<p>meg, SMU is the school we toured last week. If you don’t mind telling, how much money did it give your dd? Or American, for that matter? Ds is interested in both … TIA</p>
<p>YDS: It’s a bit complicated…Both of those schools are United Methodist and I’m a pastor, so we received part of her merit aid as a pastor’s dependent. So American gave 1/2 tuition as pastor’s dependent and an additional $5000 merit. SMU gave $7500 as pastor’s dependent and additional $12000 merit. Plus she got work-study from SMU, but not American. Our EFC is $25,000. She is at American and it seems like, with her stats, she probably would have gotten about $12,000 - $15,000 in merit aid if she had not gotten the 1/2 tuition. (Judging from what other kids we know received)</p>
<p>AP scores arrived today! They are fantastic 
Leaving for Europe tomorrow!!!
Have a great rest of the summer. I keep telling DS that starting this fall it is going to be very challenging and quite nerve wracking 18 months of his life. Anyone with me on this?</p>
<p>Are you guys Harry Potter fans? We are and I am sad I will miss the last movie premiere - I am sure it will open up later where I am heading. For the last few days we have been enjoying a kind of a Harry Potter festival put on by our dear friends. A different game each evening followed by a movie. Tonight is quidditch night (son already has a NIMBUS 2012 
) with movie #5. Gotta go pack before the fun begins 
Please relax and enjoy the summer :D</p>
<p>Hi all! Things are starting to move quickly here! It’s almost like they’re juniors ;)</p>
<p>Reeinaz: D2 came back from her summer writing program so excited and sad at the same time. She loved her classmates and can’t believe they’re apart now. She had some very interesting observations about geeky super smart kids vs. quirky creative smart kids. She also is chewing over what it felt like to find other members of her “tribe.” She has fantastic friends here, but given where we live they are pretty conservative regarding social issues. She’s not super liberal (actually she is pretty conservative about her own behavior) but she said it was nice to be with a group of people where she didn’t have to keep biting her tongue. Not quite sure how to figure that out in the college search calculus. A lot of schools with a “liberal” label have a wild social scene…</p>
<p>Kelowna: we are big HP fans. D1 is in England now & is very excited that she’ll get to see it 6 hours before her friends stateside :)</p>
<p>AP scores are not expected here until Friday at the earliest…</p>
<p>After D2 unpacked she sighed and said she’d need to get started on her summer reading this week. 1 month till school starts here.</p>
<p>Haystack-check out Tulane. I know several that received enough merit to make it equal instate.</p>
<p>Hmmm, not a Methodist or a minister, megp! Thanks.</p>
<p>I’ve been wavering back and forth, trying to decide if I’ll request accommodations for the college board tests for my son. Trying to get input from him has been so frustrating. This is a kid who won’t tell me if he shoes are too tight so getting him to say he’s feeling rushed during tests is an exercise in futility. But, he took the actual SAT in May and we just got back the questions and answers. Going over the questions he got wrong, it became pretty clear that he did know most of the answers but between his hyper focusing AND inattention (what a combo) he ended up rushing through some sections and forgetting he skipped questions in others until it was too late answer them.
