<p>PSAT scores were good, and she's almost certain to be Commended, but not likely to be NMF unless the cutoff unexpectedly drops by several points.</p>
<p>It seems that NMF is the most direct path to merit money. However, most of the schools on her current list don't base their scholarship decisions primarily on NMF status.</p>
<p>"Except for the Southern..."</p>
<p>Well, it is southern Minnesota. ;)</p>
<p>Search threads for "BassDad" - also look on the Musical forum, there are some good discussions of the need to do trial lessons, and the importance of the student-teacher relationship for a musician. His daughter plays a somewhat unusual instrument - bass violin - and went through the process last year.</p>
<p>Being a harpist may be another little hook that earns her additional merit money at the right school.</p>
<p>Lgreen, if you're looking at Ohio schools, take a peek at Otterbein. They have a harp instructor (adjunct, I believe), and their music program is very strong, but largely unsung. [Insert groan for bad pun here.] In addition, they offer talent awards in music (my daughter just received a very generous award, and she would be pursuing a BA not a BMus), plus they have automatic academic awards based on ACTs and GPAs. And, as LACs go, Otterbein is more reasonably priced than most. </p>
<p>Otterbein would probably be a safety for your daughter, as it was for mine, but despite my daughter's oft-stated claim that she wants OUT of the midwest, Otterbein is a definite contender. The folks at Otterbein are the strongest selling point; they're just about the nicest group of people you could ever want to meet.</p>
<p>Vanderbilt's Blair school of music has a Harp instructor. See this url: <a href="http://www.vanderbilt.edu/Blair/faculty/faculty_strings.html%5B/url%5D">http://www.vanderbilt.edu/Blair/faculty/faculty_strings.html</a></p>
<p>We are still just throwing names around. OP, I've got to ask again the most important question, what are you financial parameters? How much are you willing and able to pay out of pocket, realizing that loans are not something you will consider? If it is $10K that is one list of schools. $20K is another. $0 , well , I haven't found that list. LOL.</p>
<p>curmy: you make an excellent post. As others have mentioned, simply getting a 20K a year merit for a 40+K school won't "cut it" if the parents don't have the 20+K to pay for the remaining tuition, R & B, Fees, books and transportation back and forth for holidays.</p>
<p>That is indeed a very good point, cur. We started with a dollar figure, which we told our kids. The merit money had to make up the difference. At least when the "offers" come rolling in there's no surprises.</p>
<p>And it does affect what "level" school you need to look at. For a fairly high stats kid, looking for full scholarship, they should be looking lower than if they could swing half-tuition.</p>
<p>For us and D ( our oldest child), we concentrated on merit aid colleges and universities, and mostly applied to matches and safties because even if we got into reaches, without financial aid, d probably won't go to the reaches.</p>
<p>(Some of her stats: NMSF, 4.7 GPA weighted, 4.0 GPA unweighted, 3/462 in class, 1520 SATs, got 4 "5"s and 1 "4" on Ap tests, lots of extracurricular in fine arts, community service and church activities)</p>
<p>As she is our oldest and we have 3 more children with her stats following her: we played ultra conservative in terms of where she applied.</p>
<p>Reaches:
1. Duke - got an interview, haven't heard about acceptance (but won't go unless she gets substantial merit aid)</p>
<ol>
<li><p>UNC Chapel Hill - accepted, waiting to hear about merit offers or will try to see if we can pay in state instead of oos tuition (unfortunately Morehead, has come and gone and she wasn't asked to be a finalist). At $18,000 tuition/year OOS, we probably could afford w/o scholarship aid if we had to.</p></li>
<li><p>UCLA --probable in, got asked to apply for regents scholarship which is only offered to top 1.5% of entering class</p></li>
<li><p>UCBerkeley -- haven't heard</p></li>
</ol>
<p>Matches:
1. UCSan Diego--haven't heard</p>
<ol>
<li><p>Pepperdine--haven't heard, will only go if offered scholarship</p></li>
<li><p>USC -- accepted, applied because we knew she would automatically get 1/2 tuition
Safties:</p></li>
