Here ya go!
http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/class-20xx-community/1732893-parents-of-the-hs-class-of-2019-p1.html
@Cotton2017 I’m sure I’m not alone having the opinion that PSAT to SAT correlation is good only if the student is good or experienced at standardized test taking. There are too many cases of large improvements (and these kids can’t have become that much “better students” in that short a time) to discount that aspect. The SAT-ACT correlation appears a bit more loose, probably due to the different style of questions; one would have to be good at both for tighter matching. My son prefers the ACT as his PSAT scores predicted ~1290. Perhaps your daughter will be similar (esp if she is a fast reader). I’m guessing you’re already thought about practice exams or classes at some point… they seem to make a difference for many students. Anyway, keep on keeping her chin up.
I hear you on financials too, as S18 is my first of three. The numbers are crazy. I still recall when UCs were $750/semester so a $1500 scholarship was a “full tuition ride” 
That’s the million dollar (or 67k?) question isn’t it. I do think it is subjective and based on the kid. What might be intellectual enough for my kid might be too much or not enough for another. I will share what I did and apologize in advance as I tend to ramble and over explain. I am a dork. A pretty ridiculous one actually. I gathered a ton of “paper” data first. Not really paper…just a massive spreadsheet. I would say our search had a clear and distinct phases to it and I expect S19’s to be similar. S17 trusted me to do the grunt work and present him with options. It truly overwhelmed him. S19 will be a bit different in that respect.
First.
Big picture research based on interests at the time. I put together a list of schools that appeared to be in the stats range, had the programs of interest and hit geographical or other “fit” targets that my S had identified as being important.
-I looked at the various ranking lists (USNWR, A schools for B students, Princeton Review, Forbes, Economist, Kiplinger, Fiske, Payscale) and our naviance. I also looked at a few lists for either bonus points or red flags (i.e. chools most LGBTQ unfriendly was a flag list, “Green” schools was a bonus point lol).
-I looked at retention, yield, acceptance rates, 4/5/6 year grad rates and average loan default.
-I looked at diversity and male/female ratio
-I ran NPC’s on every single one.
Second
Based on this we had an original list that covered a range of what we thought he wanted and used that as a starting point for tours. We then toured 5 schools to get a feel for how that translated.
Large University, Mid Sized University, LAC.
College Town, Rural, Suburban
On these tours, where possible, he had program meetings or tours. Things we looked at and noticed.
- The tour guides themselves. They did make a big impact, and while were never a deal killer they definitely could tip the scales in a positive way.
- The info session folks, both admissions staff and students. Those did make an impression of overall rigor and fit.
- The program tours and faculty meetings. In general these were HUGELY important in our impressions of rigor and fit.
- Overall campus vibe. If the tour didn't go to the library, we went on our own. Likewise with the student union and cafeteria. We looked for kids that were happy, engaged with each other but also plenty that were working/studying as well. We also looked for "fit", could my S find his "tribe" there?
Third
After the 1st 5 visits we had a much better idea of where the interests and sweet spots were and I went back to the drawing board for research, adding in a lot of CTCL schools or other LAC’s for review. I actually assigned a point ranking to the schools where I gave points for “fit” which was tribe, location and $ based and then a “ranking” rating. And really, outside of budget all of this is subjective! I then added those two together to stack rank all the schools and help cut the list down. Hey, I said I was a dork!
I will say, and this goes to @Cotton2017 's point above that a LOT of schools were cut if the NPC’s didn’t pencil and I couldn’t find publicly available merit stats scholarship info for that specific school that would indicate a more favorable result. If a school looked especially interesting I’d dig into the CDC to see if money was hiding anywhere.For us this meant zero reach schools as they would have no chance of being affordable. And yes, to the point above, even the match schools might not give enough merit to really work, my rule was it had to have a “chance” of being affordable based on my research to make the list at all. It is tough for the mid stats kid to find money, that’s just a reality. I chose a path that allowed for a slightly larger budget should S choose to take his federal loans and/or contribute additional through work earnings. Which meant we had 2 budgets. The debt free list and the non and the non had a cap. That isn’t for everyone. I have a super picky kid and I felt he had the right to make that choice if it meant that much. That doesn’t mean there weren’t more debt free options out there that would have worked for him, but he didn’t feel they fit him and those that did “might” be worth considering debt.
