Ok, thanks for clarifying that! Most of the schools on his current list only have one required teacher recommendation. The only one on his list that requires two teacher recommendations is Case Western, but their materials don’t say anything about two different subject areas. Do you think Case would be okay with 2 science teachers and his orchestra teacher? (He is also submitting a music supplement.)
His AP history teacher from last year has left the school, so he is not allowed to ask for a recommendation from her. His English class last year was the lower level English class (scheduling issues prevented taking the AP English). The teacher liked him well enough, but there wasn’t any opportunity to distinguish himself in that class.
His orchestra teacher knows him very well, and can speak to his academic and personal growth over the years, as well as his leadership and community involvement.
Edit to add: He was originally planning to ask the Latin teacher + one science teacher, but both science teachers already approached him and volunteered to write letters. Should he still ask the Latin teacher?
If Case doesn’t specify, I wouldn’t worry about it unless you think your student will add other schools to their list. If so, I’d ask the Latin the teacher.
If they asked him, he should probably use them. They would not ask unless they had a very favorable view of him. My son asked his band teacher for some schools that allowed extra and although we didn’t see his letter, the band teacher had us crying with his speech about him at the end of year band banquet. Sometimes choosing people who will know you best is better than an okay letter from someone who knows little about you.
On the ED topic. It’s a game that favors the wealthy.
This whole process opened my eyes—even more than they were opened before—to the enormous advantage of being full pay and the advantage a full pay student gets with ED.
So, I will continue to remain unimpressed by the Ivy world, because prestige is all made up. Where I live, people are snobby about Brown, as though it’s not good enough. It’s such entitlement and snobbery that I may have to vacate that other board.
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I was reading about the teacher shortage. Maybe one day colleges will have LOR-O or Letters of Recommendation Optional if there are too few teachers. I see some high schools have to combine multiple classes due to a lack of teachers, so that would be a lot of letters for very few teachers to write.
In FL, anyone who was a military veteran with 4 years of service and 60 college credits with a 2.5 or higher can teach K-12. A 2.5.
And that is who will be writing a letter for kids in FL — if they even remain on the job.
S23 isn’t applying to super-reach schools, but he would have a chance at some of them if he were to apply ED. We can’t afford to apply ED anywhere because perhaps the main factor in his decision will be how much aid is offered. You can’t compare aid offers with ED, so he wouldn’t be able to apply ED even if he wanted to.
Some of his friends would love to apply ED and plan to apply to some fancy schools. One friend in particular would have a real shot at some ivies (fantastic stats and ECs), but also will need to compare aid offers, so he can’t apply ED anywhere. The two kids from their high school who got into ivies last year were 1) Questbridge, and 2) Full ROTC scholarship at a school that doesn’t do ED. They wouldn’t have been able to do it otherwise.
Yeah, it’s frustrating for us also. But I have come to realize how lucky we are to be in a position to compare schools from all over the country and possibly even afford them, with merit. So many where we live are stuck - the nearest community college is an hour away. The local directional U is over $12k just for tuition. If you’re just above Pell-eligibility, that’s completely out of reach based on average salaries in my area.
Pennsylvania is a horrible state for higher education. I would never have moved here if I’d realized this 20-plus years ago, but we got stuck here shortly thereafter because of family obligations and here we still are.
We can’t afford ED but we can afford much more than what’s available in PA to most kids. I am grateful.
I 100% agree that ED favors the wealthy and should be abolished.
BUT…
I wonder if more kids (who don’t need aid) are feeling pressure to apply ED because they perceive they are at a disadvantage compared to kids with certain hooks like 1st gen or underrepresented minorities, especially now with TO.
Apologies for naïveté but aren’t those most selective colleges quite generous with aid? Always reading about how it is free to attend below various income thresholds etc? I do think a “financial out” is permitted by ED terms. I wonder if it isn’t more of a possibility than some people think.
