It sounds like (from upthread) Miami won’t be increasing Merit offers this year. That probably prices them out for us (D21 got the minimum for her GPA bracket). U of Alabama (which she’s not very excited about) would be $12.5K/year cheaper (after merit) and the U of Minnesota -TC is about $9K/year cheaper (after merit) w/o adjusting for travel. I’m actually feeling pretty dispirited by the whole college application process. 1) It was a lot of work & she may as well have just done a single app to the UofM & been done. 2) My daughter has an UW GPA of 4.0; Miami puts her weighted at 4.4 - I’ve seen higher weighted GPAs posted - but her High School only has 4 honors classes that were offered, she took 9 APs (and has gotten 5’s on all the tests she taken so far) and both college in the schools classes her high school offers - she could have squeezed in 1 more AP class - but really her GPA is about as high as it could be. Her ACT 33 is dragged down by her math sub-score (27) but she isn’t planning a mathy major. The only way to afford what colleges seem to think we should be paying is to either pretty much drop contributing to retirement (which would be for 8 years as my too kids are back to back 4 years apart) or to saddle them with a bunch of private loans. I’m mostly just venting on the whole processes - but I do think if Miami’s publishing a “range” for scholarships and giving almost everyone the bottom of that range was pretty misleading.
I totally understand as I have a younger son 4 years apart from my D. As for your daughter’s stats, I strongly believe she should have been awarded more scholarship funding. In my humble opinion, taking out retirement funding is the last resort. Your daughter will be successful no matter which college she eventually choose. If I were you, I would choose in-state university for the same major.
My son goes to Alabama - a really well run school. It’s more similar to Miami than UM in that it’s not in the city - although it’s bigger and busier than Miami. Tons of out of state and religious diversity, etc.
I’m not sure why you are dispirited. If you are OOS, I assume Miami gave you $21K. We all wanted it - but they only promised 50% and they achieved it. Don’t forget, Miami also guarantees cost for sour years. Few other schools do.
Have you looked at Arizona - they have guaranteed merit. You can apply until March 3rd. If she’s had straight As she will get $35K vs. $38K tuition. With a 3.9 it will be 30%…it’s unweighted. Very nice - they also guarantee tuition and the app is easy. They also have Honors.
Sounds to me like she has great opportunities. The $$ given this year are less than in the past overall but there are still some great offers. Not sure what she’s studying but at UAH she’d be a great deal as well. It’s a mid size school. Check MS State too - not sure if you can still apply - it’s nice - they still send post cards so maybe you can - and it’s cheap.
You have wonderful opportunities but outside of the schools like Bama and Arizona that guarantee a fixed amount, I’m not sure any of us can complain.
These are businesses - and they’ve set the prices at the levels they need.
But MN is a FANTASTIC school if that’s where she ends up.
Good luck.
I completely understand about it being a disheartening/confusing/frustrating process. I won’t have back-to-back college students, but rather twins both in at the same time. We are in-state and each twin got the low-end that was published as well (3.95+ in-state says $13K to full tuition). Yet their ACT’s are a 33 and 34 (pulled down by english, so opposite of your daughter) and 4.6-4.65 weighted Miami GPA’s. Even with extra Prodesse money for one (Honors for the other), they have OOS offers that put the tuition/room & board on par with Miami if not slightly less, so at this point with what’s on the table it’s up to each of them to choose where they choose to go.
Sorry - May 3rd for AZ, not March 3rd and you’d get $30K off with a 3.9 UW, $35K with a 4.0. Nice school. Good school. Maybe further from home but you’d save $$.
All these schools are interchangeable reputation wise - it doesn’t matter that MN is 66, Miami 100+, Arizona 97, Alabama what it is…they are all solid public universities. You can save more if that’s a concern and your student could love wherever they end up. After all, just because they love Miami, a bad roommate or tough class and it can go downhill quickly. So be open to wherever they go - they can meet their BFF. You just never know.
