Looking for advice in Merit aid for a top 1% student

Paying for College
661

Nope, not the case, I’m not sure where you got the idea that I’m completing and submitting the main application from or why you would make that leap.
I started the Alabama app for her by filling in names, addresses, phone numbers, etc. The mundane information. Then I saw that the second page was pretty much felony questions and a submit button - that surprised me - I thought there would be at least a page or two that would require her input, thus my questions.

Again, I’m not applying to college for my daughter. Please stop with the unfounded accusations. Alabama made no such mention of any sort of restriction even remotely close to what you are saying, at least nothing that I found. Can you provide an example from a college’s webpage that requires the student to acknowledge this in writing so that I know what to look for? That would be very helpful!
Since she’s in Massachusetts and I’m in California, you’re saying that I shouldn’t even be able to review her application for typos or mistakes before she submitted it then? Cause there’s no way we could do that without me logging into her application and reviewing it! Is it typical of parents to never see any application that their child submits or to go over it with them?

Sorry, I’m slowly learning what not to say on these forums!

662

@KevinFromOC read my post above your last one. Yes…reading and discussing essays, proofreading for errors of grammar and spelling, giving suggestions of college websites to look at, answering questions your student has. Providing info that they might not have (like if your kids don’t know your level of education). Helping to keep track of deadlines.

Providing good moral support…because it’s an exciting but stressful time.

I don’t think anyone here ever said you shouldn’t help.

Try to get your daughter a little more invested in this college search…unless I am reading this wrong, it sounds like you are doing all the work. Is she, perhaps, doing some searching on her own?

663

@KevinFromOC. It is hard to access sometimes what people say vs what they mean on sites like these. I personally get your humor and remarks. You seem like a great father. Keep doing that. Many kids don’t have a father’s influence and that is especially crucial for daughter’s to have. Personally, I don’t think your doing anything wrong. I think it might be some phrasing of the words but not the meanings. I get the Alabama application. You saved her a few seconds of her life. I think some people think your actually doing the main applications for like the common app or something.
Regardless, there is much work for your daughter to do. One thing that worked for us is to schedule like appointments with your daughter to review these things with you . Google docs and video conferencing in your case might be helpful.
What you know but some might be concerned is this time just flies by quickly and it seems your daughter has lots to do with applications. Essays take a lot of time especially if going for merit /honors.

664

@Knowsstuff I could not agree more.

665

@KevinFromOC we don’t live with you, and therefore we really don’t know anything about your daughter. To us…it seems as though you are the one who is driving this process…but of course we may be wrong. A few thoughts:

  • Has your daughter done any research on her own about all of these colleges? What are her thoughts? Comments? Does she have any schools that stand out to her....or would she still be willing/happy to go anyplace with dorms? Are there any schools that she wants to cross off the list?
  • Does your daughter feel stressed for time, or does she feel confident in her ability to get all of these applications done?
  • Is there a guidance counselor at her prep school who can help review her applications for spelling, etc?
  • Will you be happy with any affordable option that she chooses.....as long as you know she is happy?
666

It’s not too late to take some of the more complicated applications off the list. Jefferson Scholars and UVa ,for instance , sounds very unlikely. The school can probably still nominate someone else as the deadline is not until December. Initial nomination in no way guarantees admission (the money comes from Jefferson Scholars Foundation,not UVa itself). UVa is need based primarily and would likely expect you to pay your EFC if she WERE admitted and. was not a Jefferson Scholar. And you’ve said you are not prepared to pay your EFC (not uncommon).

Might be better to concentrate on easier and more likely merit options, lower priced state school options, etc , since your daughter is very busy and will have limited time to get all these applications done well.

667

I think helping kids through this process is fine. It is an important and and overwhelming task and most have never done anything like it before. I think proofing and critiquing essays has much more impact on the app than insisting that the student fill in their address with their own fingers. As long as you make sure your DD is driving the bus on the parts of the app that really matter and is intimately involved with the choice of where to apply, I don’t see anything wrong with what you’re doing. There is definitely a spectrum of how involved parents are/should be. To me, the essays should be the student’s own creation in the student’s own voice, but that doesn’t mean it’s unethical for a parent to give input on how to improve the essay and help with proofing after the kid has done a first draft on their own. I helped my kids a lot with cutting down essays to meet the word count. Really, taking criticism and seeking input are very adult ways to approach a project.

