We are also chasing some aid here. DS 14 and DD 17 used grades and test scores to chase merit aid. DS 20 is hoping to leverage his sport and decent scores and grades to get us to a number we can afford/live with.
@Dave_N When I replied about differences in merit aid I was thinking mostly about Pitt. DS 13 also received a full scholarship from Pitt but I donât think thatâs possible with DD 20 even though she has similar (maybe better) stats than her older brother. DS 13 ended up attending Ohio State and their merit (published) is much lower than it used to be for the same stats.
Regarding Pitt. We looked at it for S19 but he ultimately decided he wanted a different campus feel. I followed decision threads last year and this year. Their awards have dropped just from last year to this admission cycle. Love the school and city though!
I wonder if D20 shouldnât even bother applying to Pitt if the merit award wonât be enough. S13 ultimately turned down Pitt because of the campus feel. He was very close to attending and changed his mind at the last minute. I agree that itâs a great school and city.
Agree about the general trend on merit. Couple notable exceptions. Expansion of the Benacquisto to OOS NMF at Florida publics. Class of 19 maybe was the first year? Also Alabama increased their NMF award to cover four years of housing instead of one beginning with the class of 2018.
I went to the Pitt threads and read several high stat kids with merit offers were rejected from Pitt Honor. What is that all about?
@whataboutcollege - I thought I read they had an unusually high number of honors applications. Maybe that much more selective? Some schools - for instance UMD - high stat kids are not automatic shoe-ins for honors.
Does anyone know anything about the Parchment website that compares percentages of kids who choose different schools? I was trying to search for schools outside of California that are comparable to UCLA/UCB and found the website. Just curious if others have poked around on it.
Where they go to college is less important than what they study. As first generation immigrants, we have been encouraging our kids to go to practical fields of engineering. DH and I both have engineering degrees. D17 was a stem kid from young age, but was very good writer who also got published on NYT. She wanted to go political science, we said you need a career to support yourself. She is attending Vandy on full tuition merit scholarship, studying CS premed. She made the same decision as her dad by not going to MIT, even though DH wanted her to go (He was a poor student when UIUC gave him a better offer for his PhD with higher stipend). Years of frugal upbringing solidified Dâs decision. But I was nervous for a while when she was applied and applied for internships, and didnât hear from anybody. I knew that MIT kids having a much easier time with internship, some having one a year and half before time of their internships. It made me wonder if she had made a wrong decision and we didnât stop her. But she pulled through, with two internship offers by November and has already been contacted by two companies for next yearâs internship. With D, she doesnât dislike anything, but she knows that she doesnât want to program all day long and have been working toward project manager, product management track, which her internship will provide. Her science GPA is actually higher than her overall GPA, so she has the options of medical school open as well. So for her, our strategy of either prestige or merit worked out well!
We are not sure about DS20. He is not motivated as D, and wants to go to U of Pitt, our local college here. His SAT from Dec is 1370, missing 7 in writing dropped him to 30 in writing. His unweighted is only 3.5 to 3.6 currently, hoping for a better GPA this year. He will be taking 12 or 13 APs by the time he graduates. We just had a meeting with his HS counselor. Amazingly, the counselor spent twice as long with him than with D17 3 years ago, and he agreed with us on pushing him to Enginerring. Currently he has 89.68 on cal AB, and solid As on AP gov and English. This is the kid that I am so unsure about. Maybe he does have aptitude on other things than engineering. Or maybe he is not fit for the rigor of Engineering if he doesnât turn in homework! Then I think even the engineers now, not many of them would have had BC by they graduate, and they did OK. He will take another SAT in June. If that doesnât go well, he will do review over the summer and take final one in August. The counselor thinks he can get into to U Pitt, but may not Engineering. I am concerned that he will struggle there, and be frustrated. But in all, I really hope he grows up and takes things seriously.
Any parents want to comment about parents pushing majors at you and how to discover the right career path for your kids? This might be my very first long post!
@SincererLove nice post! Itâs a difficult topic about how much as parents we should âpushâ our kids into certain career paths. I work with a lot of companies, from Fortune 500 to very small private companies with less than 6 employees and everything in between. While many of these companies have engineers and scientists on staff, there are a equal number of employees that are in accounting, finance, marketing, legal, HR and sales.
Some important things to consider, does your child have a passion for a particular subject or field and would he/she be happy in other fields of study?
The other thing i think about is isnât college a time for kids to explore and figure out what they want to pursue as a career? Our kids are only 16 and might not have their life completely figured out yet.
One example. Best friend growing up wanted to be an electrical engineer and always wanted to go to UC Berkeley. He got in but quickly realize he wasnât cut out to be an engineer. Switched to Economics and got a job at Oracle and later Visa in sales (his true passion and something he has been exceptional at since he was a kid). He is now very successful and working in the SF Bay Area as a SVP sales for an international high tech firm. The bottom line is he is both successful and well off doing what he enjoys.
@SincererLove
First gen immigrant here too so I totally understand your viewpoint of hoping kids to choose practical major/career path. DS loves music and is pretty good musically (in his various music teachersâ opinions), but we do want him to choose a (more practical) major (math, currently) along with music in the undergraduate level. Schools like Oberlin, or Rice that have excellent music schools are no longer on his list because they donât âencourageâ double major (very challenging to double and be done in four years). That being said, I think parental influence can only go so far, and our kidsâ generation, with English as their mother-tongue, deeper/wider network, and better family economic situation, they almost certainly will have better chances of finding their own passions and pursuing career-paths that shall utilize their strengths than we did.
