<p>My sister applied to 7 schools 4 years ago. That number seems pretty average. 6 of the 7 were FREE to apply to. Here is my list including a few free safeties. </p>
<p>Notre Dame Mendoza... $65
UPenn Wharton... $75
WashU St. Louis Olin... $55
Cornell AEM... $75
UIUC College of Business... $50
Miami U Ohio... $50
UChicago... $75
Marquette U... Free
Case Western Weatherhead... Free</p>
<p>Soooo I'm going to be spending $450 just to see if I can get in.... Since these schools are so selective... I just feel like I'm wasting my money....</p>
<p>Half these schools have rejection rates of 90%+
Income bracket is 90,000-99,000 so qualifying for fee waiver is impossible... How am I expected to pay this?!??!!! My father doesnt want to.... I've earned about $3,000 this summer working and then this fall 16% of that is already gone...</p>
<p>Does anyone have any suggestions???? I'm almost baffled... </p>
<p>These schools love sending me thick expensive booklets and free t-shirts for a total of $10 then they know they'll make $75 off you... </p>
<p>Well, you might look at your chances of admittance with your ACT 32 and eliminate the ones that are not likely. An ACT 32 is very good, but chances at schools like Wharton are low.</p>
<p>Which schools are your financial safety schools? (schools that you know that will accept you AND you know FOR SURE that you have all costs covered?) The schools on your list that will likely accept you do not meet need, so will your parents pay all those costs? Do you know how much your parents WILL pay? If not, ask them. </p>
<p>Since your dad won’t pay your app fees, are you concerned that he can’t/won’t pay the amount that colleges will expect him to pay? You have at least one OOS public on your list. Those will have high costs and will likely give little need based aid. </p>
<p>What is your home state? Illinois? If so, do you know how you’d pay for Miami Ohio or Marquette if admitted?</p>
<p>As you think about expenses, please keep in mind that there are additional costs in sending test scores to specific schools. Applying to college is not cheap, and that is one reason people gasp at the stories of applying to 10-15 schools.</p>
<p>As a parent, the primary question, asked above, is what is your financial safety. If it is IUUC and you know your stats will get you admitted and you can afford it, then you are fine. Make sure you apply to meet the fall admissions announcement rather than the second one. At least when my son applied, all decisions were released online at the same time, either a date in Nov/Dec or late February. Make sure your application is complete to be in the fall decision pool. iUUC does direct admits into specific colleges – engineering, arts and letters etc, and competitiveness varies by college. </p>
<p>In contrast, for instance, all students at ND are admitted to the university generally and then declare a specific program. You are not admitted directly into Mendoza. </p>
<p>If you are worried about application fees, review your list to see if it is reasonable. Check the Common Data set in each school’s site to see where your stats fall – if you are in the bottom 25%, maybe you decide not to apply. As the prior response noted, a 32 is a great score at many places but is just average or even on the low end for ND. </p>
<p>Finally, if your family is balking at these expenses now is the time to understand what your financial needs are. You may need to identify schools where you will get lots of merit money. There are running lists on cc about schools with automatic merit money etc.</p>
<p>*As you think about expenses, please keep in mind that there are additional costs *</p>
<p>Oh gosh, good point. You have to pay to send your ACT scores and you have to pay to send CSS Profile for financial aid requests to many of your listed schools. </p>
<p>I would rethink my apps at any school or program where your stats are in the bottom 50% since you don’t seem to have any special hooks and you wouldn’t add geographical diversity or ethnic diversity.</p>
<p>iFinally, if your family is balking at these expenses now is the time to understand what your financial needs are. You may need to identify schools where you will get lots of merit money. There are running lists on cc about schools with automatic merit money etc</p>
<p>I was thinking the SAME thing. With your parents’ income and only one student in college (you), your parents are going to have a highish EFC…likely around $22k per year. If your dad won’t pay anything close to that (or more), then you need a totally different college list.</p>
I will address the “for what?” part of your post. The application fees of the colleges on your list do not cover the full cost of operating their admissions offices.</p>
<p>Let’s take a hypothetical example. A college charges a $75 application fee and collects 10,000 application fees after waiving the fees for low income applicants. Thus they collect a total of $750,000. They might need 10 staffers to handle those applications, including an admissions director, several application readers, clerks to organize and file the application materials, a secretary to answer the phones and organize the tour guides, and an IT person to keep the network and the website going. The salaries, benefits, and overhead costs like office space of those 10 people can easily total $750,000 or more per year. Most of the colleges on your list do admissions outreach, so they have travel expenses, printing expenses, and mailing expenses. Also they hire a dozen or so student tour guides and host events on campus for prospective students.</p>
<p>The expenses of running an admissions office will vary from college to college, but I suspect that $75 covers less than half of the cost per application to run admissions at the colleges you are interested in. The colleges absorb the remaining portion of the cost in their general operating budgets.</p>
<p>Why don’t the colleges absorb the entire cost of admissions? Some do so in order to encourage applications. Others charge an application fee to limit the number of frivolous applications. In either case you pay less than the cost of your application.</p>
<p>An alternative is for you to do like your sister did, and apply primarily to low fee/free colleges. You can find out by going to the commonapp website, clicking on members, filter 100 per page, then on the “fee” column so that the free/cheapest appear.
