<p>Now that the end of the "suspense season" is near, I thought it might be a good time to start a discussion about how our kids get from multiple acceptances to a final choice. Some questions that occur to me:</p>
<p>1) How involved are you (parents) in the final decision process--and how are you involved?</p>
<p>2) What factors are considered, and which turn out to be most important?</p>
<p>2a) Is net COA the ultimate deciding factor? How big does a difference between bottom lines have to be in order to be decisive? </p>
<p>3) What role will visits play? Are they return visits? Are you doing the accepted-student-day thing, or do you favor the "stealth visit" approach where you go on a normal day? Do the parents go along or is the kid visiting by him/herself? Overnights?</p>
<p>I'm sure there are other questions I'm not thinking of.....let's hear 'em! (And mods, if there's already a thread like this that I missed, please merge.)</p>
<p>at our house it will come down to financial, which means we (parents) will have some say in final decision. we currently have 6-7 that are do-able financially, son himself has whittled this down to 1. but there is one that he loves that is above the cut-off for do-able financially that he has asked us to re-consider. for these 2 we will look at programs offered, faculty, availability of courses, research opportunities etc. He has visited both and no intention of more visits. then it becomes can we justify based on the school, paying 100K for undergrad or accepting his in state offer.</p>
<p>As far as the financial end goes, wife and I told son, before he sent out his apps, how much he could count on us to chip in toward the gift of his higher education. He was permitted to attend any school he desires. 5K yr or 100k yr college expenses he still got the same dollar figure from us. It is simple math: school cost - parents’ gift - grants or scholarships = students cost.
For him, the COA was a real factor, but not the final “tiebreaker”. Of the last 2 he had narrowed down, he choose the bigger school to have a broader spectrum of classes available, and so those classes were offered most every semester, unlike some smaller schools where the subject may be very sequential- and one missed class throws off the timing of one’s graduation.</p>
<p>1) Involvement - We have been involved throughout the process, but have left the decisions to her. We have mostly provided financial input and will analyze all of the FA packages. It’s up to her where she wants to go and how much she’s willing to borrow to make it happen. We will support that decision.</p>
<p>2) Factors - Most of the factors were sorted out when she decided which schools to apply to, including financial factors. All of the schools she has applied to are either in-state U’s or private schools that meet 100% of need.</p>
<p>2a) COA is not the ultimate factor; COA minus free money (grants & scholarships) is the measure we use. It’s up to her how much to borrow. </p>
<p>3) Post-acceptance visits will only be made once the choice has been narrowed down, and even then only one or two visits. She visited all the schools prior to making application.</p>
<ol>
<li><p>Involvement — with DD very little. She is like me and knows what she wants. You can suggest something, but it is highly likely that it will be ignored. The only involvement we truly had was when we said NO, you are not going to apply to this OOS college (public) when it ranks lower than the IS. </p></li>
<li><p>Factors — WILL YOU BE HAPPY? That is it! Yes, some will cause her to take student loans (not a large amount maybe 10-20K for 4 yrs), but if it makes you happy that is not a factor.</p></li>
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<p>2A. COA —factor issue, but not huge, since we are not talking about 50K+</p>
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<li>VISITS — I am sure it will play very little in the decision process. We are not doing a return visit, but 1st visit to both of her top 2 choices. Unless something is dramatically shocking to her it is just a checkmark, fill the square, been there done that moment.
Yes, if there is an overnight visit she will go, and we will go with her, BUT stay in a hotel while she stays on campus, only reason why we will go is because it is 3 hrs+ away from home, doesn’t make sense to deny her the fun. Overnight visits should be attended if at all possible, it is a time they get a true feeling of the school an start making friends.</li>
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<p>Parents are down to three that we can afford adn they align with son’s top three choices fortunately. Son likes two very much and one “sortof.” “Sort of” is the least expensive for one year only. Then they should be all about the same. Student will make decision. We were not going to make another visit, but son would like very much to revisit one of the two so we parents will make “that” happen. Decision will be the student’s. H and I like all three for different reasons and they are very different schools in style and geographics but I think it would be splitting hairs to try to differentiate them academically. One of the three has a major that son was pretty interested in, the other two do not have that particular major. Each has their own strengths and weaknesses. All three are have similar size student bodies. Son will make final decision…soon.</p>
<p>
That’s what I meant–net COA including aid, not sticker price.</p>
<p>Like Younghoss our S had a budget. This will be our education contribution. If less money was spent more would be available for grad/professional school. More spent would mean accumulation of debt. Since the risk for debt legally falls upon us we also set limits on that. Beyond all of this it was S’s choice. Third choice school came in under budget, 2nd choice came it at budget, 1st choice several thousand over budget. Two of the three were not visited until the acceptances came in so we did visit both. We also visited the 3rd choice a second time with me hoping he would like it better the second time around. In the end since for many reasons the first choice was a significantly better fit we communicated with financial aid both in person and via e mail and did get an increase in grant money. Then, we explored work possibilities for S and in the process stumbled on as sweet a load deal that a loan deal could be that was offered by the school. This brought us within budget and will put S in debt. Hopefully he will find work, it will be managable and he will take responsibility for it. Right now it seem that it was a great decision for him and the amount of debt is not excessive. If anyone would have told me a couple of years ago that this would be the decison I would not have believed it. Sometimes kids communicate that something is just that important that you take a leap of faith and try and find a way to make it happen.</p>