I hear you as I, too, went into Tuition Exchange pretty naively also last year. The school I worked for really pushes it as a great" benefit" . Little did I know its only great if you are one of those that are awarded it. The good news is that I learned many schools offer nice Merit packages with the acceptance letter. The merit is very similiar in the amount that Tuition Exchange would have been. I didn’t realize schools did that. I always thought one had to fill out and apply for “merit”. Hang in there and hopefully some of your choices are not the schools with less than 10% awarded. Those are clearly like winning the lottery. It felt last year that the schools that awarded more than 10%, of the applying students TE, were pretty reliable. Do you feel like your choices are balanced that way at all?
The key to TE is to cast a wide enough net with a few state institutions thrown in there. My son was class of 2019 and received the TE nearly everywhere he applied and was accepted. I want to recall that it was just Villanova where he didn’t get it. There’s also CIC if your college participates. Ours does and there are three college where D20 has applied that are also part of that network. The hardest thing is the wait as we have a bunch of acceptances in hand with no word on the TE. I will probably begin to reach out to schools in a few weeks to learn more about their timing/softly exert a bit of pressure:).
Newbie here! Literally just joined any my daughter is just now applying. I was not sure if she was going to use the TE benefit but considering she wants to go out of state there’s not many other financial options. So fingers crossed.
Curious questions. Where is this list of schools with available spots?
They’re all in the 11%-40% range (except Alfred which is 41%-60%, but he doesn’t really want to go there.)
It was on their website but not until May 1 ish
I think the list someone was referring to was a list of schools that still had available spots open for TE at the end of May… I don’t know where it is though
This was the list of TE schools with spots still open for Fall 2021 admits. Not sure how much it was affected by the pandemic.
If they were advertising in May that Tuition Exchange was still available at these schools, does that mean that those colleges would still be accepting admissions applications that late, too?
Interesting question. Often schools that are not in that Highly Selective Category have rolling admissions which means you can apply at any point. Even during the summer I bet. So possibly the schools on that list are rolling admissions. I am curious though as I thought we had a cutoff date set by TE that is a lot earlier than when that list appeared. So yes, interesting question. No doubt it is a helpful tool for the next year candidates though.
This list is not as lengthy as the one that I find on the TE website; maybe it’s just the beginning of the list. It took some searching and a bit of formatting, but this is the list I found from May 2021.
School, State
University of Saint Joseph, CT
Oglethorpe University, GA
Lincoln College, Il
Saint Xavier University, IL
University of St. Francis - IL, IL
Illinois Institute of Technology, IL
Rockford University, IL
Saint Mary-of-the-Woods College, IN
University of Detroit Mercy - FACHEX ONLY , MI
Logan University, MO
St. Louis University, MO
Mississippi College, MS
Pfeiffer Univeristy, NC
Campbell University, NC
University of Jamestown, ND
Five Towns College, NY
Mount Saint Mary College - NY, NY
Alfred University, NY
Ohio Christian University, OH
The College of Wooster, OH
Wilmington College, OH
Bushnell University, OR
Ursinus College, PA
Wilson College, PA
Mercyhurst University, PA
Salve Regina University, RI
Southern Wesleyan University, SC
Johnson University, TN
Bethany College, WV
Schools added 5.5.2021,
Bethany College, KS
Louisiana Tech University, LA
Regis College, MA
Cazenovia College, NY
Schools added 5.6.2021,
College of Idaho, ID
College of Saint Mary - Nebraska, NE
Schools added 5.12.2021,
Spring Hill College, AL
University of Evansville, IN
Newman University - KS, KS
Southwestern College - KS, KS
Aquinas College, MI
Rockhurst University, MO
Bloomfield College, NJ
Ohio Dominican University, OH
York College of Pennsylvania, PA
St. Mary’s University - TX, TX
Bridgewater College, VA
Thank you for not referring to any of these schools as “less desirable” as was done in a previous post.
All of these schools have something to offer the right student and while they might not be Ivy League, referring to any college as “less desirable” makes it sound so negative. Any one of these colleges may be a dream school for the child of one of the group members! 
I think there’s any one of a million reasons these schools could end up on this list, including that their export numbers are imbalance based on their current employee rolls, so they have spots. I did look at the list from May 2020 and it was notably different, so things change.
My daughter has been accepted into one of these schools for Nursing and having been in higher ed my entire career, it’s all about fit. In fact, a highly regarded Ph.D. colleague of mine graduated from the College of Wooster and speaks very highly of her undergrad education from there. Ursinus is always spoken favorably here and lastly, my daughter’s language teacher at a private day school sent her daughter to Regis and speaks well of it.
It was my post and yes, I meant less selective (note I used quotes). My kid is in the 3.0-3 4 GPA camp and will still succeed and find his way.
Financially it would help a ton if he could get a TE award so we have to be realistic with his chances based on academics.
All 3 of my degrees I’ve earned were from lesser known colleges and it hasn’t affected my success at all. I work for a college that most people know only because of sports.
I put zero weight into how desired a school is or how well known it is. It’s about fit for my kid period. Not how prestigious the name is.
Applied to multiple schools for FALL ‘22 and most were on TE (Fordham, Villanova, Bucknell, BC, BU, WPI, Syracuse, USC, Case Westwrn) - only have one status as “waitlist” but the rest on the TE site for us are still “Awaiting Import School Decision” - it’s VERY frustrating! Any BTDTs with TE experience with these schools???
Yes, I want to recall that Bucknell came relatively early after the acceptance (yes, didn’t attend) and Villanova was a no for the TE as they were fulfilling demand from previous years. Merit was just ok from Villanova so didn’t attend.
Exciting as “waitlist” means the door is still open however it can be a super long wait to get an update from the waitlist. I remember last year that some students/parents would reach out to the liason at the waitlisted school for updates and believe it or not that helped move the decision along. Perhaps they liked your interest so reaching out can be beneficial. As for the remaining schools, I think your wait could easily be March. I had a coworker whose son got TE at USC! They tend to be generous which is wonderful for such a selective school otherwise! I wished my D had kept USC on her short list. You have got some great schools there. I think Case Western was a promising one too last year for TE if my memory serves me right. Hang in there !
You get admissions decisions before TE decisions and many of these schools haven’t announced decisions yet. Long wait ahead.
Three of the schools my daughter applied to during the EA round sent TE scholarship notifications with the acceptance letters: Lewis & Clark, Lawrence, and Case Western. I wish all the schools took this approach, but I assume she’ll be waiting much longer to hear in the RD round. (And, of course, her two top choices are RD.)
Every school is the right school for someone.
Is Case Western keeping their TE set at 40k, despite the 8k increase in tuition this year?
They were already pretty borderline for my son, and that would make them expensive enough for us to just cross them off the list.