But to get back to stats, for his final list I looked more specifically at the % breakdown on GPA admitted in his range (3.25-3.49) and ACT %. I wanted him at the middle/bottom middle of that pool with at least half the kids in the higher brackets and with ACT scores where he barely made the bottom of the middle 50%. For both, ideally I didn’t want more than 25% with lower stats. This seemed to work well for us, but bear in mind that these are high acceptance rate schools…not sure that would have worked as well with a more selective list. The one school that fell academically short upon touring had him much higher in the pool.
Fourth
For us, money was a factor and we elected not to tour most schools prior to applying. S felt he knew enough of what he wanted to apply and we agreed we’d tour after acceptances if the offers made sense. In our case he toured 4 of the 5 never visited acceptances, the 5th was just too expensive to even visit and be tempted by.
On those tours we arranged for program meetings, faculty meetings or to sit in on a class wherever available. This was critical in determining academic (and non) fit. We also did the same as before in regards to library, cafeteria, student union. I do believe that both are important. His absolute favorite program didn’t make the final cut as the rest of the fit simply wasn’t there and the program itself wasn’t enough to override the fact that he couldn’t see himself there.
@MotherOfDragons Good ole Malcolm. He gives carte blanche to tiger mom parenting with his 10K hours theory and then follows it up with his take-the-foot-off-the-gas little pond theory. I’m confused but I still read all his books!
^^Luckily the 10k hours theory has been mostly debunked…
@eandesmom You are undoubtedly a stud. Thank you for this! I’m going to digest a bit and come up with some follow-up discussions 
I liked your 5 school tour (I gather it was around Seattle) to gauge the different categories of schools. I was advised similarly (but to tour them regardless of interest just to gain understanding) and in the Bay Area found it to be relatively easy and educational. I feel I still need to hit a real rural school.
Re: Malcolm, yes the 10K hours thing was a small phenomenon here, and it’s even smaller now. Sports (and travel teams), music and robotics still are highly prevalent, but the trend seems to be a more calm path. I do like the small pond theory but I agree that the trick is finding that balance/fit that you mentioned. It speaks to the fact that the most important factor is the student… the school needs to be “within range” and the student must do the adapting… if their adaptability is low like mine, then we parents get to wring our hands more regarding fit.
@chippedtoof lol. No, it actually wasn’t around Seattle, or at least not all of it. I basically gave him an unplanned spring break trip to see family in the Denver area…and tied in 3 schools with it. It made it hard for him to say no, whereas 5 local schools he knew he didn’t want…would have been easy to say no to. Rural is likely subjective but for my city kid…Laramie WY was rural. It was a super surprising trip, none of his reactions to the 3 schools toured were what we expected going in and it was incredibly helpful.
I am not sure I agree with the “regardless of interest”. If a child goes into it with the mindset of “absolutely not”, it can be hard for them to give a school a fair shake. That said, we toured a local LAC based on the recommendation of a “free” college counselor (long story lol). Based on his early interests I didn’t have LAC’s on his list at all. That visit really reshaped the search and final application list and though at this point it appears he is unlikely to end up at an LAC, what he liked about them, we’ve been able to find in various degrees at his top 2.
What all have you toured so far in the Bay area? It sounds like none of them measured up academically.
@eandesmom We toured Santa Clara, St Mary’s, Stanford and Berkeley. He’d likely not fit academically at the latter two, and I’m guessing would do ok at the former two as long as he stayed focused. We know a recent admit to Santa Clara who is loving it there, so I’ve been using that student as a yardstick and saying my son would do ok as well. But I couldn’t place St Mary’s. It has lower stats, but on the tour, we walked past a few of their talented basketball players (they seemed like nice people), libraries were in use, people were reading out in the sun, classes we walked by seemed engaged, and our tour guide was a very well spoken senior whom we liked… in other words, there wasn’t anything that would have placed them above or below Santa Clara other than the published stats for their students or the stat level at which they were willing to provide merit.