@tsbna44 you are, of course, right that she’ll most likely thrive at whatever school she attends. She’s a much better student/harder worker than I was in high school (or college)- I got full tuition thanks to being a national merit finalist - not because I worked hard in high school in the subjects I didn’t really like or when multiple classes hit crunch time together. She worked on a list of colleges last summer, wrote up color coded pages on each school she wanted to apply to. Finally let me take a look and I hit up the cost calculators on them & shot down nearly every one as we didn’t get sufficient need based aid & they didn’t offer merit aid. Miami was one of the first schools I came across & I sold it to her pretty hard & now I get to say it’s probably too expensive : <. The whole process feels backwards to me. We spread a pretty wide net, a lot of essays about a $1000 in application fees, css fees, & fees to send some test scores- just for her to get into all her safety schools (mostly w/ insufficient merit aid) , waitlisted at 6 schools, rejected at one, waiting on a few more. Can you imagine if applying for a job were like this? Why can’t students post their stats, a few sample essays & the schools go through those and make some offers? The current process of students paying to apply to schools, some of which will probably eliminate many applicants based on a single number, means the schools mostly end up offering spots & top merit aid to the same students all the other similarly ranked schools targeted.
I am also a little dispirited, as you said, because we also cast a wide net, and the schools were ranked as high as 53rd in the nation all the way to Miami and Oregon (both tied for 103rd). What is odd to me is that out of the 10 schools, decent range of rankings, the merit lead to a net cost across all of them that was similar. At Virginia Tech she was a finalist for a full merit honors program, but currently waitlisted for that. Beyond that, however, the schools ranked 53 and 66 would be about 5-7k more per year than the schools ranked 103rd. This leaves us with a lot of choices, but, no real clear obvious financial choice. I will likely push D2 for the higher few ranked ones with cost being similar. She may have other thoughts.
I agree with the misleading info on scholarships per their website.
My son has 4.5 GPA (weighted) 1520 SAT, 11 APs and decent ECs. He was also selected as a finalist for the Presidential Fellows Program. He did not become one of the 15 who won in the end, however if he was chosen as a finalist I would’ve thought that meant he was in the top range Stat wise, yet received the lowest amount in the highest tier ($21k). Miami ultimately isn’t the school for him, and I do think it’s a great place from what I researched and the scholarship was still very decent. But the website is misleading and knowing that if it wasn’t for Covid and Test Optional he more than likely would’ve received the $36k for OOS. That’s the hardest part. The school has been great in terms of email communication I have to say that.
My daughter (also from the Twin Cities) feels exactly the same way! She cast a wide net and has been disappointed about 2 deferrals and 1 rejection (did have 10 acceptances so far). She is wondering what all of her hard work was for. She also applied to honors at the schools where she wasn’t automatically admitted (U of M - TC and Indiana) so this process has been less than fun! We just visited Miami on Sat. Campus is beautiful (second visit for her). I did notice a number of houses near High Street that were having parties Saturday afternoon. It wasn’t the entire campus by any stretch but I had heard from another friend about how there is “day drinking” at Miami.
I just want to mention something about rankings – take them in context within students/parents on-campus experience.
I have had 3 kids apply to Miami in the last 4 years. Two attend. One is still deciding. Miami has said every year we have been a part of the school that they have recruited the most academically talented, most diverse class the last 5 years running. In other words the incoming class continues to have higher grade points, test scores (yes, even in this TO year!) and come from all manner of socio-economic backgrounds and geographic locations (representing on average 49 of the 50 states.) Miami places upwards of 95 percent of its grads either in a job or at the 1st grad school of their choice. Starting salaries are extremely competitive. Fortune 500 companies come to the cornfields of Oxford, OH to recruit Miami students because they know they have been prepared for the job market.
But experientially, I want to assure you Miami has put (our) money where its mouth is. My junior has secured an internship for summer and my sophomore is already in contact with law schools through Miami’s law fair. My kids have direct, regular access to their professors. They have never not gotten a class they have needed/wanted for a particular semester. They have utilized campus resources and are thriving academically, owning that their futures are theirs to create. Each will graduate in 4 years.
I understand finances, but I have found rankings have been incongruous to our experience at Miami. No school is perfect, but having toured upwards of two dozen colleges around the country, including highly selective ones, Miami more than holds it own, year in, year out.
Take that for what it’s worth. No school is perfect, but I just wanted to offer my experience as a Miami parent. If your student is excited about Miami and liked the campus they have the beginnings of a wonderful college future.
I think there is day drinking at almost every school. There definitely is at S17’s school, and the schools most of his friends attend, including Bucknell and MIT.
Sorry- I have to go back to my point - you can only “know for sure” your scholarships at auto merit schools.
Miami promised and delivered. Would you have gotten more with a 1520 - I don’t know?
