<p>OP: As noted early on in this thread, Columbia & Kenyon are two different worlds. I am not a fan of Kenyon, although the campus is gorgeous. Small LACs tend to be very similiar to high school-- if you fit in, great, if not, not so great.
In my opinion, you need to withdraw your Columbia ED supplement explaining that your parents are afraid of the cost. If you qualify for serious consideration for admission to Columbia, then you’ll get into many colleges & universities with varied financial incentives.
I don’t know enough about you in order to recommend a college list, but I do know that you need to respect the concerns of your mother & withdraw the ED supplement & apply to Kenyon. Then apply to a dozen or so additional colleges or universities.</p>
<p>I think the OP needs to talk to both parents and find out dollar amount what they are willing to commit to.</p>
<p>The hard question to ask (but probably necessary) is how much will each pay regardless of what the other parent is paying? Is the father or mother expecting a fixed percentage to be paid by each parent? Will they pay X if the other parent decides to pay Y or nothing? Right now, one parent is encouraging a course of action that the other parent is not comfortable with. What are the real issues here? It might just be that after some analysis that your mother determined that she over promised. It happens. If that is the case, she has been honest and is trying to help with plan B.</p>
<p>At this stage, unless you can get some answers, you should consider moving your application to RD.</p>
<p>Don’t ask parents for hypothetical dollar committments when it is obvious that finances are a major concern. Withdraw the Ed supplement & apply broadly to determine your actual options, then discuss finances.</p>
<p>Sorry to differ, but the OP absolutely, positively should not withdraw his ED application. I think that is outrageously bad advice. If he is accepted ED, and the financial package isn’t workable for his parents, and after discussion Columbia won’t improve it, then he will have to turn down the acceptance, that’s all. That is no reason to withdraw the ED application.</p>
<p>Axelrod says “Don’t ask parents for hypothetical financial commitments.” That’s right. But an actual offer from Columbia, if it comes, will come with a non-hypothetical financial proposal, and that will be worth discussing. It may be “obvious that finances are a major concern” (although that’s not how the OP presented it), but in many circumstances where that is true the OP would do better with a financial aid package from Columbia than practically anywhere without doing something like going to Alabama or Oklahoma, and that’s a very, very different prospect.</p>
<p>The likelihood of getting accepted someplace reasonably equivalent to Columbia (which may or may not include Kenyon) with a radically better financial package just isn’t that high. Sure, if he applies broadly RD he may well do better financially, but not so much better that it would be worth turning down a sure thing unless it was really not workable.</p>
<p>Thanks for your opinion. OP withdraw the ED supplement. Your family situation is much more important than whether or not you are admitted to Columbia ED.</p>
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<p>That’s flat out wrong. If the FA offer makes the school unaffordable, that’s a perfectly acceptable reason to turn down an ED offer.</p>
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<p>I disagree. Adamantly! Mom does NOT get to decide which schools the OP applies to unless Mom is paying the full cost of OP’s attendance . . . which appears not to be the case.</p>
<p>Now, let’s be clear here - we’re not talking about a student who’s completely irrational and has decided to apply to a dozen schools that are clearly unaffordable. If that were the case, then I’d say it’s time for parents to step in and voice their concerns.</p>
<p>What we’re talking about is a student who has thought things through carefully, has the unqualified support of one parent (who appears to have the financial means to pay at least some of the cost of attendance at the student’s school of choice), and has another parent who is waffling . . . for reasons as yet undetermined. In these circumstances, I’d say the student can apply to Kenyon if he or she wants to, but if he or she doesn’t want to . . . well, I’m sorry, but that’s the student’s decision, not Mom’s.</p>
<p>As for the pending ED application to Columbia, the student should sit down with Mom and try to sort out what her objections are - and the sooner, the better. But Mom’s sudden and unexplained fixation on Kenyon (prompted by, of all things, a promotional mailing from Kenyon!) is not, standing alone, a good reason to withdraw the ED application to Columbia.</p>
<p>From what I can tell, the only person in this family who has really thought things through is the OP. And the OP knows Mom better than any of us . . . so he (or she) should trust his (or her) own judgment on this.</p>
<p>The OP may ask for the ED application to be transformed to RD.</p>
<p>@dodgersmom: What we’re talking about is a starry eyed 17 or 18 year old being raised by a single parent who is responsible for her son & his well-being.</p>
