To me, the fundamental goal of parenting is producing young adults who can fend for themselves in the real world. That means, at minimum, they are able to support themselves financially. Feeling “fulfilled” professionally and stretching themselves intellectually are also desireable achievements, of course. But I believe those goals are secondary to the ability to be self-supporting. If I only have a one dollar to spend on preparing my kids for the real world, I will apply it toward the goal of being self-supporting first – if there is change left over, I will apply it to “education for the sake of education,” and “pursuing their passion.”
The pushback against parents who choose pragmatism over idealism surprises me. I don’t understand the disparagement and judgment against those who choose based on ROI. FWIW, I am a full-freight payor for D17 and eventually S18. I have “change left-over” for luxuries like an education for education sake, but I am reluctant to spend that extra change at a high-price college when there are other non-institutional opportunities (cheaper) that can give them “education for education sake.”
I don’t understand either, @MAandMEmom. In our (major metropolitan) area test prep companies run FREE timed practice SAT and ACT tests and work with high schools to spread the word. Granted, paid trial is not a lot of $$ in the grand scheme of things, but the expense is unnecessary IMO. This school year I have received at least 3 notifications of such a test from school.
The prep companies recoup their expenses by signing up the free trial participants who want to improve their results.
@MassDaD68 I really don’t expect my son to be a NMSF as I’m in MA and by your name it seems that you are as well. Even many, many 99%ers in MA will never have a chance to be a finalist as the cutoff is so high. In my case my son is a good standardized test taker but pretty unorganized overall so his grades and GPA/rank “may” be indicative of that and lopsided. I say may as I have no idea where he stands as a sophomore. I’m also is more of a unique situation in that we have access to schools that participate in the Tuition Exchange program where tuition is covered at many schools in the country. Both my spouse and I work in higher ed… The awards are competitive so scores will be important regardless.
@twicer I’m not aware of those yet as it might be too early. I would certainly consider it though. I do have to say that my daughter (different instance) took a practice SSAT at a test prep place and it was literally the same one I had administered to her at home. It was a waste of time.
The investment I made in test prep for each of my three kids was the single highest ROI dollars I’ve spent in my life. It also was worth it to spend some time and effort figuring out whether my kids were better SAT or ACT takers.
Adding 2-4 points to your ACT composite score 2-4 points really changes (i) where you can get in and (ii) how much the merit offers are. I was actually pretty stunned how pliable the test scores were.
@gratefulmama We had a similar experience with a test prep company. My daughter took a practice ACT at a local library. When she signed up, we thought it was just something the library/school was doing. We come to find out its a test prep company. She had been taking a few practice tests at home and doing well on them. But we thought it would be helpful for her to take a practice test in test conditions (surrounded by other kids taking the test, taking each section sequentially with limited breaks – at home she was taking them a section at a time with several hours/days in between). She gets the results back from the practice test and they are 4-5 points worse than she was doing on the practice tests. She was quite upset and started to panic a little. She was scheduled to take a real ACT in 2-3 weeks. We debated whether we should cancel and spend more time studying. In the end, she took the test as scheduled. She did 5 points better on the real test than she did the practice exam. Right in line with the practice tests she was taking at home. I am sure the testing company intentionally scored her test lower in the hope we would pay for their course and she would score higher on the real exam. Total scam. I think test prep can be helpful (for many kids I think you are better off prepping at home on your own) but you have to research the company if you go that route.
@PragmaticMom You will find some people who pushback on the pragmatic approach but ultimately here you will find more people taking the pragmatic approach. There are scores of ongoing discussions with parents taking the pragmatic approach each and every day here. A lot of very helpful folks here. Best of luck to you and yours.
