I don’t think that being need aware is the end of the world if you are promising to meet full need generously (and without loans) up to a pretty high threshold. Many need blind schools are stingy when calculating need and many don’t meet full need as it is - what is the point of being accepted if you can’t attend because the FA package is underwhelming?
I wasn’t being critical. Just pointing it out.
The impact of need aware. Now this article is based on four years ago so it may not hold true today for Lafayette but it gives an interesting idea of how it might work on many campuses.
In the end, Lafayette rejected two hundred students the college tentatively accepted but couldn’t afford.
How Family Finances Sway Admissions Decisions (road2college.com)
1 Like
I didn’t take it as a criticism of them.
1 Like
I think this just underscores that there is no perfect financial aid system. Is it better to admit kids need blind and not offer them the aid they need to attend or is it better to admit fewer and offer them all generous aid? I don’t know the answer. All but a few schools (Harvard and the like) are making trade offs in some way, I guess.
1 Like
Thank you, @bronzerfish and @NiceUnparticularMan. I agree with all your thoughts and appreciate your support. I definitely am going to encourage her not to apply ED, and it will be interesting to see how the re-tour goes. And I absolutely adore the significant other, I just know people change and grow a lot during the college years….
2 Likes
Some reality has hit D24. One of her BFFs really wants to go to “College X,” but the kid’s parents have told her that they will not be paying one dime for her college education. However, they put their older 2 sons through college. the parents earn enough $$ that the kid won’t really be able to qualify for any financial aid. So now D24’s BFF has 1 option: live at home and attend local in-state public university.
D24 is really sad for her friend. The friend really wants to attend some place else, but it’s just not affordable. D24 is very frustrated by the friend’s parents’ decision and it hit her that this process is really really hard for a lot of students.
Then in the conversation, she said to me, “I really appreciate everything that you & Daddy do for me and how you help me out with all of this because I don’t know how somebody is supposed to pay for all of this entirely on their own when their family won’t qualify for financial aid and their parents won’t apply for Parent PLUS loans and they’re entirely on their own to figure out how to pay for it with no help from their mom and dad.”
It felt like in that moment, my kid learned a huge life lesson. It also felt like my kid did this in the maturity department:
16 Likes
That was a source of frustration for my daughter - she could see herself at many schools she visited, but was waiting for the magic “THIS is where I want to go” moment that all her peers seemed to enjoy at some point during the process.
At the end, after acceptances came in, and revisits, it was mostly a process of elimination than a strong “choice”. Fortunately, it all worked out and the college she decided for in the last days was a success.
I too remember such a moment from my daughter’s HS senior year - where she expressed that she did come to realize how privileged she was that she had parents who had the ability to plan head - but also actually DID so. There were peers from the posh neighborhood and big mansions, where choices came down to budget.
5 Likes
This is one of those topics where I think the analogy to relationships can be helpful. Sometimes what people think is love at first sight is just a passing crush. Sometimes the person you saw as a non-entity at first ends up being the person who is happily smiling next to you at your 50th wedding anniversary.
So I think the kids who do develop some college “crushes” can make the other kids feel like they have not met the right college yet. But actually, maybe they have! It may just take some more time to get there, and that is fine.
And for what it is worth–we watched all this with some older kids last year, and it seemed to me a lot of crushes finally kicked in once kids were actually admitted. Because now these colleges really, really try to make that happen for their admitted kids, and it sure looked to me like they often do a great job of it.
6 Likes
That does describe it well - my daughter truly was a bit distraught over it, and thus anxious about making a wrong choice for herself.
While she fully realized/rationialized that her only “problem” was having too many objectively great choices - it still made her feel uncertain if she hadn’t been looking at the right colleges, yet.
2 Likes
Thank you for sharing your experience. How did your daughter build her college list when dealing with this? Our list is ever-evolving and this is a bit challenging for me. I did not do my undergrad here, so there’s that additional learning curve and I want to ensure that we are doing right by him.
