Oh Dear Lord, now Susquehanna coach is messaging him. Part of me just wants this to end LOL…
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@billb7581 Susquehanna is a great school!! D21 is accepted there with I think $36k merit? They were offering tours in the summer. Really pretty campus. I know a very active alumni who still super involved; my son’s ex-girlfriend is a senior there. Kinda bummed D21 insists it’s too small. Great study abroad options too.
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Just glancing at the numbers I doubt I can make the $ work. I have to do the calculator when I get home I dont have my tax info in front of me.
Yup… my daughter went to Stockton for the cost of not even maxed out Stafford loans, and nothing OOP (18K a year scholarship lived off campus cheaply). Son applied with stats that used to get you 12K, got 5K LOL.
Hi, I am late to this thread but I too am the director of a college search for a 3.5 kid. I am a new parent to Texas and only looking at school that are a day’s drive from Houston. So far he has been rejected at TCU (his number 1 choice), differed at Trinity University (his farthest reach) and accepted to Baylor. He was accepted to all his safeties (state schools that we had never heard of before we moved to Texas) but is not interested in attending a safety. We are still waiting on Southwestern University which is a CTCL school and similar to the school I attended.
Anyway, I see McDaniel (previously WMC) mentioned a lot on this thread and it where I attended college many decades ago. I had a great time there, lots of kids from Baltimore private schools, NJ and NY. It definitely changed my life. My freshman year I took a philosophy class that was so small that we all sat in the professors office on cushy furniture, strait from a movie, discussing the Metamorphosis by Kafka. Only downside at the time it did not seem very career focused and a lot of us sat around after graduation looking hard for a job and not trained on how to start a career.
I am not sure for my child if we should expand our search to new schools farther away so he would potentially have more choices.
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Oh @g8rmomk8ans! I get it. That’s essentially the same message S21 got from his top school. They said there were network issues and so no more decisions until January. Here’s what I told him (which seemed to make sense to me at the time 
): because so many people are working virtually, I’d expect admissions is too which means if their systems are down at all or counselors are having issues connecting, it becomes impossible to meet in committee. And with the holidays they may have decided to let IT do it’s magic and come back together as an admission committee in Jan.
Do you buy that? It’s all I’ve got.
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@ububumble–love it! Sounds like as good an explanation as any. Such a strange year. I think what we’re going to do is do a little road trip next week to see her #2 school (for which she has an acceptance) in person for the first time–just drive there/drive around town/campus and then drive back through her #1 school. The goal being to make it to where she’s somewhat excited about #2 in case #1 does not work out. #2 did send her a shirt and some fun stuff yesterday which was neat to get. Her sister is home from college also, so it would be fun for her to see both. Crossing fingers for our kids!
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Just for the record, we heard from University of Puget Sound today. Son was accepted with $22K merit. That doesn’t quite make the cost meet our EFC, the first school to fall short. My son did not love his interview there and had cooled on it by today anyway.
Main school we are still waiting for is St. Olaf, but as it stands he favors DePaul and Allegheny (YES THEY COULD NOT BE MORE DIFFERENT)
If he gets no more scholarships, the estimated debt for him after 8 semesters at Allegheny would be about $16K and for DePaul about $48K.
We sat down with a loan calculator and showed him that with $300/mth payments and current interest rates, it would take him 5 years to pay off Allegheny (We could help and it would likely be less) and over 20 years to pay of DePaul. Hopefully that will help him either find a ton more scholarships, put DePaul out of his mind, or both.
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Now that S21 is on break, he is not really checking his email. I told him he needs to check at least once a day on case anything comes from one of his colleges. I get a big sigh and an “okaaay”
Sometimes I feel like I am more invested in this process than he is!!
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A saying that a good friend told me years ago - “your child’s procrastination becomes your emergency”! 
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A few updates today.
In at Wooster ($25,000) and Temple (as a commuter; threw that in a couple of weeks ago just in case). Wooster is most definitely not enough. But - it was a semi-reach due to her low GPA. Wooster is in her top 3, of course, and the only acceptance she got really excited about.
Knox f/a: They gave us a $4,000 residential grant and a $700 award. On the last page, the residential grant was listed under scholarships. I reached out to AO to ask if it was guaranteed for the 4 years.
Bottom line: Kalamazoo still wins by $9,000- $12,000.
