<p>Sorry jbjc, I hope that he is pleasantly surprised in March & April. Several schools final deadlines for applications are tomw Jan 15. Is there any last minute ones that you could send off that are lower price tags? Ohio U is a steal & I know the kids love it (but you w/ Ohio-ens :) maybe that's better than New Jerseyans?! :)
Goggle best value state schools, & colleges & it should send you to a CC link of somesort.
And taking advice from one of the books I read-- just do all the legwork/paperwork/rotework yourself w/ him giving it a look over before submitting. Especially when right now, it's a school that doesn't mean anything to him. These kids are under so much stress & they get overwhlemed & depressed as they face such a huge change. Some people will say the kids should do it all themselves- that doesn't make sense too me, it's not like they are going to be paying pay the tuition bills. Why would I expect S/D to figure out & handle a possibly $100K to $200K decision on their own, and not even 18 years old!</p>
<p>I hope that means RD acceptance rates at private colleges will go up.</p>
<p>I’m not counting on it though; even with the economic downturn, I doubt that recognizable private colleges will have any change in number of applications. It’s only the little private LAC that will probably see any change? Just a guess.</p>
<p>Some one mentioned the University of San Diego and San Diego State University being similar in admitted student stats- not true if you check the common data sets of both colleges. USD has an average gpa of 3.8 in 2009. San Diego state’s is 3.4. Big difference.</p>
<p>USD is much more expensive but your student will most likely graduate in 4 years. SDSU is impacted and I know of several students are on the 5 yrs (or more) plan. Even some upper division students can’t get the classes they need. </p>
<p>So, one more wrinkle to factor into public vs. private. Things are going to get much leaner in CA in the coming year.</p>
<p>Obviously this is an old thread which speculated about drops in private college applications and concomitant increases in public applications. It would be really nice to see a new article from the NYtimes one year later to hear whether there really was any significant shift. My suspicion is that applications are up at publics AND privates. I can only comment on my state’s flagship school (enrollment increased by ~ 3% last year; not sure how much applications increased) and the private “top 20” my D attends (applications up ~13% for fall '09 vs fall '08). How representative are these two cases? Don’t know. Are you listening NYTimes…?</p>
<p><<<No claims that this list is 100% comprehensive or accurate, but these appear to be the need-blind LACs for US students:</p>
<p>Amherst College
Bowdoin College
Claremont McKenna College
Davidson College
Grinnell College
Haverford College
Middlebury College
Pomona College
Swarthmore College
Vassar College
Wellesley College
Wesleyan University
Williams College >>></p>
<p>Interesting that Lafayette was mentioned in previous posts. At least up until this year LC claims to be ‘need-blind’ for admission for non-international students. Not sure whether that policy is continuing for this year.</p>
The schools have an agreement to not adjust financial aid for athletes (or any other desirable admits) … and the league has a system to monitor the financial aid of ahtletes (just like it does to monitor the level of admission breaks atheltes get) … so theorectically, athletes do not get any sort of financial aid break … not sure how theorectical or real the oversite is.</p>
<p>I take a little offense at the supposition that some posters make about the income and spending of the nation’s wealthy. I am very much like LaxTaxi in that we forgo quite a bit to make sure we saved and provided our kids with a great education.</p>
<p>Also, not all private prek-12 schools are indicative of a wealthy student body. The school my children attend give out approximately 4 million in financial aid yearly. Some of those families get a full ride, others minimal, but the fact remains not everyone is paying the average 23k tuition. And by average that may be 8k yrly for preschool and 25k yrly for high school. </p>
<p>Third, a lot of upper tier schools are making cuts across their entire budgets EXCEPT for financial aid. While I too wish NYT would do some sort of update (considering I don’t think applications were ever down at a lot of these schools as it turned out), I do wonder where the tipping point will be that has those families of full pay wondering what their 50K is buying if there are too many cuts to the promised perks that says nothing about cutting into the core of the educational mission of schools in favor of financial aid. </p>
<p>However, with the severe cuts of state funding and concerns of overcrowding, an in state school might be my last choice vs a school with generous merit aid. Fortunately, we have two more years to see how all of this shakes out before sending child #3 to college.</p>