<p>P.S. Adamantly !</p>
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<p>Or . . . what we’re talking about is a responsible young adult, with good grades and impressive test scores who has researched the college application process thoroughly and thoughtfully, with an affluent noncustodial parent ready and willing to foot the bill for a good college, and a recently divorced single mom who isn’t yet ready to face the prospect of her only child leaving home.</p>
<p>Take your pick. Bottom line is that none of us here on CC know what this family’s situation is, and it’s presumptuous of you to tell the OP what he or she must or must not do. You’ve voiced your opinion. Repeatedly. It’s time to let someone else be heard.</p>
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<p>There’s a big difference between “I don’t like the financial aid package” and “The financial aid offer makes this school unaffordable.”</p>
<p>@dodgersmom: You and I are redaing different threads. The mom in this case is in California with her son. She is willing to let him attend an LAC in semi-rural Ohio. She is raising her son. We have no evidence that the non-custodial parent is wealthy or that he will even contribute when the bills arrive.</p>
<p>OP: Time to act like an adult. Part of this is taking into consideration the advice, wisdom & guidance of those you love & trust the most.</p>
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<p>I disagree with the “buyer’s remose” clause above. The agreement signed by the student, parent, and counselor gives only this reason as legitimate for declining an ED offer.</p>
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<p>We have discussed at length in other threads that people DO squib out of their ED commitment for other reasons. That does NOT make it morally correct to do so. If you sign the agreement and allow your application to remain in the ED pool, then you are morally obligated to attend except for financial reasons.</p>
<p>That said, get that Kenyon application in if you are truly interested in attending there. You might be rejected (or deferred) from Columbia, so you need to have some other applications ready to go anyway.</p>
<p>Axelrod, with all due respect (which is getting less and less), I don’t think you have any idea what you are talking about. I don’t know what is going on in your life, but you are projecting a lot of stuff onto the OP’s post that I don’t see there.</p>
<p>As far as I can tell, the OP does not seem remotely “starry-eyed”, and it is clear that he has two involved parents, even though they are divorced. He gave us absolutely no information about their financial condition or relative contribution responsibility, and he may not even know what that is (although clearly he is worried about it). So while it is true that his family situation is much more important than whether he is admitted to Columbia ED, neither you or I knows enough about his family situation to be able to say that there is any likely conflict between the two. There could be, sure, in which case the only right choice is the family choice. But in a wide range of circumstances there would be no conflict at all.</p>
<p>If anything, the person who seems “starry-eyed” and immature in the OP’s story is the mother. She hasn’t had a real discussion with him about finances at all, and it sounds like she hasn’t been honest about her feelings, with him or maybe with herself. She has been passive-aggressive with her financial aid forms and fixated on ONE merit scholarship possibility at ONE college that she seems to have learned about at random, and which of course she assumes is her son’s for the asking. She may very well have real, legitimate concerns, but she hasn’t communicated them yet, at least not so far as the OP has told us. And the father – the guy who filled out the financial aid forms for both parents – is on the same page as the OP.</p>
<p>So I am having a really hard time figuring out where besides your own you-know-where you are finding a story about a kid recklessly endangering his family, and instructing the OP in no uncertain terms that he has to change his entire strategy immediately. I am reading a story about a kid who is doing something that probably makes sense, with the agreement of the parent who is paying attention, and the ambivalent acquiescence of the parent who isn’t. If – and it’s a big if, not all that likely to happen – the OP actually gets accepted ED to Columbia, that will be a perfectly good moment for the mother to focus on something specific and react to it, and then one hopes she and her son (and probably the dad) will discuss it and decide what to do in a straightforward way. </p>
<p>Otherwise, the OP will be exactly where he would be if he did what you suggest – applying to a range of other colleges, maybe or maybe not including Kenyon, maybe or maybe not chasing merit awards. He SHOULD have a conversation with his mother about that, and he seems to have tried, but not very successfully.</p>
<p>OP: Beware of any anonymous internet poster who advises you to disregard your custodial parent’s advice & wishes.</p>
<p>Columbia is not the end of the world. Many are admitted RD. Apply to at least a dozen schools to determine your options.</p>
