My D is a liberal English major at Sewanee and very happy there. It’s a breathtaking campus with an amazing English department, but it’s definitely rural (as is Kenyon). She considered other schools on your D’s list including Richmond, Kenyon, Rhodes and Centre. If you need merit aid, focus on the match schools instead of the reaches. Also, look at schools with decent FA that don’t require the NCP Profile. Not certain, but Hendrix may fall into that category.
Denison doesn’t take NCP income into account so I’d put that on the list. Generous with merit and need based aid too, with full tuition merit a possibility for high stats kids they want. Wooster doesn’t require non-custodial profile but does have its own short form, IDK how much it matters.
In reach-land, two Us that don’t look at NCP info are Vanderbilt and U Chicago. UC has early action still, I believe.
Miami of Ohio is another to consider for possible full tuition merit.
FYI - both Allegheny and Denison are FAFSA only schools so will not require forms from the non-custodial parent. I think they would both be great options and they both give out a lot of merit as well.
Per Vanderbilt:
Vanderbilt does not automatically require or send a non-custodial application. There may be times when we will request information and documentation from your non-custodial parent. We will send the appropriate forms if this is deemed necessary.
Thank you all for the helpful suggestions. I appreciate it! Such a stressful time. I really want my D to enjoy her senior year and don’t want it all to be about the college search. Fortunately she is starting to have a much better attitude about our state flagship and while I would love to see her at a smaller school with great teachers and serious students, I know she will make the best of wherever she lands.
(Like that Vandy approach to FA, but probably too much of a reach. Darn)
FWIW, I thought Holyoke’s English department was very strong with some great professors, and the folks in the Rooke theater were warm and friendly on the day we visited. Their Admissions and Financial aid people seemed easy to work with in contrast to Smith. They may be able to coach you through the FA process - you are not the first with this issue (sorry to say). Your daughter’s stats put her in the running for merit there.
Go for the big merit, as mentioned. D has to be careful not to waste her time applying to selective schools where your EFC could be way off due to D’s pop’s nonchalance, where you might require a decent amount of merit. Her odds of winning a full-ride at Clark U, Centre, and Furman may not be significantly lower than gaining admittance to a much more selective school where you probably need some kind of merit anyway and where they like you to show plenty of enthusiasm for the school, which D might not have. If she can write solid essays/proposals for the full-ride awards and make the cut, the opportunity (usually) exists to impress them to the max during a finals weekend. With an excellent academic profile, good interview skills, sufficient interest in the school, an obvious need for the aid, her odds might be better than you think. Apply to a few. (Last I checked, Centre offers 20 full-ride awards, plus 10 full-tuition!)
State flagship is a good safety, if you’re sure you can afford it.
Another option is to target a reach that D absolutely loves, get D’s dad to comply with the NPC and paperwork so that you know, say with 95% certainty, it will be (easily) affordable with need-based aid only, then apply ED and pull out all the stops as far as showing interest and gushing about the school (they love that). If she gets in and it turns out unaffordable, you could likely get out of the deal due to your complicated financial situation. She would have to find a clear first choice school, though. Some would say that’s a risky strategy in your place, but if you can clarify your EFC and give yourself a big margin for error, it could be D’s best bet for a top school that meets her preferences. It sounds like you’re in a jackpot situation anyway, aside from the state school, so I’d roll the dice with the big merit and perhaps a top choice ED. That way, you’re relatively certain that D is applying to affordable schools, rather than spending hours on apps where affordability is nip and tuck. Yeah sure, apply to a couple of those, but try to eliminate most apps where affordability is resting on D’s dad being highly accurate and motivated with the paperwork.
What is your state flagship, if you don’t mind?
Why did you have a question mark for Gettysburg? My son went there! Was so happy!! If you have any questions about Gettys let me know!
I agree that the more you can find that have stats based merit and do not require the NCP form will be your best bet. Ohio University, Lawrence, Beloit, Allegheny, Kalamazoo, Muhlenberg, Ohio Wesleyan, Ursinus, Ithaca, Goucher may all be worth running NPCs and give you some safety and match options.
I think she is fine on EC’s, theater is a huge commitment!
Chicago does not require non-custodial parent financial information for need-based financial aid. Vanderbilt usually does not. Most other private colleges with good need-based financial aid do require non-custodial parent information for financial aid, so if the non-custodial parent is uncooperative, or has significant income or assets but will not pay, those schools are likely to be financially out of reach unless the student gets sufficient merit scholarships.
@VAOptimist - Thanks for the tip on Mt. Holyoke. Seems like a great school and we’ll look into it more.
