I’m finding that some schools don’t have the tour schedules posted yet for April. But we are thinking about UVA, William and Mary and maybe Wake Forest for Spring Break. Any other suggestions in that area for business? Or any tips/thoughts on these schools?
We’re also considering Spring Break tours - possibly Pomona, Pepperdine, and Occidental or heading the other way and hitting Centre and Rhodes. Or maybe Tulane. We’re all over the map, both literally and figuratively. I still don’t have a good handle on what would be good fits, and D20 is so excited and up for anything that it makes it really difficult to narrow down lists.
Hopefully she can spend some time really reading up on a small handful to find a few that she’s super into before we launch some huge travel plans.
@Glitterbug When you’re all over the map like that, and pardon me if I’m stating the obvious, but a couple good places to start narrowing things are: 1) Budget. Run NPCs on any college you are considering for your D; 2) Stats…make sure your D has a very good chance of admission (unless it’s a lottery school where nobody has a good chance, but you feel they care about ‘desmonstrated interest’; 3) Weather/Distance/Semester v. Quarter./Sports 
@Glitterbug we never looked at Pepperdine but from my 3rd hand impression, it wouldn’t appeal to the same students as Oxy and Pomona. Unless the only criteria was “I need a way to live in SoCal”. It’s a much more conservative campus than the other 2.
Yes and more conservative that LMU if you are looking for a religious school.
We’ll be looking at California schools during Spring Break - Cal Poly SLO, UCSB, and USC. S18 has spent lots of time already at UCLA and UC Irvine, and recently visited SDSU (which he liked very much). He’s thinking he is likely to stay in California at this point.
@pickledginger- My son is considering most of those schools too, substituting UCB for UCLA and SJSU for SDSU.
@Glitterbug @bigmacbeth gave you excellent advice. Before you make spring break plans, I would work together to narrow down specific boundaries.
Budget is the easiest category to start filtering with. It isn’t personal or emotional. It boils down to hard numbers. Run NPCs with accurate inputs. (Junk will give junk out.) Understand how individual schools deal with FA. Our family, for example, relies on merit. Every single school that is strictly need-based aid only is eliminated as an option bc we cannot afford our expected parental contribution. Then, we eliminate every school that doesn’t offer large enough merit scholarships to bring schools down to budget.
We search for schools that offer their general area of interests and offer large merit. Then we start filtering by personal preferences–size, location, special programs, etc. You can visit local or closer schools to get an idea of general size/set up preferences. For example, one of my daughters knew she didn’t want a city-runs-through-it, non-traditional campus. We visited a small campus (which she thought she wanted) and then it turned out she found it confining and claustrophobic.
When searching for merit, we make a very critical assessment of how the personally stack against former recipients. We also investigate if the schools allow stacking of merit (this is a biggie!!) Our kids have had as many as 4 stacking scholarships before (he attended full-ride bc of them.)
Fwiw, our family is pretty opposite the normal CC family. We don’t think ranking is that big of a deal. Our older kids have gone to very avg Us and it hasn’t impacted them negatively at all. Our oldest is a chemE. Another attended Bama and is now at a tippy top grad program in his field. One is currently one of 20 sophomore OOS Top Scholars (McNair) at USColumbia. Having her attend on scholarship means that study abroad this summer and next spring are doable. Otherwise, the $$ would not be there for her summer abroad.
Figuring out the big, long-term picture now (which includes how expenditures impacts younger siblings, retirement, etc) saves heartache in the future.
@Mom2aphysicsgeek thank you for the great advice. We are not big on rankings either. 
We have some weekends and spring break visits planned. DS20 will be flying south to visit UGA, USC (South Carolina), and Clemson. On a different long weekend he is attending an admissions event at Virginia Tech and hopefully seeing Richmond before/after. He has already seen some other likely schools earlier in the fall. We learned from our first to go see the schools with students around and classes in session to get a good idea of the campus vibe. Rankings are not a consideration for us but the allusive “fit” is high on the list.
@Mom2aphysicsgeek in academia is it referred to as “stacking merit”? How do you bring that up on a visit and who do you ask the question to? I’m not sure I would trust the accuracy of the answer from the student guides.
Off the top of your head, can you give examples of schools that don’t allow stacking of merit?
It’s been a while but hello 2020 fellow parents. I have been spending last spring and fall with kid visiting schools with art/design programs but not art schools. We have many competing demands, merit money chances, driving distance from home, must be a university, and of course “don’t want to go to college with anyone I know” . Dad and I are discounting that last criterion LOL. So far we visited SUNY Buffalo, U Cincinnati, Pitt, Penn State, Penn, Temple, Drexel, Kent State. Best tours so far for kids major? Kent State and Buffalo IMO.