<p>Axelrod, if you were actually concerned about the OP, you might have read his post more carefully.</p>
<p>For example, how do you know that the mother is the custodial parent? Maybe she is, but I don’t see that anywhere. What advice are you talking about? Again, maybe she has given advice, but all I see in the post is a reaction to one college’s marketing materials.</p>
<p>You are right that Columbia isn’t the end of the world, and wrong that many are admitted RD. Fewer than 1 in 20 is admitted RD. The real odds ED are not much better than that, but they are somewhat better. For lots of middle-class people, Columbia would be the least expensive option for college, or close to it (except for a handful of other Columbia-like colleges that would be about the same), short of chasing merit scholarships to radically different institutions (that the OP might or might not qualify for). For most people, getting accepted to Columbia would be the equivalent, financially, of winning the lottery.</p>
<p>There is a much better chance the OP will be accepted at Columbia than that he will get a full-tuition merit scholarship at Kenyon. Many people, if they could afford it – and there’s no clear indication the OP’s parents can’t – would pay a substantial premium for Columbia over Kenyon. I’m not saying they should – I actually dislike Columbia and bash it periodically here, and I like Kenyon – but it’s a real possibility the OP’s family would make that conventional choice.</p>
<p>I take seriously the fact that real kids (and parents) come here looking for advice they often can’t get from their own friends, parents and teachers. But I try to respond to them, taking into account the full range of possibilities for what they are not telling me, not to my fantasies about them.</p>
<p>Let’s look back at the first post. OP has already applied to Columbia ED. Both parents agreed that he should do this. The only thing that changed was that he received a marketing letter from Kenyon telling him about merit scholarships. His mother wants him to apply there, too.
I’m not sure she understands the timing–if he gets into Columbia ED, he will have to tell them yes or no before he hears from Kenyon. It seems to me that it would be foolish to turn down Columbia for financial reasons in this situation–unless their package really is unworkable. And if their package is unworkable, it would also be foolish to depend on a merit scholarship from Kenyon which might not be forthcoming. (This student needs to have a bigger list anyway.)</p>
<p>The point is to greatly expand his list of schools beyond the two mentioned. There are financial concerns & family concerns.</p>
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<p>As someone who has written more posts about ED and the expected commitments before and after receiving an ED offer of admission, I believe that the posts of JHS have been right on the money. In addition, the above suggestion of withdring the ED application could not be MORE wrong. </p>
<p>Although Columbia was a school that went as far as DESCRIBING in clear terms how it would release a successful applicant, this position has been entirely eroded by the language added to the Common Application. If there were once any discussion about the binding element of an ED agreement, the consensus is now pretty clear that a candidate has the right to DECLINE the admission if the financial package is deemed insufficient. </p>
<p>To be clear, I remain adamant that this does NOT mean that the candidate should use this as the start of negotiations in the (not so) veiled hope to stretch the decision until April. In so many words, if the package is not sufficient, the obligation is to decline the offer. At best, a very short appeal of the FA might be acceptable, but this is a matter of days, and not weeks. </p>
<p>In the precise case of the OP, there are no reason why the ED application should be withdrawn. There are, however, plenty of reasons to actively seek to add a number of academic and financial safeties and matches.</p>
<p>Sorry for the wall of text, I’m not sure how to quote. </p>
<p>SteveMA: Thank you for your input. I have a few safties and will be applying to the local UC and local CSU school where I could commute if money gets to be an issue. </p>
<p>Yankeedoodles: I am going to apply to Kenyon soon and other places soon after that. I just want to avoid other situations that may come up if I am accepted to Columbia. Although it’s competitive, sometimes you really have no way of knowing. </p>
<p>JHS: I know that both are competitive and I know I can’t expect either – but my mom seems sure I’ll get the scholarships at Kenyon and would like me to go there. Thank you, also, for the ‘quote’, it brings up some good points I hadn’t thought of mentioning to her. Thanks again! </p>
<p>dodgersmom: I thought the same thing. I’ll make up a chart and walk with her through the calculators. Thanks for the advice! </p>
<p>Midwestmomofboys: Thanks for your input. I’ll talk with her soon and find out what’s going on with her that made her change her mind like this. I have a few safties in the UC and CSU system lined up that I’d be OK with going to. 
