@BelknapPoint Thank you! That makes sense for FAFSA, and now that I look more carefully at my taxes, the adjusted gross income does have those premiums taken out, so the net price calculators do take the premium into account with the adjusted gross income. I hope I get this all understood by Oct.
I’d be encouraging your son to think about test prep as a necessary evil. He may be interested in musical theater, but his training will still include reciting soliloquies from Hamlet. He may be interested in the avant-garde, but his training will still include Moliere and performing Greek tragedies. I know a middle aged man with a successful career as a voice over actor, and yet he spent years learning swordplay, dance, etc. Artists have to learn all sorts of random things to develop. And test prep is one more random component.
Higher scores mean more options, even for programs that allegedly don’t care about scores. This is one more rehearsal he has to endure.
@blossom All I have to say is he’s a idealistic teenager. Straight acting, btw, not musical theater. All mature, wise people know its worth the misery to get the SAT scores up to open up options. Right now he’s more interested in the concept that he is more than any standardized test can show…As my mother used to say, cut off your nose to spite your face…as a parent, I just keep on trying different angles until there’s one that hopefully works. Cue the music for the entry of the character that cares about standardized testing…
Set the budget and show him how much merit he can earn by getting his scores up.
I wish I had understood how much just a small amount of studying for the ACT could have earned my daughter. If you want to see an example, this is the grid Wyoming uses: http://www.uwyo.edu/admissions/scholarships/non-residents/rms.html
By the way, Wyoming has a very good and well funded theater program.
Thanks @twoinanddone, I’ll look at Wyoming. I already showed him a few graphs from other schools, logic isn’t going to work here, I need to creatively deal with the emotions. Also brushing up on “test optional” as another angle, since grades are OK and definitely trending up. We’ve got 1 financial safety, I’d just like to add 1-2 more so there’s options.
But I think even test optional schools require test scores for merit.
He is of course more than his stats.
Any acting program he applies to is going to care about the “whole person” and his talent and craft. But some focused test prep-- which results in higher scores- are going to give him more options once you factor in merit aid. I am sure he understands that sometimes you lose a role because the director wants a tall, thin actor with curly hair and you happen to be medium height with straight blond hair. That’s the way it is. Just another factor in decision making.
Scores are the same way- except unlike your hair color or ethnicity or height, you can actually put your finger on the scale in a meaningful way. One more weed out or weed in factor- only he controls the cards here. Even moderately higher scores are just going to make him a contender for even more programs.
An actor surely understands that.
My little theater rat wasn’t logical either, but she did understand that when I said $15k was the limit, that was the limit. She sick today but at work (took yesterday off) because she needs the money. She doesn’t understand all the logistics of college, but money is one she does. Have Money=go to college. No money =/ stay home.
Cracking up! If only I could have a college confidential intervention in my home…Drat @mommdc, I was hoping test optional might help…I have to admit I don’t know much about it. The learning curve is a %^&^&*.
@DoinResearch Start a new thread and put him on. It comes down to studying for an exam or waiting on tables.
(If he poses a question, he’ll need his own acct. Just saying.)
This student is an actor, right? I’m guessing he is chasing performance awards which will be based on the strength of his audition. Those folks over in the theater forum can give better advice than I can.
One of my kids is a musician…he was also looking for performance awards…and he got what he needed to get from 4 of the 7 schools to which he applied. Of the remaining, one was affordable without aid, and he was denied acceptance at one. The 7th would have been a full pay option…without any merit.
The crapshoot here…the audition is the thing on which these performance awards are based…and your student needs to be a top candidate in THIS audition pool…which is hard to predict from year to year.
Correct, he’ll be chasing the talent pool of money. I’ve been in the theater forum working on the list for a long, long time. I’m sure to win the award for “longest list building parent”. S knows he needs to knock it out of the park for the audition. However, we are looking to add a few safeties; a non-audition talent safety and 1-2 financial safeties. It’s the financial safety that has me diving deep into the EFC calculators and net price calculators. There’s tons of “crap shoot” with being self employed, but trying to research merit or need based aid to find 1-3 reasonably priced schools on our list makes sense. It may turn out there’s only 1, but at least we’re digging. I don’t want to get to April 2018, have him pass the acceptance/audition hurdle, look at financial aid, and then be shocked that a miracle didn’t happen. Theater Dude is clear that there are 2 hurdles, acceptance and payment.
But talent awards are like athletic awards - really nice, but usually not enough to make an unaffordable school suddenly affordable. What really makes a difference is being able to combine a talent/art/athletic award with a merit award or need based aid. Stack 'em up. Take all the little $1000 ones he can get. Your son might be top of the heap, but not many talent awards are for full tuition or even close. The top schools with the top awards also have the top tuition (looking at you NYU). A half scholarship is fantastic, but it still leaves $30-40k on the bill at those expensive schools.
One of my kids has an athletic award that when combined with merit basically pays tuition. Without either, she could not have attended this school. Having high academics really opened up the field for her. Absolutely she could have had similar athletic opportunities, but it was the combination of athletics and merit that was the key.
My other child had a talent award and a merit award. She switched majors and there went the talent money (very small amount). She does a lot more shuffling, takes the student loans, and works during the school year. Oh how she wishes she’d scored a few more points on the ACT and earned the next level of merit money.
I’m sore the OP is on this issue…but some schools will NOT allow you to stack performance awards, and other forms of financial aid. These are not like athletic scholarships in that way.
The Hartt School, for example, awards performance awards for music, drama, dance and art…but these same students can’t double dip into academic merit or institutional need based aid.
YMMV by school…but the OP does need to check whether stacking of awards is possible at her kid’s target schools. It might be at some…and not at all at others.
Oh, it is the same for athletic awards, merit awards, need at many schools. Some allow it, some don’t. It would not have worked for us at either school if we could not have stacked merit and talent/athletic/need/state. D#2 school doesn’t allow stacking of certain categories of merit so you only get the highest award in that category, but you can then stack it with another category. Merit/athletic is fine, but merit for stats cannot be stacked with merit for robotics. They also do not ‘refund’ any awards, so all awards issued by the school have to be used for something on the bill. Now that daughter lives off campus, she can’t use her athletic money for her rent and no grocery store money. Even though the NCAA allows it, school doesn’t. This school applies each award to a specific charge, so if a fee is $125, they’ll take part of a $1000 grant and apply it to the fee, and then apply the $875 remaining to the next charge. For fun they often back off the posting and reapply it. Her bill for each semester can run 2+ pages because they keep posting and backing off charges and credits. Why? Don’t know but suspect it is just to drive me crazy.
Other daughter’s school dumps everything into one pot for total charges (tuition fees r&b) and another pot for credits (grants, scholarships, loans, payments), applies the credits to the charges, and I pay or get refunded the difference. That seems easier to me.
Correct, I’m aware of the various stacking rules. Talent awards, to me, is the hot fudge, whipped cream and cherry. I’m looking for the base ice cream scoop of need/merit based aid. Then I’ll look for the sundae…