile only.
Our EFC is 13K. Hoping with the merit this would make it doable.
Total Cost (Tuition, Fees, Room, Board, Books) = $49,400
Here is the award:
Merit 19,000
Grant 4,660
Loans (3 diff kinds) 6,500
Work Study 2,000
(Leaving an additional 19,250 that we would have to come up with. No way to do that!).</p>
<p>She may have to start liking the safety, University of Arizona, again.</p>
<p>BV, I wonder if there is any flexibility with the college? Still learning, not sure what this means: “as she had a 19k merit scholarship, and they were profile only.”. Is that a dollar figure that is formula-based on test scores/GPA?
Hope it works out and good luck to you and D.
Us:
1 acceptance at private with 1/4 tuition incl loans
2 private denials (and one was a safety!)
3 reaches pending including public in-state
2 matches pending incl #1 choice. </p>
<p>Starting to think we were too optimistic and overshot so that one offer is looking pretty good. +sigh+</p>
<p>BV,
Sorry to hear that the need based FA was not generous enough to make the school work, I know that the financial part of college can be a hard thing for kids to grasp and accept. They’ve worked so hard, that it’s difficult when the economic side makes a school not possible. Hang in there.</p>
<p>D2s current situation:</p>
<p>Accepted:
1 IS public w/small merit award; more merit to be announced shortly.
1 OOS public w/excellent merit; COA about 5-10k
1 OOS public w/half tuition merit; likely out of the running as hoping for full tuition merit to make it a viable option, I think she applied too late as they are rolling for both admissions and merit.
1 OOS public; merit awards to be announced shortly.</p>
<p>Waiting for RD:
6 need only privates; we are on the FA bubble, so I don’t know whether any of these will be affordable options.</p>
<p>JRN,
D2 asked me the other day, will I get into some of my RD schools? I said, yes, I thought so. What else am I going to say? But truthfully, I am so anxious right now that I can hardly stand it. Maybe it’s just the nerves speaking, the college list seemed so well though out and rational last fall, and now, I just don’t know.</p>
<p>BV, that sounds frustrating. I agree with those on cc who say loans should be considered part of the family payment since the student or parent has to pay the loan later. So if you add the loans to the annual payment…that’s how I’m approaching any packages.</p>
<p>JRN, I have found that it’s difficult to guess both acceptances and merit/FA. I second-guess my advice all the time, still think I should have taken him to see the Arizona schools and used that as my parent card. </p>
<p>entomom, I’ve learned that late Feb/March is a difficult time with all the waiting, and it looks like things might trickle in here and there. Friends and relatives keep asking, and I answer that we’re still waiting. So far:
Accepted: 1 OOS public, $10K merit; 1 OOS private, $20K merit and grants
Denied:1 in-state public
Waiting:2 in-state public, 1 in-state private, 3 OOS privates (one need-only)</p>
<p>Good luck to all!!</p>
<p>Update, got a letter yesterday that D2 received the big scholarship at our IS public. Nice to know that the extra effort it took to fill out the application and write essays was worth it. This makes the actual COA for our IS and one of the OOS publics equal considering travel costs, etc. This will make our trip to the midwest in a couple of weeks even more important since now the money is not a deciding factor.</p>
<p>Cg, yes, “where is she going to college?” seems to be the only question anyone asks these days. I usually give as few details as possible, just that she’s waiting until the end of the month to consider all of the options.</p>