Parents of the HS Class of 2021 3.0-3.4

Parents Forum Class of 20xx Community
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@nichols51 Congrats to your student on their acceptance to Knox with merit! I’m the parent of an older kid lurking, bc I love these journeys. My kid went through athletic recruiting at a number of schools including Knox – a true hidden gem – Wooster and Kalamazoo (Beloit too, but he did not get to know it as well). We are a few years out, but happy to share any information or insight.

For what it’s worth, after visiting about 15 LACs, and sitting in on classes, he found the Poli Sci class at Knox the most riveting and engaging of any school. And the Jazz prof spent an hour with my kid, talking about opportunities to continue his instrument. Finally, I wound up chatting with the President at an athletic competition, and was so impressed. Knox seemed very much on the upswing, and I concluded it is a place where students can really learn and grow, become their “best” selves. Congrats to your student!

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@scotiagal Congratulations to your daughter on her acceptance to Towson! We are waiting on pins and needles here in NJ! If you don’t mind me asking, where are you located, what is her intended major, and what were her stats? TIA!

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@Mommy2Hailey NJ. Business. SAT 1230 GPA 3.7 Good luck!

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Yes, this is right - Wheaton requires officially submitted, not self-reported scores. We confirmed this with them a few months ago. Hope that helps!

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@scotiagal do mind telling me if she was offered merit from Towson? it was on our original list but we cut it because merit didn’t seem likely. Thanks!

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@NJWrestlingmom not so far. I would be shocked if she qualified but we have had acceptances where no mention of merit at first, then snail mail notifications of nice merit. Good luck!

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Your reviews (and private messages) have been so helpful for my last kid and this current one. Thank you, thank you!

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Figured I’d chime in with some info about my son’s path… he’s fairly indifferent about where he’d like to go - mainly just that he’d wants a larger school rather than a small one… He’d prefer somewhere he can do some snowboarding, but it’s not a deal breaker, hence some southern schools.

Stats-wise, right in the ballpark of this thread - 3.3 UW GPA, 25 ACT. We didn’t even really consider privates since there won’t be much merit with those stats, and we wouldn’t get any need-based aid. His school only does QPA, so there’s no actual GPA (unweighted or weighted) but based on conversion charts we come up with a 3.3. However - he is in a competitive-entry (have to test to get in) magnet school system, and based on the info they send to colleges, every class is considered “honors” even though it doesn’t state it in the name… so maybe he does have a higher GPA if colleges recalculate it?

One advantage we have is that I am going to move to whatever state he ends up going to school in and will get in-state tuition for years 2-4 (yes, I checked this with all the schools he applied to and with the state residency requirements!). I found some large in-state publics that will give some automatic merit to out-of-state students, thus making year 1 comparable to the NJ state schools (which are quite expensive even for in-state kids).

Also - the way his school system works is that his entire senior year of HS is done at the local university (Kean University) so he will end up with a HS diploma and 29 college credits. These are not “special” courses for the HS kids - normal college course with the rest of the kids attending Kean. At least 15 credits will transfer to all the schools he’s applied to, and 25 will transfer to Ball State!)… and if he stays at Kean and continues in the same major, he’d be starting as a sophomore since all the credits will count.

He’s in a technical theater program in HS and that is currently his intended major (sound/lighting/stage mgmt/etc)

His school list:

Kean (already accepted)
Rutgers
Ball State
Appalachian State
West Virginia University
University of Nebraska
University of South Florida

He’ll get some money from Ball State, WVU and I think Nebraska, making them all about the same (or even less) than Rutgers even though we’d be out-of-state, and then after gaining residency they’ll be around $10k/year cheaper.

When I factor in cost of living differences compared to NJ, the lower prices of the schools, and the transfer credits, it works out better in almost all cases for him to go to an out-of-state public vs staying in-state.

We may throw a few more on there just for good measure… maybe Kansas and something in Utah.

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@Schadret Good luck! And which of these schools has any snowboarding? I wouldn’t have thought of them.

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Well we have winter in NJ, so Kean/Rutgers will allow him to snowboard on weekends… Appalachian State actually has a PE requirement and snowboarding is a class (I guess western NC in the mountains gets snow)… there’s a ski area in Iowa about 1hr from the Nebraska Campus… And we were told that West Virginia has some decent places as well.

