Ctcl from our experience does give decent aid. Knox college will stack several merit aids together on top of financial aid. They will also match many other college offers and then surpass them. Beloit college is giving my daughter (junior transfer) $38,000 merit aid. This is double what she got at Illinois Wesleyan University (LAC not Ctcl college). St Olaf gives very good aid as well. Lawrence is also known for good aid. These are the ones I know about.
My daughter applied to two CTCL schools. She barely had a 3.0 gpa (3.7W) and 31 ACT and got about $30,000 from each. And she was invited into the honors program at both. They would’ve been less than our instate uni, which she didn’t want to consider due to its size.
So I was a medical residency director in the 90’s and we took C doctors because they just work harder, since they had to. The “A” doctors were great at reciting information but clinically horrible. The “C” doctors were smart enough to go look up and ask questions and had better bedside manners and made better surgeons… Something to think about 
@hopedaisy My 3.6 uw, 27 ACT DD averaged between $12-$16k from most of the LACs she applied to. In the end we found OOS publics to be the most expensive. In the end for both of my B average mid 20s ACT DDs (2016 & 2018) anything OOS/LAC averaged between $32k - $45k. Some outliers on either end of the spectrum. Fordham was crazy $52k+, even with a nice merit scholarship for DD2018; as was Drexel for DD2016. Ole Miss, Baldwin Wallace and Wooster were nearly identical in price to our in-state, Texas, choices. We don’t qualify for financial aid so every little bit helps and considering where they were stat wise I found the offers for merit money they did receive to be decent (better than I expected).
So my c+ or so daughter got accepted to 11/12 LAC 2 years ago. Her grades and Act were lower then most of the averages.A counselor told her to not worry since the colleges want you more then you want them. She was going for BFA’s in theater design /tech and some very well known programs. We planned her summer junior year and early senior fall for vacation /college trips. But she used her strengths. She is an amazing writer with AP lit 5( she was shocked) and wrote an amazing essay. She is an great interview. Her love and passion shines. She’s the kid everyone likes and she thinks at many different levels.
So she would set up interviews with the department heads at each school. She was like interviewing them. She did 2 schools that were not really that important to her for practice and quickly noticed a pattern of questions. She also brought her portfolio of work whether they wanted it or not. Her academics were not getting her in. Some schools offered her right on the spot, most soon after. Her “dream” school Emerson in Boston she got offered but not enough aid and we just could not justify the expense with another child 2 years down the road.
She went to a good LAC with strong theater program and became the lead designer… Before deciding to switch schools and incorporate theater to another field with double the merit aid. If she did go to Emerson BFA she would not have been allowed to switch fields and that would of been a disaster.
She actually missed the academics. She was on the honor roll for 2 years also. She is creating her own major at her new LAC.
So what you were in high school doesn’t have to be who you are in college and leverage to your strengths.
I know people mean well and are talking about less than perfect students, but this is a thread for b and c students. A B is 3.0, and a C is 2.0. Someone who has a 3,6 is way above the range of most of the people who are trying to get info from this thread. And as for people talking about ACT scores of 30 and 31? Also way above what your average b/c student gets. Your average b/c student doesn’t have shot of getting accepted at Fordham, and if by some miracle they pull it off they aren’t going to be offered any merit.
A 3.56 uwGPA (which is what my DD2018 had at time of application), is a B+/A- average; My 2016 kid had a 3.47 uwGPA, which is also a B+ average. Their standardized test scores were certainly equivalent to their GPA. At the time we were looking at college, end of sophomore and beginning of junior year, their GPAs were not in the upper B GPA range, so our needs were in the college search were definitely in the B/C realm. A 3.5 GPA is an A, by a hair and the students sitting on the border are are certainly not competitive in the high stat world. Not sure how that doesn’t fit into the B/C range mission? No one is saying a B+ kid is targeting the same schools as a C- kid; which is why post lists the stats, so others can see/compare where their own stats might fall. There are students with higher GPA and lower standardized test scores and students with high standardized test scores and lower GPAs who are best served by information gleaned on this type of thred. If some of the information you are seeing here doesn’t fit for you than pass it over, it however, may help someone else who is sitting on the border too.
I completely disagree that an average B student does not have a shot of being accepted at Fordham nor that they will not receive merit. I think if you read thru the Fordham admissions threds you will find B students who were accepted and received merit.