I’ve been sitting on the request form for a few weeks. The deadline for the PSAT is Aug 20 something, which is before school starts so I am sending it in myself. I have 3 evaluations and his IEP to send. I hope that’s sufficient. </p>
<p>RobD I’m glad to hear your daughter liked her workshop. She went to Sewanee right? School starts in a month?? I wish school started that soon here. My son starts his internship tomorrow which is a month long. Then he will still have another month before school starts.</p>
<p>Sorry to interrupt your board…I am usually on parents of 2012 but I have a younger D14 and I fond this process fascinating. concerning financial aid and costs, I am probably preaching to the choir but my cousin currently at The College of Wooster received a very good MERIT package and he didn’t have stratospheric scores and had a 3.7. Also received some grants.In the end it was cheaper for him to attend Wooster than another state school he applied to.(in state)</p>
<p>We had a visit at Wooster today and my daughter has a amazing interview - was in for a over 45 min then they called me in and talked another 25 min. she has cum.4.0 and a 28 act ( taking it a 2nd time in the fall so hope for higher.) We were told she qualifies for a guaranteed $17,500 merit and also was encouraged to apply to more based on her extracurriculars etc… Plus they give grants even if you have a higher efc and he said they make every attempt to make it affordable so they can get students like my daughter. Not trying to brag, I know a lot of kids share these stats so just want to put that out there.</p>
<p>we were thoroughly impressed by Wooster, their IS program is rates 2nd to only Princeton. they have a high % of international students and attract a lot of out of state. This was our 7th college visit and had the most visitors except for Ohio state. there were more out of state than in. California, Connecticut, and I heard the receptionist talking about a recent visit from a family from Dubai.</p>
<p>HerAdmissions counselor was a graduate of Middlebury who has also worked at Brown, MIT and St. Lawrence. My D mentioned St. Lawrence prior to him mentioning it and at the end he actually said he would give her a reference to St. Lawrence. Also told her they hope she picks Wooster. This was another world compared to every other visit. No cliche spiel about blah blah blah, we have study abroad etc. The focus was on the specific student and they want to find out in depth about the student, what they wanted in a college. They listened to her and responded to her without canned statements about fit etc… He even went through how she need to fill out the common app. Now, I honestly think it was one of those meetings where two people just click and he was genuinely intereted in her. But I also think this approach is pervasive and more the norm. amazing environment and we fell in love. It put Kenyonp to shame. </p>
<p>I had a long conversation with a family from Michigan while D was interviewing and the Dad was. History professor at Kalamazoo. His daughter is considering Cornell, Oberlin, Hamilton and Vassar among other elites. I think that says a lot.about the caliber of Wooster. Especially that he is a prof and knows his stuff. </p>
<p>I think Wooster is becoming more selective and it was such a privilege to basically be offered admission on the spot. He gave us his business card and encouraged us.to please keep in touch. we have not had interest like that from any other school- even ones where her stats are far above the average admitted student.</p>
<p>I highly highly recommend for people to check out Wooster. it.might be rated 70 or so but it deserves in top 50 easily. it is first class all the way, the campus is gorgeous. trees, pretty paths, compact and very.safe area. My cousin attends and says the kids are very accepting. Diverse and definitely leans liberal but conservative students aren’t estrAnged or isolated. There is home for everyone, yet boundaries are are pushed and it is intellectuallly challenging with one on one with profs. Daughter leans liberal but isn’t amazing activist but even if she was conservative or lgbt, she will have a home. only drawback for us is it is 18 miles away and D wants to be further from parents…but Wooster has.definitely captured her heart and she is definitely applying. If they give her a great package I may have a fighting Scot!</p>
<p>I urge you all to check it out, it IS becoming less of a hidden gem for sure. Good luck to all your amazing kids and sorry for hijacking but just wanted to share our amazing experience and.remind people just because a school costs 47k doesn’t mean you will pay it. </p>
<p>lastly, some anecdotal experience, cousin has two friends .transfer to OSU and Kent and the academic rigor is nothing compared to Wooster. They feel they aren’t getting challenged. one transferred due.to major change and the other for financial reasons. </p>
<p>Good luck all!!</p>
<p>Reeinaz - It took two wks for us to get a reply back from College Board regarding extra time. DS school filed the paperwork in Jan at the request of his AP Gov teacher. One reason I was told we had no problem is that they sent documentation of IEP’s back to elementary school, so if you have earlier testing and IEPs I would include those. Is the Guidance Office at your HS open during the summer, they should be able to file the request for you. Even though he was approved in a few wks, College Board never sent the letter to our home address, I had to get a copy from the school.