Our annual family income varies from about $250K in a “bad” year up to about $400K. We live in a Chicago suburb so the cost of living is moderate relative to either coast. D is full pay at Notre Dame but had a long list of merit scholarships at less selective colleges to pick from with between $15K and $25K of merit money. We have around $600K in a 401K, a company pension that might be worth 30% of income and a home that will be paid off. We are in our late 50’s. I think most financial counselors would look at our assets vs. income and tell us to save more now. Any bonus or stock option grant, anything beyond normal bi-monthly paycheck, goes into a brokerage account that is primarily set aside for tuition. The other thing we did is we have agreed to fund one semester of Law School for every semester D earns straight A’s as an undergraduate. Yes, it is a financial hardship to write a $32K check to Notre Dame every six months but realistically what would I have done with the money otherwise?
@socalmom007 - I think the UC’s put a high value on EC’s and essays. Through the UCLA thread for this year there are applicants with lower stats than my D that were invited for the Regents scholarship (and she was not); which leaves me to believe the weight placed on the essays is very important. Honestly, I thought my D’s essays to be average at best, so if she doesn’t get in, I will assume it was her essays.
With all the EC’s and awards your daughter has, it will be interesting to hear where she gets accepted. Please be sure to post when the time comes. I think you are going to be pleasantly surprised. I on the other hand, might need to lower my expectations.
@saillakeerie - Great story and definitely relates to our experience. Whether or not you pay or get the practice test for free is irrelevant. The low results are the tools/hook the company uses to get you to sign up for classes. From my experience I would recommend taking a real test prior to paying for outside help. If the real score is low, by all means look into classes or tutoring.
@saillakeerie@gratefulmama We took the real test several times, and then paid for help where my D was weak. The tutoring then paid off, with a much higher score the last time she took the ACT. Part of paying for Tutoring is the fact that there is a set time for the child to work only on Test Prep. Left to study/practice on their own, it might not get done with undivided attention. Same with college apps. We paid a consultant hourly to help D once a week get her college apps done, and go over her essays for Grammar/etc (was a former english teacher). The ROI on that was almost priceless and I feel did help with getting into Target school.
(a) basic reading/writing/analysis skills can be learned in any major (e.g. see blossom’s posts on this thread)
(b) ROI is not a guarantee anyway. A lot of the new emphasis on ROI came after the crash of 2008: It wasn’t those kids’ fault they couldn’t find jobs. There simply were not enough jobs to go around, even for experienced workers.
I feel for the kids who post on CC that they hate their major and all their classes, but they can’t change major because then their parents wouldn’t let them go to school at all. There has to be a balance between talents and interests lie and planning for the future.
@sdl0625 No doubt test prep services can be helpful. Particularly for someone like your daughter who is helped by having test prep time set aside with no distractions. And I agree with @gratefulmama in terms of taking an actual test first. One you know you have a good starting point rather than one a test company may have manipulated to get business. Two you know where your kid needs to improve/focus efforts. And if you go with a reputable company, the results can be significant (in terms of admissions and $$).
Our district at one point had freshmen take the PSAT. To me it was a big help to kids who were on the borderline in terms of NMSF status. Also helped some parents understand the significance of the test (which many parents/kids do not). Now they have the kids take an ACT based test freshmen year. Only time taking PSAT is junior year. I think it would make more sense to select a group of kids after 8th grade who they have reason to believe will do well on the PSAT. Have them take the PSAT freshmen year and let the rest of the class take the PSAT. If nothing else, seeing the test at least one other time is helpful. Also gives areas to focus on if necessary.
@AroundHere I don’t know, I can understand the ROI argument somewhat. My D has spent her life as a competitive dancer, a few of her friends are applying to colleges as dance majors. Thankfully my D wasn’t interested in majoring in dance because I really wouldn’t be ok with that. A double major? Sure. Major and minor? Ok. But straight up contemporary dance major? No. The professional dance teachers, studio owners, choreographers we know, and we know many, barely make a living. At minimum I would want her to have some business background or something if that was the path she wanted to take.
Massdad: Not sure that obtaining NMF would have resulted in a much higher merit award. Many of the schools give only a minimal NMF scholarshipr. Getting more than half tuition in merit money is very rare at higher ranked colleges. That would not put you below $35K at most of the highly ranked colleges. Don’t second guess what you did. He has good stats. My NMF student ended up with about half tuition from a school ranked just below the top 30, that is known for good merit money. He got nothing to very small awards (despite 800s on 2 subject tests and 2340 on old SAT) from the higher ranked schools and would have had to drop down quite a bit in quality to get full tuition (he did not have an uw 4.0 GPA).