@Dunboyne - Thanks so much for your thoughts. D is definitely interested in applying for the full ride scholarship at Centre. While she really liked Furman, their big scholarships seem out of reach based on what I’ve read here on CC. I will also look into scholarships at Clark and she will try for awards at Richmond, Lafayette and some others. When I run NPCs for places like Denison, where others have suggested she might receive large merit (and where they take GPA and scores into account on their NPC) the estimated costs come quite a bit higher than the more selective schools. So, it’s a bit difficult to know where to put our efforts - since it’s risky to count on anything without dad’s financial info added in. Our state school is UGA. She would receive full tuition and hopefully more (not for sure though). I will know more about her chances for the honors program when we visit this week. Your idea about the ED at a school she loves is interesting and I’ll give it some thought.
@MurphyBrown - Thanks for your input. I think Dad will cooperate with the paper work; just won’t pay for anything unfortunately. My guess is that he does not have a high income (also has a wife who doesn’t make much and two younger kids) so I’m just not sure how that will impact FA. I really thought we were going to be able to use the tuition exchange program but now some of the deadlines have passed and he convinced my D that he might leave his job after her first two years of college so she just gave up.
I took Vanderbilt off this list because I thought it was too out of reach. It’s good to hear your thoughts about her theater EC though. It basically takes up the whole school year other than homework and studying. I can’t figure out the weighted/unweighted thing because while she has only had two high B’s during high school (dreaded math), she does get 10 extra points for AP and IB classes. However, at their h.s. kids can’t get higher than a 4 for their GPAs. I guess I’ll see how good her essays are and maybe put Vandy back on the list. Thanks for your help.
Regarding taking the ACT again: she would need an additional 3 points to earn a 34 C. If she feels she can easily improve the M by 2 points then consider taking it again. However, for students who have math as a (relative) weakness it can be difficult to improve by a couple of points without significant study. She can probably spend that time more effectively on her essays. A 28 M is ok, considering her academic interests. A higher SAT/ACT can be very important for winning big merit awards, but competitions tend to be holistic once you get past the initial cut off.
Colby is free to apply to and is a LAC
Gettysburg seems like a good fit - they have a very strong music department, good poli sci. They are 1.5 hrs away from Washington DC with all the job / internship possibilities. (There are many Gettysburg grads working in DC.) They are generous with merit to get the students they want and coming from GA would help.
University of Richmond also meets her criteria - they have a very good theater dept. But there are only a small number of the high merit awards. I think she’d have a better chance getting one from UR than Vanderbilt.
Yes, @VAOptimist she’d be very lucky to get into Vanderbilt but I’m sure she wouldn’t get a merit award. Hoping for something from Richmond and their financial aid seems good as well, but it will all be up in the air until we see how they consider dad’s income etc. We were able to do a quick private tour at Gettysburg and liked it. We’ll see if it stays on the list after I look more at the financial aid/merit.
Another small piece of advice on applying for the full tuition/full ride scholarships–read as much as you can about the requirements of the scholarship and what the schools are looking for in their scholarship recipients before you apply, and target the scholarships at schools you really like and for which you are a very good fit and at the top of the applicant pool. For the LAC’s fit is very important for you and for them. These scholarships are indeed very competitive. My daughter applied for one of the full rides at Centre. We were told when she went to interview that they had 500 applicants for those 10 scholarships.
We loved Centre, BTW.
@Parentof2014grad Thanks. Some of the schools seem to have a lot of info about their scholarships on their websites, and others seem to not give you much until the student has submitted the application for admission. That makes it a little hard to plan out how long it will take along with all the other commitments/applications. Even though she seems like D could be competitive for some of the big scholarships at some of the LACs she likes, I know that the odds are still very low, so it’s also hard to determine how much time she should spend in each area. Thanks for your thoughts.
For what it’s worth, my D applied to eight LACs (several CTCL schools in that eight), all of which were unaffordable without their biggest scholarships. Her safeties were our state universities that we could comfortably afford, but were huge, and she wanted small. We did a ton of research on the schools she applied to up front, met with reps in our area, she emailed the others, and we visited about half of them. It seemed like a big risk for disappointment, given that all the scholarships apps were a ton of work and there was no guarantee of any more choice in the end than if she hadn’t bothered. She was a finalist for three of the top scholarships, and won one of them, at a school that had her on the phone pretty much as soon as she submitted her app. It was the last school added to the list, but she loved it when we visited, and it is certainly seeming like a great fit now.
It’s a crazy process, not for the faint of heart, but not impossible either. Go in with eyes open, and give it a go. Best wishes to you and your D. 