<p>My son and I are in the process of narrowing down a few places to apply to and we are trying to find some where he could possibly compete for a merit scholarship. This got me thinking, though. Say we applied to 3 places so we could weigh one against the others and see what comes out best both financially and in terms of what he thinks is the right fit and not decide until April or so, which I'm sure lots of people do. Say he applies for competitive scholarships in case he could receive one. What if he receives more than one good offer with scholarships -- what happens to the scholarships from the schools he is passing up? Doesn't this keep them away from other students who might have wanted them, and meanwhile my son is taking his time deciding on where to go, and another kid would like to know that scholarship isn't being used and maybe should be up for grabs for somebody else? Hope this makes sense...and any advice on how this all works out? I suppose it's a slim chance he'd get a scholarship from more than one, if even any, but it got me thinking.</p>
<p>If he is lucky enough to get more than one top scholarship & has to turn the other(s) down, he doesn't have to feel bad. Schools know that they won't get 100% yield & they plan accordingly.</p>
<p>I would recommend applying to at least 5 schools and then wait and compare the costs once the financial/merit packages arrive.</p>
<p>Don't worry about taking someone else's scholarship. It doesn't work that way. Colleges offer scholarships knowing that a certain percentage of accepted students will not take them up on the offer. In other words, they offer more scholarships then they will actually have to pay out. Offering your child a scholarship does not take a scholarship away from another qualified student.</p>
<p>^ Just do the schools a favor ... if you've eliminated one (or more) from consideration, email the school as soon as you can and let them know you won't be coming. There are a few "use or lose" scholarships, and in these relatively rare cases you may free up money for some other lucky student.</p>
<p>I would say apply to at least 6 - 2 reach, 2 pretty sure he can get in & 2 safety schools where he would be happy.</p>
<p>Don't just depend on the colleges for scholarships - go to fastweb and also start looking at local scholarships (my dd walked in freshman yr with over $12,500 in outside scholarships - the money was a big plus to add to what her college offered her for merit, etc.)</p>
<p>It's hard to know what the next kid is doing. You do have to take care of yourself, but NewHope is right - if you eliminate a school early on, let the school know. Also, you have to consider what you will tell your son - will he have to choose the school that has the best financial pkg or where he wants to be the most?</p>
<p>It's a hard decision - been there</p>
<p>orangepop-
It would be great if you have this problem and have lots of scholarships from which to choose! When you have them in hand, if you find that school#1 offered more $ but school #2 is his first choice, if the schools really are comprable schools, you can speak to someone in the FA office at school #2, advise them of the scholarship you were offered from school #1 and ask if they will reconsider their offer to be in line with the offer from school #1. This is perfectly reasonable and often very beneficial. Good luck!</p>
<p>I agree with nysmile. At least at the University of Chicago they told us exactly that. The ones offered to students that end up not attending are not offered to anybody else and are not "saved" to be used next year either. </p>
<p>If merit money and/or financial aid are major factors in your choice of college, apply to many schools because you need to have many options. If the application fees would be a financial burden, many schools will wave it if you ask.</p>
<p>I agree with orangepop that it's a strange system. As a foreigner, although I see many happy families on CC with multiple acceptances to top schools, I also see many others either having to wait months to (maybe) get off a waitlist, or else hesitating so long between their different acceptances that some, after finally chosen College X, start thinking they made the wrong choice as soon as they meet the first "less than perfect" situation in school, and start talking about transfer. I have now understood that most of it is about money. On the other hand, if schools were clearer from the start about FA and merit aid at least among comparable schools, the US could adopt the policy many European countries have adopted, i.e. having students classify their applications from 1 to, say, 8. Colleges and schools then send their acceptances and waitlists to a centralized org, somewhat like CollegeBoard, and the students then log in. If student A got his first choice, then his name disappears from the other schools, and student B, on the waitlist, moves up a notch, etc... The whole process takes 2 weeks and is, imo, far less stressful. But of course there would have to be a real concertation between schools to eliminate the bargaining factor jym mentions in his post.</p>
<p>jmho, but from we learned, the admission reps anticipate that top students will apply to 8 to 10 colleges. it's also not unusual for top students to apply to 10 to 14 or more.</p>