Yes, for many (even most, depending on where you draw the boundary between most selective and just highly selective)—but with a caveat.
And the caveat is a big one: They’re way generous with need-based aid. However, for those who are left gapped between need-based calculations and ability to pay for college, the fact that they’re also incredibly stingy with merit-based aid makes them unaffordable even so.
Only a few of those are truly need blind. The ones that explicitly state that. Same is true of LACs. It should be abundantly clear to most that prestige and scholarships that are not need based are inversely proportional. What many of these colleges offer is a discount to entice your kid to attend and for you to pay. If you extend that logic, certain schools don’t even need to do this anymore because there are enough parents that will pay for “prestige.”
Wake Forest needs ED because they are competing with kids that might otherwise apply to and go to schools like Tulane, NEU, BU, NYU type schools. EA does not really help the university much. Because then students that get multiple admits will weigh aid packages.
Oh heck, yes! I feel so lucky. S23 is going to get some great offers and will be able to attend at least 2 excellent programs for no tuition if he wants. He will have his pick of schools. That is ONLY because spouse and I are both professors (free tuition at our employers) and he qualifies for tuition exchange scholarships, and we have cheap in-state options.
He will be taking out loans and working for room and board even with these advantages. If we weren’t profs, he’d likely be much more limited. I really feel for the kids who don’t have those advantages. In-state PA stuff sounds so confusing.
Here’s an example: I think my son would have a shot at Northwestern. That could be a great fit for him and he could apply ED. There is no way we could afford that without a hefty aid package. So even with the “financial out” (it’s a bit nebulous?), there’s just no way (I did the NPC). We qualify for aid, but it’s just not good enough. He has not even looked at Northwestern because we said “no way”. So there is a category of ED schools that is far from closing the financial gap.
I’m no fan of ED but the bottom line is either you can afford a school or not. Many of these private schools favor the rich because they can afford them without batting an eyelid. My D17 removed a number of schools she was interested in attending because there wasn’t a path to affordability. And schools that practiced ED and had/have Merit she applied RD.
Yup! We are “upper middle class” and make about $125k AGI. Just to put it out there - I don’t care.
Our EFC is $35kish; it depends on the year, because we have irregular income, and a good chunk of it is not W-2 income.
The irregular income makes the NPCs next to useless, but I tend to think FAFSA’s calculation would be close enough to a CSS calculation.
And so we have no interest in pursuing CSS schools. Because they would “meet need” but only bring us to $35k at best. Which we can’t afford. And they generally ban stacking. And that’s critically important to us.
Hence the concentration on lower-ranked schools. It sucks, it really does, but honestly, my kids are awesome and I have no doubt they’ll have happy lives despite their inferior schools.
We are that donut hole family. Our EFC is full pay, zero need based aide, but it’s not like we’re rolling in cash. We live in a high cost of living area and have a lot of kids. We determined ED is just not for us. We might pay 80k for our son to go to USC or something if he doesn’t have other options, but it won’t be comfortable to afford. If he had some great choices cheaper, we’d jump on them.
We also live in a high cost area. We have done our best to save for the kids’ college funds, and can afford an in-state or moderately priced OOS school, but there is no way we could pay 80-90k/year, even for the most exciting college option. At least it simplifies the college list building process, since we can forget about all the schools that don’t give merit (or where our kids’ stats are not competitive for merit).
What I don’t understand is how can there be so many families that can afford to commit to ED and are ready to pay 80-90k/year? Are families taking out big loans for these ED schools, or are there really so many families who are wealthy enough that they don’t bat an eye at the cost of a full price private?
With regard to paying for college - here’s a thought for the future (doesn’t help with the today unfortunately). One day those of us parents on here may become grandparents. If financially able, set up a 529 account for the child at birth and fund account with say, $6000 per year ($500 per month). That amount, with compounding, will grow to about $300,000 when they’re 18, greatly reducing the college expense burden. A great way to “pay it forward” if able.
