<p>Hunt wrote *This is fine, if that’s what the kids want as well. When they don’t we get some of the other threads we see this time of year: “How do I convince my parents that…?” *</p>
<p>Right! But if the parents are doing what they think best for student and family, I can’t fault them. Education isn’t a one size fits all process. Count me as part of the group bothered when posters make sweeping statements about private college not being worth it. And if it isn’t worth it to them, it just makes sense to me they let their kids know that early on. I understand and sympathize that families have to wait for FA decisions in many cases to decide final worth. But if you are clearly full-pay and you don’t believe it’s worth it, why apply? The situation the OP describes seems to me to put the student in an unfair position. I didn’t discover CC until after the applications were all in. After a panicked over-reaction to an EA deferral, our son found himself with an embarrassment of riches including offers for merit scholarships we had never known existed and it never crossed our minds not to let the kid make the choice… I feel like I can offer my opinion here. Let the student decide and own the decision.
IMHO</p>
<p>I am remembering back to when I was that age and I really had no idea about costs on that order of magnitude… Granted, parent were less involved then and not every app was vetted, but they certainly ‘let’ me apply where I wanted. When I got my acceptances back (3 for 3 and this feeds right into that would you have gotten in today thread . . . no) my dad spread everything out on the dining room table to run the numbers. He didn’t ask me how I felt about the value or fit or what size wedding I wanted. He just told me that I wouldn’t be attending The University of Pennsylvania. I said “fine” and moved on to #2 and the world didn’t end. Whatever this family’s deal is, I can’t say that I’m on board with the ‘kid gets final say no matter what or they might melt’ concept. </p>
<p>Well, I have a reverse scenario to contemplate: income that goes UP precipitously. When S applied to college, we were as close to $0 EFC as one could get. (We did have a complicating factor: shared ownership of a piece of real estate that we couldn’t get any money out of, but some schools were willing to see the light on that one.) Near the end of S’s junior year, our income suddenly tripled, roughly. The school told H not to worry, our EFC would be calculated based on last year’s income. Thanks to their extremely generous FA policies, we weren’t expected to kick in 50% of our income that last year, something that could easily have happened elsewhere. </p>
<p>This is a pretty judgmental thread. You don’t know why the OP said the child was admitted to certain schools. Maybe they had likely letters, or had reason to assume the child would be accepted. They wouldn’t be the first family to assume certain correspondence from a college meant they were in. (The acceptance my son received from a college several weeks ago followed by a rapid apology and the explanation that decisions haven’t been made yet is a fine example). It doesn’t automatically follow that they applied ED to several schools. </p>
<p>Did he say full ride when he meant full tuition, or was that a lie? We don’t know. Apparently someone knows, or suspects, ASU only gives certain types of scholarships. But, oh, wait, maybe that’s not strictly true. The OP is pulling a bait and switch, or using us to convince a spouse, or maybe there is no spouse, but a stepparent…You have no way of knowing whether any of that’s true. It’s not appropriate for the OP to assume his child was admitted to a couple of colleges, when he may actually have data indicating the liklihood of it, but it’s okay for posters here to make assumptions about him without pertinent details? And we’re picking on people’s spelling now, are we? Really?</p>
<p>Even if the OP is a child yanking adults’ chains, I’d be hard pressed to say who was more ill-behaved. No, I take that back. I don’t see the children belittling each other in this manner.</p>
<p>Wesleyan’s notification date for ED students is 12/15; for ED II students, it’s 2/15. At which point, if you’re accepted, you’re supposed to withdraw your applications to all other schools, not be hunting around for the best deal. </p>
<p>I don’t know - maybe the OP’s son got an early write from Wesleyan (if any went out this year - no one reported it on CC, if they did). Otherwise, I don’t see how an acceptance in hand from Wesleyan on the day the OP started this thread jives with acceptances at Bard, Lawrence and ASU. Add Grinnell (another ED-only school, where the OP said here <a href=“Whitman vs Oxy vs Pitzer - #10 by cbkeeler - Whitman College - College Confidential Forums”>Whitman vs Oxy vs Pitzer - #10 by cbkeeler - Whitman College - College Confidential Forums; that his son had a large merit scholarship), and an acceptance at Whitman (yet another ED-only school), and the whole story is just too much. So shame on me for wasting my time trying to give an anonymous stranger some assistance. But shame on him, too, for positing an impossible and very possibly unethical scenario.</p>
<p>No one asked me to referee this thread, but it seems to me that the people being scolded here have modeled restrained and adult responses in the face of some pretty insulting posts.</p>
<p>The OP described a scenario that could happen, and certainly does happen. That’s why I don’t care so much if it wasn’t literally true. I guess there’s always a problem when somebody asks for advice, and the situation they’re in is because of something they did (or failed to do) in the past. Do you identify that fact? I think on a forum like this, you do, because other people will read and (hopefully) benefit from it. Then, you provide the best advice you can for getting out of the predicament the OP may be in. Those of us who thought OP made a mistake in the past still gave advice as to what to do (in my case, it was to apologize and buy the kid a car to use at ASU–I still think that’s pretty good advice to somebody who would would be saving a couple of hundred grand).</p>
<p>And yeah, it can come off as judgmental. But sometimes people are asking us for our judgment about what they should do, but don’t want any judgment of what they did in the past. I think that’s too much to ask for in this kind of forum.</p>
<p>I have no agenda here. Just a couple of thoughts.</p>
<p>I do think that posters have the right to privacy, and that it is entirely likely that some posters fictionalize and fudge here and there to try to maintain some privacy.</p>
<p>I believe it is quite possible that a person posing a question might change a few identifiers to maintain some privacy. I can imagine that a person might be asking a legitimate question, but might change a few facts to protect themselves and their child. I can believe that a person might substitute one college for a similar college. Perhaps the OP was asking for our thoughts about “colleges like these”, where his son had been accepted. Not Grinnell or Wesleyan, but colleges similar to Grinnell or Wesleyan, colleges with an early action application option, where acceptances might have been sent. Perhaps the OP felt that it would be too easy to identify him or his child IRL if he posted the actual colleges where his child had been accepted. </p>
<p>Grinnell and Whitman do not do likely letters or early writes – at least not historically. So this would be a first if the OP has those in hand.</p>
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<p>People might fictionalize on specifically where they live or some really specific EC that could identify their kid. But there is no point in not disclosing the actual colleges involved, actual admissions status, and costs involved. One reason this OP annoys me so much is that many parent are out here giving time and advice that is hard won in the college search over the years – when people screw around by providing incomplete or misleading info, it wastes everyone’s time.</p>
<p>college experience? who cares, you can always visit friends at other colleges and have your “college experience”, trust me, being single and living with friends after college, before marriage and kids, etc. is waaaaay more fun than college!</p>