@lindagaf, not to worry, we are limiting reaches to one, two at the most, and if it’s two, one of them has to offer some merit aid. She is now focusing on LACs in Ohio, Minnesota, Wisconsin, and possibly PA, that would offer the possibility of good merit aid for a kid with her stats. Frankly, as we get deeper into this process, I think she’d do better at a place where she’s comfortably in the middle third rather than feeling that she’s towards the bottom and everybody is better/smarter than she is. That is a nice place to be in when one is balancing fit and merit.
Great discussion. We will face very similar situations soon… Even if my D doesn’t get accepted by any auditioned-programs, she has 4 schools to choose from. Merit $ varies, prestige varies, etc… If she gets accepted by auditioned program/schools (going through till the end of Feb), decision will get even harder.
I’m learning a lot by reading these posts - I am dying to start a conversation about which school, but trying hard not to until all auditon results are in. Currently very stressful time period for D.
My D2 had 2 she clearly liked best (but was admitted everywhere she applied) and she was also admitted to the “mom’s choice” school. She went to accepted visits at all three. Honestly, although she had cheaper choices, we could afford any (as it sounds like you can). Merit would have been nice, but education is our top priority at our house – and in this case, there was a clear distinction in fit & education quality between her options. So we let her decide. She ended up at “mom’s choice”. No merit. Best experience we could have hoped for, no regrets.
D1 really liked her safety with merit, and decided on her own it was her best fit. Also no regrets. I’m glad I let them decide.
We had the money talk BEFORE applications were sent. We also agreed with the schools where applications were sent. Once the acceptances came in, we let our kids make the final decision about where to attend.
One decided on April 30. The other was all set much earlier.
But we parents would have been fine with any of their choices…because we discussed schools and finances before applications were sent in.
ETA…and neither of our kids chose the least expensive option. But remember…we discussed finances before applications were sent in.
@thumper1 , as I said, merit aid is a very appealing factor, but it isn’t critical. It wasn’t unitl she recieved it that we realized how it complicates things. Finances were discussed before applying, but who doesn’t want to save $80,000? In a way, I am now unreasonably annoyed with the two schools so far that have offered her money. In my mind, while they are great schools, they are just not as excellent as her top choices. In the grand scheme of life, how much will that matter? It could all be a moot point if she ends up not getting into her top choices.
Both my kids had a hard time choosing agonizing about their choices to the very last day allowed. We had not made money part of the equation, both had merit scholarships and my youngest, at least, felt badly about turning his down as he really liked the college. It’s quite strong in his major, but less strong overall and he worried that if he changed majors he’d be less happy there. They didn’t actually write down the pros and cons, but for both it came down to a college that was ranked much higher vs one that they perceived as a better fit both academically and socially. They both turned down the higher ranked college. There is no doubt in my mind that my oldest made the right decision. I’m less sure about the younger one, but I can’t fault his reasoning. In any event he’s graduated, had a couple of internships, a pretty good job from the second internship which he decided was not for him and he’s about to start a new adventure. His college experiences had, I think, a lot to do with his current direction. (Amusingly going to a very liberal college seems to have made him considerably less liberal.)
April will be interesting. My kid has exactly zero interest in visiting/revisiting any of the schools he’s currently admitted to until he knows the whole story. He seems pretty confident that he’ll be able to select no more than four strong contenders out of whatever results come in, though no hints yet as to any ranking that would inform that, other than a strong hint that any of his RD schools would (appropriately, given the sequence of events) likely outrank any of his EA admits. (I reserve the right to add one more if I think it’s a particularly good fit, either personally or financially.)
I was advocating visiting EA admits before RD results come in, so he’d be able to hit the ground running, but we’ve concluded that those visits would have little meaning to him without the larger context of what his options really are.
So we wait. And then will scramble to schedule visits once we have the news. Will he just be visiting EA schools? Just RD schools? A mix? The suspense is killing me!
But we were happy with his application choices, so will likely be happy with whatever he selects.
