How did your son do on the PSAT? Is it likely he will be a National Merit Finalist?
@blossom
Thanks.
“If your HS has naviance that will be a huge help.”
They use Naviance. I expect his meetings starting next week will be enlightening relative to your advice.
“He doesn’t need to know what he wants to do with his forever life and career.”
True. But so far: can take snow or sand. College sports arent an issue, could be 300 or 3000 miles away. This kid’s a blank slate right now.
With you S stats, he will have choices at schools where he won’t be stuck if he changes his mind after fist year. Look for schools with MANY great departments.
$135 May still get decent FA at some schools. And with his stats, some good schools will offer decent merit! In fact, he may be competitive for some of the full tuition scholarships. So some schools you may apply, but only consider if you get those scholarships.
Does your state have good state schools?
Consider Tulane. They gave my daughter a fantastic financial aid package with lower stats than your son.
With out of pocket of 10k a year, $5500 in student loans, and some summer work money, you are close to needing full tuition. It depends on the cost of attendance and cost of room and board in your area. I would look at your state flagship, see what the costs are, he certainly should apply there. There are several schools that offer full tuition scholarships at his stats, it depends on if he’d like to go there or not. There are great scholarship opportunities out there for a kid like yours, but not at top schools. I’m afraid you’d likely end up in the same boat as the rest of us donut holers, expected to be near full pay, but can’t really afford our EFC. I wouldn’t look at too small or two specialized schools as you want him to be able to come in undecided or change his major as he figures it out.
so … share a few! As I mentioned before, Rice, Vanderbilt, Chicago seem like stretches and likely out of reach financially. Someone mentioned Tulane which is intriguing. Other ideas? Are the elite LAC (Swarthmore, Williams, Amherst )out of reach for this profile, given financial constraints? Is Princeton? He seems to be on their postcard lists at least…
Makes sense.
The state schools are adequate to quite good, including honors school potential. My assumption, entirely unfounded as of yet but based on some prior knowledge, is he would compete for a very low cost education at our State schools.
Adding some student contribution from work and federal direct loans ($5,000 to $10,000) gives a price limit of $15,000 to $20,000. While some of the private schools with the best financial aid may produce a net price like that (check their net price calculators), they are few in number and extremely selective.
Realistically, it is likely that most of his choices will be:
a. In-state public universities, depending on their in-state price and scholarships.
b. Large merit scholarship schools like this listed in
http://automaticfulltuition.yolasite.com (potential safeties)
http://competitivefulltuition.yolasite.com (potential reaches)
http://nmfscholarships.yolasite.com (if National Merit)
(but check school web sites, since some have changed)
Go to each school’s web site and search for its net price calculator. Use it to estimate financial aid and net price to determine if each is realistic from a financial standpoint.
Your state flagship, and its honors program, should certainly be part of your search. Have your son spend some time on campus and in the area – it’s good to have a kid who LOVES his “safety.”
Look into University of Southern California - if you show interest, a high-stats kid can do well there with scholarship/FA.
As for some of the other schools you mentioned - Princeton, Williams, Amherst – they’re a reach for everyone, especially if you need a lot of FA.
Agreeing with others about starting with your budget.
We made a spreadsheet. It included estimated tuition & fees, room & board, estimated transportation costs, health insurance, and personal expenses. I added in 3% inflation to each year.
Then, I ran the Net Price Calculators to get an idea of what we’d be expected to pay. In our case, I had to change it from “2 in college” to “1 in college” for D16’s last three years. That was a shock re: how those numbers ballooned up.
We compared estimated FOUR year costs between schools, and gave careful thought as to where that money would come from each year, and if we’d be stretching ourselves too thin.
Our D16 had good stats, but not nearly as good as your son. Nevertheless, our D experienced quite a bit of pressure to apply to elite selective schools (which we could not afford). She was bitterly disappointed in the large public OOS flagships on her short list, schools that were willing to throw money at her. She felt these schools were beneath her and she felt somewhat ashamed. I’m sure a major factor was the atmosphere at her private high school, where most of her peers seemed concerned with admissions only, not admissions AND affordability.
To her thinking, she was the only one of her peers who didn’t get to choose where she was going to college. She didn’t really want to go to any of the affordable schools on the list. Her safety (the school is attending now) was merely acceptable, definitely not love. She seems to be making the best of it though, now in her second semester of freshman year.
We did make the mistake of allowing her to apply to a school that we were not willing to borrow the money for. My first quick and dirty estimates were not very accurate. I didn’t factor in a projected increase in income, nor did I change the number of kids in college. What originally looked like a painful stretch for a lottery school, actually was a deal breaker. Way, way too expensive. People did try to tell us “you never know what will happen!”, and “that school is totally worth it!” as if the school was going to love my snowflake so much it was going to slash our expected contribuation.
With a high stat kid, you’re likely to have some amazing offers on the table. Give some thought about what you’ll do if your kid can go to a lower ranked, less sexy school for next to free.
Did you answer the question about the PSAT? I didn’t see it, if you did. Is your son a URM? Schools will update their web sites around the first of August, with scholarship information for your son’s incoming class. Until then, you can hunt for the money and pencil schools in.
I hope that helps.
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Retaking a 1540 SAT with a 36 ACT already in one’s back pocket seems like it should be a low priority, at best.
