Parents: Do not do this to your kids!

Parents Forum
521

Because it is for the full scholarships in the revenue sports where schools like NU tend to lower their standards. They have far less incentive to do so for sports that make no difference to their bottom line. As for the rest of the post, I can only repeat that it assumes that all the kids filling those slots are below average (for NU) students. What NU wants for sure is to have about 2000 students enroll each year. It is not hard to believe that in order to do that they have a few hundred with somewhat lower stats that are not athletes or world-class musicians. Of course, if all those things you list are considered hooks, then I guess I might agree with you. That’s casting the “hook” net pretty broadly, IMO. Lots of students in the upper 75% will fit that as well.

With all due respect, and I have a great deal of it for you, if you have no idea of the actual numbers (as you say) then your speculation is no better than mine, except I think mine makes more common sense. But you disagree, and we will probably never know the true details. In which case I would definitely say that being negative towards a student in this regard is not warranted, if one has no supporting facts. In other words, it seems to me to be quite wrong to say something like “I don’t see how you got in with stats in the lower 25% when you seem to have no hooks” if one has no evidence that most of the kids that got in at the lower 25% had hooks. I don’t know if you personally said that or not and I am not going to search this thread to see if you did, but several people made comments along those lines. I am simply pointing out why it makes a difference if the student is a football or male basketball player as to my previous comment, and how that impacts the overall picture for the bottom 25%, IMO.

FWIW, I agree that the financial aid picture as laid out makes little sense and it seems some important piece of information is missing, or something. That is a totally different issue, though. But I think as some have pointed out, it is important that any future applicant reading this understand that even if that is a fairly accurate picture of her case, it certainly is not typical. That’s quite clear from reading hundreds of other cases and their outcomes on this site.

522

Glad that things have worked out so well for the OP, but agree that when some stories are out of the norm, they do cause some readers to question its veracity, especially when the thread is posted in the parents forum. The ultimate goal here is to help readers with useful and hopefully accurate information for the college admissions process.
Best of luck to you, OP.

523

I don’t think Cali should be faulted for a less than clear financial picture, especially when her parents were unwilling to be straightforward with her for so long about how her education would be financed.

She is obviously an enormously talented person, given her thoughtful posts on many threads, and NU is fortunate to have her in the class of 2019. Go Wildcats!

524

Because NU gives limited scholarships to music majors. These are performance awards, not need based aid.

If I were guessing, I’d say it’s possible that NU financial aid made a professional judgment based on the information Cali and her family provided…and this reduced her family contribution. Perhaps they allowed the money being paid to support another grandparent. Maybe there were other expenses that NU allowed in the equation.

I hope she got in writing what she will be awarded for all four years…since usually need based aid is applied for annually. She will need this documentation of promised aid in future years.

525

^ I thought that, for UG, the music scholarships were still “on the basis of need.” Grad stu can get merit money.

526

MODERATOR’S NOTE:

If @CaliCash is ready to move forward, then so should we. I think that there really is nothing left to say. As recent pages have headed extremely off-topic, the time has come to close this thread.