@labegg,
I’m not trying to be a jerk, but I see this as a thread for kids who get mostly B’s and C’s with an occasional A in regular and perhaps a few honors classes, not for kids who get a couple of B’s in their 9 or 12 AP’s, pulling their unweighted averages out of A range, and certainly not a kid with a 4.6 WGPA. If this becomes a thread where people are posting about their A students where does it leave the true B/C kid? There are plenty of other threads for the “average excellent” student.
A kid with a lower than a B+ average will fall into the lowest 12% of matriculants to Fordham. I can’t see that kid getting merit money unless they have disproportionately high standardized test scores.
Based on its origins, this thread is for kids with GPA’s in the 2.5-3.2 range, scores in the 18-24 range or 850-1100 range.
There’s another tread for 3-3.4 kids. And one for 3.3-3.6 kids.
@knowstuff: do you mean C’s in med school or college?
(Because nowadays college students aiming for med school need a 3.7 GPA, barring specific
circumstances).
Where should parents of 3.17 weighted GPA and ACT 30 composite post?
@MYOS1634 this was like 30 years ago… But the point being the lower the GPA and the more struggles to get through seemed like the harder the doctor worked. Some kids could recite what was on page 158 paragraph 3 by memory but couldn’t diagnose or give an injection properly… Lol…
@OrangeFish : this thread as well as the 3-3.4 thread.
@knowstuff: the process has changed a lot so that the right A students are selected. New pre-requisites, the new MCAT, emphasis on clinical experience all ensure there’s not a single kid who makes it to interview who’s just a rote learner. Check the the thread by Iwannabebrown on the pre-med forum about this year’s selection process.
I’m in no position to be the thread police but IMO a kid with a 3.17 weighted GPA belongs here and/or the 3-3.4 thread. The problem in my mind is that threads like this always seem to migrate upwards. Look at the 2017 3.0-3.4 results thread. A whole bunch of people posted about their kids with 3.8 and 3.9 unweighted (well north of 4.0 weighted) GPAs and 32-33 ACTs to go with them, who were accepted to schools like Brandeis, Kenyon, and Carleton. That’s not particularly helpful to a parent with a 3.2/25 ACT kid.
On that thread there were people with these higher scoring kids discussing Barnard, Middlebury, UNC Chapel Hill, and other schools that were appropriate for their kids, but not really for the kids for whom the thread was designed.
@Sue22 totally agree. This was designed for the lower Stat kids in general and why there are many threads for the others type of kids. No question some are between both but parents have to use their wisdom which to post in.
As the OP for both the 2017 and the 2019 3.0-3.4 thread, the # of kids with UW gpa in the stated range were in the majority and it was my personal goal (still is) that all were welcome, both above and below.
But, bear in mind that the kid who started at a 3.33 when their parent got involved in the thread could have an upward trend and have a 3.49 at graduation, but only a 24 ACT.
Likewise a kid with a 3.4 UW could have a 2.8 junior year and their parent be looking here and elsewhere, despite a 33 ACT.
That said, in a very general sense I would agree that UW 2.5 - 3.2 or maybe even 3.0 is a good range for this thread and that there are still schools on the 2017 results thread that fit this group as well as that.
My D19 has a 28 ACT composite (29 SS) and no matter what she does, she’ll have a 3.3 GPA (thanks to a hated Chinese class/teacher that we won’t let her drop until after AP Chinese this year, even though we know there’s no way she’ll get higher than a B/3, just to show perseverance, whether she believes in it now or not.)
She might be a bit high for this thread, but since we are always broke, I’ve concentrated on schools where she’d be a superstar, not where she’d slide in the back door … So forgive me for lurkage. I have sweated every C and B-, right along with y’all.
See post #36.
Thanks so much for the ever so subtle, “you can’t sit here”. I’ll take my lunch tray to the bathroom stall now. Have a lovely college admissions cycle.
PS. Don’t sell you B/C student short they can and will be accepted to some fantastic schools where they will thrive and become active participants on campus. They have the tenacity to succeed and that is a trait most colleges desire.
I’m the OP.
A few comments:
For starters, I know that starting a thread is not the same thing as “owning it.” Starting it just means that I start it; it will meander along whatever direction it goes. It does not give me the right to set parameters on who can post or should post, on what direction it takes, or on when it should close.