Personally, I think I finally convinced him it’s not that important - he’s under this impression that his weekends will be free… i try and remind him that there will be 1) studying, and 2) rehearsals/performances since he’ll be in the theater department…

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@Schadret Definitely look at University of Utah. You can become a resident relatively easily. He can take classes in the morning and snowboard in the afternoon. :wink:

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Congrats on the Goucher acceptance and merit. Maybe I’ll be messaging you with questions about Beloit at some point! S21 did hear back from Knox within 2 weeks (I think it was even a littler quicker than that when we considered the date as of which his application was truly complete including counselor documents which came in a day or two later than the rest of his app…since he homeschools, and I’m his counselor, and I was later than he was, haha). We actually stumbled on his acceptance about 12 hours before we got the official offer via snail-mail…it was a few hours after the snail mail that an email arrived telling him to check the portal. We had been checking the portal that morning and saw that he had “8 of 9 steps completed” or something along those lines, whereas a few days earlier he had 8 of 8 done. We checked to see what the new to-do item was, and it was to accept his offer of admission. The offer itself wasn’t there yet (came later in the day). So you might be able to see it early? I also wonder if things just slowed down as it got closer to the application deadline and more and more applications came in. Hopefully she’ll hear very soon.

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@Midwestmomofboys

Thank you for sharing this! And I agree with @lisabees - your descriptions of multiple different schools have been helpful to us throughout this process.

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@nichols51

Aaah - thank you for all of that! We just checked her Common App - it said that her counselor rec wasn’t downloaded until Nov 5th, even though everything else was downloaded in October.

But the other frustrating bit is her portal says the FAFSA isn’t turned in, and I’ve double-checked that Knox was on the FAFSA list. I reached out to financial aid 7 days ago and her admissions rep on Friday about it. No one has responded. Not too happy with the lack of responses.

Her application does say it’s complete even though the FAFSA is missing.

So we wait. :slight_smile: Her favorite interview was with Knox, so she was excited.

And, yes! Please reach out if you’d like more info about Beloit! I bet your guy is going to have lots of great choices!

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@lisabees We had such a variation in the amount of time it took the FAFSA to hit the portals for different schools! The only one where it hasn’t hit the portal yet for us is Kalamazoo (but many of the schools took a long time), and S21 got an email from Kalamazoo saying they’d received it, but a week later it still wasn’t showing in their portal. When I asked, Kzoo’s financial aid office said they have it but it can take a while for admissions to show it (but financial aid knows they have it), so that’s hopefully (probably) what’s going on at Knox as well.

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My D has acceptances so far to:

Montana State
Northern Arizona
Oregon
Utah State (decided against it)
Colorado School of Mines (she only applied because it was a free app and she wanted to see if she could get in to a competitive school)

Still waiting on:

Oregon State

She got some nice aid from NAU and has been accepted to the honors college. MSU just opened their scholarship app today, they were deciding how they were going to do them without requiring test scores. I think it’s her top choice at the moment but she likes to keep things close to the vest.

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Just popping over from the class of 2022. If he’s interested in theater UNC-Greensboro is worth a look. Pretty big school, great theater program (one of their grads has been performing in Hamilton). No snowboarding, but Boone is just 2 hrs away so could do it for a weekend or daytrip.

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Thanks, I’ll check it out some more. It was on our initial list, will have to see if we just pruned it due to already having enough of if there was some other reason. I know that a lot of people also recommended SUNY Purchase, but based on their virtual tour video he hated the place… I’ll ask him if he looked at Greensboro.

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@nichols51 Any updates?

Well, as of today, everything is in. But things keep popping up - we were verified and have non-custodial stuff to deal with - so lots of extra forms for my ex and me.

Re: Knox. On Monday night, I got another reminder email saying the FAFSA still wasn’t in. Grrr. So I sent another email to the FA office. She actually responded within a day (STILL haven’t heard back from the admissions rep; that’s disappointing). Apparently, they had the wrong social security number for dd. She said she updated it but, of course, it’s still missing in the portal.

Oh well. I’m actually quite nervous that no school is going to come through financially. Goucher gave us no f/a beyond the scholarship.

I’m trying to think of alternatives for DD. She’s a kid who needs to head out into the world. Community College wouldn’t be my first option for her. Neither is a large state school. Her four older siblings all loved their schools, so the pressure is on lol!

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Our FAFSA finally showed up in the Kalamazoo portal.

The merit S21 got at Knox was exactly what I’d predicted with their NPC. FWIW, S21 is a homeschooler with about 2 honors courses per year, 1 AP (APUSH), a 1230 the one chance he got at the SAT, and decent extracurriculars and awards but nothing incredible. I thought their merit aid was reasonably generous and brought the cost into the affordable range for us. So far we haven’t seen any need-based aid from Knox (though I expect he’ll be eligible to take loans and do work study), but the merit scholarship they offered brought the COA a little below our EFC. Maybe that helps you think through how might compare it Goucher - hopefully you’ll get the Knox decision in the next few days and be able to breathe a sigh of relief. Keep us posted! Sorry for the difficulties with verification, non-custodial, incorrect social, and so on. This waiting process can be stressful.