Still confused about college list

Doesn’t ED require an agreement that parents have to sign?
Maybe this is the way to get a foot in the door in this situation.

Explain to your parents that you want to apply ED to Vandy, but that it requires a signed agreement from your parents that both they and you are committing to the costs projected by running the NPC. Given them the link to said NPC https://www.vanderbilt.edu/financialaid/net-price-calculator.php and tell them, “I know you’d rather not discuss money with me, but I need to know whether you will be comfortable signing this agreement, so please run the numbers yourselves and let me know whether I can apply ED or not.”

Knowing they have to sign something might be enough to reel your parents back in from “We want our child to have anything she wants” Land, and into the realm of “Oh, this is real and we need to decide what we can commit to.”

If they say, “Of course, we’ll sign whatever you want, but you’re going to have to borrow the additional $40Kx4”… then understand that that’s really a “no.” The vague remarks about not wanting you to take on debt are concerning. Not only is significant debt inadvisable for you if you want the freedom to pursue a not-wildly-lucrative career, but the amount you can borrow in your own name, without their cosigning and being equally on the hook, is quite small.

@aquapt I can try that but my parents really just don’t care. They think it’s weird that I’m even looking at colleges this early (even though I’m applying to Bama in less than a week). They’ll probably tell me to wait until school starts again and I’m actually applying and ask again then or just say that they’ll sign it without giving me any more information about what’s really affordable. I’ve told them about the npcs and given them links before but they got annoyed and said that they were pointless and wouldn’t be accurate.

@twoinanddone the sorority fees at Alabama will include meals and the University does discount the meal plan for freshman who pledge. However the ‘extras’ I mentioned are NOT included and the price range I quoted does not include living in the house. That is typically slightly more but still cheaper than an apartment with utilities - but also limited somewhat as most houses have officers with first dibs and then most active members or highest GPA getting next choice. I’m an alum of both The University and a sorority and I have several friends with daughter’s in various houses there (I promise I am not inflating the numbers). Every single house has recently been either completely rebuilt or completely renovated to accommodate the large numbers (150+ per pledge class/house total 400+). Just thought that OP should know about that extra cost factor if that truly is an activity she hopes to participate in.

Good luck to @extra21 You will find that any school can be fun if you let it… I didn’t get to go to my first choice school out of state (or my 2nd or 3rd for that matter!) and had to attend the big in-state school. My parents also never acted like money was a big deal UNTIL I told them I wanted to go to Sewanee or Agnes Scott (and I had a strong 4yr merit scholarship to each, but still it was too much $) So if your parents are being vague be prepared for that disappointment. Even though it was 30 years ago I still wonder, ‘what if’. But I put on my happy face and had a great time (probably a little too much fun) and got a great education… ultimately college is what you put into it! Roll Tide Roll!

And one other point (because it was brought up in another post), a teaching license from the State of Alabama is reciprocal in I believe 47 states … you should have no problem finding a teaching job almost anywhere in the country.

Sorry, @extra21 , that’s frustrating.

It seems as if you are doing all the right things at the moment. You’re making sure that your list includes financial safeties at the UIUC/Bama cost level. At this point, trusting your parents’ assurances that this will be affordable seems reasonable. (If it turns out later that the evasiveness is because of financial limitations that are even worse than you’ve assumed, then you already know what your options will be - either defer and take a gap year to regroup, go to an even-more-affordable 4-year school like Truman State, or go the CC-transfer route. But there’s not much more you can do right now to prepare for that contingency, and hopefully that isn’t where this is heading.)

You’re planning to apply to Common App schools regardless, so it seems to me that your best use of energy right now is to table the issue of tweaking your list, and focus on writing the best Personal Statement you can. If you can get that done over the summer, you’ll be in much better shape to deal with everything else as you head into the school year.

And maybe, rather than pressing for better answers right now, you could secure an agreement with your parents to sit down with you at a future date (Labor Day Weekend maybe?) and get down to brass tacks about the college application process and the financial aspects of the decisions you need to make.

For now, your list looks good. You can always revisit it later, but there’s really no point is spinning your wheels about it, when you’ve already planned as well as you can based on what you know. Better to start putting your energy into the writing. Your stats and EC’s are already pretty much locked in - your essays are the one remaining variable that you can control, and with your reach schools, they are your chance to grab their attention and show them what you have to offer their community.

Note, however, that some automatic full ride scholarships are not available to gap year students.

