I personally recommend that all file the FAFSA. Unlike PROFILE it’s really not that bad and it then allows for loans should your student need it and covers you in case a merit offer requires it on file. You may never need it and it does depend on the school list but you just never know.
Case in point. We file for S17. We are, by all accounts, a full pay family however we have 2 in college right now. Somehow our EFC went down for this year despite all of our numbers basically being identical to last, where we also had 2 in college.
Anyway, we file so that he can take his federal loan which was our deal if he chose the pricey OOS option. He receives a merit scholarship that has nothing to do with FAFSA. We were gapped last year and had expected to be. The gap is larger this year since EFC went down but I assumed it just meant a larger subsidized loan, nothing more. We just received his award for next year. They gave him an additional 3K grant/scholarship. It is deliberately vague and impossible to tell if it’s merit or need based or both (implies he may recieve more info late summer but may not) but it does refer to filing FAFSA by the priority date as one of the qualifiers. In a million years I would not have expected a single extra penny out of his school, which is not a meets full need school and is an OOS public, and had we not filed FAFSA, we wouldn’t have seen it.
My son was offered federal work study. Some campus jobs are only available if you have work study, and are usually very accommodating to a student’s schedule.
We also don’t qualify for Pell, but qualify for a state grant.
One of the scholarships my S got requires filing of FAFSA every year.
So I would file the FAFSA if it seems worth it.
My D is looking at grad school and subsidized undergraduate loans have lower interest rates and orientation fees than graduate plus loans.
So she has been saving her subsidized loans for later.
Found this thread when I was researching Stockton U. I have an S19 and a D20…D20 is the 3.0-3.4 GPA so I’m sort of mixed in the middle. Hope you guys don’t mind me popping in from time to time because we are touring colleges all through East Coast now for both kiddos, and you guys have been very helpful!
Wanted to mention that I just toured Stockton U for both kids. D19 liked it and D20 loved it! Lots of new buildings. Mentioned new campus in Atlantic City. Housing guaranteed all 4 years. I asked if they wanted to stay on main campus, would they be able to, and they said yes. Said they were selling the other property that they were dorming students, so they will have only the two campuses. Both kids are applying.
One of my kids had work study added to her financial aid award after getting an on-campus job. I don’t know if that’s common—the college must have had extra work study funds. Good thing we had completed FAFSA even though we weren’t taking loans or getting any other need aid. In addition one of her study abroad scholarships required financial need. Our EFC is not much less than the COA but it was enough to make her eligible for that particular scholarship.
Hi @cakeisgreat! I also toured Stockton and my D liked it a lot. It’s a great academic and financial safety for us, and we are in PA, so there aren’t many financial safeties in our state. What majors interest your kids?
Hi @Gatormama! Awesome you liked Stockton. Definitely a financial safety fir both snd on target for D20 while academic safety for S19. Both will apply. D20 is looking to do psychology and maybe get an education degree so she can work in schools eventually ( with a good understanding of how it all works) or double in art for art therapy. S19 is goung for biochem/premed.
Theater tech, but it looks like she’s headed to WVU, if all goes well. It’ll still be an application to Stockton, but not expecting her to end up there.
Pretty quiet on here the last couple of weeks. D19 was working on her essay last week while we were out of town. Apparently, she has scraped the one they did in English class at the end of the year.
We are also still waiting on her initial list of schools that will get applications - it was due to us on 7/1. In fairness, we were out of town and yesterday was her birthday so giving her a bit of break.
One bit of good news was her first official college acceptance arrived in the mail yesterday - Iowa State.
@DCNatFan Congrats to your daughter to have one acceptance in the bag. We have our only planned college visit of the summer later this week - Ursinus College. We are skipping the Admissions session as they are all starting to sound the same, but we are meeting a coach. For such a small school, I was surprised to see that “Demonstrated Interest” ranks so low for them.
We are taking time for a short vacation to visit family, but D is still studying for her (hopefully) last ACT attempt in 2 weeks. Then we only have 2 1/2 weeks for her to draft her application essays before school starts. Busy time.
Looks like I posted too soon. D19 has her initial list. Couple surprises and definitely a few reaches.
In-state (UMD, Towson, Salisbury)
JMU, Pitt, Delaware, College of Charleston, Auburn, Clemson, Elon, High Point (free application from our visit), Dayton, Tampa, Kansas, Wake Forest and Tulane (she received an e-mail from Tulane and something about priority consideration, which includes no application fee).
