@2014novamom, in our area, SAT summer prep course is between $3600 -$6800 with no guarantee of score but pre-requisite of GPA above 3.5 if you want to take them. My DD1 still has no clue of her college, tuition, test, but she will prepare for SAT since her counselor mentioned to her. Maybe I will let her know about PSAT when time comes (after 10th grade) or have her take both on 10th grade. She wants to go to UCLA which I heard they have low acceptance rate and really provide scholarship for NMâŠ
@jjkmom and any others who are curious about how generous a particular institution might be with merit aid, I suggest you look at their Common Data Set.
UCLAâs is available here: http://www.aim.ucla.edu/profiles/cds.aspx. Section H, which is the financial aid section, will tell you how many students who were determined not to qualify for need-based aid got merit aid. UCLAâs is here: http://www.aim.ucla.edu/pdf/CDS_H_2013-14.pdf. You can see that in Fall 2014 UCLA gave 126 of freshmen who did not qualify for need based aid merit aid (out of a total freshman class of 5,700). The average freshman merit aid award was barely above $4,000. Not all schools fill out the CDS but the vast majority do and I found it to be full of interesting information.
Also, doesnât your daughterâs school offer the PSAT in 10th grade as a practice? The only score that counts for National Merit consideration is the PSAT taken in 11th grade but many school districts give it in both 10th and 11th so that kids can get a test run in before it counts.
One more thing to keep in mind is whether or not the merit aid at a given school is competitive or automatic. Wash U, for example, has merit aid available, but it is all competitive and not guaranteed. So you could get in and still not get that scholarship to make WUSTL affordable. Then there are the schools like Alabama, Baylor, Miami of Ohio, etc. where the benchmarks are upfront and you know even before you apply if the school is affordable. Other schools, like Case Western, Drexel, etc. award merit aid with admission so you donât have to compete and you know at the time of admission what the cost will be.
@jjkmom just to be clear out of state schools that offer merit scholarships are usually open to all students not just in state students, even Texas schools waive out of state tuition if you get a merit scholarship. Itâs true that the very top ranked schools offer little or no merit aid. I think itâs important to look at the ranking of the program you child is interested in and how well that particular program ranks not just the ranking of the school in general. OU is far from a top ranked school but their Meteorology program is one of the best in the world. Also if your child plans to attend grad school, the ranking of the grad school is more important than the ranking of the under grad school.
I really am astounded at the price of test prep in other areas! I would certainly look into on line prep classes.
In our district, a particular teacher offers ACT/PSAT/SAT prep. He offers the sessions throughout the year and summer, and they are a fraction of a fraction of the big-name prep courses. Check with your districtâs Executive Director of Secondary Education (or however s/he is titled) to see if any current faculty offer this. We used the ACT and PSAT prep course for 2015 daughter and saw remarkable results.
Just to add to some to the merit scholarship discussion, several higher ranked schools do have merit aid (though the majority do not), but the merit aid is very competitive. Emory, UVA, Vandebilt, WashU, Vanderbilt, UNC, Tulane, Case Western, Duke and others. Some require a nomination by the HS even to be considered (Emory and UVA, for example). Others require separate applications. Most are limited to only a certain number of awards (in several cases the awards are in the single digits). You just have to look at the school websites to figure out what is available and how competitive it is. I wouldnât hold my breath for any of these, but could be great if your kid is selected.
Thanks @2014novamom for UCLA data, I know its very rare to get merit aid scholarship with NM status there, and I will also consider out of state but worried about too far from home, too cold, not adjusting, etc. She is my first kid, its hard to believe she will go to college in 3 years, and possibly out of state.
Thanks @3scoutsmom, I am considering TX, Nevada, Arizona, they are closer to CA, warm and dry weather but I dont have relatives there. Iâm debating on adding NY, NJ, IL to my list although I have relatives in those states. but I think its so far from CA and so cold. Maybe its still early to chose schools, it will depends on her performance in school, AP classes, GPA, SAT, lots factor⊠but I do like our state university, CSULB and CSUF are close enough to be our safetiesâŠ
Another benefit of test prep is that the more familiar the student gets with the test, the lower the anxiety. That is not true for all kids, but it is for some. That does not mean that the test prep has to be âprofessionalâ - if a student sets aside one hour each Saturday to take half a practice test, after a few months the student gets pretty familiar with the format. Just a thought.
