<p>My son has a financial safety. How do I know now that if it came down to it and he could only afford to attend there because he didn't get high enough scholarships elsewhere, that it would meet his needs? On paper it looks okay, and we plan a visit there in a month or two, but how do we know that we don't need to look for another financial safety now? I've looked pretty hard and don't see another financial safety other than community college, but if pressed could probably name another one that doesn't sound as likely to be what he is looking for as this school. He is not a picky kid, but I don't know if I have considered everything I need to. Plus he has changed his mind several times regarding the type of school and his major - big swings every 4 - 6 months. Of course, I can't force him to apply to a school he doesn't want to apply to.</p>
<p>The fact that kids change their minds is the main reason NOT to pick a school based on a single potential major. I think it’s wise to pick a safety that has broad academic strengths.</p>
<p>My son’s financial safety schools were also based on whether he got a merit scholarship from the school- have you looked at schools where he might get scholarships? There are plenty of threads in the financial aid section on schools that give good merit scholarships. Generally,those are schools in which your child’s GPA/SAT score is in the top 25% of the stats for that school.</p>
<p>Lovestheheat - A lot of parents do actually reserve the right to pick a college or two for their son or daughter to apply to - usually for this very reason. My son is a freshman now, and he really wanted to get out of our home state for college. That meant finding some money somewhere! He applied to a lot of schools - a couple he really liked but were reputed not to be real generous with financial aid, some he liked that were supposed to be good with financial aid, 2 in-state public schools, and a couple more I thought might give him enough money to enable him to go out of state. The last two categories - the in state publics and private schools I thought he could get money from - were my picks. He ended up with several choices, and luckily one he was very excited about. but if that one hadn’t panned out like it did, he would probably have ended up at one of the ones I chose, just because those were the ones we could afford. It’s very unpredictable - we cast a wide net, and some of that was with a few “mom’s choice” applications sent in.</p>
<p>My son was set on going to the largest four year college in our state. He wasn’t interested in applying elsewhere. He received a number of scholarships and awards and even a very selective scholarship hall selection. Still, it was going to be a stretch for our budget and more in loans than we really wanted to take out .I got the ball rolling for him to apply at some local commuter colleges across state line which would be a 'financial safety and plan “B”. After touring the instate school and a safety he began to change his mind and was happy that I forced him into applying for some ‘plan B’ colleges. </p>
<p>The college he chose ended up being half the cost of the instate school. With the scholarships and awards they gave him we will pay less than $2500 out of pocket and because of his grades, SAT, ECs, and letters of rec they allowed him to declare a double major as a freshman and helped him map out his his path to achieving it. We figured the double major would ensure he would be challenged enough while providing additional value from our ‘financial safety.’</p>
<p>We feel our financial ‘safety’ turned out to be a blessing because it’s actually worked out to be more flexible and offering more opportunity to my son than did the instate school.</p>
<p>I think it’s a good idea to have 2-3 financial safety schools because sometimes a student later decides that he doesn’t like his one safety.</p>
<p>And by having 2-3 financial safeties…if all of his other schools are unaffordable, then at least he’ll still have a choice to make in the spring. NO one likes feeling like he has to go to his lone safety because none of the others worked out.</p>
<p>I’m reminded of one of my son’s classmate that only had one financial safety. She kept referring to it as the “consolation prize” when none of the other schools worked out. That was sad. Too bad she hadn’t had 2-3 safeties to choose from.</p>