<p>Colleges do accept and give out more financial aid $/scholarships than they can afford, knowing that some kids will reject their offer, so there is nothing to worry about. Most of the time this system works very well.</p>
<p>Lost: Lots of people have suggested that system, but it would require far more coordination that has ever happened to date among colleges, and would probably violate U.S. antitrust laws. (Years ago, the Justice Department forced the Ivy League to end its policy of ensuring that everyone got the same financial aid package from every Ivy college who accepted him.)</p>
<p>The problem you are noticing only affects a small percentage of U.S. students anyway -- those applying to and accepted by the thin layer of elite, highly selective colleges at the top of the food chain. Those kids are way overrepresented on CC. The vast majority of college-bound students doesn't go through this.</p>
<p>Note: At least one college that offered one of my children a merit scholarship DID redistribute funds as candidates turned them down. After an initial offer in February, the college increased the award by 33% in March based on turn-downs, and hinted that it would likely be increased further to full tuition.</p>
<p>Thanks, JHS. Since the only contact I have with US colleges is through CC, I know I have a skewed outlook. Could you possibly explain in a few sentences what "normal" college-bound students face? (Not only for my own info; I spend quite a lot of time trying to explain to French high schoolers how the system works on your side of the Atlantic).</p>
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What if he receives more than one good offer with scholarships -- what happens to the scholarships from the schools he is passing up? Doesn't this keep them away from other students who might have wanted them, and meanwhile my son is taking his time deciding on where to go, and another kid would like to know that scholarship isn't being used and maybe should be up for grabs for somebody else?
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<p>Several schools notified by D that she would be contacted if not all merit money was accepted by the winners. Those schools that offered her money - except Michigan - attached deadlines for her acceptance.</p>
<p>Here's what isn't too cool - schools that solicit scholarship applications from busy seniors, then not ever bother to notify them that they didn't make the cut. There were several schools that she never did get an answer from which complicated many things. And some like U Chicago and Rice that don't notify of merit money until they deliver the acceptance - very late in the game. Had she known this for instance, she probably would have withdrawn at two of the schools where she was a scholarship finalist.</p>
<p>I think it would be a very nice thing if these schools would observe a universal scholarship finalist notification date, just as they all notify of acceptance by March 30. That would really help clarify the process.</p>
<p>And finally, we found the whole merit award business enormously arbitrary. Some scholarships she seemed perfect for she didn't make it to first base. Other long shots she made finalist and in a few cases won the award. Like selective admissions, the system forces students to cast a wide net if they are counting on having scholarship options.</p>
<p>Lost: My kids graduated from a public high school with a class of about 550 students. About 97% of them went to college following high school (the rest went into the military or to trade schools; a few took gap years doing other things before entering college). Something like 70% of the students in each class went to a public college in the state where we live, including some of the top-performing students -- either the main campus of the state "flagship" university (Penn State), the local satellite campus of that university (Penn State - Abington), one of the two large, urban research universities that receive state support but remain somewhat independent (Temple -- which got about 20% of the class -- or Pittsburgh), one of 10-15 smaller, second-tier state universities, which collectively got about 15% of each class, or one of the local two-year community colleges (another 20%). </p>
<p>With the exception of the Penn State main campus, all of these colleges have very predictable admissions (and in many cases effectively a 100% admission rate) and predictable financial aid. They also have rolling admissions, so students who applied early in the year might know that they had been accepted within weeks of applying. Strong students might qualify for non-need-based merit scholarships, but these, too, were fairly predictable based on grades and test scores, and awarded long before the season ended. (They also tended to apply for numerous outside scholarships -- the school works very hard to support that.)</p>
<p>Of the students who didn't go into the state system, about two-thirds went to Catholic or other private colleges that are primarily local or regional and accept most of the students who apply, or to not-very-selective public colleges in nearby states.</p>
