UpNorth - tell your daughter to take that full tuition scholly and keep it moving. She’s sitting in the catbird’s seat.
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I agree with you 95% @homerdog
The 5% of me that disagrees, argues that hundreds (maybe thousands) of gap year 20s took the seats of 21s. So perhaps your D or S21 was ever so close, but “we just didn’t have as many spots this year.”
Otherwise I totally agree with your points.
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FWIW, Williams accepted about 250 fewer applicants this year than in the last two years. Their student newspaper reported that about 130 members of the class of 2024 took a gap year. They aim for an entering class of 550.
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Re Michigan that’s too bad he couldn’t figure it out it’s right there on the applicant portal “Withdraw Your Application”. Sometimes I think kids are looking for something that says “decline” which tbh would make sense as opposed to “withdraw application”. After you’re accepted if you are declining you just click that and withdraw. But, when one fails to find it, what your son did is 100% correct.
I remember when my daughter needed to withdraw her application to UNC and they had nothing to do so and finally she had to hunt down an email to withdraw. Apparently they still haven’t figured out to put a withdraw application and still want you to send an email. It seems so inefficient for schools.
I have no idea as I never saw any of his portals but continued to get parent email from those 2 schools, so I kept reminding him 
Congrats! What a beautiful campus - that dining hall looks like a cathedral! I hope is is all that she dreams it will be.
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And best of luck to your D at Bryn Mawr! I’m sure she’ll have an outstanding experience at such a gorgeous place!
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A colleague of mine has a daughter finishing up her first year at Bryn Mawr and loves it.
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Thanks @anaray, @srparent15, and @CalAlumandDad for the back-up.
We know that ‘Where you go is not who you’ll be’ and that a full tuition scholly and lots of 529 $ left over sets her up for life, but she just doesn’t see it yet. It’s so hard this month when so many of her friends are committing to reachy schools and posting on her school’s ‘Where are you going’ social media pages. We just gotta get through the next few months and then I’m fairly certain she’ll thank me someday for ‘making’ her go to that ‘loser’ school (her actual words on a particularly bad day).
To be clear, we’re not forcing her go there just to save the cash: that 529 $ was meant to be for undergrad. She was originally set on a much higher-ranked LAC where she got a half-tuition scholarship until we finally got to visit last month and she was really disappointed to see it in person. Those virtual tours sure can be deceptive and selective about what they show. We did tell her that since she wasn’t very happy with either school (and had ruled out all the other options for various reasons), then at least go to your less-than-dream school for practically free rather than for 50K a year.
And while we briefly considered it, we’ve also ruled out a gap year. It’s too late (and too uncertain with COVID) for a good one, and god help me if she spends another year under our roof after being in lock-down and distance learning since last spring.
Finally, thanks for the tip on 529s. Fortunately, we have also learned that any unused 529 funds can be withdrawn penalty-free up to the amount of any merit scholarships granted. So if she doesn’t use it all for grad school, then she can use the remainder for a house down payment, to buy a car, etc. Or she can roll it over for the next generation: just imagine the compound interest on that! If only her 18 year brain could see that far into the distance…
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I went to the free state school instead of the pricey highly selective LAC back in the day. And my resentment lasted all of a couple of weeks. It really will be OK. All of the invidious comparisons will stop by the time they graduate. My D and some of her friends, even though they are happy with where they are heading, still are feeling twinges as they see friends blithely headed to Ivies and other T-20 schools that we would be hard pressed to afford. This too shall pass. But it sure seems like it’s taking forever!
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I laughed at the “god help me if she spends another year…” line. I can totally relate to that. We went from having one kid home last year to suddenly having 4 here last March! I love my kids to death but they all have their “moments” and due to their dad being a Dr and having 2 more little kids, they couldn’t see him all that time, so we were all pretty much locked up here together for months on end. It was a good thing to see my 2 girls go back to school in August. My #1 son was here until December working from home. I guess that’s the advantage of working for yourself but the disadvantage of living alone during a pandemic. It forced him though to get rid of his apartment in SF and go out there and get a bunch of roommates and once he did he finally went back. My hs senior finally had some peace, we finally had some peace, and only in April did my senior get to go back in person to finish his year off.
I think if they all came back again I would lose it. So reading you say that got a hearty laugh.
Your’s is just a typical teenage girl maybe a little bitter right now but that will pass and she will shine. She will be a star at the school she is going. Especially when she realizes not everyone has a full merit ride. And if she doesn’t like it, she can transfer! It’s on her ultimately to choose to love her situation and try to have a great experience or to go in there planning to hate it. You’re not going to college, she is. So it’s not really any skin off your back if she has a crappy attitude at college. It’s only hurting her in the long run by acting that way. Everything happens for a reason. She can make the best of it and run with the opportunity she has or not. Hopefully she will do just that! 
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I just want to clarify that I am not blaming anyone. When schools announced they were going TO, I was naive enough to think that would mean more of our kids would be accepted to top schools. Numbers turned out same as usual, TO didn’t provide the boost in acceptances that I thought it would.
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Where did you learn unused 529 money can be withdrawn penalty free up the amount of merit money? Is the earning on that money also tax free? Is there a link you can point me to.
My D18 has a bunch left and she got a full OOS tuition scholarship to law school so it would be great if I could just give that money to her.
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This year is very different, everyone knows it. Of course no one knows how things might have gone differently in a different year (that is always the case). But there have been interesting discussions in this thread and others about how different aspects of this year have impacted the process.
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100% agree based on the area we are from in which essentially every kid had a score before Covid, and almost all were able to get a second or third if they wanted to try for it (obviously some areas of the country there were kids truly without scores). Plus, the schools ended up devoting well over 30% to TO. Our school did not do as well as typical years, so far, per what other parents are saying and where their kids ended up(yet our D got in to all her safeties and matches and one reach–so it is hard to really discern the facts on whether these others were really matches at the schools they think? It becomes somewhat guesswork, but there is a general sense TO hurt a school that had almost everyone submit).
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Yep. When the rules change, it advantages some and disadvantages other. That’s just reality. I’m sure there are plenty of kids who had great luck applying TO and are happy as clams when maybe they wouldn’t have applied if they had to submit scores.
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Honestly, at our high school, results weren’t all that different this year. And, like I said, D21 got in everywhere I expected according to our Naviance. Since she was TO, I just went by weighted GPA and, if anything, she got in places that were muddled on the graph. Lehigh, BC, Davidson and Colgate have red and green marks at her GPA level and she got into all. Most of the kids at our school who get into the real tippy top schools go ED as legacies or athletes and that was the same this year with similar results. The difference was that some really great students who would have gone ED in the past felt like they couldn’t because they didn’t get the chance to visit schools last spring. In the RD round, some of them didn’t get into places they definitely would have in ED so some disappointment there but they knew that risk.
In 2019, there were a LOT of kids on CC saying they were waitlisted or denied everywhere except safeties. It happens every year. No one knows what would happen to any one student this year versus another year. Blaming TO or increase in apps isn’t helpful to any student at this point.
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I have a good friend who attended Macalester, from Boston, and loved it. My son attended a math camp there, and what I remember is the cake shop near one corner of the campus. Very good cake:)!
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I appreciate that we have a supportive and diverse group on this thread who give real texture to the events of the year. I’ve found the whole process pretty fascinating and I’m still reading about the cycle.
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Definitely early round was pretty important. I’m hoping my D24 has it more figured out and is able to successfully ED. Do performing arts kids get auditions early?
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