One of the benefits of the extra time is they take the test on a room with only other kids who have extra time, so when DS took SAT II in June there was only one other boy in the room (less chance of distractions).</p>
<p>I am so overwhelmed reading all these responses! It is showing me how little I know about the terminology that most of you speak of…In my d’s ex-school, it was all going to be done for us I guess, so if she is able to go back to school, at public, I do hope there will be substantial help in the process. Her school had steered them to ivyies and top tier schools ONLY because of the wealth of the community which was not us! </p>
<p>Longhaul: Ok, so I need to educate myself on Stafford loans. Pitt and Bama (is that Pittsburgh and Alabama?) and what is PASSHE? OOS I think I figured out is “out of state” schools. What is FM EFC (I know estimated family contribution, is FM - financial merit?). How do you find FAFSA only schools? Is it on the FAFSA website? I don’t even know what flagships are! </p>
<p>Shillyshally, thanks for that info as my therapist, who is divorced and remarried, said most schools require the non-custodial parent’s income as well. </p>
<p>I wish my d was well, and after researching lyme, as I mentioned, I will ask the college board for extra time with dr’s notes. Both hashimoto’s and lyme cause severe mental fog, inability to focus, and complete exhaustion. Lyme is a neuropsyche disorder, and my therapist said I should talk with them. Her own school’s learning specialist didn’t even understand how debilatating the diseases are and claimed a lot of kids had it at the school. Trust me, they didn’t as it is like watching the walking dead. My d is scared out of her wits, and I do hope we get some answers on Thursday at the infectious disease specialist. I’m out of my mind with worry. What troubles me is how her pediatrician missed all this all these years, and I am thankful to have found a dr who explored and got it right on the first set of bloodwork last year. Both are insidious diseases. </p>
<p>My D is such a good kid, and my ex did nothing for her for Christmas let alone her sweet 16. All she asked for (and she knew how strapped we were financially) is if she could go to Harry Potter world or London. She’s an old soul and loves to get lost in the classics including Balzac and Maupaussant. She loved her English class this year, and sang “To Sir with Love” (she was the only one who could sing and that’s her passion) to him at the end of the year, because the entire class of boys and girls did NOT want to leave. He really stretched them creatively with books like the above, and The Dubliners, The Stranger, tons of Shakespeare, the Iliad and Odyssey and Clockwork Orange, Candide and the requisite Catcher in the Rye, Fahrenheit 451, Prayer for Owen Meany (and John Irving actually came and taught a class to the upper school), and on her own she read Age of Innocence. They read To Kill a Mockingbird and acted it out along with Twelfth Night and Romeo and Juliet in middle school, and they performed A Midsummer Night’s Dream in 5th grade (she loved being Helena; and she took on Malvolio in Twelfth Night which was no easy feat…she just memorizes lines from Shakespeare with ease (I think she lived back then), that is why I knew something was terribly wrong when she kept re-reading passages from The Hunger Games series while she’s been recuperating…it was so frustrating to her). </p>
<p>She vascillates from theatre (since she’s done it all her life and wants to be in a school/college with a strong program - she would not major in it, but it must be a big part of her life), broadcast journalism, to lnt’l studies, to literature. A good friend of mine’s d got an incredible package from Hollins, one of the top schools for writing. She got into Kenyon, SweetBriar, Bryn Mawr, and a few others, but no one could beat the package at Hollins. From the minute she went to see the school, they pursued her, and she wound up getting a $38,000 merit package from them for writing and community service. My friend’s out of pocket expenses are $15K and her mother will contribute $5K to her d’s ed, and she and her husband will contribute $5K and it is up to her d to raise the last $5K and the school offered her a work-study program. </p>
<p>So now that I am truly panicking, I had better hit the boards and learn about all these loans, grants and fin aid packages from the colleges. I don’t even know where to begin, because it seems like the smaller colleges offer the best packages. My d’s friend applied to 17 colleges and got into all but Brown and made it into all the other ivyies. It was a crap shoot because she applied to state schools and colleges all over. She was a terrific student with a great resume, but you never know. But not one school gave a single stitch of merit money even though she was NMSF. </p>
<p>My d said if she was well, she’d want to go to school in Europe and forget the madness here. She can live and go to school there, but I couldn’t go with her since I’m not a European citizen. I am just dreaming of the day when she regains her health and is back to her old self. </p>
