I think choosing classes wisely the first year is a necessity. If there are some core course requirements that are easier for the student, take those first. It would be a very good idea to have a 4.0 as a base, and then if one or two courses are harder or have a particularly hard grader, the student’s gpa can take the C hit without losing the scholarship.
@Marguerite1910 = yes, my son has been accepted at all of the schools, less the two he applied to regular admission. It is very stressful, he has received a 100% TE at a fine school that he really doesn’t want to go to, but did not get it at his #1 school. Even with regular merit scholarship $, that is a difference of $22,000 per year. Ugh. Tough financial decisions are ahead of us. We have yet to hear from 3 of our TE schools, so perhaps his #1 school will change. 
Our son applied to four colleges–three TE schools (LAC) plus our home institution (a larger, private university). We were told (by the admissions offices and TE liaisons) that each of the colleges he was applying to handed out only 4 or 5 TE scholarships each year, but as he wanted to stay in state and wanted schools that were strong in his major, he didn’t have the option of applying to some of the TE schools with higher percentages. Even so, we have been pleasantly surprised that he has so far been accepted and received TE at his two top choices (and he has been accepted with a nice merit aid package at the third, but we are still waiting to hear about TE). So I’d say it is worth applying even to schools where TE is quite competitive if your kid is likely to be in the top half or quarter of the applicant pool. At one of the TE schools the award covers full tuition; at the other two (higher ranked) it covers $33,000 towards tuition, but that still leaves about $9,000/year in tuition + R&B uncovered. But as we have only one kid to put through college, this is still affordable, so we are encouraging him to pick the one he feels is the best fit.
Ok, here’s where we’re at: He was accepted to 3 TE schools and got the TE scholarship at those schools (full tuition at those schools). He was accepted at his home school and waitlisted at 2 other TE schools. We are still waiting to hear from 3 more TE schools (including Syracuse). We should know by the end of the month. Seems that the strategy worked. He has options and he and we are pleased with the schools he was accepted to.
@Marguerite1910 Any news? Fingers crossed for your son.
So, he applied to 9 TE schools, including his home school. Of them, he was accepted to 4 of them (including his home school) and got TE from all of them. He was waitlisted at 2 TE schools and is waiting to hear from 3 more. We’re on vacation, so the letters may have come since we left. Regardless of the outcome, he’s 99% decided that he wants to go to his home school after his father promised to not acknowledge him on campus and not let anyone know he is his son! He’ll live on campus and study abroad for his junior year. He’s going to contact the other schools this week to let them know he is not coming so they can offer the place and TE it to someone else. I think we approached this realistically. TE is hard to get at some of the schools, but there are enough good schools that offer it to many applicants. The key seems to be to make sure your child applies to some of those schools that award the scholarship to more than 50% and are a good fit for your child.
@Marguerite1910 - I can’t say how any TE awards might be impacted, just that I’ve heard that sometimes awards are based not only on academics but also on relationships - or desired relationships - between schools. It’s worth talking to your home institution TE liaison officer about past experiences with schools. Our liaison officer gave a breakdown of all the schools students from our home institution applied to and how successful they were at getting TE. Now, we didn’t know their stats, so we couldn’t say how they stacked up academically, but it did help to see at certain schools we’d NEVER had a student receive TE.
There can also be other factors you aren’t aware of at the time. The one school where D didn’t receive TE was in the 40-60% range, and she was above average - but we later found out another TE kid from the same home institution - who also went to the same high school - had applied to that school. The other student was ranked a few students higher in the top 10 at the high school, and had slightly higher test scores. She did receive TE, and I’m thinking the school they both applied to might not have wanted to give two TE awards to students from the same high school with parents teaching at the same college.
The hardest thing for us was D applied EA at every school. So she knew by early January she was accepted everywhere. TE award notices didn’t start coming out until March. Her #1 choice didn’t notify us until into April. That made it difficult - we did narrow it down to one other choice if her TE didn’t come through, and let all the other schools know so they could offer the awards to students on their wait lists, but we did have to hang on to one TE offer just in case her top choice didn’t come through (thankfully they did).
We also made sure we included a couple of 90-100% schools on her list so we were sure we had good safeties. As noted earlier, anything other than that isn’t a guarantee as the percentages can be dependent on the pool of applicants for TE in any given year. It can be easier to get an award at a 10% school if you rank high in their applicant pool, and you can get shut out of a high percentage school if there are too many other applicants ranked ahead of you.
One more item to consider with TE, if study abroad is important to you, make sure you ask about policies for using TE to study abroad. Some schools will not allow TE scholarships to be used for study abroad. Other schools will, but might restrict it to certain programs. It was important to us that our kids get to spend a semester abroad, so this narrowed our options.
I learned that you can’t totally trust what is on the TE site with regard to study abroad. When I contacted a few schools to ask about their policy I sometimes received info that was different from the TE site.
@InigoMontoya Good to know. Since he will be going to his home school, he actually isn’t tapping into the TE scholarship. He is getting a tuition waiver. That said, I will look into how much money, if any, the school will kick in for studying abroad. I’m guessing that the college’s programs, will be available to him, but maybe not. We’ll see.