Cost WAS a factor in our family’s journey, and D has several affordable options already and we’re waiting on a few honors college/merit decisions that could add to the pile of choices. There’s a good chance D will NOT be choosing the most affordable option, and is willing to do Stafford loans to make that happen (assuming little to no FA forthcoming). Her major will make it possible to have some of that debt forgiven down the road.
We already have a spreadsheet with the various cost differences, merit awards, etc. Once these last few decisions come in, we’ll add a pro-con list and D will choose. We’ve been transparent all along as to what we can pay and are willing to pay. She chose schools where she would be happy to attend, no matter what the rank. She (and we) saw no point in applying someplace she would not want to be. She has visited all but one on her final list-if the money is good, she will visit. If not, she has other equally good choices. We suspect we know the final 2 schools D will choose from, but I suppose she might go rouge and choose a different one. Time will tell.
Fwiw, she applied to 10 schools and is in at 8 of them. We’re waiting on 2 more, plus 3 of the acceptances are still processing honors apps. She could easily have stopped at 5.
Merit aid only complicates things if you let it.
Both of our kids got very significant merit awards at perfectly fine schools. Neither chose to attend these schools. We had the money talk prior to applications being sent. We never told them that they had to weigh the money offers more heavily than the other places where they applied. So…when acceptances came with generous merit offers…those merit offers were not part of the decision process…because we had ALREADY discussed costs, and such…before the applications went out…and all the schools met our price point. And we put no conditions on choices related to money offered.
I know it’s hard to do what we did…and it left a lot of money on the table in our family. But we made those choices before applications went out.
If we had planned to insist on the lowest net cost, we would have told our kids that before they applied.
Just a note that you don’t have to visit/revisit all the schools. Ds1 applied to 11 and was accepted at a number of schools that we never visited. In our case, money and quality of education were the two drivers, and he had some wonderful options, so when a school we had not visited didn’t come in with as much money as others (Notre Dame and Tulane) we dropped them off the list.
Like rayrick, on April 29 ds still was trying to decide between Carleton and one other school. The other school was a bit less expensive than Carleton, mainly because of travel costs, but he and I loved Carleton so much that it was worth the extra expense. He had a great four years there.
Exactly, @Youdon’tsay. We’re hoping pro/con lists will inform WHICH of the available schools will get visited/revisited.
But first we have to wait and see what’s available.
Tapping toes…
When we did this, the first thing we looked at was net cost. There was a clear jump in price between the lowest 4 net priced (public) schools and two much higher priced (private) schools. As my daughter had chosen the schools, I told her that I didn’t think that those other schools were worth $15-20,000 more per year. So then we were left with 4 schools with a netprice under $30K, which was affordable to us.I told her any of those would be find with us ( and I thought they would all work for her).
I helped her make a spreadsheet of various aspects of the college… and really any of the 4 would have been okay. She crossed off our State Flagship as she didn’t want to be around all the kids from our town. That left four…she ended up picking the most expensive of the lower 4, but it gave her the most credits from her IB diploma which let her graduate early which ended up saving money and also it was in teh state that she wanted to work in after she graduated.
So much is up to the student…some kids may be thrilled with big college sports and would have picked UConn. My daughter couldn’t care less so she ended up at a school with no football team.
She didn’t get to go to admitted student’s day as we were living overseas at the time.
I would suggest reducing the number of colleges to 3 or 4 and then attending admitted students day for those.
BTW, she chose “mom’s pick” as well…it was a North East public Univ (like she has been looking at) but was up there in Kiplinger’s Best Value list.
Well, since we’re bragging, Carleton was a mom’s pick as well. 
Once we got to the point of comparing schools with roughly comparable costs (i.e. schools that had offered merit aid and were affordable) we made a couple of different versions of the pros/cons list. DS did his own general pro/con list, and then I made a spreadsheet that compared the different major and minor requirements, course by course, at each school for the fields he was interested in majoring and minoring in. I did a similar spread sheet for the general ed requirements at each school. We then sat down and studied those comparisons and were actually pretty surprised by some of the things we found (some very different styles of departments and types of required courses in the same field, and one department’s offerings and structure of the major ended up being not as suited to his interests). Those lists and spread sheets ensured that he was making an informed choice about not only the “feel” and “fit” of each school, but also the academics. The overnight accepted-student visits were the final piece of the decision, and one visit sealed his conviction about fit. I have to admit that I did some additional research looking up the course evaluation numbers and teaching reputations of the faculty (for his major and minor fields) in the two schools that ended up at the top of his list. I wanted to make sure there weren’t hidden problems (and fortunately, there weren’t). So bottom line, the decision was made by first comparing costs, then doing more detailed research, and then re-visiting.