<p>She finished school June 2nd and if she was going back to private, it would be Sept 10th. However, if she is going to public, she will have to be placed and do summer reading for ap classes and return after labor day. At this point, we are taking things one day at a time.</p>
<p>MEda…stay strong. There is still a lot of time for your D to get healthy and recover her energy. You and I know that if she has to finish her last 2 years of school in 3 years…well, that is one more year that you get to have your D at home. Like I said, we put our son back and I am so grateful for the extra time with him even if he thinks it was not optimal…</p>
<p>I wouldn’t focus too much on what is on CC…90% of rising juniors haven’t even thought about college. CC is a special world of high achieving kids and neurotic (me included) parents so we are not the norm. I think getting an accomodation for the psat sounds like a good idea, if only to take some of the pressure off a kid who is feeling a lot of that lately. Also, I think there is some thread that actually explains all of the acronyms on here but I am not sure where that is… </p>
<p>I appreciated the poster’s tips on Wooster. If you have spare time, check out the “schools that are known for giving good merit aid”…it is very long thread but fun to read and I found some good tips. I am looking closely at these tips because the counselors at our big public high school really can’t do that research and generally point a kid to the local universities and some of the well known ones in the nearby states. Nevertheless, I don’t see the private schools being much more creative. Friends with kids in very well known prep schools are getting directed only to private top name schools with the safeties the very good state universities but little creativity by those well paid advisors… I think this is where parents can really help. If kid has a preference for a sports school or a southern school etc then you can look for the hidden gems that fit kid’s preference but aren’t on the radar by counselor. This kind of research can keep you busy and reduce stress on kids. You get to read college web pages, stats and reviews and only when you find a “keeper” do you add it to a spreadsheet. It is a great stress reliever and you don’t even have to confess to your kid that you looked at 20 unknown LAC in the past week…they just see you as an island of calm and reason as college application season approaches.</p>
<p>Medavinci</p>
<p>You have plenty of time to absorb all this college stuff. Let the focus now be on supporting your daughter to get well and dealing with your divorce. Both are very stressful events. Do not let the college process add more stress. </p>
<p>Yes, Pitt is University of Pittsburgh which we are in state.</p>
<p>Bama is University of Alabama which CC taught me has the best merit in the country, not because of the $ amounts (which are good), but because it is one of only a few schools which has clear cut benchmarks to get guaranteed money. Plenty of schools have great merit, but few lay it out that 100% of applicant who have X GPA and Y SAT receive Z.</p>
<p>PASSHE is a Pennsylvania thing. We have “true” state schools which are “Pennsylvania State System of Higher Education” and we have “state affiliated” schools like Pitt, Temple and Penn State which provide cheaper tuition for in state residents, but the schools are not fully state supported. Most PASSHE schools would be considered “directional” schools.</p>
<p>FM EFC = Federal Method Estimated Family Contribution. This means the financial aid is dependent upon the FAFSA only.
IM EFC = Institutional Method. The individual college determines your need rather than a federal formula. Many of the private schools require information in addition to the FAFSA. Usually this information is submitted on the CSS Profile. You can complete 1 CSS, aplly to 3 private schools which require CSS and have each school provide a different EFC to you.</p>
<p>The college books and college websites Financial Aid section will state what forms are needed (FAFSA or FAFSA and CSS Profile). I have never met anyone who has not been overwhelmed by the forms, yet thousands muddle through it each year. </p>
<p>FLAGSHIP - Is the “best” public (usually research) university for your state. Some states do not have a clear Flagship. In my opinion, CA is a state without a clear flagship because there are so many great schools.</p>
<p>HAYSTACK - Trinity (TX) has recently (last year?) added a full tuition scholarship. We visit there in August and obtaining more info on this is a top priority for me. I’ll report back if I learn anything.</p>
<p>MEda…stay strong. There is still a lot of time for your D to get healthy and recover her energy. You and I know that if she has to finish her last 2 years of school in 3 years…well, that is one more year that you get to have your D at home. Like I said, we put our son back and I am so grateful for the extra time with him even if he thinks it was not optimal…</p>
<p>I wouldn’t focus too much on what is on CC…90% of rising juniors haven’t even thought about college. CC is a special world of high achieving kids and neurotic (me included) parents so we are not the norm. I think getting an accomodation for the psat sounds like a good idea, if only to take some of the pressure off a kid who is feeling a lot of that lately. Also, I think there is some thread that actually explains all of the acronyms on here but I am not sure where that is… </p>