I know it’s late in the game, but I wanted to post my experience for anyone looking for info about this next year. My daughter only had one school she wanted to go to (U of PITT). It has a 11-40% acceptance for TE. She applied in Nov. and was accepted and invited to the honors college a few weeks later. The tuition exchange letter came in the beginning of Feb that she did get it and to let them know if she didn’t want it as there was a waiting list. What a relief! I don’t recommend applying to one school, but that is the only one she wanted that was closer to home and had the program she wanted. I didn’t understand that this was merit based until December. A few people from my husband’s college had told us it was based on imports/exports. I guess I should have done more research. I am wondering when we tell friends and family about this , do you call this a scholarship? I feel like she earned it by working hard in high school and not everyone gets TE. Someone asked her and she said it was a scholarship through her dad’s job. What do you think?
Tuition Exchange awards are definitely considered scholarships, though the competitiveness of the award differs from school to school.
Re: Study abroad options. We were told that the TE scholarship couldn’t be used for a semester studying abroad, but that the college reverted to whatever merit aid package had initially been offered to cover a semester abroad. So in our son’s case that would make tuition for a study abroad semester about $4,000 more than a semester at home. But I think this policy may differ school by school.
Also, the LAC our son ended up choosing allowed him to add a competitive departmental scholarship on top of the TE award.
Just checked with our home school with respect to the study abroad question. If my son attends our home school, he is not using a tuition exchange scholarship, but is getting a tuition waiver (he will still qualify for 4 years of the tuition exchange program should he decide to transfer or go to graduate school). As a result,they said he can go to all of the programs (hundreds) that have been approved by the college’s study abroad program tuition free!
@bella88 - colleges maintaining a balance between imports and exports is important. Schools that repeatedly export more than they import get put on a warning list and can get kicked out of the program. Conversely, H’s home institution wasn’t accepting imports for several years as they had almost no exports going out.
Each college is allowed to determine how many TE scholarships they will offer (which impacts how many are available for their faculty to use to export). I’ve seen some schools that only offer 3-5 TE scholarships per year. Others offer them to just about every accepted applicant. So the competitiveness varies depending on the overall competitiveness of the school applied to, how many TE scholarships they offer, and how many applicants they get. A school that only offers 5 TE scholarships but gets 100 applicants will typically award based on merit.
When I explain this to people I say it’s a merit scholarship available only to dependents of faculty at participating colleges.
@profparent - study abroad does vary by school. D’s school allows her scholarship to transfer if the study abroad program is sponsored by the university. Several schools she looked at offered no aid whatsoever for study abroad, even though she did earn merit scholarships before receiving the TE award.
As for stacking scholarships, again, that depends on the school. D was offered merit awards at all the school but one prior to receiving the TE award. Two schools allowed keeping enough of the merit award to combine with the TE award and cover full tuition. The others required her to choose between the TE and the merit awards, and made it clear she would not be eligible for ANY additional school-sponsored awards, including departmental scholarships.
Tuition Exchange, the brand name, with caps, is a scholarship program open to children/dependents of eligible college employees (not just faculty). The exporting institution may have rules regarding who can apply for the export spots (seniority, etc) and then there’s competition at the importing institution.
Keep in mind, though that even within the Tuition Exchange, there is a group called the co-op, which does not have the stringent import-export rules. The co-op is mostly populated by smaller college.
And then the Tuition Exchange, again the brand name, is but one tuition exchange organization. There’s the CIC, again a lot of smaller schools, but the rules stipulate only 3 students per year need to be imported, hardly a sho-in. There are consortiums of religious affiliated schools or schools within a region. All offer tuition exchange. Importing institutions are free to use whatever criteria they want in selecting students for those awards.
Final results: My son applied to 9 Tuition Exchange schools. He was accepted at 5 (including his home school) and waitlisted at 4. He was offered TE at all of the 5 that accepted him. In the end, he has decided to go to his home school so we are going to call the other schools tomorrow and let them know he is not going so they can award the scholarship to someone else. Thank god it’s over (at least for another 3 years until our next child is a senior). My advice: If you need the TE scholarship to afford to send your child to college, make sure your child applies to some schools that he/she is interested in and also have a higher rate of students who are awarded TE.
Possible game change: my son just got a call from an admissions person at Syracuse and they told him they have a place for him (he was on their waitlist), so now he was accepted to 6 schools and got TE at all of them and was put on the waitlist at 3 others. We’re visiting on Monday and will make a decision after that. Our plan worked out: he had a lot of options, was realistic in terms of which schools he could get into that also had high rates of TE awards, and of those he picked the ones he was interested in. One child down, two more to go.
With a D16, when would be the best week prior to August 2015 in which to first contact the TE liaison at an importing school for their TE details? Sooner the better? During a summer lull? Thoughts?
@dyiu13 - I have a D13 who is on TE currently, and a S16 getting ready. For D13, we were considering a pretty broad range of schools, and I contacted liaison officers in the winter of her Junior year. That really helped to narrow down her choices.
For S16, I just contacted the officer last week at his top choice school - which happens to be the school D13 is attending. I found out the TE is currently being awarded to far fewer students than when D applied, so I used that information to push S16 into another round of SATs. I think now is the perfect time, really.
Thank you!
Mamaduck, you bring up an interesting point regarding siblings attending the same school. D1 goes to a school (and received TE from) that d2 is interested in as well but I’m wondering how likely it is that that school will award the same family another TE scholarship. Although I know all schools are different, I’m wondering if anyone has experience with this?