Keep in mind though that even applying to no-fee colleges costs money since you’ll need to send your scores.</p>
<p>I’m with Fifty on this. When you think through how much staff they need and all the related expenses, I would be surprised if any of these schools break even in their Admissions Offices.</p>
<p>Given the low acceptance rates at several of the schools on your list, I would try to narrow it down a little more. As someone else mentioned, you have to pay for CSS profile, and I am not sure of all the schools on your list that require it, but I know UChicago does. It costs $25 for the first school you send CSS to and each additional school is $16. </p>
<p>I would say 4 schools with app fees would be a little more reasonable. Pick your top 4 and if you can get in and get a good aid package, it will all be worth it!</p>
<p>thanks for all the great responses and sorry for the late reply…
my financially safe schools are: UIUC, Marquette, Case Western. </p>
<p>Father says the most we could afford to pay yearly is about $19,000. At the very very very most.</p>
<p>I feel bad saying this but it sucks for middle class applicants. Too rich to receive need-based aid but too poor to comfortably pay today’s expensive tuition.</p>
<p>*my financially safe schools are: UIUC, Marquette, Case Western. </p>
<p>Father says the most we could afford to pay yearly is about $19,000. At the very very very most.*</p>
<p>???</p>
<p>Since Marquette and CWR cost more than $19k per year (your dad’s contribution) how can you say that those are financial safeties? How do you know how much aid/merit those schools will give you FOR SURE???</p>
<p>I think the bigger question is if your father is unwilling to help you with the application fees, how do you expect him to help with the actual tuition bill</p>
<p>Beyond the fact that application fees don’t cover the cost of the application process, but at the most selective colleges, the fees serve another purpose - weeding out applications who know they don’t have a chance, and those who might have a chance, but are not that committed. If they have a less than 10% acceptance rate with an application fee of $75, imagine now many more applications they would get if it were free, particularly when so many use the Common App. Then if the acceptance rate was 3%, you would be wondering if it’s even worth trying. </p>
<p>Now consider those why apply to the Ivy League and other highly selective schools. They’ll usually pick 3 or 4, and they are serious about those 3 or 4. With free applications they might each apply to 4 times as many which could translate to 4 times as many applicants to each school. Are they all going to accept the same 3% of the applicant pool? Then what happens to yield? It drops significantly, and they either risk being the popular school that year, ending up with over enrollment, or they have to have a huge wait list. They already deal with the same issues even with the $75 fees, which is why so many offer ED and single choice EA, to encourage a higher level of committment.</p>
<p>You should select only 4-5 application fee schools, then apply to “no fee” schools since it is a problem.
Run the Net Price Calculator: I don’t quite understand how Marquette and CW can be “safeties” for you.
Are you CERTAIN that at the schools you listed you’re in the top 10% typical applicants?</p>
<p>If your family income is in the $90K-$99K range, you are not necessarily too rich to receive n-b aid. It depends on the school and your entire financial picture.</p>
<p>HA. 40k need based aid for 90-119k. I was in the 40k bracket when we were applying and got about 10k from my state schools, half loans. And two I considered financial safety’s.</p>
<p>Oh I didn’t read for a private school. I didn’t apply to any. I’d edit my post but I’m on my phone. Still, I thought my aid was low regardless. Lol. </p>
<p>OP, personally I think focusing a lot on the application fees can be VERY counter productive. First, in the scheme of the overall cost of college the costs of applying is a VERY SMALL percentage of the overall cost … applying to 10 schools might cost $1000 in total while the overall cost of 4 years of school will likely be $40,000+. I am not saying blindly throw money at applications … however eliminating applications to save money might in end cost more money. In your case it sounds like you’d like to find the best financial aid/merit aid situation … in cases like that I recommend something more like 10-12 applications … and the schools that give better aid tend to not have free applications for families that make $100k. So if it costs and extra $500 in application costs to net $5000/year in aid that is a pretty sweet return isn’t it. So my advice would be to take 4-year overall costs in mind when looking at application expenses.</p>