These colleges are beset by state budgets. If they all come in at a similar $ then that tells you the cost of operation. Don’t forget, your kids are the best and brightest - so think of the kids whose #s are not as good.
The only way to “guarantee” the cost you want is to apply to those where you know to the $$ up front - the Alabama, Arizona (still can), UAH, Bradley, Mizzou, MS State, WVU, etc. Then you won’t have sticker shock. Florida State, for those reading in the future, doesn’t guarantee but pretty much anyone with a 31ACT and strong grades gets the OOS waiver.
I think too many people make assumptions based on ranges - is all I’m saying.
btw - I laughed at the job market comment. The job market is way tougher than this. Kids are applying to 10 colleges and getting into 8 - maybe not with the right merit but. People apply to 100+ jobs to find one…so this is a lesson for life.
Rankings - someone mentioned - I agree. My son goes to low rated Alabama engineering (which he inexplicably chose over Purdue - and he’s not the only). He’s got a great, well paid internship this Summer at a major auto manufacturer - he’s with a Ga Tech and U of Houston student. Find the right fit and finannces - US News does not know which are and aren’t great schools.
They know how to formulate data - which by the way - many many schools have been caught cheating in providing that data (see Northeastern, Oklahoma, Clemson, and more).
Good luck to all.
Rankings: I totally agree with @LSA1994 the ranking game is out of context and misleading. Rankings are a vicious cycle, once a school ranks well, they then are noticed by parents and students and they get more applications, which lowers their acceptance rate, raises their yield, and, in turn, raises their GPA and test scores on average, ultimately raising their ranking. If a school is located in a remote area, it is much more difficult to achieve this, though not impossible (look at Colgate in very remote Hamilton).
I have 4 kids, the last 2 are entering college next year. I actually do the research myself and look at acceptance rates into law school and medical school (even though neither are going to those after graduation), along with employment/grad school rates. The former tells you if academic institutions respect the education they are getting at the school, the latter is an easier stat to obtain and tells you what employers think. Then I compare income rates out of school. With this, you have to be a bit careful, as a CA school is almost always higher than a mid-western school, just because of wage demand, but it gives you a good idea.
Rankings are a racket. They tell you a very small piece of the story and advantage those schools with a reputation rather than give a fair shake to all. They do not tell you if free speech is respected or if kids are encouraged to form opinions on their own, something many colleges have skewed away from. In the end, the ability to form decisions and critically think will be one of the greatest things that come out of their education and Miami does seem by all accounts to encourage this (I read student input on this from various sites as they tend to be honest to the core on reviewing their schools).
I was actually told by AO, this year they had to disperse their budget across more people because they were only using GPA due to TO. Makes sense, I understand. It’s still unfortunate that that’s the case this year for some kids. From prior years many high stat kids received the $36k/OOS. It’s all fine in the end, because it turns out this wasn’t the right fit in our situation. Still a good quality school though!
The Fiske Guide rated Miami 4.5 out of 5 for academics. That is the rating given to UW-Madison. I know Michigan and Northwestern were rated 5/5. Thank you so much for the parent perspective! My daughter will be pre-med and I have been impressed with what Miami offers to support students on that track.
Thank you for sharing your family’s experience.
Here is my beef with the overall rankings, such as USNews. There are a little more than 2,800 accredited colleges/universities in the U.S. Top 5% would be 140. What is the difference between a school USNews ranks as 58 (2.1%) and one, like Miami, ranked 103 (3.7%)? Is the kid who ranks in the top 2% of her class that much better than the kid who ranks in top 4%?
I prefer to look at ROI by major, student quality of life, experiential opportunities, and how many have jobs within 6 months of graduation than yield and selectivity which seem to be big factors for USNews rankings. YMMV.
Does Miami offer any institutional grants other than merit scholarships? I know most public institutions do not.
Some schools - like PItt - match the Pell Grant. Charleston - if you’re under $30K EFC, gives you $6K. Those are examples I’ve seen. Not sure about Miami or others.
I am thinking as of now, for example, Miami is offering $3000 to 10000 admitted applicants. When eventually 3000 freshman enrolled, everyone would get a new amount of $10000? Maybe my assumption is too ideal.
Yes, schools know their yields…this is all pristinely planned. The only issue this year is with TO and more applying to more schools - many schools are loading the waitlists -just in case they undershoot.