My only advice would be to insist that your D evaluate these schools - don’t let her get away with “I’d be happy almost anywhere.”

True story: my daughter had her social security number incorrect on her common app because that old-fashioned paper card from the SS Administration was hard to read (some government worker was late changing the ink in the printer that day?). It was a real pain to fix after she had hit send. It took lots of phone calls and emails school by school to make sure her app was getting matched up with her FA documents.

668

Not sure about the BAMA app (since I don’t have an ID and login) but the CA absolutely has a way for you to see hers before its sent. She can do a preview and copy it as a PDF. And likely she can have one of the counselors at her school will review the applications with her before she hits “send”. They have done this for many years, though many cycles, and are very familiar with the process, even with different schools on a student’s list.

What people here who HAVE been through this rodeo many times, themselves and/or reading here and elsewhere, TBH it does sound like you are being overly involved with the list building, researching for scholarships, the essays, filling out even the preliminary information, etc. What we are saying is yes, she is busy (so are many if not most seniors), yes you want to find an affordable school (like most here and elsewhere), but please, let her do this work herself.

And my broken watch is right twice a day too, but I don’t rely on it. I find other ways to take ownership of knowing what time it is.

669

My daughter was on automatic with apps. My son, not so much plus he’s a procrastinator type of kid (he’s much better now that he’s in college).
What we found out after going through one school website with him was that there is a ton of information on like each page. We just wanted to highlight the scholarships, clubs, major etc.
We could tell that this all was getting to him. Like his anxiety just rose etc.
So what we did with that same website is I just sent him links to specific areas of the schools. This is what made a huge difference for him. He needed the sites to be broken down. Too much information to process . This would of been consistent to his LD also. (which it seems he sorta outgrew in college).
So we went through many schools this way. He did the research but finding the certain page of this or that was to cumbersome. He eventually just did it on his own. But he really appreciated the help and told us a few times.
So… Know your own child and what works.
He still pressed the send button for some schools to close to the deadline for our comfort though… Lol.

670

I just spent two hours sitting on a chair next to DS while he filled out a scholarship app. I don’t write things for him, but lord he needed a lot of support on this. Part of it is he just doesn’t remember all that he’s done and I know where to dig it up. Hopefully future ones will be more cut and paste now.

671

To clarify, although I believe this is going off on a tangent…
My daughter IS doing the majority of work for this effort. I don’t talk about that because it’s not part of the original intent of this thread and not really relevant. I’m doing the recon - researching which schools have a shot at meeting our budget that we should consider applying to. That job is about 2/3 complete now. While I’m doing the last 1/3 of that, she’s looking at the list of possible schools and pruning them down, all while completing the common app, essays, and other schools’ apps for those we know we will be applying to. We talk about this via e-mail, text, or phone, at least every other day. In our case it’s very much a team effort. She’s at the point where we should be able to submit some apps by next weekend.

I personally do not see any moral or ethical issues with a parent filling in the mundane parts of an application or two (name, address, credit card #, …) and think it’s within both the spirit and the letter of the law of the process. I completely respect the opinions of anyone who has a different opinion. If anyone knows of a college website that explicitly states something contrary to this, please let me know - in that case I might change my opinion! So far I haven’t seen anything stated about this on any college websites (granted, I certainly haven’t been looking for it).

Oh, and regarding Virginia - we had felt obligated to apply since she was nominated for the Jefferson. But, she talked with her counselor last week, and he mentioned to her that not one student the school has nominated has gotten one, and basically told her not to get her hopes up (my second hand interpretation). So maybe we can prune that one after all and not feel guilty.

672

Kevin – You have a major price constraint, some challenging family circumstances, and (as 34 pages of discussion show) a daunting college app death march in front of you as you and your kid try to thread the needle and hit your extremely aggressive $15k COA bullseye. How many apps are still on your list – 10? 15? Most/all with regular supplements, plus a separate pile of merit apps and merit app essays. Your path makes sense, but it is waaaaayyyyyy more complicated than what most kids have to do.

