Please help! Cannot find any "safeties" we can afford, what to do?

College Search & Selection
101

<p>I’m no expert we have similar issues. One school I have found that was a fit for us is Concordia in Chicago, it gave great merit with the SAT scores and a lower GPA. Concordia Irvine was more $$ (I thought that would be a good fit for our daughter when she is ready).</p>

<p>I saw you mentioned Champlain College. I have direct knowledge of the school. We know a few professors there. I’d say with your daughters SAT’s she likely would not be a good fit intellectually. We’ve known two people who went to St. Michael’s, one in business, one in nursing they each liked their experience.</p>

102

<p>Hi guys-
Just wanted to check back in here… this whole conversation has been seriously put on hold since my D. is struggling more and will probably have to do a dual enrollment thing with a shortened school day augmented with virtual high school classes.
So right now we’re just not talking about college at all, and concentrating on supporting her recovery.
I really appreciate all your input, though, and hopefully will be revisiting it again not too far in the future :)</p>

103

<p>Thanks for letting us know. I wish her well in her recovery, and I do hope she will be able to revisit college planning again soon.</p>

104

<p>A friend’s DS went to University of Maine-Farmington and loved it. It’s a public liberal arts college, known for its teaching program, but which has other strong programs as well.</p>

<p>Perhaps when she is doing better, you might take a look at it with her.</p>

105

<p>OP, did you look into York college? ycp.edu</p>

<p>I graduated from there with a few art minors and all of my art major friends landed jobs. </p>

<p>Shed probably get some sort of aid there. It’s one of the cheapest private schools around.</p>

<p>Sent from my DROID BIONIC using CC</p>

106

<p>If she’s interested in liberal arts colleges, I would suggest looking at the Colleges that Change Lives. Some of them may not be safeties, necessarily, but they’re certainly middles. A lot of them have really good financial aid, and they’re all great schools. I visited and applied to quite a few, and I had excellent experiences with all of them. :)</p>

107

<p>Hi folks,
For any future CC-ers who find this thread, or any of you VERY helpful folks who contributed, I thought I’d post an update.</p>

<p>My D had a major turnaoround a month or so after I last posted. She had cognitive testing done by the school, and eventually ADD testing. It turned out that she has a very, very high IQ but low working memory (executive function issues) and ADD-primarily inattentive. The source of her depression was finally clear (simplified version: high achieving “gifted/talented” suddenly struggling due to undiagnosed LD, felt a failure, = depression) and those diagnoses were a godsend. She finally had something concrete to work on, to fix. She worked HARD (both to overcome the depression and to compensate for the LD weaknesses) and started improving immediately. A 21-day Outward Bound stint over the summer was a further boost.</p>

<p>She scored 2100 on the SAT, with 790 on Lit SAT2 and 720 on World History. Her mid-semester senior GPA was 3.46 unweighted. </p>

<p>Despite her low GPA (and the fact that she’d had to drop a lot of her IB classes junior year) she chose to apply to selective schools. She DID get her applications all in by November. </p>

<p>Her results:</p>

<p>Hampshire College - EA
This was her “safety” (really more of a match, though.) She applied EA and was accepted, but with less aid than their earlier, non-standard NPC had predicted.</p>

<p>Bard College -IDP/EA
She applied IDP (Immediate Decision Plan) and was accepted, with a $44k scholarship, but the COA is so high that it was still unaffordable.</p>

<p>Skidmore College - RD
Rejected</p>

<p>Smith College - RD
Rejected</p>

<p>Wellesley College - EE
She applied Early Evaluation and got a “possible” which is basically like being deferred EA. During the RD round she was waitlisted. She accepted the spot on the waitlist.</p>

<p>Mount Holyoke College - RD
Accepted with $43k grant + loans to meet EFC.</p>

<p>This is a much better outcome than I ever would have imagined back in January 2013 when I started this thread. In addition, my D is a changed person and doing incredibly well. She’s going to thrive at college, I think!</p>

108

<p>Wonderful news, Stacey! Congrats to both of you. Will she be at Mount Holyoke, then? Great school.</p>

109

<p>Yes! She’s sent her tuition deposit Mount Holyoke. In fact this was the first school she fell in love with sophomore year, and was the thing she held in her mind as her Future Goal when things were tough and she needed motivation. So it’s really all quite wonderful :)</p>

110

<p>Love this thread. OP staceyneil described the situation and framed the issues clearly in her first post. Focus and persistence paid off in a great outcome (a generous aid package to the first-choice school.)</p>

<p>Congrats, and good luck!</p>

111

<p>I am so happy to read this. Good luck to your D - she sounds wonderful and MHO will be lucky to have her :)</p>

112

<p>What wonderful news! Thank you for the update and congratulations to your daughter!</p>

113

<p>I love hearing success stories!</p>

114

<p>OP needs to consider public school if she didn’t save up enough in a 529 for her D by now.</p>

115

<p>Congratulations to her, and you! What a relief it must have been for all of you when you could get a handle on what was underneath her struggles. She sounds like a wonderful, talented kid and Holyoke will be a great spot for her. In the old days, I visited Holyoke and loved it – it struck me as good balance between intellectualism and a close community (I still remember my interview, we discussed John Donne’s poetry – how cool is that?)</p>

<p>Thank you for sharing the update – always good to hear the end of the story!</p>

116

<p>Congrats on a happy ending!</p>

117

<p>Thanks for the update.</p>