Your DD’s NHS situation sounds a little like an opportunity similar to when my DD neglected to put National Merit Semifinalist on her Common App (Common App limited awards to 5 and she had other awards she thought were more important). Her GC thought that was a mistake, so DD emailed her regional AO at each school about her NMSF status. Instead of just saying “oh by the way I forgot to tell you I’m a NMSF”, she also took the opportunity to express interest in each school by listing a few things about the school that made it a good fit for her (e.g. specific program within her major, specific RSO she liked, reputation for having xyz kind of culture, anecdote about something positive that happened when she visited, etc.). If she had a genuine question about the school or its programs, she asked it in the email too.
Big merit scholarships at schools that are not auto-merit for stats are decided by real people who, consciously or unconsciously, are swayed by their interactions with prospective students.
Frequently there is a responsibility placed upon the recipients of the big merit money scholarships to be spokespersons/ambassadors for their school, and for many of th very big scholarships the candidates are brought in for interviews. It’s perfectly reasonable for the people reviewing these candidates to consider how a student comes across/presents themselves during this process. IMO it would be foolish for a school not to consider this as part of the total review process.
Also, I suggest reading chapter six of Frank Bruni’s book “Where You Go Is Not Who You’ll Be: An Antidote to the College Admissions Mania” which starts with this remark: “With colleges as with so much else, we have an unfortunate tendency to indulge in stereotypes”.
If still unconvinced, National Scholars should accept ASU’s offer to spend a night on campus.
What does your daughter want from her college? Does she really have no opinion? My daughter had a whole list of “must haves.”
What excites your daughter? What sparks her curiosity? When she isn’t doing school work or playing hockey, what is it that energizes her? What does she enjoy talking about? These are all of the things that might help narrow down some schools.
As far as expressing interest, a simple email to ASU letting them know that she wasn’t on their list seems like a great start. As I mentioned earlier, some schools have online chats that she can participate in for an hour…maybe she can ask? Are there any local events she can Uber to? How about emailing an admissions counselor and letting him/her know that she can’t visit…and is there a local alum who would meet her for coffee and possibly give her some insight about life on campus?
FYI all schools have parties. If your D isn’t into that scene (mine isn’t either), then has she done any research about things to do that may be of interest to her? For example, does she want a school where clubs are active and well attended? Does she plan to get involved in research (my daughter’s research team often went to dinner together etc)? Does she enjoy being outdoors? This may help narrow things down.
Your D doesn’t have to express interest to schools that give automatic, guaranteed merit based on stats. In my opinion she should show it at schools with competitive merit…even at schools that are relatively low on the food chain. There are lots of really impressive students out there who are also looking for money to attend college.
I’m sorry if this comes off as rude. I find your and your daughters attitude as somewhat arrogent and entitled. When somebody is asking for $40k a year or so, I would think that you should be humble instead of coming off as if the school should be the greatful one. Full disclosure, my daughter was a $0 EFC student who attended a top school with 100% aid. She knew what a gift that was, and if they would have said jump, she would have gladly asked how high.
To be honest, we really don’t know what his DD does or doesn’t want. We are hearing it all through a filter. As far as we know, she hasn’t read or posted on cc. But for that matter perhaps she is working diligently with the college counselors at her boarding school and is doing what we are suggesting here.
My feeling is that OP’s Dd may well be similar to mine. My dd is a high stats kid who knows she will not be able to attend a school we cannot afford. So, her attitude is that she wants to apply to a wide variety of schools, including 1-2 reachier financial reaches that might not give her an aid package that is feasible for us. It will only be for the personal satisfaction of knowing whether or not she could be admitted to that reachy reach school. But, frankly, I believe the “I don’t care where I go” attitude is more of a self-preservation mode, and it’s better to allow the kid to have a number of options that might be financially feasible and then let her choose in the end than to limit those options up front.
Here’s my take on it. They are gifting your daughter thousands if not, hundreds of thousands of dollars. And you cannot think of a single question or reason to write?
What?
