<p>Northeastern gives full tuition for NMFs. </p>
<p>I would save one of your 3 plane trips for after acceptance, if there is a school at the top of the pile that your S hasn’t visited yet, and would want to see before choosing to attend.</p>
<p>good luck!</p>
<p>cbug: As jshain (post #6) points out, “demonstrated interest” does not necessarily mean the prospective student ever has to set foot on a campus to “show the love.”</p>
<p>We’ve been able to make my D’s interest known to a large number of schools by attending local presentations that are made by various colleges. Surprisingly, as we found out this spring, colleges Outside are more that willing to visit Alaska to talk to prospective students. We may be a bit more isolated than you are there in the Midwest, but I think our experience may apply. </p>
<p>Our D attended at her high school, and we as a family attended events at local hotels, presentations from schools from Washington, Oregon, California, Arizona and Colorado, just this spring. There were at least three more college events we only found out about after the fact. I had (mistakenly) assumed we were too far off the beaten path to attract attention from the likes of Washington State and the Univ. of Oregon, but my daughter assured me that planes fly both ways nowadays in safety and comfort :). Since we’re only getting short notices from D’s high school concerning college visits, I’ve been making it a point to search (selected) college’s website and have already found a few presentations we’ll attend this fall.</p>
<p>Getting a free tee-shirt or key-fob is of course not a replacement for actually setting foot on campus, but setting through a one-hour presentation by admissions’ people has allowed us to indicate at least our initial "love’ for a college while learning the basics of the school. And my daughter does “love” the tee-shirts as she goes through them at an alarming rate at volleyball practices!</p>
<p>Best of luck in your search, cbug.</p>
<p>PMKjr was a NMF. NMF’s are also eligible for the Trustee Scholarship, which is full tuition, room and board. From what I can gather, there are about 100 students per freshman class are selected for the NMF or Trustee scholarships.</p>
<p>“Demonstrated interest” does not always mean you have to visit the campuses of these schools. You can always attend a local college fair in your region if one is being held."</p>
<p>JSHAIN’s got it right, at least for Georgetown. An admissions officer specifically said that the university understands the financial challenge of traveling to the school, accordingly, they do not keep track of which applicants visit the campus and which do not.</p>
<p>By all means, visit Georgetown if you feel you need to get a feel about your DS’s interest, but physically visiting the campus will not help your application.</p>
<p>You will want to register interest at their website and “friend” their Adm. office Facebook page.</p>
<p>PMK & Mom2collegekids – S1 was a NMF too and had he applied at Northeastern would have been eligible for full tuition. Maybe that’s why I was thinking Northeastern would be good with aid in other cases. You asked about S2’s stats he is a 4.0 with good EC’s and while he hasn’t taken tests yet my instinct and other evidence tells me they will be high.</p>
<p>DO visit Tulane if you can. I am a Louisiana student who far exceeded the criteria for automatic acceptance but applied a day after the auto-accept deadline. In addition I didn’t bother to visit. I ended up being waitlisted, even though I was accepted to several other more selective universities (i.e. Harvard.) My friend, also from LA and also far exceeding the criteria for auto admissions but also applying past the auto deadline and never having visited was also waitlisted. </p>
<p>I would assume if you are not from LA or around LA a lack of a visit will not hurt you as much as it hurt my friend and me, but Tulane is DEFINITELY big on demonstrated interest regardless of where you are from. If you can afford to visit and are seriously interested, do. If you are far from LA and the visit is too expensive, definitely show interest in as many other ways as you can come up with!</p>
<p>NEU does give NMF full tuition scholarship (if you handle the paperwork correctly). But on CC threads I’ve also read about some non-NMF students getting around $17k/year merit scholarship. With expensive room/board, that still leaves a hefty bill… but much better than full price.</p>
<p>cbug - You should consider having your S2 take a practice PSAT. If he likes NEU and is anywhere close to the range of NFM for your state… it could really be worthwhile to do some summer practice tests.</p>
<p>My D will be attending Tulane in the fall as a freshman. She applied EARLY!!! and wrote the optional essay. She did not visit before she found out in November that she had been accepted with almost the highest merit aid. Visits may be helpful, though it is more helpful to apply early! to Tulane and do all of the optional stuff on the application. </p>
<p>She did visit in March for the honors weekend before making up her mind to attend there, though that was 4-5 months after being accepted.</p>
<p>I should also add that D also will receive a big chunk in need based aid, in addition to her merit aid. That was not a determining factor in her acceptance.</p>
