Our DC started their college list in earnest during Spring Break while recuperating from surgery. Had about 2 dozen on the list initially based only on possible majors of interest. I also had a maximum driving distance from home requirement. DC scheduled and attended virtual tours for each school and reviewed the curriculum. We had actual tours at Georgetown and UMD (going to UConn this week) and drove/walked around Pitt, PennState, and UDel. The list has been brought down to 13 mostly due to cutting colleges with remote/rural campuses. Georgetownâs size was about right (in fact it was the first campus we heard actual excitement about) and Penn State was too big. Shooting for 6-8 apps.
We will not plan on DC prepping for SATs until Spring/Summer of 2022. They got their schedule and had one change. Since they took DE Psych this summer, we asked the counselor to switch AP Psych to OrgChem. DC is familiar with a couple of teachers as they are in charge of 2 science clubs. Hopefully theyâll be good for LoRs. Mostly pretty happy with the schedule.
@AnonMomof2 - i do think thereâs a tution exchange thread here on college confidential - might be a good place to start reading. Iâm sure youâll be missing your kiddo this fall. Hoping you can stay in touch a lot.
@Starski - iâm so impressed with what you have done! good job. youâll get lots of ideas here on how to proceed (not that you really need much direction it seems) â
but the one thing i wanted to mention was the financial side of things. I do have friends who donât have to worry about paying for college; i envy that and the opportunities it provides. with 4 kids, and now grad school for one of them, we have to really stay in our budgets. SO - if you want to start looking at NPCs, Iâd encourage that.
Iâm assuming you know this (but i did NOT 7 years ago when i first started looking at colleges) but just because your EFC is a certain amount, that doesnt mean thatâs what youâll pay. Most colleges in the US do not cover the difference between your EFC and the final cost of attendance. Itâs on you and your student. Thatâs one reason why merit hunting is great; it cuts into that COA. And, when we did the NPCs on some top schools for kid #3, we also found their NPCs came in higher than our fafsa EFC. We couldnt do it. Anyway, Iâd take a hard look at the NPCs, what institutional aid is offered if any at your choice schools, and what merit is offered now just to see if they are in the ball park. Lots to think about!
Loving the visit reports - keep 'em coming! My husband and I run a business that operates around the summer tourist season so weâre pretty much stuck in place from May-October. And with the sadly expected Covid resurgence who even knows what schools will be offering in terms of in-person visits this Fall/Winter.
D23 finally got her preliminary schedule in, and it looks great except for missing AP Computer Science A - which weâre worrying is in direct conflict with AP Music Theory but wonât know for sure until we talk with her GC on schedule change day Tuesday.
D23 has been plugging away at her Khan Academy SAT prep plan on the days she doesnât have work (I told her not to overload herself) and sheâs really liking the way it zeroes in on her weaker areas. Iâve found out our HS administers the PSAT on 10/13 but it doesnât sound like results come back until later in December than the December SAT date? I donât get why the PSAT results take so long to come back when the actual SAT gives results in only 2-3 weeks. Iâd like to have D23 take the SAT while sheâs already been in the prep zone, but it would be nice to see her PSAT results first to know if there was an area or two to re-focus on before taking the SAT. Pretty annoying!
@Starski , are there that many schools with BA Theater programs? My daughter did one (LMU) but I thought I remembered when we were looking that most had BFAs. Some other ways to narrow down the theater part of it could be to see what the audition requirements are, and the incoming theater class sizesâŠtheater programs can be super hard to get into, although BA much less than BFA. Does she think she wants to double major? If not, she could also try to find out if non-majors can audition for the school shows (assuming she would want to do that), and/or if it is a school with both BA and BFA, see if the BAs can audition for the school shows (at some schools with both, the BAs kind of get âthe leftoversâ compared to the BFA students). Also, I know she doesnât want to narrow based on geography but what about campus type, such as urban, college town, surrounding area (rural), etc? Or diversity of student body? Or prevalence of Greek life?
