I’m not clear on whether the over or under 40% would mean that California cutoff would apply…
I checked the school’s directory, and it lists how many students from each state attend. There are 307 Massachusetts students, and 111 from other states. There are 539 total students, so that must mean there are 121 international students (wow, I didn’t realize there were that many!).
So that means 57% are from Massachusetts, 21% from other states, and 22% international.
My condolences during this difficult time for you and the family.
Don’t rack your brain over the boarding school National Merit rules. Call the school counselor who can tell you precisely how it works for the school and your daughter.
@homerdog Your assumption that this is about “full rides at elite schools that give merit” is precisely the problem with your assertion that it’s “not worth” bothering to apply. This is about applying for competitive merit at U of SCarolina, Pitt, Utah, etc. where OP’s D may well get a better financial or academic deal than from her auto merit schools. I said previously that OP needs to prioritize those schools rather than focusing on Hail Marys like Caltech and UVA.
The winners at those schools do not have to be “over the top in many ways” let alone winning national awards or appearing on TV. They have to write a good application, interview well, and more than anything else offer something unusual that the school wants. Just like being an excellent flute player might get you into Harvard if they need a flute player (and if they don’t then you will probably be out of luck).
My twins were average excellent middle class students. They didn’t have any extraordinary achievements. But they each won the (one) interview based merit scholarship that they applied for. It wasn’t a “slim” chance, roughly 5-10% of applicants won, which is better than the rate of admission to Ivy League schools that tens of thousands of kids apply to rather than concluding that it’s not worth bothering. More importantly they each had something the college was looking for, so their odds were much better than average.
If OP’s D picks schools that are looking for hockey and/or her URM background, where she is in the top 1-2% of students in terms of academics, and which have a significant number of scholarships available compared to the number of applicants, then with a strong application and interview her chances of winning could easily be anywhere from 20%-50%.
However she’s not likely to meet those criteria at tippy top schools, which is why the list of “competitive” schools needs to be split between realistic and Hail Mary choices.
Best way to think about it is that ABET accreditation sets a good minimum standard for engineering major programs. However, for any given student, there could differences between “good” and “better” among ABET accredited programs. Note that some potentially relevant differences are not prestige or selectivity related (even though that seems to be the main kind of difference that people write about here), such as curricular organization, subarea emphasis, and elective offerings, preferences of which may vary from one student to another.
Sorry for your loss.
I would like to comment on majors that are employable at Starbucks, because it struck a nerve. My D has one of these majors that CC often warns about. She decided to work for a year or 2 before heading back to school. She sent out 8-10 resumes, received 3 job offers, and was offered 2 interviews at Stanford (2 different positions). The positions at Stanford were ultimately given to applicants with a year of real world experience, but my point is that my D’s choice of major was not an issue.
Next, I have a sincere question for the OP. You indicated that your daughter has no preferences about fit and that she can pretty much be happy anywhere. Be glad…my older one was like this. Applying to colleges that give significant merit (competitive), applying to “elite” schools, highly highly competitive merit such as Jefferson Scholars etc…is an extremely time consuming, grueling process. And I mean time consuming. My younger daughter worked on her 19 essays every night from the end of June through the end of August…and this is a kid who can easily write. Is your daughter willing to put in all of the time? Will she mind? Have you had this discussion?
I would have her apply to Alabama right now so that she has a school. The process will be quick and she will be done. I would also suggest an additional 2 schools with automatic acceptance and merit so that she has choices. If she wants to apply to any of the other 40+ schools that have been suggested…great!! If not…she has a very good school to attend, and one where engineers graduate and find jobs. I wish your daughter luck!
I’m with you @blossom . Slow and steady. I would be really disappointed in my kids if they expressed the kind of intolerance the would keep them focused/associating only with people they perceived as their intellectual peers. Why? Because their perceptions are often wrong and because their day is coming.
As an aside I told my daughter when graduating college no waiting tables.(no negative comments please… You will see where this is going soon ?). She was in theater design before transferring schools and major. It was just too cliché… Lol.