Happened to me over 30 years ago. Fell in love with one school. Applied early decision, was deferred, then wait-listed. Held onto the crush, but went to an undergrad school that was probably a better fit for me. Met my bride there, and finally returned to the “crush” school for my MBA. Best of both worlds.
4 Likes
When D24 was talking about this, it made me think, “So THIS must be some of the stuff that the counselor was talking about last year when she said that there’s big changes that happen from the start of senior year to the spring!”
1 Like
Yes, DigitalDad! I’m proud that we make under 200K a year, but that we’ve planned well enough to make a decent budget work, esp. with merit choices (not full-pay for us, though, except if at state flagship!). Yet, I know wealthy parents who plan to send their kids (who don’t have strong enough grades to earn merit) on the same budget that we do. This is because they don’t want to liquidate any of that (significant and varied) passive-income real estate. It really surprises me what parents think is important in this life.
3 Likes
My daughter handled this fairly independent from us (generally her modus operandi).
For one, she knew/announced that she would be an “undecided” major, and looking towards LACs, or at least liberal arts studies at universities.
She tagged along some early college visits with friends, sometimes visiting their parents’ alma mater.
She definitely had a suggestion list given by her counselor, she had heard of colleges where prior seniors with similar class standing had applied to/attended – as well, of course, from what her academic peers in HS were doing. Coincidentally, the college where she ended up was not on anyone’s radar, but was recommended by a prior-year HS alumni.
I know that one of her criteria was academic reputation - because there were some out-of-state state schools, or other colleges, where she was quick to reassure me, that those were known to be “good schools”.
She did make use of Naviance to gauge how well her stats lined up with previous admissions to those colleges, and from there balanced them into reaches, matches, safeties. (I do suspect she threw in some of the reaches to pacify her helicopter-Dad.)
College visits very much helped her refine her list, realizing what “environment” generally spoke to her - and which not. She also started to question specifics, as the ease to switch majors, or how engrained/predominant Greek life was. So, during this phase, it was mostly a process of elimination to whittle down the list.
Once all the acceptances had come in, we visited/flew to some more distant colleges for the first time, revisited some NE cities, now knowing which campuses she needed to “really” compare, as well as question other details - such as the effect of co-op’s, how restrictive a “core curriculum” might be.
By that point she definitely was waiting for the “Aha!” moment, which frustratingly/scarily never came. But, for certain, the accepted student (re-)visits were crucial in her case, to “cut” 80% of the schools in favor of 2 comparable finalists.
She was fortunate to be close enough to take two days off from HS and audit two classes in subject areas she had taken AP classes in - and it reassured her that she’d be able to “manage”. She had also met some of the other accepted students, which alleviated her strong reservations, how driven/competitive/cut-throat her future peers might turn out.
The final push came from an approachable, younger (creative subject) teacher, who supervised/moderated one of the larger after-school clubs/ECs she had partaken in for four years, and who knew the universities first-hand as an adjunct but also from his spouse – telling her flat-out she “could do better”.
2 Likes
I’m sure all the colleges that you chose from can give a similar education and experience vs. the ones you couldn’t choose financially.
Some people who can afford more just choose not too - regardless of if their assets are liquid or illiquid.
It’s a choice as to what one spends - and I’m glad you found a great list of schools. There’s no doubt so many can if they just realized - there are MANY schools out there that will work and not just a select one or two.
5 Likes
No question - people have different priorities/philosophies.
In our case, we didn’t wait until we would have been faced with liquidating assets at inopportune times. We had decided at birth, that we would fund college for her over time (through a 529) - possibly because of our upbringing in a part of the world, where education is not an individual “privilege” for those who can afford, but a societal investment.
2 Likes
Bravo 
We did the same. Paid for son’s BS and MS from Stanford. Daughter current in second year at Johns Hopkins. Funds will take her through BS and MS or even a little further.
2 Likes
Thank you so much! I am to hear that it worked out successfully for your daughter.
1 Like
We did one before our S20 left for college and already have one for our 18 year old senior son. It’s a very good idea and it’s so easy to do.
2 Likes