Sorry all for my poor writing with lots grammatical and misspelling errors. I read my previous posts and found many errors. I normally read before sleep, laying in bed and using my tablet or phone to browse or reply. I didnât notice my errors until I post them, many words were automatically correct to the wrong words! Iâm sorry, hope I donât discourage future comments. #:-S
D14 has just finished her first year as a full tuition scholarship at one of the highly selective colleges mentioned for merit aid. I would just like to emphasize that many of these âmeritâ scholarships are tied into leadership. So itâs really not just about test scores, GPAâs, etc. Itâs truly about having a âstoryâ that you can tell about your high school experience and how that story will be meaningful on a particular college campus.
S18 is just beginning to discover his strengths, his interests and how his âstoryâ will develop. With online test prep (and be sure to look at CC for great SAT and ACT test strategies), more kids are getting high scores, making many scholarships more competitve. Donât get discouraged but realize that scores alone are not a guarantee ofr admission or consideration for many of these highly competitive scholarships/merit aid offers. S18 will be a very different candidate than his sister. He had the benefit of looking at many colleges when his sister was applying but my feeling is that while she was drawn to larger schools, he will thrive in a smaller, LAC environment.
If I could give any piece of âhindsight is 20/20â advice, I would say, donât have your kids look at schools you think they should consider until they have one good SAT or ACT score under their belt. Make sure you are clear about your finances. Donât show them wonderful selective schools that do not offer merit or their scholarships are total crap shoots (Wash U comes to mindâone of the first schools D18 saw and fell in love with. Got in but without a dime of merit $). Kids are tender at this age. They need to know they have a realistic shot. Until you have those scores, itâs really cruel to get them excited about a school that will most likely reject them.
D14 applied to many schools where she had the scores/grades/ECâs that made her a viable candidate. She didnât step foot on campus until she got the invitation to interview for the scholarship or a sizable $ merit award.
We will probably employ the same strategy with S18.
That is good advice by go2mom.
Seniors graduated today. DDâ18 has 4 seniors on the track team that have been a great help to her. Bitter sweet t see them move on. Exams next week. That was a quick freshman year!
Thanks go2mom for the great advice.
For those parents with older students, and those with schools who rank. When do you ask about rank status? In speaking with a mother of sophomore at our high school she told me that she found out her daughter was ranked #1 in the class. I did not ask how she found out, but could only guess she asked. Is this the appropriate time to do so after freshman year? If any of you have experience with this, please share your thoughts.
@magnetnh - in our public school district, we have a system called âcampus portalâ that allows parents to go online at any time to see their kidâs grades. I think itâs one of the smartest things the school system ever did. It allowed me to keep an eye on my S15âs grades over the years & to get on him when his grades started slipping here and there. This system also lets us see the high school transcript which shows the number of students in the class and the studentâs ranking. My D18âs transcript shows that sheâs currently ranked 86th out of a class of 766. I donât know if your school has a similar system, but it might be a good place for you to start looking. Iâm sure one of your schoolâs counselors can give you information on how you can access your childâs class ranking. It shouldnât be any great secret
I can also see class rank on our online portal. It is also printed on the final report cards each year.
Yup. online portal provides the info here as well. We can also go to the guidance office and ask to have a transcript printed and it will show all classes, all grades class rank, community service hours, etc.