So she has always wanted to be a barista. She just thought this would be a great college job and a way to meet people. So when she transferred as a junior to her new school she only knew like 2 students. So she worked in the coffee shop and was a pseudo barista. She met tons of friends she has today and learned a new people skill but she said it was way to basic.
So now a senior she got an off campus job as a real… Barista at a local coffee shop(actually owned by big corporation and never heard of it prior not a big name) that not only has like intense training but is paying way above the paltry minimum wage in Wisconsin and they are offering her a 401k! This is a very partime job but she got interview skills, she will learn something new, able to start the habit of contributing to a savings account regardless how small it will be and have a fall back job besides baby sitting, just in case. Don’t laugh at baby sitting… In Chicago she makes $17-22. 00/hr and has set families ?.
The fact of the matter, which is OT and maybe we should start a lively discussion about this, is that Humanities and Social Sciences majors, over all, do not get jobs that pay as well, get the benefits that STEM majors, particularly in fields like Computer Science, Engineering and other fields that are particularly needing more employees get. That’s a fact Yes, there are exceptions, But, it is clear as can be in any group of statistics where earnings by major are laid out. It’s just a fact of life
@ordinarylives I think that an unwillingness to associate with those not an intellectual peer is a terrible characteristic that serves no one. But an unwillingness to engage in an academic exercise, where intelligence is a real asset, where most if not all participants have lower engagement levels, is perfectly fine. Students are spending their money and valuable time in college; it is both reasonable and rational for them to want a good value. And the best students I know admit that they often learn more from other students than professors. When you are always the best student in the class, this happens less. High stats kids who go to strong high schools where they eventually find themselves in classes with a homogeneous group of strong students figure that out, and want it to continue in college. They have been the smartest kid in the class plenty of times, and they are over it by high school.
In an ideal world, every kid would be cut out for engineering and CS.
In the world we live in, someone has to be the nurses and the speech therapists, the financial analysts, the folks who write the instructions for medications so that elderly patients understand not to take three doses once a day (which could kill them) but one dose, three times a day. And it’s nice to live in a world where people design signs for the subway which are clear and legible, and a world where people create ads that explain to parents that you should give your kid children’s tylenol, not try to guess at the right dosage of the adult product by cutting the tablet in half. And it’s nice to live in a world with music and art and theater. And someone has run human resources at all these companies that hire tech folks, and someone has to manage the facilities and negotiate contracts with the caterers for the companies that employ all these engineers. (and those jobs pay very well btw, even though the people who do those jobs are NOT engineers and are NOT computer scientists.)
That’s also a fact.
I agree we need all kinds of skills. But for right now, for kids graduating from college, those with STEM and pre prof certificates regardless from college, are getting jobs faster and for more than those who are humanities , arts and Soc sciences. It’s a simple fact. It can hurt when a family pays a lot for college and kid is working at local Starbucks side by side with high school kids. I see a few at my local Starbucks, Gap, etc. Most will find better paying jobs in the next several years. Many will have a hard time in that department, more so than those who took more pragmatic majors.
It’s not an anecdotal thing; it’s a hard fact. Not advising or judging on this. It is a hard fact.
The conversation again turns to earnings. There is a lot of implied snobbery here. If a kid isn’t majoring in finance or engineering, they are doomed to a life of poverty and dissatisfaction with life… Hogwash. Anyone can find recent articles discussing the glut of engineering grads who can’t find jobs. The same can be said of people who graduate with degrees in other majors. The worlds doesn’t just need engineers. Again, it’s all about the person and what he or she does with their life. It’s not just about the degree.
Earnings potential has much more to do with how smart a person is rather than specific major. A “Starbucks” majors is fine, but make sure the employer knows that you picked it because engineering was too easy 
FWIW : based on the last several posts, and at the risk of yet another of my off-topic comments being taken the wrong way, let me say that my son who graduated college 5 years ago (with not a penny of merit aid, which is why this aspect is all new to me), started with a Starbucks major, and then halfway through changed to a Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf major. He got a job right out of school with the NFL Network, gets paid a decent salary with several perks, and loves his job. I couldn’t be prouder.
Attitude and motivation >> degree choice.