I guess it felt a bit futile to tour with the intent of determining these details. Perhaps I need to pay closer attention to the students on campus and not just the tour guide.
@eandesmom I must be your sister dork because I printed your perfectly detailed college process from above and put it in our college binder!
@chippedtoof I must have misunderstood, I got the impression that some of the tours didn’t wow at all, in fact the alternative.
One thing I left out, on the LAC was size of endowments. I looked at that as well as it shows financial health and how active the alumni are…aka how good the network is.
My purely outside impression of the difference between those two is $$. I could be way off mind you having never visited either but knowing several who have attended one. $$ can make a difference from a networking standpoint. I’ve heard very nice things about both schools and both may be in the running for my S19 though I don’t see Santa Clara as likely coming through financially for us.
Our academic impressions were much stronger from program meetings (either with students or faculty), sitting in on classes and in some cases, interviews. The general tours will give an impression to be sure and to be honest, our tour guide at one of the final two was not academically impressive. However, the program student tour guides were of a different ilk, as was the professor and that far outweighed the poor sweet girl who couldn’t remember if her study abroad research project covered 400 or 4000 kinds of potatoes. Because you know, she was bad with numbers.
Once it gets to brass tacks, overnights if available, can be helpful as well.
@VaNcBorder it’s just one path of research, lots of ways to go about it, I wouldn’t consider it any kind of holy grail lol! We’ve not made it to step 5 yet…which is deciding. LOL!
Catholic schools don’t always show the full financial reserves they have, including costs for personnel. A priest friend was president of Regis for many years. One time they listed the salaries on the cover of a Sunday paper insert of different workers in Denver (like they do on Parade Magazine) like a firefighter, a small business owner, a professional football player (John Elway), etc. I actually knew two of them, a guy who made $7M per year as the CEO of a gold company, and this priest. It listed his income as $250k. He was not taking that $250k, but rolling it back into the school. There are often other jesuits or religious at the schools who may not be taking the full salaries on the books either. The school might get ‘gifts’ to build building or religious students come with scholarships from their orders. If they need more money, they get it and it isn’t necessarily through a school foundation.
Many of the students attending catholic schools bring outside scholarships with them. They might be small from the catholic high school or KofC in their hometowns, but all those small ones add up.
@eandesmom , @chippedtoof I have a tour plan in the works for Pa schools but it is not completely thought out yet. Thanks for the idea of five. There are so many choices for five schools that fit different categories in Pa, so it might be tricky to narrow it down, particularly those rural LACs. But it’s certainly doable even without too much driving in between. And huge urban schools in can be left out. I might just loop around Harrisburg.
@MACmiracle we recently finished a tour of four PA schools, there are many to choose from! We ultimately looked at schools with a range of affordability, location, and students, but they all had to offer merit. Much to my son’s surprise, he came away thinking he may like three out of four! His next thought was, next year at this time is going to be hard!! We have a few other visits later this month, but hope to have 6-8 realistic schools on his list. It can be harder when students aren’t there as we found last summer when touring a few (but still doable).
@jcmom716 Whenever you visit a school and have an interesting experience, please share-- especially any wonderful or horrible ones!
@twoinanddone There’s a teacher at my D’s Catholic school whose name shows up on donor lists whenever there’s a major fundraiser, always in the highest donation category. A big chunk of whatever he makes is getting recycled back. The school itself doesn’t have a lot of money but if there’s a kid in need there’s a community of donors they can reach out to for tuition help.