It just seems odd Pitt would give someone 25k merit scholarship but would not accept him/her into honor college. Looking through that thread, 25k might as well be the highest merit Pitt gives out (other than chancellor?).
@whataboutcollege - well, UMD is stingier with money but I have seen kids with perfect stats not make it into honors there. At Pitt, my understanding is that merit is very stats driven while honors is much more holistic and looks at the rest of the package. If they have too many applications for honors, they may be moving to a model where they are looking at kids that will be actively engaged in the university community â âmovers and shakersâ not just super smart kids. At the same time, they still entice the smart kids with money because the higher stats help their overall standing. Just my thought.
Another thought on Pitt in general - it is widely known that the early bird gets the worm there. So kids that submitted later in the cycle might lose out to others that applied earlier. Maybe that is coming into play with honors as well? As for money, I have mainly seen $25,000/year as the high range â maybe one full tuition offer? Last year it seemed as if almost all 36/4.0 kids were receiving offers of full tuition (provided they applied on earlier side).
With S19 having stats like your example and S20 similar (35 ACT instead) I am keenly aware that super high stats do not open every single door - sometimes the school is just looking for something in particular to round out their group. Unless a school has auto admission and auto merit, I have told my kids to count on nothing. Also why I am huge proponent of having a true safety that you love and can easily afford.
But Pitt is a definite example of a downward trend in scholarship offers. I like to track decision threads to plot a course of action for S20 but I do feel like it is a moving target. But TBH, as I have mentioned in earlier posts, he seems keen on staying closer to home. So despite his high stats, he may be perfectly happy taking advantage of all of the opportunities at Colorado State. Might make for an amazingly simple senior year! Time will tell!
In terms of their passions and path, DS18 and DD20 arenât the same kid at all. DS18 in a sense was a well rounded student, but especially strong in STEM. He never seemed to struggle in any of his STEM APs through Calc BC or AP Chem. Yet he hates creative writing assignments. He almost never reads for pleasure, only information. Of all the subjects he tackled in HS, I remember him getting the most stressed over any kind of assignment that didnât have an objective provable answer. He considered engineering early on in HS but then shifted toward medicine. It feels like a really good fit for him.
Iâll never forget in middle school DD20 had to write a short story, and she let me read it. She blew me away with her ability to create characters and describe them emotionally. It felt like she had lifted a chapter out of an S.E. Hinton novel. She has lived in her brotherâs shadow a little bit academically, but the truth is she can write circles around him and will end up being far more well read than he is. She seems to be heading toward education, teaching initially and perhaps administration later on.
I have never wanted to âpushâ them toward any major or career. We have had a lot of conversations. Have always tried to help them figure out what they are good at and enjoy studying, and how that may translate into some occupation later on. I have set a tone that whatever they study there needs to be an end goal, not just aimless academic work. By end goal I mean doing something where they can support themselves and use their talents doing something productive.
@mountainmomof3 What you said made a lot of sense. Honor college might be for a different purpose than Merit at different colleges. As Pitt trending lower merit offerings, I no longer think it is worthwhile for S20 to apply. He should get a better deal from our instate flagship. And I think that is the only true safety for him and is the cheapest. It is probably getting harder to get Merit $ there too. But I still think he has a very good chance.
S20 just told me that heâs been very busy helping classmates with their CS coding projects and barely had time to work on his own?! I am glad he has established himself in the class butâŠhey, your grade?! 
Another full pay family here, looking for merit. D18 used her Canadian citizenship plus merit scholarship to get full tuition+ at McGill. Fortunately for us, it was also the best fit for her in every way and she is thriving. S20 has visited McGill and UBC and says no way, not for him. It also looks like he will be just short of NMSF, so we are expecting to have to pay more for him.
We havenât given him a hard number. We figure value will play a part in the decision. If we would have to pay an extra 5k/year (or whatever) for a college that is a much better fit, we would definitely consider it. It wonât be a hardship for us, but it may affect our ability to help out should he go to medical school. Itâs so hard to know what hard guidelines to give S in the college search. We are currently telling him that we want the best fit and best value. We have come up with a list together. Heâll apply, and when the acceptances roll in, we will sit down together and figure out what makes the most sense.
And yes, one of his favorites is Pitt. (As an aside, some long-time family friends have just announced that they are moving to Pittsburgh. They are hoping S will attend Pitt, as they can be his home base there. What dollar value do you put on something like that??)
@ShrimpBurrito - I would put a huge value on that connection! One of S19âs schools is back where all of the family still resides so an easy metro ride and he can visit grandparents, aunts/uncles/cousins and a multitude of very close family friends. We have already discussed the value those connections bring to the table. None of S20âs schools bring that to the table so it will come down to fit and financials for him. Lots of factors to juggle when making these decisionsâŠ
Another school where not only is merit drying up for OOS students, but where the tuition has increased dramatically, is University of Minnesota. Tuition has been increased roughly 15% the last 2 yearsâŠor close to thatâŠ(donât quote me). D17 applied, but I think the award was around $10K that year for her stats. Itâs still not too bad a value, but not like it once was. D20 will apply, since they have a direct admit nursing program, but I donât have a good feeling for it being within budget (we are trying to stay away from any COA starting with a 4 and above 
)
Just finished booking airfare and hotels for our spring break tours. Flying to Raleigh first to see three schools within driving distance and then north to Cleveland to see one more. Prices were decent so needed to get it done before those fares were gone. Tip to all: Always check the college websites for local lodging recommendations. There is often a special rate available. I just covered the application fees by paying less for the hotels. Every little bit helps!