<p>Historymom, glad your incentive paid off! he iwll want a copy of Assassins Creed II to go with it, I bet</p>
<p>Schmoo, congrats!</p>
<p>NEMom, I think you will be able to compile the definitive comparative guide to aid offers.</p>
<p>Two more acceptances for S today (UConn and U Vermont) and a deferral from his uber reach. I noticed that he still has the Tulane symbol on his cell phone (he was admitted there about a month ago) and I’m sort of hoping he can move on soon given the $52,000 per year price tag.</p>
<p>RTR, congrats! Is your son a big sports fan? That is certainly 1 area where UConn has it all over Tulane</p>
<p>Schmooo congrats!! I love Pitt on paper though I have never been. Don’t know IIT but it is nice that there are choices on the table! </p>
<p>RTR Yay for New England Publics!!! If you boy wants to escape winter chill I can see why Tulane has his heart…plus it is a great school. Does he have other private options/pending decisions??</p>
<p>NEMom 6-7 acceptances…you and your S are a testament to the value of the EA/Rolling app. How nice it is that you can go into the new year without the wondering. Bring on the wonderful FA awards!!</p>
<p>Oh BTW:</p>
<p>Thanks all for the kudos and support for my S. He is a character :rolleyes:</p>
<p>Congratulations to all on the new acceptances!!</p>
<p>RTR, I just love UCONN, (with 3 alum in the family) and I am a Syracuse Alum! (makes it interesting during football & basketball season)</p>
<p>It sounds like a day full of good news around here. I sense a nice momentum. We received an envelope from Seattle U today which my daughter swiped and went to her study room to look at. She came out dangling it from her fingers, saying we need to pay the application fee before they’ll review the application (which has been in-house since Nov. 14). So I had to get on the phone and remind SU that we had had the fee waived for attending their college planning day during the summer. The woman in admissions was very nice and said she’d pull the file for review “right away.”</p>
<p>RTR, no football at UVM, though, and their basketball team seldom gets into March Madness. Think there is probably more “Rah Rah” spirit at UCONN than at UVM, Tulane, or Indiana. Just my opinion on the school sports issue! Is it important to your S that the school’s sports teams have very successful seasons? The oldest D is always attending some UCONN Alum event in the Boston area to view UCONN sports in sports bars, etc. It has certainly been an advantage to her in networking, socializing etc for after graduation.</p>
<p>Not that sports is the deciding factor, but I always had the impression that Indiana had HUGE basketball spirit. I also thought UVM OOS could be as expensive as Tulane after aid.</p>
<p>UConn haas benefitted in spirit and visibility because its football and women’s basketball teams have been very successful of late, as well as men’s basketball.</p>
<p>That said, and knowing evry child has their own needs, I was glad when our son turned from schools he had seen on ESPN to small schools, because I thought they offered a better chance of what we thought were his particular needs–small classes, strong relationships with faculty and not just gliding through to graduation. </p>
<p>In addition, in NJ and some other states, the 4 year graduation rates have dropped so low (in substantial part because students cannot get into the classes needed to complete their majors) that the proper cost comparison seems to be 5 years vs. 4 years for privates that stay focused on the 4 year track.</p>
<p>The last time Tulane football finished the season in the Top 10 was 1998. While that wasn’t long ago, the football team hasn’t had that much success since. In a 2002 bowl game they played the underdog before they beat Hawaii (back when the Warriors had Timmy Chang and June Jones at the helm.) So it’s inconsistent at best that Tulane has good years for football. Basketball games are always packed but the team could certainly perform better. Baseball-wise is another story, Tulane consistently makes the Top 25 and its fans travel all over to support the team. </p>
<p>Overall though, UConn probably has the best fans for the athletic department as a whole out of the schools mentioned.</p>
<p>UVM is HUGE ice hockey country; most of the school spirit is puck driven…and operates more like a mid-size private rather than a large public…apparently, very little budgetary impact from the economic crisis…but still an expensive school IMO</p>
<p>Re: UVM
</p>
<p>About 5 years ago, my son’s GC suggested UVM to my son. I looked up the price tag then and my jaw just dropped for about 5 minutes. He did not even apply! The sticker price was way too high for us at that time. We still had more OOS options where sticker prices were lower than our EFC in 2005. Now that is no longer is the case so we gave up on most OOS public Us.</p>
<p>DS1 is a freshman at UVM and couldn’t be happier! Yes, it is expensive, however I would agree that it seems more like a mid-sized private than a typical public U. His classes, even in year 1, have been pretty small and the professors have been extremely accessible. Almost 70% of the students are from OOS, so the student body is a bit diverse. While team sports aren’t big on campus (other than hockey), the students seem to be very active with hiking, biking, skiing and club sports. Plus Burlington is a great place to go to school if you can stand the winters!</p>
<p>Where can one find the average four year graduation rates for various schools, by the way?</p>
<p>Yes, UVM is expensive. S basically applied there because it was easy…they took the common app. and waived his application fee, and also I have good friends here who are alums (married to each other) and kept bugging him about applying. I don’t think he was ever that interested…he feels it would be too cold for him, and he doesn’t ski. I’m not sure I knew the price tag when he submitted the app. </p>
<p>He is considering UConn which would be excellent for us since it is instate and very affordable. I do want him to have the best college experience he can have, though, so aside from telling him that Tulane probably needs to be off the table, we will let him look at all the schools and reach his own decision while being fully aware of loans he may need to take at certain schools (i.e. OOS publics). He is still waiting to hear from other schools in which he is interested. One thing that he would like is a Greek scene, which I think would be good for him as being part of a fraternity makes a big school smaller. UConn doesn’t have a big Greek presence. He is also a big sports fan so that will play into his decision as well. Major is undecided, and so college which have a really good exploratory program really interest him as well. (He originally thought he wanted business but now really thinks that he <em>doesn’t</em> want business!)</p>
<p>The Department of Education’s “College Navigator” is a gold mine of information. I refer to it all the time. It has admissions stats, financial aid stats, average graduation stats, and more. It also allows you to select colleges and compare them side-by-side. Extremely useful.</p>
<p>[College</a> Navigator - National Center for Education Statistics](<a href=“http://nces.ed.gov/COLLEGENAVIGATOR/]College”>College Navigator - National Center for Education Statistics)</p>
<p>I think graduation rates are also in the colleges’ Common Data sets, although those are sometimes hard to find on websites. I have sometimes Googled “X University + graduation rate”. Oddly, sometimes you see different figures for the same school, even for the same 4 year period.</p>
<p>Also, some schools now use 6 year graduation rates to make their numbers look better. </p>
<p>I cross check those rates with freshmen retention rates–at some school, almost all those who leave do so after freshman year–for example, if a small rural school or big urban school simply is not a fit.</p>
<p>RE UVM’s high OOS cost, between that and the high % of OOS students, I think education is a very profitable tourist industry for Vermont, just like skiing.</p>
<p>collegeresults dot org is a good place for graduation rates, too.</p>
<p>If anyone has any spare time during this lull period, I suggest it would be a service to future generations of kids like ours to write CC Visit Reports if you have not already. As so many of the schools we discuss are small or off the radar, few have had a significant number of visit reports filed. Even with the X factor of kids’ quirks, I found them to be a good resource.</p>
<p>agree w/ yabeyabe. I found the visit reports to be really really helpful</p>