(Forrest Gump Voice) And that’s all I have to say about that.
I don’t know anything about boarding schools. My DS school has over 700 seniors and 5 counselors for a school of 2700 students. The counselors really can’t provide any individual counseling.
But isn’t part of the expectation of attending a private school or a boarding school that your child will receive individual help with college? I think the OP can develop a list of schools and run it by a school counselor for advice. Also, the OPs DD is a high stats student. Is there an advantage or disadvantage to having attended a boarding school when applying for the elite merit scholarships? I’d think there might be an admissions advantage, but suspect there could be a scholarship disadvantage. The OP could ask how many students from this school have received elite merit scholarships in the past 5 years.
The $15,000 per year budget is tough. The auto-merit schools need to be closely reviewed by your DD. Which is more appealing: Alabama or Arizona or Nebraska? These places are very different in terms of climate and culture especially for someone who has lived in CA and MA. The engineering schools and curricula as well as alternate majors should all be investigated. ASU has an interesting planetary sciences major and strong honors college for instance. Each schools will have appealing aspects but it takes a lot of time to investigate all of this.
“Humanities and Social Sciences majors, over all, do not get jobs that pay as well… That’s a fact Yes, there are exceptions, But, it is clear as can be in any group of statistics where earnings by major are laid out. It’s just a fact of life”
Quoting “overall” statistics (ie for average students) is particularly inapposite in a thread discussing a top 1% student. There are plenty of “winner takes all” professions where the best performers receive the lions share of the earnings. And CEOs like @blossom’s “Renaissance Man”. Our rulers are mostly lawyers and liberal arts graduates not engineering or finance majors.
First of all, OP, I love your writing style and sense of humor (which I suspect can be misread as written tone can be read so differently).
Re boarding schools, the OP mentioned early on, and I agree with him, that college counselors are not attuned to kids needing high merit awards. Most of their students are either full pay, or qualify for financial aid. Very few fall into that middle ground. I suspect the OP will get better advice on this thread.
As a rule boarding school in and of itself is not a positive for college admissions, particularly at selective institutions.
Oh yeah, one of the big advantages of a prep school. Her school has 6 college counselors (whose sole jobs are college counselors) for 135 seniors. We talk with our counselor on a semi-regular basis, and our daughter meets with him often. I just don’t think they are as skilled in finding merit aid as they are in other aspects of college counselling. For example, I believe it is very rare for them to have a student that wishes to submit an application before the middle of October, yet that seems to be crucial for some schools regarding their merit aid.
Regarding the National Merit Scholar cutoff - I posted a question to Art Sawyer at College Prep and he promptly responded. She falls under Massachusetts, which has a cutoff of 223. As Maxwell Smart would say, “Missed it by that much”
KevinInOC says:
September 5, 2019 at 9:11 pm
Hello Art
My daughter received a selection index of 222 (760 math, 730 RW). We live in California, but she attends a prep school in Massachusetts. I read somewhere that in this case the state used for the cutoff depends on the number of out of state students that attend the school, with 40% being the magic threshold. Can you confirm (or deny) any of that? I believe at her school 57% of the students are from Massachusetts, and the remaining 43% are out of state/international students.
Can you tell me if California’s cutoff of 222 or Massachusetts’s cutoff of 223 applies to her? In our case, that 1 point makes a world of difference!
Thanks!
Reply
AvatarArt Sawyer says:
September 5, 2019 at 10:14 pm
Kevin,
My understanding is that, unfortunately, 223 is going to be your daughter’s cutoff. I hadn’t heard the exact 40% figure; in NMSC literature, they talk about “predominantly out-of-state” The catch is that the location or status of a student’s high school — not residency — determines eligibility. If your daughter’s school is not a boarding school, then she is a MA student with an MA cutoff. If her school IS a boarding school, then her cutoff is the highest state cutoff in the Northeast. That cutoff is MA. I’d like to be wrong on this.
Pitt’s scholarship committee starts meeting in October I believe, I would urge your D to apply asap!
Also sending SAT/ACT scores can take a week to 10 days, so send them early.