<p>I appreciated the poster’s tips on Wooster. If you have spare time, check out the “schools that are known for giving good merit aid”…it is very long thread but fun to read and I found some good tips. I am looking closely at these tips because the counselors at our big public high school really can’t do that research and generally point a kid to the local universities and some of the well known ones in the nearby states. Nevertheless, I don’t see the private schools being much more creative. Friends with kids in very well known prep schools are getting directed only to private top name schools with the safeties the very good state universities but little creativity by those well paid advisors… I think this is where parents can really help. If kid has a preference for a sports school or a southern school etc then you can look for the hidden gems that fit kid’s preference but aren’t on the radar by counselor. This kind of research can keep you busy and reduce stress on kids. You get to read college web pages, stats and reviews and only when you find a “keeper” do you add it to a spreadsheet. It is a great stress reliever and you don’t even have to confess to your kid that you looked at 20 unknown LAC in the past week…they just see you as an island of calm and reason as college application season approaches.</p>
<p>Even for those of us that have been through this rodeo before it can be overwhelming because each kid has differences in needs, abilities, strengths, wants, etc! No one has the process down perfectly because in the end you are also always dealing the variables of admissions! But you will survive and your daughter will end up at the place right for her - just know too that isn’t always the first place they go or does it always happen right after high school :)</p>
<p>mspearl: you’re not interrupting our thread! Thank you for the info on Wooster…I keep saying I won’t look at anything new but…</p>
<p>reeinaz: yup it was Sewanee :)</p>
<p>medavinci: I’m gonna piggyback on what shilly & finearts and longhaul said: just breath. 2 years from now things will have worked out the way they are supposed to. CC is not representative of what the average junior and their parents are doing at this point. What you’re doing and thinking about right now the average senior and their parents aren’t thinking about yet. There’s over 3000 colleges in the US and our kids would end up being fine at a good portion of them. Make sure you have a financial safety so that she CAN go to college when she is ready; it may not be the dream school, but she’ll get a good education and go on to be a productive adult. I’d be way more concerned with the health issues right now than the schools. </p>
<p>I told D that she needs to start working on whittling the list down. Right now they all seem like such great possibilities; some are reaches, some matches, some safeties. But the reality is that she could probably throw a dart at the list and be happy and successful at whichever one she hit.</p>
<p>God bless you all for your skind words. I am so impressed with the support from all of you, and hopefully we will find a solution to her health issues soon, as it truly is paramount. We are alone in this as we have no other family, and most of my good friends live so far away. It is my faith that keeps me going. I almost feel like I am being buoyed in the direction I should be going by some universal force. My friends are panicked about where my d will be going to school come September, but I keep enforcing she can’t even make it down the stairs without feeling so ill. She started some new meds for her thyroid and we stopped all the lyme meds for now, and she actually had a smile on her face today. i have to trust things happen for a reason whatever they may be. I miss the girl that was full of energy and had me laughing all the time. She is so resilient and her life has been tough the past 12 years in actuality. She’s due for a win soon and hopefully it will be in getting her health and strength back.</p>
<p>Thank you for the info and your honesty. I truly appreciate it!</p>
<p>Got AP Govt score today and being the impatient parent, I openned it. Not a 5, but very respectable 4. I’m thrilled - I hope son will be.</p>
<p>Congratulations to your S Longhaul! My D is dying to know her score. This is a real exercise in patience for her. Today she found out some friends in a neighboring community got theirs, so maybe tomorrow will be the day.</p>
<p>Congrats to your S! In our high school AP Gov is a course for senior year.</p>
<p>Congrats to your son Longhaul. My son’s school doesn’t offer any AP classes at all. Instead they offer dual enrollment in senior year at local colleges, not just the community college. His school is pretty new. The first class graduated June of 2010. Their college acceptances were pretty respectable with several good LACs, honors colleges at state unis, and a couple Ivys. They haven’t posted the acceptances for this past graduating class yet. It was a tough decision for me to pick this school when he also had acceptances at high schools with known reputations for producing good learners. But ultimately, I had to go with “fit”…lol.</p>