Secondly. There have been threads I’ve started that have gone in a direction I hated. So, on those occasions (actually only one that comes to mind at the moment), I’ve simply stopped posting. And I haven’t stopped posting here, nor do I intend to.
But since the subject has come up, here’s what I had in mind in starting this thread: kids like my daughter. Let me tell you about her.
She’s 18, and just graduated, though she was starting the admissions cycle when I started the thread. She’s a wonderful kid, one who brings light into any room she enters— but that has nothing to do with admission. I’ll ignore all the wonderful things about her here, and concentrate on the academics. She’s unlike the typical CC kid-- in fact, never in a million years would it occur to her to spend her free time on a college forum unless she was looking for an answer to a particular question.
Her grades were as the title implies-- B’s and C’s. She probably ended the year with a ballpark 81 average, though her sophomore average was probably a 77 or 78, (Sophomore year was tough. She had her first ever anxiety attack, and it was close to 3 days long. And then my husband spent 11 days in the ICU, and it was touch and go for a while-- she faced the very real prospect of losing her dad.) She never failed a class or had to attend summer school, though there were a couple of Regents exams where the Rosaries I said probably had a lot to do with her passing grade.
Her SATs were not the type typically seen here 480 verbal, 410 math. She took no AP classes, though she does have 6 dual enrollment credits in foreign language.
She had very minimal ECs in high school. Instead, she got a job the summer after freshman year. She’s completing her 4th year of work there, has a key to the store, and got her younger sister a job there last May.
In short, she’s the kind of kid who, if she somehow does end up here, is typically told to run, not walk, to either a trade school or community college.
I started the thread because there I’ve taught hundreds of kids like my daughter. And every single one of them had parents who wanted their kids to get into a good college. Only for parents like me, the definition of “good” isn’t always the standard CC definition. We don’t care about “prestige.” And we would be thrilled to death with even a little bit of merit aid-- in no small part because of the huge ego boost it would mean for our kids. We care about a school where our kids can live and learn and grow, and get a degree which will enable them to follow their dreams. I wanted a place where I wasn’t made to feel as though my daughter was somehow “less than” because of her academic stats. (And for those of you with higher stats kids, please know that that attitude is very, VERY pervasive here on CC. I think it’s a real part of why we hear from so few parents of this kind of kid. Even if they do wander on here, they quickly get the feeling that it’s not the right place for them.)
Parents of kids like my daughter don’t always find a lot of information here on College Confidential. And yet every single high school has lots and lots of kids just like her. CC parents may not know a lot of them, since they’re not in the AP classes, not running the activities, not getting the internships as teenagers. My daughter isn’t friendly with a lot of your kids, simply because they don’t travel in the same circles.
But, as a high school teacher for 30+ years, let me tell your: there are lots of kids just like her in your kids’ schools. And they want to attend college. And there are plenty of schools that would love to have them.
But finding info on those schools has required lots and lots of legwork. So my intention was to provide some of it here- for any parents like me looking for information on kids like my daughter.
@bjkmom Amen. And thank you for your honest and thoughtful post. I believe strongly that people are so proud and protective of their children it creates blind spots to the real world.
And it also leads to unwitting cheerleading, decision bias and self congratulatory behavior.
We are all in this together. No one is a superior or inferior parent based on their child’s school choices. And it doesn’t lead to better outcomes universally.
Northern Michigan State wouldn’t get much love here. Howard Schultz of Starbucks did just fine there. Nebraska. Warren Buffett. UMass Amherst Jack Welch. Occidental Barak Obama. URI Tom Ryan CEO of CVS. Washington and Jefferson. Roger Godell commissioner of the NFL and Mike Klaska head of the American Society of Plastic Surgery. And on and on it goes.
Let’s keep this thread exactly for what it was made for. To encourage and promote options for hundreds of thousands of wonderful children and the future backbone of the USA.
…"Only for parents like me, the definition of “good” isn’t always the standard CC definition. We don’t care about “prestige.”
BINGO!
I’m interested in the “right” college for my kids, not the “best” college. I don’t fully grasp the concept of looking for a “reach” school, which by definition is a school that isn’t necessarily a good academic fit for my kid. And while I agree that it can be tough to find relevant information on this site if you’re not a 4.whatever GPA and 15whatever SAT, it does exist if you look hard and are willing to reach out to individual posters via private message.