@MACmiracle LAC’s can be so very very different from each other I think the point of the 5, at least for us, was simply to see if the overall idea of an LAC made any sense at all. If one already knows an LAC might be a very good fit, a couple of known “different” types would be good.
lol @MACmiracle nothing overly wonderful or horrible! My S is pretty laid back so it would take a lot to “overly do” too much, except maybe video games :)) . We visited Juniata, Dickinson, Muhlenberg, and Urisinus. All four had something to offer, but the tour guide at Ursinus didn’t give a great impression and overall my son wasn’t feeling it. We plan to visit Butler, College of Wooster, and hopefully Kalamazoo before the students go home for summer. For anyone looking to visit, note that some schools let our much later than others so you can squeeze some in after others. For example, Kalamazoo will have students on campus into the first week of June.
And for anyone starting spreadsheets, there are a few that can be exported with basic information and you can add as you go. One I’ve found useful is college results .org. It may not have the most current year info, but there is a lot to get started including admission info, degrees granted by program, and educational expenditures and endowment assets. From there you can add all sorts of merit info, SAT/ACT ranges, etc. College data has good information with regards to admissions which can give insight on where you child may fall with admissions and possibly merit. Guess you can add my name to those who like spreadsheets!
I’ve fallen for a particular school. Now how to a) get dd on board and b) get her accepted? Ha! Such a helicopter mama! This school has a lot going for it: in a vibrant town in the suburbs of a great city (easy public transportation access); a special support program for math/science; a Nu Rho Psi chapter (neuroscience society); cross-registration with great schools (if anyone is actually taking advantage of it; I’ll have to check on that, but I know for sure there is social stuff going on amongst them); cool internship/research opportunities. I think it’s affordable if merit/need comes through. I’m not 100% sure about whether the school culture is a fit, but I’m fairly sure it’s okay.
I have also come to the conclusion that the very best fit, culturally and socially, are all the sort of quirky male-heavy Tech schools, ie. South Dakota School of Mines & Tech (definite cultural fit), NM Tech, etc. She could do pre-med reqs at these but not neuro. So if anyone has in mind a school that is similar to these, culturally, but on a larger/broader scale, let me know! A few that we have on the list are Montana State, Virginia Tech (reach, I think), Michigan Tech (reach, too, probably) and Northern Arizona (no neuro but neuro residential community for some reason).
Some LACs I have on the list but that are not definite: Kalamazoo ( @jcmom716 I’ll be very interested to hear about your tour), Union, Lawrence U, Gustavus Adolphus, Allegheny. However, Dd has not expressed any interest whatsoever in LACs, though I don’t think she even knows they have football teams and the like. Of course, with some of these we’re straying from the idea of urban/warm
Also looking for cheap public options that have either neuro (not Behavorial) or would be good for pre-med reqs. This is where I find it difficult to guage whether or not dd would find a good fit socially. UA Birmingham and Huntsville seem like good fits because of the medcine-obsessed student body at Bham and the rocketry/aerospace types at Hville. Anyone familiar with the school culture? (@eandesmom, before you say it lol: I know Bham is kinda commuter-y but that they’ve made efforts to change that; their freshman dorms look awesome). Others on the list include: Iowa State, Indiana Bloomington, Georgia State, UNC Asheville (the Portland of the east coast), UArizona, Colorado State and Temple. I have a few others but they don’t seem like a good fit culturally.
To all the spreadsheet geeks: That is so not me. The idea of spreadsheets overwhelms me completely. I am a research geek, though, and will know every single detail of every school on our list by the time we’re done.
@Kardinalschnitt That’s funny that you mention the male heavy tech schools because I just realized that is an option we need to look at more seriously. I just happened to ask D the other day how she would feel about being at a school where most of the students were men and she gave me a big thumbs up. That was the most positive reaction I’ve had from her since we started talking about colleges. And it makes sense. She has always prefered the company of boys, and she devotes most of her time to a male dominated EC.
Yes, the European options are so affordable. She has EU citizenship but I can’t see her do that, nor my next one. They will both need more hand- holding than they’d get there. But my youngest already is talking about going abroad for college. And my oldest is chompimg at the bit to go to Asia after her post-grad internship. Fine, but she has to go somewhere she can give her enough income to pay back her loans.