<li><p>UCIrvine--automatic in</p></li>
<li><p>Baylor -- automatic in if put Bayor as #1 choice for NMF, will get 4 years full tuition and $3,000/year towards housing</p></li>
<li><p>UT Dallas -- automatic in, get full tuition room and board x 4 years, also finalist for McDermoot scholarship, flying in March 17-19 for finalist weekend</p></li>
<li><p>TCNJ--will be automatic in, has not yet applied (deadline is Feb 15th) full tuition room and board and laptop based on getting over 1500 SAts, and ranked top 4% in class</p></li>
</ol>
<p>We think she will get in to all of her colleges except for maybe Berkeley and Duke. we purposely did not apply to any Ivies because they would also have to grant merit aid which Ivies do not do . </p>
<p>We don't qualify for financial aid according to Princeton financial calculators (Est college contribution: $60.000) --so did not even fill out any profile or Fafsa forms, etc. </p>
<p>We knew from the onset that Baylor, UTD, and TCNJ were full tuition which made the college process more anxious-free. . .and made it easier to apply to reaches because we already had some "aces in the hole".</p>
<p>mom of four: Please make sure that the FAFSA is not required even for the merit awards. In some places, even though your EFC may be too high for need-based aid, they might still expect to see the FAFSA as part of their process for awarding all scholarships, including merit. </p>
<p>However, there may be someone on CC that can tell us that this is not true, but in the past (and this year), I didn't take a chance.</p>
<p>There are also schools (like Brandeis) which require the college profile for merit aid, even though they don't ask you to send in a FAFSA.</p>
<p>Ditto the suggestion of submitting FAFSA and college profile. Boston University required them for merit aid for freshman applicants, but does not require them after that.</p>
<p>Yep, momoffour, that NMF does make things a little easier on the auto-merit hunt. LOL. I want to remind everybody that the specific Baylor , UTD, USC auto scholarships she spoke of are all NMF based. So if you have a super high scoring ACT or SAT kid as opposed to high scoring PSAT kid, those results don't apply to you.</p>
<p>Also I'd like to point out that this kid, momoffour's kid, is the type of phenomenal kid that will be applying to get one of Duke's,UNC's, USC's, UTD's "great" top merit awards people always talk about. She, and several hundred just like her, are the competition at these schools of widely varying rank. That's why you need to set the bar at a realistic level AND add schools.</p>
<p>For those parents looking for a "full-ride" or "full-tuition at least" (and they are here in droves), that is a VERY difficult proposition. Anywhere. If you have the super stats required by TCNJ, and you are not NMF, you will be hard-pressed to beat the price in my opinion.</p>
<p>(I was timed out) Although we would be gleeful if she got a full-ride or full-tuition , she was able to apply to schools where that was not offered as a possibility. That helped us keep the quality level as high as possible. That's why I keep asking the OP what they are willing and able to pay. If they are looking for full tuition or better AS A MINIMUM the list really changes, and the Rhodes, Centre, Hendrix bunch falls away except as a merit reach (yes , there are such categories and you have to break it down that way). We were at half tuition as a minimum consideration, and those schools I mentioned are more merit matches at that level for a very high stat kid.</p>
<p>A fellow poster sent the following to me PM so I'll post it here (I altered a bit to protect privacy). </p>
<p>Parents need to think in terms of: TOTAL COST OF ATTENDANCE (total COA). Look on each schools' websites -- many post such. </p>
<p>For some schools (even lower tiers!!), the various costs can be: $32K tuition + 10K R&B + 1K fees + 1K books = 44K THEN, you have to add $$ for air travel for holidays and misc expenses (such as car, other transportation, cell phones, personal products, pocket money, etc -- some of these you would already be paying for but still are part of your child's total expenses). </p>
<p>This all easily adds up to 45-50K total COA. </p>
<p>If the merit is only 20K per year, then you'll need another 25K-30K - PER YEAR. </p>
<p>Most merit aid offers won't come close to that.</p>
