Accepted to a second TE school with a non-TE scholarship. Interesting.
For the first school, the scholarship is more than TE. For the second school, the scholarship is a bit less than TE.
6 Likes
I’m guessing you’ll get notice of the TE scholarship later? My kid has been accepted to 2 TE schools but hasn’t received word on TE scholarship from either one yet. But has received other scholarship offers from both.
For the 1st school he got the top academic scholarship (at least according to their website). For the 2nd he got a good scholarship offer, and an invitation to apply for the full ride scholarship, which he plans to do.
At the 1st school, he might very well end up attending if he gets the TE scholarship, which is more than the top academic scholarship.
The 2nd school isn’t his favorite, but he might go if he gets the full ride, which is obviously more than the TE scholarship.
I think schools often just route the apps through the normal aid process and then TE is a separate thing that happens, and proceeds at various schedules depending on the school. Some give TE offer at the same time as other aid, and other places it is disjointed. We’re expecting some schools to do: normal merit aid offer 1st, then notice of TE sometime later, and need-based aid maybe even at a different time.
We told our son to not expect the full picture 'til sometime in March at the earliest. Some schools say TE notice in April (yikes). We’ll be stoked if it’s somehow earlier. But I won’t be surprised if he commits to a good offer before then.
5 Likes
Good point. I had assumed that TE would not be offered if a generous merit scholarship was awarded. For some schools, the money comes from different pots so that makes sense.
Seems like most schools don’t stack scholarships. I’ll be curious to see what happens with that. Do they allow us to choose which one if both are offered? I guess we will find out.
Congrats to your 2023 on the scholarships!
1 Like
Yes you can choose if you get more merit to accept that rather than TE. Does anyone know if Syracuse still stacks? Our TE liaison at husband’s work said his son was able to stack a merit scholarship from them on top of his TE several years ago.
1 Like
Syracuse stacked for my son 3 years ago up to full tuition,
3 Likes
It depends on the school. At most TE schools, TE is the best scholarship they offer. So many of them say that a TE offer will replace any previous scholarship offers. Some of them don’t spell out their policy at all.
Let’s stay tuition is 60K. You’re initially offered a 36K scholarship that covers 60% of tuition, and are subsequently offered TE which covers 41K. Many schools wouldn’t stack that and would say that the TE offer supersedes the 36K offer.
This is what WPI says they do. Some schools would stack some of it, even up to the price of full tuition; several work colleagues have had this happen for their kids, often at less selective and/or expensive schools. But some selective schools appear to be quite generous with TE and stacking aid – Syracuse and USC have done this in the past.
In the case of the TE school where my son will apply for the full ride scholarship, that would be pretty silly to award someone a full ride and then say that they have to settle for the lower TE amount. The whole point of huge merit awards is to attract strong students. So I’m assuming you get to keep the larger scholarship, or it would just drive those students away.
Congrats to your kid on the better-than-TE offer!
3 Likes
Just checking back in to say that my school did finally confirm my eligibility. I asked if there was an internal application process to use the benefit and they told me to just submit the TE applications and they would approve me. So, I submitted the applications to the four schools on my D’s list that are TE and I was notified today that my employer approved them! I’m not sure that my school is sending out any info about this program to employees - we used to get a yearly email with an application, but the management of the program has changed hands several times since that last happened a few years back. So I guess there isn’t much demand currently because most people don’t know about it? I’m glad this thread served as a reminder to me to check on it! Thank you!
3 Likes
I heard they do still stack yet take fewer people. I think I saw that mentioned in the forum somewhere yet not sure how accurate that might be.
1 Like
S23 applied to 12 Tuition Exchange schools. Fingers crossed.
4 Likes
Mine is only applying to 4. She is applying to 10 total, the others have big merit/FA potential. But one is due this Thursday and she hasn’t started the essay, and it’s for a super competitive scholarship and school. Her procrastination is making me insane. She only has 3 apps done and 2 are safeties she is not very interested in. She has other safeties but won’t be submitting any others (besides the Dec. 1 deadline) until her winter break. Her choice to not enjoy her break 
3 Likes
My D23 applied to 17, 16 TE and one non-TE. 11 EA, 6 RD. A lot to keep track of, but TE is like a lotto so you need more tickets. 