D chose Carleton over many schools that offered her lots of $$. We did wrestle with this decision until the last minute as well. Bottom line, it had the best academics and best ‘fit’ for her.
We always emphasized that if our kids worked hard and were motivated enough to gain admission to a top school, we would pay. We were very lucky to have the resources saved, but like many of you, we found the decision to use all of the cash on an undergraduate education complicated, taking into consideration the amazing discounts offered by some pretty good schools. Since D had no intention of going to med/law, or b school,( and still doesn’t) ,we feel it was a good decision. I have no idea where she will land next, but feel confident that she will be equipped.
Our son, a senior awaiting the rest of his decisions, isn’t a top student. Ironically, little angst! He will be able to take advantage of one of the generous merit scholarships being offered him since he stands no chance of getting into a top tier/non-merit school, nor would he belong at one at this stage!
This topic invariably comes up every year. As long as you limited your child’s choices to schools you can afford, and your student is respectful of your hard-earned money, I think it’s best to let them guide the decision, while encouraging them to look at overall VALUE.
Some things are just worth paying extra for, but most folks have a hard line where it doesn’t matter if it’s worth the price or not, it’s just too much, given the family budget. Ideally you communicate that line PRIOR to your child’s applying.
Still, life happens. Major health crises or job losses can change your ability to pay and, in those situations, all you can do is level with your kids, knowing that ofttimes “good enough” is plenty good–and far better than most students will ever have.
Good luck to your DD!
My daughter applied to 5 schools (our own state flagship and 4 OOS flagships). She was only interested in large schools. She was accepted to all of them and went with her gut in narrowing it down to two (both OOS flagships). Without regard to financial considerations, both were attractive choices for totally different reasons and also had completely different drawbacks. Due to merit aid, there was a difference of over $100,000 over 4 years between the two. We had told her all along that we were willing to pay for whichever school she chose. However, I did tell her that as she made her decision, she should consider whether the more expensive school was worth an extra $100,000+ to her. Since she was agonizing over the decision I knew it was close, so it seemed appropriate to throw the financial considerations in there even though we’d previously told her she didn’t have to worry about the finances and we would pay for whichever school she chose. We left the choice completely up to her, which was easy to do since I thought one school was a better fit for her and DH preferred the other. Interestingly, she did not want to do any additional visits (she had visited all of her schools in her junior year) and said that visiting again would not help her make up her mind. She ended up choosing the school with the generous merit aid. We never discussed it further, so I have no idea how much weight, if any, she gave to finances, but 4 years later she still thinks it was the right choice. In light of that, I’m really glad we left the choice completely up to her.
Read post # 8 again!!!
I don’t see how this works. It isn’t her $100,000. It’s your $100,000.
Did you set things up so that there would be a benefit for her in choosing one of the less expensive schools? For example, did you offer to contribute to future graduate school costs if she made a less expensive choice, but not if she made the more expensive one?
In our family, it’s OUR $100,000. Not that our kids are entitled to it, but they know if the money is spent on item A, it’s not likely going to be available for item B.
My older son chose the school that would save us all $80,000 over four years. It wasn’t nearly as highly ranked as the other schools he was deciding between, but in going back and reviewing the class statistics for the schools he walked away from (which ranged from SLACs to our well-regarded state flagship), he really wasn’t giving up anything in terms of their student bodies. (No, not every student at his school is his peer academically, but I actually consider that a real-life perk. Welcome to the real world! 
)
And that saved money came in really handy when he was offered a co-op job at the end of his freshman year and needed a car STAT. Because he chose the better overall value school (for OUR family’s finances), we had the funds left over from our freshman-year budget for him to buy him a very nice (and, more importantly, SAFE) car.