Did your parents attend selective 4-year colleges?
Did their friends’ eldest apply to selective colleges?
If the answer to either (especially the second one) is no, it may explain why they don’t get the necessity of making a list now, etc.
You may want to encourage them to post on the parents forum. Perhaps send them some articles you find about “what to do as a junior” (so that they see you are not too early at all…) And 'what to do as a senior"…

@MYOS1634 they didn’t go to selective colleges. And I have an older brother who applied to no colleges at all besides community college, which he didn’t do until after graduating, so I guess it makes sense why they think it’s so early.

Ok, that makes more sense. It’s not reluctance, it’s just that they don’t realize what the norm is among the competitive college cohorts.

Do they have any idea what these selective (or even in-state publics) cost?

@inthegarden Yes, I’ve told them the price of both Alabama and Vanderbilt multiple times but they’ve just never actually given me a clear answer about whether or not they’d pay for them.

Given their evasiveness (a signal that they are procrastinating on disappointing you, which will just make it worse when they disappoint you in April when you are unable to work around it), build your college list with the assumption that parental contribution is $0, or at most what they are contributing for your brother to go to community college.

I still don’t think that their contribution will be $0. I don’t think they’d want me to go to UIUC if they knew they couldn’t afford it, but that is where they say they think I should go. I’ve looked at the colleges that would give me an automatic full ride and I just don’t think it’s worth it for me to apply to any of them because I really don’t think I’d like being at any of those schools, and I’d rather just take a gap year or go to community college if my parent’s contribution really is $0.

Many apps will open within six weeks. Apply then to all your public safeties and matche as soon as your apps are ready. Then add Vanderbilt ED, working through the Fall.
It means you’ll hear back from several universities between October and December. You’ll definitely hear back by the end of December from Vanderbilt.
At that point, your parents will have to say they can afford the colleges, or not.

But do they know what UIUC costs? They may be assuming that it costs as much as your brother’s community college (around $5k for tuition and fees, $1k for books, plus whatever it costs for him to live at home and commute, though many parents do not account for the latter costs because they are mixed in with the rest of the household budget), rather than what it will cost for you to attend UIUC ($31k including cost of living there if it is not in commuting range).

Or are they assuming that you will be able to take out loans for most of the cost of UIUC?

They should know what it costs to attend UIUC because I’ve told them. I’m not sure if they’re assuming I’ll be able to take out loans or not.

Wow, this is so eerily similar to a thread from about a month ago. Then I checked and realized that @extra21 was that same OP from that older thread: education hopeful from IL, Vandy and Bama. Yep, that’s her!

@extra21 , I won’t pile on, but I do strongly suggest that you have one school that is super-affordable, even if it isn’t a dream school, just so you’re not crushed come the fall. My vote, which I said in that older thread, is for Illinois State. It’s a former teacher’s college and its number-one strength remains education. And yet it’s a large (though not too large) university that will provide that traditional university atmosphere: sports (not FBS, but FCS), greek life, the twin cities of Bloomington-Normal (it’s sort of like someone transplanted a sizable Chicago suburb and plopped it down in central IL).

I’m not saying you have to go to IL State. No, of course not. This would be your “if all things fall through completely” school. It’s half the price of UIUC. Quite literally, you’d be submitting an app there just as an ultra-safety, a backup for your backup, an extra redundancy built into the power plant.

BTW, I know what your going through. I’m originally from Chicagoland, and my parents could not care less about college applications. I literally did not know what the ACT was when I took it one Saturday (I thought it was some statewide test to gauge students’ learning outcomes). It’s frustrating, especially if parents are entirely unaware how different the application process is nowadays.

@Hapworth Thanks! Is Illinois State really that much cheaper than UIUC? When I looked it up, it said said the in state cost is $27k/year, and UIUC is $31k.
I like Illinois State as a safety but I’m just worried that applying to too many safeties will be a waste of money since I also have reaches that I want to apply to and since ultimately I’m only going to end up at one school. I’m definitely thinking about it though.

It was said that Loyola-Chicago is more prestigious than UIUC. That is false – the U of Illinois is a top-50 university globally, a peer of UW-Madison, Washington-Seattle, UNC, U of Texas, Georgia Tech, and some other top public schools. Until last March, most people did not know that Loyola-Chicago existed. (that doesn’t mean it isn’t a good school, but it has nowhere near the academic rep of UIUC.)

The U of Illinois is an excellent school, something I think needed to be said.

@extra21 ,

Hm. I must have confused ISU with one of the IL directionals, such as WIU. My bad. If you can get into UIUC, that’s a better choice, and UIUC also has a solid education department.

Thanks! I’ll make sure to apply to UIUC.

Also this is completely unrelated, but could anyone tell me if William and Mary would be a good match school for me?