<p>BTW -- Private schools charge as much as 5K per year MORE for R & B -- just something to consider.</p>
<p>UT-Austin has a good school of music and the "Lecturer in Harp" is Delaine Fedson, adjunct professor, former harp instructor at Baylor. They have a degree in harp performance and great facilities. </p>
<p>As far as money is concerned, UT is not a very expensive school to attend, but I don't know anything about scholarships, and I don't know how the total cost package would compare with other schools. </p>
<p>I do know it will be very difficult to complete a performance degree and double major in anything that requires much outside work. My husband and I both have degrees in music (his a doctorate), and the number of practice and ensemble rehearsal hours required per week... well, there are only so many hours in a day. My D wants to double major in voice and Spanish, and while that might be possible (in 5 years, hubby says, if she's lucky and doesn't have a nervous breakdown), it would be so much easier if she would choose one or the other, or major in one and minor in the other.</p>
<p>
[quote]
How much are you willing and able to pay out of pocket, realizing that loans are not something you will consider?
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Curmudgeon, I am struggling mightily to answer this question. Will I realize any savings in car insurance, utilities, food, etc., when dd leaves home? Or will those potential savings be eaten up (literally) by ds, three years younger? </p>
<p>I don't see the dollars in my budget -- in fact, it feels a bit like drowning to even think of it -- but let's say I was able to come up with $12k a year. That's the approximate EFC suggested by one of the online financial aid calculators.</p>
<p>If I could pay $12k a year out of my pocket, then what am I looking for in target schools? Full tuition? Half?</p>
<p>If she chose the in-state public, the scholarship would cover tuition, housing, and $1k/year for books. That leaves food ($3k?), personal expenses such as clothes, toiletries, pocket money, phone ($3k?), and transportation ($1k?) No doubt there are miscellaneous other fees to be paid as well.</p>
<p>So that's about $7k/year even at the "full ride" school. Do these numbers sound anywhere near reasonable to those who've already been there, done that? </p>
<p>She'll be applying for some outside scholarships, including a couple of corporate awards where the applicant pool is relatively small. One of these has a top award of $5k/year for four years.</p>
<p>If she stays in-state, she's eligible for around $4k/year in state funds. (Half of her short-list schools are in-state.)</p>
<p>And of course she could get a summer job to contribute to expenses.</p>
<p>If <em>all</em> of those things came through, then the financial picture looks considerably brighter. But perhaps that's like hoping to get full-tuition offers from <em>all</em> the schools to which one applies -- not very realistic.</p>
<p><<< let's say I was able to come up with $12k a year. That's the approximate EFC suggested by one of the online financial aid calculators.>>></p>
<p>If your EFC is only 12 K a year (I say "only" cuz many of us would dream to have that number -- $40K+ here) then your child will likely get non-merit money at schools that meet 100% of need -- if that the costs exceed 12K (such as privates and oos). Perhaps the merit money can be used to help reduce your expected financial contribution (that part I have no idea... anyone???? )</p>
<p>PS Why would your car insurance go down??? Doesn't your daughter still need to keep her ability to drive - even if it's only during summers, holidays, etc???</p>
<p>
[quote]
Why would your car insurance go down?
[/quote]
</p>
<p>It may not. Our insurance agent had indicated this might happen if she goes to school a long way from home and doesn't take a car with her. Presumably she'd be driving much less because of lack of access to a vehicle, and the rates might reflect that.</p>
<p>On the other hand, she might go to a school closer to home, or she might take a vehicle with her. Without a vehicle she'd have trouble transporting the harp, but I know some schools don't allow freshmen to bring cars.</p>
<p>Some states allow you to take the student off insurance while they're away, then put them back for summers. Not mine, unfortunately.</p>