Unless the school has money to burn, there will be lots of people in front of your daughter. They will be sending videos, emails, skyping and interviewing like crazy for that fixed pool of $$. Your daughter is likely already in a couple of piles that will end up empty unless she can learn to “schmooze” Granted, you already have some offers but since your approach was to go wide and then compare why even bother if you can’t express minimal interest? I honestly, think if that was the case you might have chosen to apply ONLY to those schools where expressed interest doesn’t matter.
It’s funny but usually those who don’t have good schmoozing skills are far behind others ( financially and in job placement) vs. those who do have those skills.
Let’s not confuse school-provided discounts with disinterested generosity. Schools want something that this kid has, and are willing to offer her a reduced price on what they’re selling in order to get it. But she has no more reason to be grateful to them for offering a discount than they have reason to be grateful to her for taking it.
Arrogant and entitled are the polar opposite of how we feel about her high school and post high school education. We are all eternally grateful for the tremendous financial aid package she got from her prep school, which allowed her to attend. And likewise being awarded any scholarship from a college, let alone full tuition or better, would be appreciated more than you can imagine. Such a scholarship would make the difference between her being able to attend and not being able to.
I’m not sure how my comments come across as arrogant and entitled. Because she isn’t in love with one particular college? Because we want to maximize her merit aid?
I am simply looking at this process from a logical/engineer point of view. Many schools offer lots of money to high achieving students like my daughter to attend. Her achievements have allowed us to play in this game, and I’m trying as best I can to learn how to play in order to maximize her merit aid and give her the best chances of getting enough aid to allow her to go to the best school possible. There are a bunch of people here who know this game inside and out, and I am also very grateful to them for giving us tips on the best way to proceed. I would hope that she is an attractive candidate to the schools that she’s applying to and that they might find her attractive enough to give significant incentive for her to attend. If this, coupled with asking direct questions of these knowledgeable folks here, comes across as arrogant and entitled, then I guess that’s the way it’s going to be, even though that is most definitely not the case.
Not only are we hearing it through a filter, but parent/student live on opposite coasts. This may be a kid who doesn’t particularly enjoy all of the college talk…and communicating about this stuff while living so far away makes it that much more difficult. We don’t know all the details.
I think this student really doesn’t care, but dad most certainly does. If D gets big merit to Utah she may decide she’s done with her applications. This may be why he isn’t pushing her to do these schools ASAP. There is a bit of a balancing act going on here between merit from Alabama versus getting out the Vandy app.
On the other hand…maybe he’s just more “chill” than I would be in this situation. Again…we just don’t know.
Most residential schools will have party scenes. However, larger ones in non-isolated areas where fraternity/sorority participation is not that high are more likely to have social opportunities that do not revolve around drinking and partying.
She can avoid party scenes by commuting to a local college, but that may not be her first choice for other reasons. Women’s and historically black colleges also tend to have lower levels of college drinking.
How does one know exactly what an aid package will look like unless one applies? You can know that the odds are not in your favor but you can’t know for sure until you apply and get the package. Just today we got a booklet in the mail from Vanderbilt that indicated they gave families with income ranging from approx 160k to $179k need based packages up to the full COA. I’m thinking that can’t really be true based on what I read here on these forums. But then again, why would they make that representation?
The OP has gotten an amazing amount of free advice, information and guidance from many very experienced folks here. I think what turned the tone is the description of showing demonstrated interest as “shmoozing” and the sense that this is distasteful.
I agree with those who said that if she doesn’t want to do that, really doesn’t care where she goes, sees one chem E as just like another (OP called them classrooms with desks), then yes she should have simply applied to the automatic full ride schools and maybe a few golden ring schools for kicks and giggles. But to put all the effort into the applications and essays for the biggies without grasping the importance of the “why xxx school” is simply dropping the ball.
Oh and by the way, many adcomms (they hate that term but it’s easy to type) and essay readers do read CC, and a female California Latino hockey player from a NE boarding school with those scores and with need is going to be pretty easy to spot.
This video is old but well worth watching. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Y-OLlJUXwKU especially in this day and age a student does need an adcomm to go to bat for them. If a student doesn’t stand out from the other strong candidates and doesn’t have the “this kid will really add value to our community” factor, they will either get skipped over or given an “admit-deny” (admission but not enough aid, leaving a big gap the family can’t cover).