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Where are you geographically? Not looking for an exact street address, but this would be helpful to those offering suggestions.
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Does he have other siblings, older/younger, and, if older, how have their educations and choices gone?
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Have you visited colleges yet? Do you plan to? Spring break is rapidly approaching for most folks. College visits don’t have to be to a short list of perfect fits - you can visit schools that are conveniently close and represent a range of possibilities, on such parameters as size, urban/rural, selectivity/rigor, public/private (including, perhaps, religiously affiliated), and so on.
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Your son really has expressed no or almost no definite ideas of possible educational/career goals? This seems unlikely. There’s a difference between being completely undecided versus having some things one favors, but being pretty uncertain about them (and open to new ideas).
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The financial end may be tricky, as you and others have said. One alternative is to aim somewhat lower than his GPA/test scores/etc might otherwise suggest - you might find some more generous scholarship opportunities.
Location will help in suggesting schools!
We live in the Southwest. Other than the obvious financial implications, location is not a criteria at this time.
Regarding the PSAT and NMSF questions, I need to gather that PSAT data. He did well, but I am not sure if it was well enough.
As others have said, retaking the SAT with a 36 on the ACT is a waste of time. Better to use an SAT test date at the end of this year to take SAT subject tests, if any possible colleges of interest need them and he is finishing the applicable courses this year.
Why so cagey about location? Even “the Southwest” is pretty vague. An obvious contender (or at least safety school) for a financially constrained family of a high achieving kid is one’s own state flagship and other publics. I don’t know a lot, personally, about the state publics in Arizona, New Mexico, Nevada, etc., but likely others here do, and might be able to offer some useful information if they at least knew what state you were in…
Also, you say location doesn’t matter, but you’re on a tight budget. Well, location DOES matter in that sense. Travel is not cheap. You’ll likely want to visit any really serious contender (at least after admission but before acceptance), and there will likely be a family trip out to drop S off, freshman year, perhaps occasional family visits thereafter, and of course your S’s travel to/from college at year start/end, break, etc, as desired.
If you’re in, say, the Phoenix area, then schools in Arizona, SoCal, etc, are likely to be a lot cheaper and easier to reach than schools than, say, a school in rural Vermont.
If you are in the southwest you could potentially look at WUE schools as well, I don’t know specifics about how WUE discounted rates work with merit scholarships, but it’s something to explore. My son is a WUE student and the tuition rate for participating states is what makes his school doable for us, otherwise the OOS tuition would kill us.
From a student stand point the time is now. The books about different colleges is not worth the time. CC is 10X better than anything those books have.
Start a spreadsheet and start gathering information as he his interest in schools. I think my columns was XF and rows was 76 lines. The rows never change but the columns went down to L. Create another tab for potential private scholarships and dates .
Read books on careers or there is many websites that talk about trends, pay, geographical areas, etc. In addition read “Where you go is not who you will become.”
Start now and take 1 hour a week for meetings to review the task from prior week. Creating no more then 2 task for each next week. Something for the first of meetings is high on his desire list and what are turn offs.
For visiting don’t do a Scholar day or when there is a plan to have a hype day. Plan your own visits through your regional recruiter, university website, and calling the different colleges to meet with professors, the dean, and advisors. Review the labs and research areas too. I always met with college of engineering and if they had it honors college. I do the tour too, but sitting through presentation at the beginning is a repeat of any other college. I created a note card of questions for each college and on the back had 2 columns of pros and cons. After we left I wrote a report on the school I could reflect on.
Do your applications early so you can enjoy the Senior year and typically the scholarship $ is at the most during this time. Personally I stayed away from Early Decision, but Early action or rolling admission go get it asap.
With his stats he should have the pick of the litter. Essays need to be from the heart and the more creative the better. I’ll send you some of my words once I hear back from my last school who deferred me from EA to RD.
Enjoy the ride and know when to push or when to hug him.
If you are looking for merit, your son’s app list will likely be long. I would suggest that you spend some time researching each school as your son considers them. Dont count on you school college counselor to take your financial ‘fit’ into consideration as a priority. A list just based on schools your s is qualified for academically may look very different from one that includes financial fit.
On our list this year, looking for merit (no need based aid expected) for high stats, undecided daughter also still torn between math and other majors like history, and also undecided on school location: Tulane, USC, Northeastern, Case Western, Lafayette, UMinn, St Olaf, Oxy, Puget Sound, Pitt, GaTech (legacy), Alabama, Southwestern, UT (in state). She knew she’d have to get a top scholarship at many of these to make them work, making most of her choices reaches, but she had early safeties with Alabama and UT. She had good reasons for each pick, and the schools were all visited and liked before apps were started, which means we know how flights in and out will work at the far ones. She and I both researched scholarship availability and requirements, and ‘guesstimated’ her odds at each school. It was a lot of work, but I think she will have several good choices from which to make her final pick in a few weeks.
The starting line is financial. $10,000 parent contribution + $5500 first year Stafford loan + $3000 student job is about $18,000-19,000 per year that you have to work with.
I would not have him retake the SAT. His scores are outstanding- I would add 2 subject tests.
I would visit or research a few schools to narrow down size, location etc. Your son can likely get very good merit if you do some research. You can play around with the net price calculators for schools like Vanderbilt and keep in mind that if you ever have two in college at the same time your cost will come down ( depending on the school).