This spring break we are planning a return to philly for a re look and on to u Maryland. Kid has to make the reservations with the schools and if they fill up before then we might not go. I leave that responsibility with kid which of course drives me nuts. Thanks for listening fellow travelers
@bamamom2021 My D17 is a sophomore in the Honors College at U of SC, so if you (or anyone else) have questions about the school, feel free to ask!
@lkg4answers Stacking scholarships means that the school allows scholarships to stack on top of each other to full cost of attendance. For example, some schools will not allow scholarships to replace parental contribution meaning that any scholarships that exceed a certain amt are simply absorbed by the school and parental costs are not reduced. Others will not allow students to receive more than 1 scholarship, etc.
My ds that graduated from Bama had the Presidential, a scholarship from CBH (now known as RRS), the Barr Scholarship, and a high school physics competition scholarship that was the equivalent to the value of instate tuition. All of those together covered 100% of costs. Dd at USC has their NMF scholarship and their OOS Top Scholar (McNair level) scholarship that stack to cover all but a few thousand dollars in costs. Her instate friends who are TS have additional scholarships like the Palmetto that also stack and cover their full COA.
Then you have schools like Bryn Mawr that state
and has a maximum institutional scholarships only valuing " scholarships range from $12,000-$30,000 per year and are awarded for a maximum of eight semesters." $30,000/yr is only a drop in the bucket at BM.
@lkg4answers I just say we have a question about scholarships, and the person in the welcome center will usually point you to the right place. Some schools have you ask the scholarship/FA office, some schools have admissions officers that can answer the questions.
We always asked how outside scholarships work at that school. My son applied for some outside scholarships and my husband’s work offers a NMSF scholarship.
Some school reduce their scholarship to the student by the amount of the outside scholarships. Some schools stack the outside scholarship with theirs up to full cost of attendance. And 2 schools told us that they would use the outside scholarships to apply to tuition first, and then apply their scholarships on top and credit him for everything over tuition and fees.
I guess things are starting to get real and it is time to get serious about visits and things. D20 has her top choice pretty locked in as Washington State University as it is in state and has a great pre-vet/vet program which is her dream. Staying in state seems to make the most sense with the potential costs of vet/graduate school in the future. She has a 1440 and 4.0 and WSU has easy admissions so no worries on getting in and she should get some automatic scholarships. Though she really wants to be admitted into the honors school and that isn’t as black and white so no guarantee on that. We are looking to visit in February to check out campus (she has been on before for a band event), do tours and specifically talk with the honors and animal sciences programs. We will probably look at doing another few tours summer or fall of backup choices just to visit somewhere else but all of those would be out of state so more details to coordinate.
Anybody else’s kids working on class schedule for next year? D20 is having some turmoil about this. The AP English teacher for senior year “doesn’t give A’s”. Not sure that is entirely true but talking to parents and students who have him this year he definitely is a hard and inconsistent grader and D20 isn’t thrilled to take a class that could ruin her 4.0 just because of the teacher. But she isn’t sure if it will look bad that she didn’t take AP senior year when she took it junior year. Again we aren’t worried about college admission as she won’t be applying to schools with difficult admissions but she is more concerned about the Honors College admissions process. So she could just take the core English class instead of AP or the other option is she could take an English class through our running start community college program though she hasn’t been overly interested in that and it could be tricky scheduling it between her regular high school classes and sports though they do have an online class option.
@lkim10 We have been discussing class schedule for next year with D20 as well. Also, not looking at elite schools, so really not concerned about GPA for senior year too much…she will have applied to all her schools before grades are in for first semester (around this time next year). Besides, one B won’t hurt her for the schools in question. She does not have great prospects for the AP Lit teacher, either, but her top school currently does not give AP credit for AP Lang, but they DO for AP Lit…so she will probably take it.
The other reason we were looking at class schedule is for the one CA public school she was considering. She does not yet fulfill the silly FA requirement, and is not interested in altering her schedule next year to satisfy it. So it’s off the list.
@lkim10 will she be taking other AP classes? I’d say if she has several others already it wouldn’t be a problem to drop down in English. (My middle kid decided to bail on AP English for a similar reason. She has 3 other APs this year including APUSH). Especially since she’s going for a pre-vet degree, I would think that if she has a rigorous course load in the sciences that would be enough.
Welcome @NYC2018nyc
@taverngirl We visited NJIT and Stevens for my D17 – she actually spent overnights at both as a potential athletic recruit, so if you have questions let me know. For spring break, we’ll be at NJIT again for D20, and probably swing by Drexel because D17 goes to school in Philly. We live near Rochester, so we probably overlap a scary amount. It’s time to start discussing those CC secret society pins @Itisatruth mentioned so we know when we cross paths with other CCers!
She will be taking AP BC Calculus and AP government for sure. Still trying to decide on her science if she will do AP physics or Anatomy/Physiology which I don’t think is AP but not sure on that one.