6 Likes
Mine is the same and it drives me nuts! Two apps were supposed to be done before Thanksgiving. Then Thanksgiving weekend while we were away—and now today. For one, they need to write the supplementals for the scholarships.
They are applying to 6 TE schools. The rest offer generous FA for the most part. Hopefully, 23 won’t waste their time with schools that will never give money (as
per CDS) but I won’t forbid applying, because sometimes kids have to learn the hard way.
3 Likes
It is a lot to keep track of but honestly, most of the applications were free and on the Common App which helps keep everything in 1 place.
The confusing part is the music school applications. Now thats a crazy spreadsheet to keep track of. Thankful for overlapping requirements and virtual auditions.
3 Likes
I could barely get DD interested in doing any research. I even signed up with her email and did virtual tours in case they track that somehow . She is not applying to anything she found herself. They are all schools recommended by either me or her college advisor. We did tour 3 officially and 2 walk around on our own. I know she will be done if she gets into her EA, and that’s fine with me! We only had 2 free apps, so would save $$$. We may be scrambling mid December to add more schools!
3 Likes
With the TE stuff, I honestly had to take control of much of it. He is interested in something with music so his voice teacher did have several chats with him and came up with a list. Only 1 on teachers list made it to the finals due to cost and chance of academic admit. Sorry but my wallet and his 3.4 gpa was not making Rice or Northwestern a possibility! (And he said no to a few on the list due to “too close to home.”)
On his final list there are only 3 that he came up with and 2 of them aren’t TE eligible.
However, what he really did help with is where he did NOT want to go and what types of colleges most interested him. I then threw a huge list at him and he whittled it down more.
2 Likes
Question: We’ve gotten some acceptances (but no TE info yet) but none of them have had any merit info attached. One of the schools (RIT) seems to always come with merit info (at least everyone else i know that got accepted got a merit letter, but we didn’t. Do schools not give a merit letter if they’re waiting to see about TE? From reading this thread it sounds like we should be getting merit letters first and then we’ll know about TE later. But RIT isn’t saying anything about Merit except “TE will be decided later”. I was expecting the regular merit info. Should we reach out to them?
1 Like
The talk about unresponsive TELO… meanwhile at my college I submitted the required forms for verification of the benefit this weekend. I literally had an email response from the TELO on Sunday, within 36 hours of my email, on a holiday weekend. And they responded to questions. Blessed all is done.
2 Likes
Just in case anyone is following. I reached out to RIT and they said they don’t evaluate for regular Merit until AFTER the TE decisions are made, because TE is their biggest scholarship. So if he doesn’t get TE, then they will evaluate for Merit. But she did say they hope to have TE decisions in the next week or so (early December)
4 Likes
Did your son apply early decision to RIT? I am just curious because they don’t offer early action and I thought regular decision announcements wouldn’t come out for a few more months.
Has anyone gotten any notices of TE awards yet? I expect they’ll start trickling in any day.
I know a small number of schools send them with early admissions decisions, and others wait until late spring, with most schools notifying sometime in-between.
My kid sent all his apps in at the same time in mid-Oct and got acceptances from half of them (7/14) pretty quickly. Merit awards have arrived for most of those as well. 3 of the 7 are TE schools, but no notice of TE awards yet.
I’m surprised at how hard it is to wait. Our kid seems patient for now, since he has 2 RD apps that he knows he won’t hear about until March. We told him he won’t have the full picture until about April, so I think he’s mentally prepared himself.
We’re all grateful he has some good early offers on the table, but I’ve been surprised at how us parents are having a hard time staying patient waiting for TE decisions and the rest of the acceptances.
He is supposed to get admissions decisions from 3-4 more TE schools in December. I expect some of the TE award notices will start coming in by January.
Can’t wait to celebrate everyone’s TE successes here soon!
2 Likes