If he is not happy with his options, it could make sense for him to take a gap year and re-apply to a wider range of colleges where a high merit award would be available. From what i understand, transfer students do not typically get large merit awards.
Also agree that some, but not all, test prep companies give tests with harder questions to get a lower pre-tutoring score. Happened to a friend’s daughter (test center test score was much lower than PSATs). The center then was able to raise her score by more than the guaranteed 100 points. She still did better than before the actual pre-tutoring PSAT so it was not a waste, but not as dramatic as was claimed.
@socalmom007 Dance is a tough one. The really good dancers don’t need any kind of college–they go straight to companies. One of my daughter’s friends is in the Los Angeles Ballet now. She makes a good living as a company dancer. She didn’t even graduate high school. She was recruited at 15-16? and took the GED at that time to be done with school. If you aren’t in that category of talent it can be very hard to make a living at dance, that’s for sure, and no college is going to help you with that. They are money pits for the most part.
One of my daughter’s other friends did go to college for dance but is going to graduate school for Arts Management/Administration. I hope it works out for her–she’d be a fantastic dance company administrator (or whatever it’s called).
@mom2and At this point I considering a gap year. Have him take the SAT over and take a stab at the ACT. I think what disturbs me in many ways is the financial safety school (under $35K) is a school that flunked the t-shirt test. He has made clear he would not be caught dead in a t-shirt from the school. Of all the schools we visited and he applied to, he bought a t-shirt in the college bookstore except for one.
Unless your child has an impressive (e.g. an extreme extra-curricular achievement), the extra boost from test prep makes no difference in elite school admissions or in elite school merit. Realistically, your options are in the next tier down, which inlcudes fabulous public schools and well-known private colleges. So far, in our case, we did not get a higher ranking nor a lower bill than what D17 received at our state flagship. I admit not everyone defines “value” by reputation and price but for the sake of arguing ROI, I’m going to assume it. It is possible we applied to the wrong list of schools and overlooked a huge opportunity at an LAC somewhere. But I think it’s more likely the case that ROI does not justify the extra cost of test prep unless you have a hooked child. For most kids who are excellent, but un-hooked, students, whose parents are full sticker price payors, extra test prep is inconsequential.
“I think what disturbs me in many ways is the financial safety school (under $35K) is a school that flunked the t-shirt test. He has made clear he would not be caught dead in a t-shirt from the school.”
That, unfortunately, is often the big rub in the whole merit money vs. full pay game. Does the kid really want to attend the merit money school?
The full pay school is almost always way more cool, appealing, prestigious, etc. than the merit/safety school is. That’s why this thread exists. It may or may not be worth paying for the extra cool/appeal/prestige. But the extra cool/appeal/prestige is undeniable.
The merit/safety school throws money at you for basically one reason – to get you to pick the school that would otherwise lose if the price were equal.
@MassDaD68 It’s not necessarily too late to apply to some of those Midwest LACs others have suggested for this year. Many of them end up on the space available list each spring.
If he does decide to take a gap year, your son can’t just shoot for higher test scores. He needs a new college list. And something to show for his year off. (But not earning college credits because that would make him a transfer student, and therefore not as eligible for merit aid.)
“Unless your child has an impressive (e.g. an extreme extra-curricular achievement), the extra boost from test prep makes no difference in elite school admissions.”
That’s not what the numbers say.
It is true that a very high standardized test score does not guarantee you admission at an Ivy League school. But high test scores do increase your chances of admission.
At Brown, a 33-35 ACT score equals an 11% chance of admission. A 36 score equals a 28% chance of admission. 29-32 gets you 7%.
So a 36 still leaves you with a 72% chance of rejection. But it also more than doubles your chance of admission. Both are true.