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<p>lookingforward: My dad completed the apps with my help. We ran through the calculators and showed them to my mom, and we saw somewhere around $10k when inputting my parent’s finances sepeartely and $30k when inputting them together. My dad said either amount is a good deal, especially for a school like Columbia. I said the same to my mom and she agreed but also told me, “You’re going to wherever gives you the best deal.” I told her ED doesn’t work like that and again she gave me the “we can get out of it.” This is before I applied, but she still encouraged me to apply anyways, and I even asked her the last few minutes before submitting, “Are you sure you’re OK with ED?” and she said, “Yes.” </p>
<p>Marian: It’s a possibility. I’ll discuss it with my mom and my dad and see what they have to say. If they say yes, then I’ll see how to withdraw my ED app and apply RD (if I can). </p>
<p>Axelrod: I’ll have to talk with my dad. So far he hasn’t changed his opinion and is excited for me to go to Columbia if I get in. For the record, my mom and my father both work together and still share expenses regularly, and I am actually a bit offended that you might be even implying that he’s a deadbeat, despite the fact he’s filling everything out and the only one talking to me at this point. Thank you for your input and concern, but I can’t make a decision like this without at least discussing it with my parents first. My mom is not the only one that is going to have a say in the college process. I know there are more financial concerns but I discussed them (or at least I thought I did) with her and she was on board until recently. </p>
<p>I spent a lot of time researching this school (Columbia) and other schools I am considering, and by far I am most impressed by Columbia. I am a bit upset she’s backing out of it now, but I wasn’t sure what to do, so that’s why I posted here. My parents will always be a big part of my life, I am very close to them both, and I would want them on board with this big decision I make, especially because they have generously offered to pay for most of it. I spent a lot of my time taking AP classes (and doing well) so I could get into a school that would offer me a lot of aid, and so I could qualify for a lot of scholarships. </p>
<p>Hunt, axelrod and xiggi: I do have a bigger list than just Columbia and Kenyon. I also have an affordable safety that I am guarnateed admission into thanks to a program available with my district (but I can’t say I’m particularly crazy about it, hence the reason I’m applying elsewhere). My mom was on board with Columbia until the promotional flyer came in – and that’s where we are now. To clarify, the issue is not Columbia and Kenyon, but that my mom seems so set on me getting a scholarship at Kenyon or other schools (but particularly Kenyon), that I should wait out Columbia until I hear from Kenyon (conservatively, it’d be at least three months between the two) or other schools. </p>
<p>Thank you to everyone suggesting plausible alternatives. I understand I’m going to have to make some decisions on my own, but my parents are a big part of my life at this point, so I’m not going to change my application without at least talking with them about it first. I’m going to discuss it with my father this afternoon and then with my mother tonight, and hopefully we can get some hard numbers and see what’s likely and what we should do. Everyone’s input has been valuable and I appreciate taking your time to read it.</p>