My husband works at a college and we are counting on the tuition exchange program to help pay for our son’s school. He has applied to Syracuse and already received a letter from Syracuse that he has been awarded the scholarship there. He is still waiting to hear if he will be accepted there. It is one of his top choices. Apparently Syracuse is the only schools in the program that sends out letters to prospective students notifying them that they are receiving the award before an admission decision has been made. Does anyone have any idea if it is easier for a child who is participating in this program to be accepted to the school? My son is an average student and I can’t help but wonder if he is more likely to be accepted so the college can balance their import/export ratio. Thoughts?
I think the admissions chances at exchange college for the applicant of a student with exchange as without. My friend’s husband teaches at Syracuse and they didn’t think their daughter had any better chance of getting into one of the exchange colleges than any other applicant, and didn’t think she’d even have a better chance at Syracuse.
The college your husband works at may have played a factor in Syracuse accepting your son for the exchange. There are some schools that have too many faculty kids applying and others with too few. Does your son have other exchange options?
Yes, he’s applied to other schools and we are still waiting to hear if he’s accepted and whether he gets the award. We’re kind of gaming the system and he only applied to schools that he is interested in and have a high acceptance rate for the award. He didn’t apply to schools that were a reach and only gave TE to less than 10% of the students who qualify since it was pretty unlikely that he would get TE and we can’t afford to send him there without it. He always has the option to go to his home school, but I think he’d rather get out of town!
^ Well thought out.
No idea if it helps, but your son should let Admissions know that he has been accepted for the Tution Exchange and that S is his first choice school. Great strategy.
My good friend works at a college with the exchange but neither of her daughters were able to use this great benefit.
Great idea. He’s going to go out to Syracuse next week, so I’ll make sure he tells them.
Both my kids used the TE to go to college (class of 2012 and class of 2015). It saved us a ton of money!!. The best advice I can give you is: Talk to the TE rep for your chosen schools, email, call , send letters, etc. Let them know it is your #1 choice. My son was given the TE after being waitlisted; our persistence and constant communication with the School TE rep definitely paid off!
@Tuitionsaver - Just to clarify, are you recommend parents contact the TE liaison at the targeted school before there’s an admission decision in hand? Or, to contact them after landing on a waitlist? Or…? Sorry, it’s a complex process and I don’t yet understand. We’re definitely hoping for a TE award.
“Does anyone have any idea if it is easier for a child who is participating in this program to be accepted to the school?”
Yes. Being a “faculty brat” or part the TE is a hook that’s on par with being a recruited athlete. So, faculty may get low pay for their degree level, but they “get it back” in part through TE. It’s also a tit-for-tat system, so that schools need to keep a certain acceptance level to stay in the program (not a formal requirement but, you know… informally… it’s kind of an obligation).
Marguerite1910, your strategy was well-thought out (congratulations :p) and I’m sure it’ll yield great results for your child. Do update this thread regularly with results as I’m sure it’ll interest other parents with TE opportunities.
Being a “faculty brat” at your parent’s institution, depending on the school, can be a significant hook, or not matter at all. We’ve not seen it make a difference when applying to other institutions via TE, and we’ve seen many a student go through the process. Most schools require you go through the admissions process first, and qualify just like any other student, before even considering you for TE. And actually, it is a formal obligation that schools balance imports/exports - schools that are out of balance get put on a warning list, and can get kicked out of the program if they don’t come into balance. The relationships between the schools can make a difference - there is a certain level of wheeling and dealing that goes on behind the scenes.
So far he’s 1 for 1. He was accepted last week at Drew and a few days later got an email that he got the TE scholarship. (Drew gives it to 41-60% of the kids who qualify for it). Took Tuitionsaver’s and cptofthehouse’s advice and my husband called and emailed Drew after he was accepted telling them he was very interested in the school and hoped he would be awarded the scholarship. Will keep you posted.
My son has heard back from 6 tuition schools, 3 Yes, 3 No. Still 4 more to hear from. One of the schools said that there were 80 requests and only 2 exchanges available. Another said they gave out 5 and he was on the wait list.
One of the 3 yes was from his 2nd choice, so if his first choice is not yes, still is in great shape…
Hello, We’ve kept in constant contact with the 3 schools that our daughter has applied TE (emails, ?'s, thank you notes, etc.). It is competetive…professors kids can be, on the whole, a pretty outstanding bunch!