One word of caution considering class ranking. Class rank will be calculated in a variety of ways by individual high schools and then viewed in a number of ways by colleges, also depending on the college. So, where we live, weighted GPA is used to calculate class rank. Weighted GPA takes into account AP classes, duel enrollment classes, online classes, etc. So, my understanding is that the Val for my older Sâs graduating class had taken online classes since being in middle school and duel enrollment classes since entering HS. This provided a large cumulative boost over the HS career and that student outdistanced everybody else, even though there had been a couple of Bs over the four years (still a very impressive run). Add that with the fact that some interesting or required classes at the HS came with no weighted boost (drivers ed, journalism, intro fine arts classes, semantics classes, etc.) and a few kids with unweighted 4.0 GPAs (kids with nothing but As) ended up dropping a little in the class rankings by graduation. Not much, but a little. In the end, the Sal had a slightly higher unweighted GPA than the Val, but a slightly lower weighted GPA.
So what did this mean? Both the Val and the Sal ended up at the same school. Kids from the top 20 ended up accepted to honors programs across the state, accepted to top rated public and private schools and had other really great options. A few received great scholarship offers and/or were National Merit Finalists. College choices, it seems to me, were often based on other factors such as distance from home, major programs, campus feel, finances, friends choices, where family went to school, etc.
My point is that I have the sense that colleges know how the class ranking thing works and that they take way more than that into account. So, being first or tenth probably doesnât make much difference so long as the academic record is strong and the outside interest record is honest and shows who they are and what they care about. Checking on ranking now doesnât hurt, but I would focus more on what they are doing, the classes they are taking and what they are learning.
Just my 2-cents (or maybe more now that I look back at this post). Sorry for being so long winded.
Our school is officially a non ranking school but has to rank the top 10% by TX state law. Students are given the rank (if they are in the top 10%) at the sophomore conference which is at the beginning of the second semester of 10th grade. Our school uses Naviance and rank shows up under the student profile page. Itâs supposed to be updated at the end of every semester but it takes them forever to up date it at our school.
You might also want to to check on your schools rules for class rank I was surprised at how different schools figure rank/GPA. At our school only classes taken 9-12 grade in the physical school building during the regular school year count. Class for high school credit before 9th grade, summer school, credit by exam, on-line courses, Duel enrollment courses donât factor in on GPA at all. Our school uses 100 point weighted scale. The use a multiplier system for weighting regular classes have 1.0 multiplier, pre-AP classes have 1.1 multiplier and AP classes are 1.2. This stinks for kids in orchestra and band which are all regular classes at our school so there is a new rule that every student is required to take at least 4 regular classes and at least 3 have to be before senior year.
Our school district provides class rank during first semester of senior year. Of course, this makes me wonder what would show if we asked for a transcript before then. I think Iâll ask next fall and see what shows up. I bet no class rank will be noted.
@dadotwoboys, @3scoutsmom, thatâs some great information about the ranking process - I didnât know most of that! My D18 is finishing up 9th grade with straight Aâs, but got two B grades in Geometry Honors & Biology Honors in middle school. Obviously, these middle school grades count for her high school ranking as her transcript shows a 3.8 unweighted gpa and a 3.925 weighted.
Iâm not very concerned with the class ranking & it sounds like the kids who aspire to be Valâs & Salâs need to start that race way early in the 8th & 9th grades. D18 is taking challenging classes and is doing fine. I do advise her to learn from her brotherâs mistakes and try to keep her gpa on the higher side as that is what kept her brother from being accepted to some of the colleges he was interested in. He definitely had the brains to get straight Aâs, but (by his own admission) just goofed off too much through high school. He still wound-up getting a national merit scholarship and says heâs ready to turn the brainpower up to high for his college work.
Our school district , which is one of the largest in the country , does not rank. I can only imagine how much more pressure the kids here would feel if they did that because we live in an ultra competitive area.
On another note, we are off on our first college visit tomorrow. Well, only sort of. DHL surprised us all with tickets to the Chicago hockey game tomorrow so we are flying out and while there will visit Northwestern . Itâs our Alma mater and we always enjoy visiting when in town. Itâs a whirlwind overnight trip so we have to make the most of it!
Our district caps the weighted GPA at a 5.0. Because of this, the recently graduated class of 500+ had 29 students in the âtop tenâ - all of whom ended up with a 5.0. It was a very talented and hard working group.