So it is just nutso to expect a 17 year old to be able to navigate (i.e. “own”) this process alone. If it doesn’t come together, you are the one (not your kid) who is going to get squeezed financially. The driver of your crazy process is finances. So you have to be very very very involved. Period. So here’s my advice, based on my two daunting (but ultimately successful) merit aid rodeos (involving each kid doing double digit apps).

The kid is the CEO of Merit App, Inc. and also the Chief Creative and Brand Officer (i.e. essay writer). The kid has final say on the schools to apply to, and the kid writes all the essays. Everything else, frankly, is administrivia for which you can and should be on point. Your job is COO, CFO and CAO. As chief administrative officer, you can help research schools and hone the list, correspond on CC, keep the spreadsheets, manage the paper flow, prioritize the essays to be written, track all the online codes and accounts, manage the Common App versions, make sure the app fees get paid, make sure the transcripts and test scores get sent, track if the rec letters are in process, etc. etc. etc.

It is a tough enough task that both of you are going to have a big job to do. End of the day, even with both of you working hard it won’t get done. By the time we got to mid/late December, both I and both my kids just punted on a bunch of totally excellent schools. We still joke on occasion about all the swank schools we ditched for no reason other than we just couldn’t make ourselves do any more. In that vein, please just go ahead and blow off UVA. Your kid isn’t getting a Jefferson. As an alum, I give you absolution – say three Wa-hoo-Was as penance and move on to more strategic tasks.

The best thing I did as COO/CAO was keep everything (deadlines, spread sheets, essay archive, passwords) up in the cloud in one place so me and the kid could share, update and find things. There’s just so many pieces to keep track of. Good luck!!!

673

Completely absolutely 100% agree, and that’s exactly what we’re attempting to do.

You may very well be right, and that same thing might indeed happen to us. But until that happens, we’re going full steam ahead with as many as practical.

674

hi@kevinfromoc,
I am sorry for your loss,my prayers and condolences to you and your family.
Are any of these free applications? The cost of applying to 30 schools even at minimum $50 a pop is $1500 in addition to paying for a SAT/ACT score report to send to each school. The CSS profile is $25 for the first application and $16 for each additional school. I understand the need for your family to chase merit, but also take in to consideration the cost (actual money and the cost of her time) to apply for all of thsses schools. Foes the school have a limit on how manyt transcripts/reports that they will send for free?

675

OP is already aware that the max number of apps via Common App is 20. Any apps beyond that will be individual apps for colleges. Anyway, we’ve all told OP how much work is involved and he isn’t concerned about it.

676

Sorry for the loss of your mom. But, might there be an inheritance forthcoming that will help make college affordable with a more manageable COA? No one wants to spend a lot to attend college, and certainly being able to pay $15k/year is quite desirable (and you note that this is already manageable if she attends some UC schools), might an inheritance, if any is forthcoming, lighten up this massive, daunting application project your daughter has in front of her?

@sybbie719 - The OP said in his OP that he felt the $2500 needed to do all these apps was a good financial investment in his daughter’s future.

677

To the contrary. I never said I wasn’t concerned about it. In fact, quite the opposite. Our goal is to apply to as many on our list as practical. The work involved is a HUGE concern, and will probably be the driving force into how many are practical.

678

Yep, well aware of that! Several schools have waived their application fee to get my daughter to apply, but when all is said and done we’ll be lucky to only spend $1500 for all of the application fees, ACT fees, and profile fees. Given the odds that spending $1500 now might save many thousands or tens of thousands of dollars over the next 4 years, I consider it a worthy investment!

679

Thanks for the thought, but I had power of attorney for my mom during her last several years (which were spent incapacitated in a nursing home with no quality of life, so her passing was in many ways a relief that she no longer has to endure that). My 4 brothers and I will probably get about $200 each from her estate. I couldn’t be happier that my parents spent all of their savings & retirement while they were able to enjoy it!

680

Has she pulled the trigger and submitted any applications yet? Many students have. The CA opened up August first.