There is a difference in applying and only intending to go if the financial package is feasible. Nothing is set in stone until the school gives the results back.
I agree with jym in that I think this is what has slightly altered the tone. Personally, I do not think that OP is being arrogant at all–though perhaps he was being resistant to really hear what was being said about the showing interest component. I think this may be because the management of upwards of 20 applications is going to be the difficult part, IMHO. And perhaps OP is hesitant to add yet another task to his kid’s to-do list in terms or expressing interest to some of these colleges.
OP, you have said you created this thread to seek advice on how to maximize merit aid for your daughter. Short of one of us working in admissions, we can not say for certain what works and what does not. It may be that it would not make a difference in the award of merit whether or not your daughter expresses interest. All that I can say from personal experience, having a daughter who has very similar stats to yours and who was applying as a prospective engineering major and seeking very competitive merit aid as well, is that she took the time to maximize her chances for this competitive merit aid by putting great thought and effort into her applications and by showing genuine interest, not only to those colleges that tracked interest, but to those colleges awarding competitive merit. That is what she did to maximize her chances. And the added benefit of expressing interest was that she learned a lot about the schools in the process. And she applied to a lot of schools as well–so I completely understand how much time this takes.
I suspect that your daughter is going to have many wonderful offers come the spring and she is going to have a short time frame in which to decide where she wants to attend. So, the work she puts in up front now will benefit her in the spring when she gets her decisions and merit award notifications. And it will benefit her applications in terms of the “why do you want to attend College X” essays and very well may maximize her chances for merit aid, which is what you said you wanted to do.
@KevinFromOC I know a few serious high stats kids who followed the money to ASU/Barrett, including engineering and pre-med students. None are partiers and all have had a good experience and found like-minded-ability peers at ASU. For at least one, the on-campus visit (paid for by ASU) was key.
Is that a bad thing? Do adcomms frown upon parents asking others how to maximize merit aid? I certainly have never tried very hard for anonymity here - it wouldn’t take a Sherlock Holmes to figure out who she is. I’m just being completely honest, that at this point she isn’t in love with any one particular school (although my checkbook might fall in love with some schools over others!). I personally would like for her to go to the best school possible (i.e., if Southeast Alaska State Community College had the same price tag as Princeton, I’d nudge her towards Princeton). But all of the schools she’s applying to are good schools, and we both would be thrilled if she is able to get the merit aid she needs (or better) at one or more of these schools.
As I’ve said before, my plan is to see which colleges come in as affordable, and then compare, focus on, and visit those schools. And the only way to see which are affordable is to apply and see what they offer.
Yes we have gotten great advice! And I can’t thank y’all enough! In fact, I’ve decided to double the price we’re paying for said advice!
I don’t want her to contact an adcomm for the purpose of schmoozing - I think that would be disingenuous and to me would be distasteful. I’m sure we’ve all had someone schmooze us, and I don’t know about you, but that immediately lowers my opinion of the schmoozer.
She had to “cold-email” dozens of college hockey coaches over the last few years, and it was a chore. She fretted over the wording of a simple e-mail and it took her forever to get it perfect to send it. And then literally only about 1 out of 20 would even respond. To add that now to the enormous amount of essay writing she’s doing would be a major stress factor for her (not to mention the regular homework from 5 AP and honors classes, plus field hockey playoffs). That being said, after all this discussion I think it would be good for her to open a dialog with some of the adcomms. I would hope that (1) they would respond, and (2) that maybe they would prod her with some questions of their own. If they were to do that, I’m sure she would be much more comfortable in communicating with them.
There are no automatic full ride schools. There are some automatic full tuition schools, which still amounts to at least $15K. Maybe one school will come through with a better offer for her. Maybe one won’t. Maybe the best will be $14K and Princeton will be $20K - tough decision then. Only way to find out is to apply.
I would answer “why xxx school?” with “because xxx is a great school and if it is somehow made affordable then it would be a privilege to go there - Maybe the best fit for our other daughter will also be to attend college and the financial aid might then be enough. I want to keep as many options open as possible”