It will be interesting to see how much this list changes over the next couple of months. Not sure but I doubt any ED applications will be in the mix.
S19 is still operating without a real list, with no progress on an essay, or the long questionnaire for the GC, or looking at Naviance, or glancing at a college website, etc. I think we’ll fit in visits to Temple, Delaware and/or GMU later this summer. So far he has only visited two schools. He liked one but won’t apply to because it’s not a good fit for his major. The other, he didn’t really like but it may be one of his better options for his major.
I just realized that there is only one student holiday on the school calendar prior to November 1 application deadlines, so we need to look to see who is offering Saturday visits/open houses in the early fall. He’ll definitely apply to some schools without visiting, but I would like him to see the ones that are fairly close to home.
Congrats on your D’s acceptance @DCNatFan — as well as on the list!
D visited some schools over the weekend and we are closer to having an actual plan for applications. She has seven BA schools and eight BFA schools.
She started a four-week arts program yesterday to develop some sketch works for her portfolio. It seems like each school requiring a portfolio has their own requirements, so it makes things a bit complicated.
She has started to brainstorm ideas for her Common App essay. Thankfully she does not have any supplements to the Common App essay, but does have artist statements to write for three schools.
She has one admissions interview done and another two schedued for next month. Every little bit she can get done over the summer makes things easier for the school year.
Has anyone had any experience with college shopping with a boyfriend/girlfriend in mind? I believe strongly that they need to do what is best for each of them, however, I fear my D19 won’t engage with her fellow students b/c she’ll be too heartbroken to acclimate. My first college roommate at UF went home every weekend and transferred after one year. She’ll be applying this fall, but doesn’t want to go ED now b/c she wants to see what he is doing. There is not enough wine in my house. I’m starting to panic b/c they are inseparable.
@TwinMom2023 there was a little bit of discussion on that maybe a few pages back. Some say it should have no bearing, if they are going to make it the distance won’t matter. I personally think separate colleges but close enough to visit is nice, if the colleges otherwise make sense for the kid with or without the SO as a consideration.
I met DH in spring of my senior year. I went two hours away but either I came home or he came over every weekend. I still engaged with my fellow students and had good friends but I was close enough to home to see him. It would have been rough to be far away, I admit.
DD has a new boyfriend. If the relationship continues, he is a grade behind so DD gets to choose first…
@TwinMom2023 A lot probably depends on the maturity of the kids. My D16 had a boyfriend starting junior year of HS. We encouraged her that this is a young relationship and they need to grow in their own ways and give each other the freedom to do so for the college years. We also took their feelings for each other seriously since both DH and I and the young man’s parents Started dating in HS. We also encouraged D to maintain other friendships in high school, and not let the boyfriend be the cause of those friendships fading, and to allow the same for him.
D16 and boyfriend chose separate and distant (from home and each other) colleges. That first semester was tough for D but she went in knowing she needed to build friendships at school and she worked at it and did well. So did he. They’re still dating. They’ve not been home summers together. She’s studied abroad twice, he took his spring break to travel to Europe for the first time to see her this last semester. They have to make an effort to see each other at all, as busy as they both are, and work to earn the money to do so. We don’t fund dates. D would tell you that they both have changed and grown a lot over the first two years of college, but that’s a good thing.
I do think it’s reasonable to be concerned how the relationship or it’s end could affect her during college, and I’m not sure how you protect against all the scary possibilities, but it could also turn out well or be a growing experience for her.
Acceptances (not yet): We thought D19 would have an acceptance in hand by now (also from Iowa State), but something in her application flagged it for further review, so they said (a week ago) that it would be two to four weeks. Not sure what it might have been, since it’s basically purely stats-based admission, but my guess is that the distribution of classes she took doesn’t match well with whatever Iowa schools’ standard college-prep curriculum is.
The list: A couple days ago, D19 trimmed her list down to 11. By ZIP code order (since that’s the way they’re sorted in her spreadsheet), and with colleges within a two-hour drive of family marked by an asterisk, she’s got:
[list][]Worcester Polytechnic Institute
[]West Virginia*
[]Lehigh
[]Mississippi State
[]Miami (Ohio)
[]Alabama Huntsville
[]Iowa State
[]Bradley
[]St Mary’s (Texas)
[]Cal Poly Pomona
[]Western Washington/list The goal is to get the down to no more than eight.
D would tell you that they both have changed and grown a lot over the first two years of college, but that’s a good thing.