Her theatre interest is tricky. There are actually a lot of theatre BA programs, but many are an afterthought, in my experience. The school I used to work for had one -great faculty who were able to do great things with students but were chronically underfunded (the main theatre building was simply allowed to crumble until it was uninhabitable, at which point they only had a black box theatre to work with). I think the major was ultimately eliminated.
So, she would like to find a robust program that is a priority for the school, but is a BA program. She wants a BA for a few reasons - she most likely will be double majoring, or at least be pursuing multiple interests (in addition to theatre and writing, she also dances, plays trumpet, and sings, and would like to continue all three, but not as majors). She also enjoys all aspects of theatre - acting, stage crew (particularly lighting and costumes), and writing (she was just able to direct a play she co-wrote last summer) and doesnât want to choose from among them yet. Most BA programs sheâs looked at include some coursework in all of these areas, with an eventual concentration, while the BFA programs are looking for defined focus areas right from the beginning.
She does have some reservations about BA programs at schools with BFA programs for the reasons that you mentioned, but isnât ready to rule those out yet.
Weâve also talked about aspects such as Greek life, campus location, etc. but she doesnât feel ready to rule anything out based on those criteria either, except that she doesnât want a campus that is integrated into a big city. Sheâll consider a city location as long as it has a defined campus. I think that is what she liked about University of Rochester -itâs wedged into a triangle with the river and med center bordering it. She doesnât have any real interest in Greek life - I think she found Hamilton interesting in that they have non-residential Greek orgs that function much like other student clubs. She isnât into varsity athletics as a participant or a fan, but she has expressed interest in picking up a club or intramural sport in college, as she is currently dancing 10-15 hours/week and assumes that will drop down as a non-dance major. Basically she wants to have another activity that keeps her active and healthy.
In summary, I think she has some solid preferences which could lead us to a smaller list, but sheâs just not ready to commit to eliminating schools based on those yet.
Thank you. I have run a few NPC on the schools we are touring, and they seem to be falling into a range that we can manage. We definitely will need to look at these in more detail as we narrow the list because we canât afford too much more than we expect our EFC to be. I have an S27 as well, so we need to be sure that we have some funds left for him too.
Walked around Princeton U last night, was nice to see all the new students there for orientation. I am always amazed at the amount of construction and expansion and construction that is going on there. The two new residential colleges are well under way and should be completed in time for next years incoming class. Undergrad enrollment will increase by an additional 500 students (~125 per class). that should up the admission rate from 6% to 6.1%!
Right now I not have time to read the recent posts in depth, but @Starski - my D19 is doing a theater tech BFA and I have a (very) little knowledge about various colleges that we researched in that area.
For us, budget was No. 1. If we couldnât afford it, there was no point in researching further. Since my daughter did not have top-tier stats, that eliminated a ton of schools right off the bat. And since our EFC was around $35k, which we had no hope of paying, that eliminated a ton of private LACs, which offer tons of merit that suspiciously always brought the final cost down to ⊠our EFC⊠(itâs startlingly coincidental, hahah)âŠ
So our list was only schools that we could afford after all of that.
And I realize theater tech isnât Theater, per se, but any school that offered theater tech also offered theater, so maybe itâll help.
Will post the list later.
Thatâs been the case for a while. Back when doing research for D17 I found that getting the cost down to around 35K wasnât that difficult but took something special to get below that. We had a budget of about $25K so it eliminated a bunch of schools off the bat for us back then.
Depending on the type of medicine that interests her, a background in dance could be usefulâe.g., physical therapy or occupational therapy build nicely off, say, a major in kinesiology with a minor in dance (or one of the other embodied arts).
My older sister turned her dance (mostly jazz/tap/modern) background from her younger days into what eventually turned into a doctorate in physical therapy. Dancers are already so attuned and empathetic, it can make a very natural progression.