Without getting too far off topic someone mentioned that colleges are a business well if they are then let’s start taxing them. I know that is whole other conversation.
I don’t necessarily want to, but by nature I always try to get value for most purchases. Now I don’t go crazy on small stuff, but I am in the mode of only buying stuff at the grocery store on sale or when we have coupon from the app. I joke that store is deciding what we are eating for dinner each week.
I am trying to get the best value for my D23 just like I did for my D19. My better half and I were discussing it this past weekend. We both went to a selective school and we had debt and lots of it. After living through that and the pressure that comes along with it we don’t want that for our kids. We have an amount we can contribute to each kid. Our kids have good stats some might call them high. We also have a pretty high EFC at least I think it is. We are both working these days. That wasn’t always the case as my wife stayed home for 8 -9 years. She only recently got back to anywhere close to what she can make. Well during that time we didn’t save enough us to meet the EFC.
So what do you do in that situation? You chase Merit$$. I got kids that will get some decent amounts. But not all schools will give it out to the level we need to stay debt fee. So you jump through all the hoops. Apply to schools that you aren’t real sure about. Ones that might not be as highly ranked as you feel your kid deserves. You make your kid fill out every scholarship app and do any interviews or essays that they want. Oh and btw you don’t bother with the elite schools because you know what your kid wants to study and paying extra for it at an elite school would not be a good value.
Along the way while D19 is going to school you learn that non-elite schools are pretty good. Being in the Honors program comes with perks. Having access to being on research and getting published twice is pretty cool. And when D19 changes career plans during junior year you don’t have to freak out because at least you know she will graduate with $0 loans.
None of that happened by accident or without some extra effort. Trust me I loathe the whole process and I will complain and complain but since I don’t have the funds to tell schools we don’t need your merit$ we will just jump through all the hoops.
At the end of the day I just try to get the best value. Therein lies the rub. Value is truly in the eye of the beholder. And to make matters worse that value has to satisfy two parties, the student and the parent.
I wish the schools could streamline the whole process and be more up front about it. I know they are playing games to some extent. They are trying to hit a number and still have the revenue they feel like they need.
I guess there really isn’t much point to this post just that we are all going through this and we really start to resent the people that already have their decision done. But like I told D19 you don’t know how much they are paying or how much in loans they are taking out. Now that D19 is almost done she really likes the $0 loan payment she will make in the future. A lot of her friends are not in that boat.
Fair point, but part of doing good research is understanding where to get valid data. I’ll admit to not believing that CC opinions are any gold standard, even if given by professionals. I always appreciate the commentary as a starting point to guide my daughter’s research, but not as a definitive end point.
Career services is one attribute that she’s currently looking at more deeply as a possible differentiator between several university options. I know she’s diving into their websites, and mining Reddit, as well as speaking to current students. There’s at least one prestige school which seems to have fairly dismal career resources. We shall see!
As someone who teaches college courses with implicit or explicit (depending on the class) information literacy outcomes, that’s a skill that has to be taught, not one that comes (or even can come) from figuring it out on one’s own—and there is a massive number of college applicants and their families who are not and have not been in a position to be taught proper information literacy skills.
That’s part of why I’m pushing back on anything that even hints at this being the consumers’ fault here.
I hear that, and agree with much. I don’t believe the current college application circus is at all a reasonable one. Buying a car is a far easier experience - with market drivers and process more easily understood.
That said, given the current craziness around college admissions, I have a hard time believing that we as consumers don’t bear some responsibility of looking skeptically at such suggestions, e.g., that
[quote=“dfbdfb, post:7777, topic:2041251”]a high-prestigiosity college is a golden ticket, no further effort required.
[/quote]
Caveat emptor
Do any of you recall hearing about supplemental essays getting cut off when copying and pasting?
Although I had given a heads up about this, I was assured all was okay. But now 23 sees that two of the supplemental essays were cut off.
This might result in a deferral or rejection from our state school. I’m doing my best to breathe and be okay with this while also wondering how many other times this may have happened.
So do you recall this happening with any schools? I recall a conversation about this in this thread or another.
D21 has not experienced any of this at her T10, nor have her friends at their various Top schools. Instead she feels like she finally has a large group of highly intellectual peers she really relates to on a deep level, same as I experienced when I attended: the first time I truly fit in anywhere and did not have to “hide” my nerdy-ness. Greek isn’t a big thing at her school–it is there if you want it , not needed if you don’t. I did it, she has not. It isn’t “competitive”. Her HS classmates who went to large public SEC type schools have experienced way more competition socially than she has, so I really do not think one can generalize that elite schools (if that is what you mean by the high performance analogy) have more competitive environments than those that cost less(Hondas are presumably state schools or merit-discounted privates?). She came from a competitive private HS so was far more ready for the workload than I was coming from an above average public HS, so she was already used to not being the best. I had to learn the lesson the hard way but was surrounded by such incredible professors and peers that I got over it fast. I think the high-maintenance costs you mention depend on the background of student, not the cost of college.
I agree with this on a basic level, but there are numerous instances when consumers absolutely share part of the blame.
How many posts do we see about parents trying to figure out how to pay for a college they can’t afford even when the NPC told them that up front? How many parents don’t take advantage of the financial aid pre-read that several universities offer? How many parents think their kid is special enough to get into HYPMS even though the tiny admissions rate is public knowledge? How many times have we seen college lists on CC that contain all reach and a couple targets with no safeties?
While there are certainly nuances to the college application process, there is also a lot of basic information that most can find easily. Most of the missteps are not from families in under-resourced areas. The bitter feelings about the process tend to be from middle and upper income families. Those are also the families that pricey college consultants target. (After all, many can’t afford their high fees anyway.) The majority of college students in the US are not applying to highly-rejective or expensive private colleges.
Did it cut off when they pasted it onto the Common App, or into a school-based area? Were they over the word count, or it was just a glitch? How did they find out it had happened? I think your kid could email admissions and explain, with the attachment of the full essays.
The essays weren’t over the word count. They were cut off when copy and pasted. This was an issue for many—a glitch between Word/Docs and Common App—and was discussed here somewhere.
If 23 had this same thing happen for other schools…I don’t even know what to say.
The schools have probably made their decisions, because they come out in 2-4 days.
I just found this forum thread about truncated essays. I’ll link to the thread for any future people who might want to know about this issue:
The information I found in the NYT is from 12 years ago so I won’t bother linking to that article.
Wow, I had not read about this. How did you find out it cut off? Hmm maybe MY D23 should check ? She did check the common app pdf/screenshot thing somewhat carefully when she submitted (I think) and said all looked ok. Now I have concerns…
ok, can you look at the pdf of each individual application on the common application?
You hit the school name on your completed apps page, then scroll down on the main page to where they list the writing things you submitted. Then click on that and hit review responses.
We looked at the regular essays and those are fine. Phew!!
Only the short answers were cut off, and they were not over the word limit. I see that people advised back in 2010 to write LESS than the word count to prevent this truncation.
This is one thing I will not suggest to S23 that he go in and double check. As it’s too late to change anything, I don’t want him to worry about anything that might have been submitted in a not quite perfect state, and if he goes back and rereads his essays he also might feel at this point that they are cringey in some way…
The common app asks you to preview and click the box saying you reviewed and accept the way it appears on the pdf. So your applicant prob checked that before submitting.
I wish there was a clause to ED that it wasn’t binding if the student had an admittance from a college/university that costs less with the ED school having the option to meet that cost if they chose.
- with market drivers and process more easily understood.
