@MAandMEmom I would definitely try Pitt! Nothing to lose and it sounds like your son has a good shot at it. They say they award it to 20 each year and I bet they actually offer it to more than that… if you aren’t one of the first 20 chosen, you still have a chance when someone turns it down. For all we know that’s how my daughter got it, which would be fine by us My daughter was an NMF and had a 35 ACT, which is virtually the same as your son’s 34. Her GPA was 95.5%UW, and had taken 7 or 8 AP classes. She worked at Panera, was involved with a few clubs at school, as well as cross-country and track. She wasn’t a star athlete, and didn’t win any big scholastic awards or anything during hs. We were lucky her school didn’t rank because she wouldn’t have been in the top 5% or 10% (top 15%, probably). If @Dolemite is right, which I believe because her daughter had out of this world stats, you have a better chance at getting TE being an OOS applicant.
You could maybe hold off on the visit until after he’s been accepted and you see what financial package he’s been offered. Just make sure he makes contact soon (at minimum with the TE Liaison) and expresses a lot of interest in other ways.
Here’s from the TE page at Pitt:
"If your parent works at one of the participating colleges or universities, you may be eligible for a Tuition Exchange Scholarship at Pitt. For the 2018-2019 academic year, the Tuition Exchange Scholarship will cover tuition up to $36,000 at the University of Pittsburgh.
"We award approximately 20 Tuition Exchange Scholarships every year to incoming freshmen. In the 2017-2018 academic year, we received 340+ applications for these limited spaces, so please be aware that this is a very competitive process. We evaluate students based on their high school academic record (GPA, class rank, SAT/ACT). You must be accepted to the University of Pittsburgh prior to being reviewed for Tuition Exchange. Be sure to apply for admissions and complete the Tuition Exchange process through the school where your parent is employed by December 15.
"We will notify Tuition Exchange Scholarship recipients of their award by the end of February.
“In recent years, scholarship eligible students possessed ALL of the following:
minimum SAT score of 1480 or 33 ACT composite
overall ‘A’ average
top 5% class rank (if applicable) while participating in challenging high school curriculums consisting of AP/IB/Honors courses”
I see that Syracuse is now a school that grants this benefit to only 11%-40% of applicants. A few years ago its was a 91%-100% school. I have been tracking a handful of schools on the TE web site for at least 5 -6 years. They have all been granting the benefit to a smaller percentage of applicants. Its a shame that the one top 100 school that was a sure thing for TE (Syracuse) is just another school that may or may not offer you this scholarship.
I think this is good evidence that this “benefit” is not what it used to be or everything people make it out to be.
@Dolemite I’ve noticed on the boards that you have some experience with combining TE with NMF. You mentioned somewhere that BU stacks. Can you give any more info about that and do you have advice for someone applying to both USC and BU for TE and NM?
As someone who has been through this twice and about to go through it a third time, the best advice I can give is to cast a wide net. With our oldest, I had a list of where I thought he would get TE and where I thought it was a long shot. Instead, you could have put the names of the schools into a hat and pulled them out to get the actual results. The other thing I would add is that if your son or daughter did not get TE at their favorite, go ahead and email the coordinator after May 1. Our son was on a waitlist for TE at his #1 and when I emailed in early May the phone rang 10 minutes later with an offer. Not saying it is guaranteed but it is worth a shot.
@mamom24 Here is a direct quote I received from the BU Financial Aid Office on 4/12/16:
My D was accepted to BU and her FA package only had TE in it and she was both a NMF and NHRP which are 20K a year scholarships at BU. I’m not sure if they always give the NMF/NHRP or if it’s just a possibility and they only give a combine to a ‘Unicorn’ that they really want. It’s also possible they would give her the NMF if she designated BU as her school. We didn’t pursue this further as she had a top 3 that didn’t include BU.
How Wide a net would you plan on casting? I was hoping to limit this to 6-8 schools. The only school in the East that is on our radar where my son might not get in is Villanova.
Eldest was probably in top 25% of the applicants to the TE schools where he applied. Applied to 9 TE schools and was offered TE at 3 (one off waitlist). None were the 90-100% type schools though.
I will share our list of 11 TE schools: Bucknell, Catholic University, Clarkson, George Washington, Lafayette, New Haven, Norwich, Quinnipiac, Stevens, Villanova, and Wentworth. Also, the home institution as well as a couple of in state Us. Testing he is at 75% for all of them, some more than others and GPA is so hard to tell.
Thanks for sharing moms. He will be applying to Fordham, Loyola MD, St. Joe’s, Catholic and Villanova at minimum. Sounds like i should beef up his list.
Also I suggest you look into applying to colleges that are not TE but where his scores are in that higher range. As mentioned on previous TE threads, we received better offers from non TE schools than TE school – if anything, we found that using TE was a distraction.
(Before people start writing in about how great TE is, let me say that I suspect TE outcomes may in part be affected by which school the faculty member works at. So if the parent is at a highly desirable TE participating school, the student may have a better TE outcome than we had.)
First off, wow @psycholing that poodle mop top is pretty impressive! I dealt with two standards with matting the other night and it’s not pretty.
I agree that the TE has complicated this already stressful process as it was our first filter in identifying schools. We did cast a super wide net to ensure that we have options come well…whenever they tell us I guess. That’s the other problem - we will apply soon and find out relatively soon about some schools I imagine, but then we will wait what seems to be an eternity to know if we are one of the lucky ones.
@MAandMEmom You are actually the first one to notice the picture! I use a razor sharp dematting comb on his head hair – that seems to do the trick. He does have a tendency to stick his nose into any kind of bur-bearing plant he can find, so that always creates some whimpers in the Fall. But poodles are worth it!
We actually didn’t know for sure about TE until end of April. But I hope you are correct that you will find out earlier. My son ended up with a non-TE half tuition scholarship at Carnegie Mellon. We never would have expected better funding from there than the TE schools. He also applied to colleges abroad – in Scotland. If we were to do it again I would have had him apply to McGill as well – it is a great deal and I think they do have some merit money. Good luck.
Hi, I saw that too and called. They said that wasn’t the case and not to pay attention to that. They were unsure why the percent had changed considering they had not voted on it yet and had no intentions of lowering it. Still it was worrisome to me.
Syracuse actually called me house today;). Son is likely not applying as it’s probably too big for him and even if the TE is guaranteed they only provide set rate. Probably no stacking??
Yes no stacking so set rate. So its still 35,000! I am waiting to see if I get it on my end. My institution usually does not have many to give to employees and they organize it sooooo late around December. I have seniority thank goodness but if there are too many of us they do a lottery drawing. I will make myself so nuts that day!!!
I found it really hard to compare all of the different colleges on tuition exchange, and I was worried that I wasn’t looking at some of the colleges because I just didn’t know about them.
I created this spreadsheet that has as much information as I could find about the 656 colleges. I know there are a lot of mistakes, but it is better than anything else I could find. Hope it is useful to some other people.
My daughter was an NMF and had a 35 ACT, which is virtually the same as your son’s 34. Her GPA was 95.5%UW, and had taken 7 or 8 AP classes. She worked at Panera, was involved with a few clubs at school, as well as cross-country and track. She wasn’t a star athlete, and didn’t win any big scholastic awards or anything during hs. We were lucky her school didn’t rank because she wouldn’t have been in the top 5% or 10% (top 15%, probably). If @Dolemite is right, which I believe because her daughter had out of this world stats, you have a better chance at getting TE being an OOS applicant.