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@lisabees - question about Wooster - what 25K is? Merit aid or the total cost to you? Did you get any FA from them yet? Congrats of Kzoo being affordable! Is your D excited about it?
Congratulations on all of the acceptances!
Beloit ended up offering D21 some additional grants on top of the Presidential scholarship so, in terms of merit aid, it is her best option. Kalamazoo is still D21’s first choice at this point. She likes the idea of being a little closer to home and it is within range financially. We’ll see. She will graduate in a few weeks and will sit down to look at her options after that. She had originally planned to apply to Oberlin in regular decision but has decided against it since it is likely an admission/financial reach school for her and she would have to wait until April for a decision.
We’ve heard wonderful things about Wooster but it was never on D21’s consideration list because they don’t offer Japanese. They have definitely been the most persistent about sending her emails, though.
@psblstnr $25,000 in merit. If it were the total cost, she’d be signed up tomorrow lol. No f/a yet.
DD is NOT excited about Kalamazoo. She knows nothing about the school and is having a hard time distinguishing it from Knox. I wish it were easy these days to send her on a plane and have her check them out. 
I’ve been to Knox and I know it’s a great fit for her. At least worthy of her checking out.
She was able to visit Goucher and Wooster. She knows people at Lawrence and Clark, so there’s some kind of connection at least.
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Your daughter should talk to mine about Kalamazoo lol! The school would NOT be easy to get to from Philly, however. That’s why I like Wooster. It’s a doable drive. (My SD is at Beloit, though, so it is certainly something we’re ok with.)
D’s dream school is Oberlin - my oldest graduated from there. 
Amazing, amazing school.
I think college marketing is funny. I may have previously mentioned that I somehow got on all of the college’s lists b/c I created a practice Common App account. They even know my birthday and sent me birthday wishes (AND my birthdate says 1968 in Common App). Every school tells me they love my accomplishments and consider me a top prospect. It cracks me up all day long. It’s kinda good for my ego, though, so I haven’t yet unsubscribed from their email list lol!
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@lisabees LOL on your emails from colleges! That is great!
Oberlin is a wonderful place! We toured there in the fall and liked it a lot. I could see D21 fitting in there easily. But I don’t think she would qualify for the type of financial aid that she would need to make it affordable even if she were fortunate enough to get accepted. Unfortunately. 
Yeah, accessibility in getting to campus is definitely a factor. We are in Michigan, in the Ann Arbor area, and kzoo is less than 2 hours from us and there is even a train that goes between the two cities. Beloit would be more complicated. Not impossible but definitely more of an ordeal.
In the end, college is such a commitment, financial and otherwise, it is important for our kids to feel enthusiastic about their choice. It has to be a good fit! I’m sure that D21 wouldn’t be as excited about K-College without ever visiting or knowing folks who went/go there. Even still, she wants to do some admitted student opportunities before making a decision.
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We visited both and they are very different IMO. I gave some info about our tours of both earlier in this thread. Both my kids and I liked Knox over Kalamazoo. Felt it had a great sense of community and simply felt like a livelier campus. Did not like the town as much as Kalamazoo but like the school itself more. As for academics there were pros and cons to each but ultimately felt that Knox had some interesting programs especially for pre- engineering and pre- med.
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Ok she’s in! Just listened to a voice message from earlier today. They said they still will likely not have her packet ready until January but wanted to go ahead and let her know which was really nice. She will be attending Hood College in Frederick, MD, about an hour from us. Now we wait until March to see if they’ll take her for nursing but if not, they’ll let her start classes in the program and transfer in if her grades are good enough. Feeling very excited and relieved for her. Early Christmas present!
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As an alum, Congrats to those on the K acceptances!
I enjoyed reading through the posts and they got me curious whether K was much the same as when I attended. After reading recent student reviews, it sounds like it hasn’t changed too much. Sounds like it still has great profs, the K plan, mixed social scene, and lame (as one reviewer put it) athletics (except of course Tennis). Not to mention seems to still be really good at preparing students for the future.
The quality of teaching from my K profs was superior to that at the T20 b-school (grad) I attended. Attending college tours with my DD and hearing colleges tout various experiences like foreign study and senior projects, more than once it felt like they were copying K ;-).
Best wishes on the college decisions! Mine wanted/want bigger school college experience so K wasn’t in the running.
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Ran the numbers for Susquehanna 27K on their calculator , so really 32.5K ouch.