<p>Only 50 students or so went to colleges where they faced any kind of significant uncertainty about admission (other than Penn State), or where differences in merit scholarships or financial aid packages were not predictable. And probably half or more of those applied Early Decision to and were accepted by a single college, most often the local Ivy (Penn), which does not offer merit aid but, because of quirks in its charter, is fairly reliably the best financial aid offer for local students, absent a rare "full ride" scholarship elsewhere. Some got athletic scholarships elsewhere. </p>
<p>That leaves 25-30 students -- about 5% of the class -- who wound up attending competitively selective "national" colleges or universities. It was only these students, and maybe 20-25 others who ultimately went to one of the state colleges but who "played the game", who applied to more than one or two colleges, who faced anxiety in the spring, who were comparing disparate financial aid offers. 10% of the class, at a magnet high school with close to 100% college attendance (in general, only about half of U.S. high school graduates go to college at all).</p>
<p>Now, that percentage would be much higher at one of the relatively affluent, sophisticated suburban high schools, but it would be much lower at any number of less competitive public high schools.</p>
<p>There are also private schools, one of which my children used to attend, and where they had many friends. There, a much higher percentage of the students played the selective college game, but the affluence of the families made most of the students fairly insensitive to financial aid differences. As a result, about 1/3 of each class (about 30 out of 90) was accepted at an Early Decision college. 15-20 students would go to in-state public colleges or noncompetitive regional colleges. Only about half the class was engaged in the multiple-application process -- about the same absolute number of kids as at the large public school. And a significant number of those were weaker students who were looking for their best option away from home, applying to colleges that accept well more than half of their applicants.</p>
<p>JHS, your ears will probably burn next week. I'm printing out your fantastic post, handing it out tomorrow and testing the students on Monday. Half of my seniors think most US students go to Ivy League Unis (the only ones they have heard about), and the others have weird impressions culled from American soaps. Thanks a million.</p>
<p>Here's the big picture: About 3 million students graduate from high school in the U.S. each year now, and about half of those will start college within 12 months afterwards -- say 1.5 million. The total first-year class size at the 8 Ivy League colleges is about 11,500, not counting foreign students -- less than 1% of the total. If you add in the rest of the most-competitive private universities, and the 15 or so most-competitive liberal arts colleges -- i.e., the institutions that compete with the Ivy League for top students -- you get to about 32,000 entering U.S. students, or a bit more than 2% of the total Including five or six public universities with equivalent academic reputations would add another 15-20,000 students, of which maybe 5,000 will have crossed state lines to attend college (i.e., are looking for the best college, rather than just their best in-state option). That's still less than 3% of the total number going to college who are going to an elite college other than their home state public university. You can expand the definitions, and expand the numbers -- 30 top universities, 30 top liberal arts colleges, all of the students at all the public universities with grades and test scores similar to those at the top private institutions, but that would still represent only 12-15% of the total who go to college. </p>
<p>Or look at it from a different angle. The 20 most competitive private universities, and the 15 most competitive liberal arts colleges, get something like 450,000 separate applications each year from U.S. students. I don't know what the average number of applications to such institutions per unique student is, but a guess of 3-5 would be reasonable. That implies something like 100,000-150,000 U.S. students -- 10% or less of the college-bound total -- who participate in the elite-college market at all.</p>
<p>I don't have time to check my numbers -- I'm doing this by vague memory. But the big point should be clear: The problems we are talking about are relevant only for a relatively small percentage of college applicants.</p>
<p>It has been very interesting reading all the responses. So many people have different approaches toward all this...things I never realized until I had a child this age and had to start thinking about it all.</p>
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all of these colleges have very predictable admissions (and in many cases effectively a 100% admission rate)
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<p>I wasn't aware we had an 100% admit rate?!?</p>
<p>I completely agree with post #8, and disagree with JHS that it supposedly isn't possible or probable. And if it violates antitrust laws, those laws need to be changed or reworked, because their effect in this case is not to protect consumers but to hamstring them.</p>
<p>I didn't mean to imply that Temple or Pitt has a 100% admit rate! But Millersville, or Philadelphia University, are probably close.</p>