Sorry I’m a little new to TE. Just to confirm, have you been in touch with the TE liaison at the schools to which your child applied for TE OR their admissions rep? I’m becoming concerned that we haven’t heard back from any of our schools. My son didn’t apply to any “reach schools”.
Contacted the TE LIASON to see if they received the Tuition Exchange application.
Another Yes Yesterday from STETSON Now 4 yes. Still waiting for a couple more
@EdelweissOne - Has your son been accepted yet to any schools? Acceptances are just starting to roll out. We’ve only heard from 2 schools so far and he got TE from both. We only contacted them after he was accepted. Still waiting to hear from the others, including his own school, about whether he’s been accepted. From reading posts in other threads, it seems that it’s courteous to quickly let schools who your child will not attend know that so the TE scholarship can be offered to another student who might be on a waiting list. This is going to be a stressful month.
@InigoMontoya That’s really interesting what you wrote about the backroom “wheeling and dealing” that goes on. Our son’s home school is pretty competitive and only gives out TE to less than 10% who apply for it. How do you think that will play into this?
Our daughter applied to 4 TE schools and 2 in-state safties (she’s gotten in to both of those). She’s gotten in to 1 TE so far and waiting to hear from others. We were told that she’ll hear about TE award from the 1 admitted school in a week or so. That school use to send the TE notification WITH the acceptance letter, but has changed the procedure. 2 of the TE schools award 90-100%/2 below 40%. When all is said and done, I think state schools would cost us less. After $33,000 TE there is still $20,000 left over to cover! TE is not ‘stackable’ with merit award). Hoping for some need-based (oh, the professor salary), a small loan.
TE is a great program and can be a god-send when you get it. As a parent who went through this last year and will be going through it again next year, let me add my two cents based on my observations and lessons learned.
D1 applied to 7 schools, 6 of which had tuition exchange, including my husband’s school. She got in to 5 of the TE schools and was waitlisted on the 6th (but chose not to stay on it). However, she only got offered TE for the last school she heard from (other than my husband’s school, which she didn’t want to attend because it specializes in media and communication which isn’t her thing, plus she wanted to go further away for school). It was a no brainer for her to go to that one school and she is happily finishing up her first year at American University - great fit for her.
However, lessons I learned going in to the second round with D2, is that while some schools may seem to have good odds (Tulane gives TE to 40-60% of the students who apply for it) you have to realize that most if not all of these schools are looking at TE as a scholarship and giving it to students often based on academics. So while my daughter got into to 5 TE schools, it’s harder to get TE at school like Tulane which accepts less than 30% of all students than American University, which accepts slightly under 50%, even though both give the odds of getting TE at 11-40%. D1s grades made Tulane somewhat of a reach to even get in, so in terms of students applying for TE, she may have been in lower tier, while for AU, not quite a safety but also not really a reach, her grades put her in the upper tier of TE students.
Of course it also depends on the particular competition that year, but my take away is that in addition to looking at the statistics on how many kids get TE at a particular school, consider where your student’s grades but him/her in terms of the average student accepted. A student with 2300 SATs and 4.0 GPA probably has a 90% chance of getting TE at George Washington even though they offer it to less than 10%, while a student with below average stats may get into Syracuse but be one of the 10% who doesn’t get TE.
For D2 we are, like Marguerite1910 including more schools that accept higher number of students for TE, but also a few that we are almost certain are guaranteed; we realize in hindsight how close we were to not getting any TE for D1 and don’t want to face that again.
Secondly, I heard from several people, whether or not it is true, that state schools who participate in TE tend to give it to their instate students, since they lose out on less tuition that way. Not sure if it is true but that makes sense. D1 applied to two OOS universities - she got into both and was denied TE, although one school gave her a very nice merit scholarship. So I’d keep that in mind as well.
Hope this helps at all. TE is truly wonderful - as we sing and dance each semester when the bill from AU comes with a huge TE tuition deduction!!! Overall, we are saving $32,500 each year.
Oh, last thing, you should also check the requirements for your student to maintain TE annually. Schools are all different - AU requires a pretty unusually high 3.2 average be maintained the whole time, while many other schools require only 2.5 or 3.0 Make sure your student can maintain that at that particular school or you could face a very unpleasant issue of either coughing up a lot of money unexpectedly, or needing your student to transfer.
Once in a college with the TE grant, what are some good strategies for reaching a 3.5 each semester?