D24 received her first acceptance to her safety, Bellarmine U. $30k merit aid per year, and invited to apply for their honors scholarship which is full tuition. S19 was just awarded a professorship starting next year, so we told her she could take one of his classes - I’m not sure if she found that funny or not.
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Bonus - while Bellarmine isn’t downtown, Louisville is a FANTASTIC city !!
Congrats. Great offer.
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Thank you! Her brother graduated from there so we’re familiar with the area and love it, and Louisville in general.
If the EA schools is his #2, why wouldn’t you simply withdraw the ED2 (#3) application?
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Agreed but maybe for merit purposes ? If they don’t get enough ?
Of course you don’t want that binding agreement to attach.
Not sure if anyone here is looking at Vanderbilt.
Vanderbilt admissions office sent a letter to parents of 2024 students congratulating them on their National Merit accomplishments. In the letter it stated they give NMF $65,000 in merit aid.
They sent an email to students notifying them that the letters to the parents was incorrect and it should have said $6,000 not $65,000.
Our D got the email prior to the letter so we wondered what the mistake was and then got the actual snail mail letter and thought it was amusing. For $65k, we wouldve applied ED to Vanderbilt!
I wonder if USNWR will drop them another 5 spots next year 
After this fiasco, Rice University is now officially calling themselves, the Harvard of the South.
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Good website for side by side comparisons? Would love to have S24 see his top two compared in a way that is organized and easy to follow- anyone have recs?
One place to get comparisons is https://collegescorecard.ed.gov/ . Search for the school, click fields of study, and then check out the median salary 2 years out of college for their intended major. The salary number comes from tax returns of people that received federal aid, so it’s not everyone but it’s a lot of students.
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[Edit: deleted this post, which had an updated link to College Scorecard]
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Thanks so much! I fixed my post.
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I don’t understand how this typo is even possible. It’s not like it was 6k vs 60k. There’s that 5 in there LOL. I saw the letter but, naturally, I did not hear about the email correction to students.
Nice for those who were already applying to Vandy, but is 6k out of 90k likely to entice a NMSF to add Vandy to their list? At best, it’s a small indication that Vandy might look favorably on NMSF in the admissions process?
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We assume the original letter was $5,000 (wrong) and then they tried to correct it to $6,000 and then it became $65,000.
We didnt think it was a big deal but it’s embarrassing, especially considering many of their applicants are probably NMF candidates.
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It’s bad but people move fast. And could be worse.
It could have said you’ve been admitted.
Hmmm no you haven’t.
We’ve seen those and it’s horrible !!
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Interesting. Our original letter said the merit amount would be 6,000 for accepted NMF at Vandy. Then we received the email that said an incorrect amount had been sent and the correct amount should have been 6,000. We looked at the letters side by side and were confused bc the original letter DID have the correct amount. Two days later in the mail, he got a letter stating the merit amount would be 65,000 per year so we figured THAT was the error. One day later we got another letter in the mail correcting it to the original amount of 6,000.
At least they spelled our kids’ names right (at least our letter did).
Can you imagine the fire drill at the admissions office. They shouldve hired experienced pros at direct mail marketing (ie the folks at U Chicago or Northeastern).
And meanwhile, someone at Vandy was having one of the worst weeks of their life . . . .
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Luckily, we had our mail held for the holiday, and decided to open the letter stamped with “corrected” first. It would have broken our hearts if we had gotten the mail real time as it is a top choice of our son’s but he will need some kind of real merit to attend ( not 6K, but nice for the full pay student who will get to be a “scholar” if attending Vandy).
I thought about that. That poor person!
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Reminder, this is the school that posted a response to their USNWR rankings drop and publicly named other institutions as a comparison (bizarre) so they seem to really care about their image.
Cant imagine the angst at the admissions office over this error.
One might argue that for the merely above average student, North America (USA and Canada) represent the easiest countries in the world to get into college.
Athletic recruiting, unusual/unique ECs, and/or URM/1st gen/low income are admissions paths one can follow for admissions success when a student only has above average grades/scores.
The only way to blow it in North America to set your expectations too high…
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