<p>bajamm – interesting to hear about your D’s early action experience at Tulane. I’m really hesitant to have S2 do early action anywhere. It’s because of the fact that financial aid is so crucial to us and I’ve always heard that most schools are more conservative with their aid during the EA round.</p>
<p>Plus are other schools more likely to reject you when they hear you are doing EA somewhere else?</p>
<p>Georgetown is a reach school for just about anybody. If you can go to a college info night at a hotel in your area or if the Georgetown area rep visits your or a nearby high school for information sessions, make it a point to go. The same is true for any of the schools high on your list as that will show interest. Having an alumni interview in your area or by phone is helpful as well. It is almost more important if you get in to go visit when you are making the decisions. Visiting schools before the application process is helpful to rule schools in and rule schools out…it is important to try to visit some schools either in a reasonable driving distance or if you can attach to a family vacation or trip…just to get a sense of what schools are like overall and what are important for you-pro and con.</p>
<p>cbug:</p>
<p>I don’t know if my d told other schools that she had been accepted at Tulane. She wouldn’t have lied if they asked, but she wouldn’t have offered if they didn’t ask and I don’t know if they asked. I guess I didn’t look at the applications that closely. She emailed me the essays to proofread and did the rest on her own.</p>
<p>The only aid we heard about during the early round from Tulane was the merit aid. The most merit aid they give (not counting special application scholarships) is $25,000 based on the strength of the application. My D was offered $22,000 in merit aid in November. That is slightly more than half tuition. </p>
<p>We then filled out the Fafsa before the deadline. Most of her need was met, though not quite all. Maybe 95%? Some was in loans, but it was not outrageous in my opinion. It was by far and away mostly grants and scholarships. She was also offered $3000 in work study, which she will use for books and personal needs. I was told that if she won outside scholarships that it may or may not affect the rest of the package, they would decide once they actually had the money in hand. And, if it did affect the financial aid package it would lower loans dollar for dollar first before affecting other aid.</p>
<p>PM me if you want more info!</p>
<p>"Plus are other schools more likely to reject you when they hear you are doing EA somewhere else?</p>
<p>bajamm – the reason I said this is because I believe schools can see through the Common App all of the other schools you are applying to.</p>
<p>My d didn’t use the commen app to apply to Tulane, she used their own application.</p>
<p>Oh, and the main reason she applied to Tulane was that it was a free application. It looked a lot nicer to her when she received the merit aid offer.</p>
<p>cbug, Early Action is just the opportunity to apply early to a school (often by Oct 15) and learn earlier whether or not one has been accepted (often by mid-December). An applicant can apply EA to as many schools as he/she wishes, so it does not indicate a strong preference for one school in the way that Early Decision (ED) does. And of course Early Decision (ED) obligates a student to attend if accepted, but Early Action (EA) does not.</p>
<p>If you do go to visit Bucknell you will be close to Lehigh, Lafayette, Muhlenburg, and also many Philadelphia schools. One flight into Philly would give you access to more schools than you could possibly visit in a week.I know Lehigh has a strong business program, very generous FA as well as merit opportunities.</p>
<p>parentofpeople, I was thinking about exactly what you had suggested. The same could be said for NEU or Georgetown. There are other colleges around the listed target schools to visit. Also, if one is willing to spring for a hotel (one can save money using some discount sites such as Hotwire or Priceline bidding, or by checking directly with hotels or their chains for deals). One can travel by bus/train btn. Washington DC and Boston, for example, if those are 2 locations where the schools of interest are located. I will admit that this is quite a haul though. NYC and Boston would be easier. It might be worth it to fly into one area and rent a car and look at schools in one region. It could be costly, but so is flying RT to 3 different schools in 3 completely different areas of the country (esp. if buying two or more RT tickets).</p>
<p>We took a college week long trip to the midwest and we drove. We had certain schools that we were highly interested in seeing, but added more since they were in the area or on our way, and of some interest. We were not willing to spend a lot on hotels, but we had a lot success with discount hotel sites for hotel rooms. I will admit that the cost of gas was less then than it is now.</p>
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<p>Unless it’s Single Choice Early Action (SCEA), as at Yale and Stanford. Under SCEA you may NOT apply to any other school EA or ED, but as with other EA programs if you’re admitted you’re not obligated to attend. Like ED, SCEA is a way of “showing the love.”</p>
<p>Cbug, I wouldn’t hesitate to have your son apply to Tulane and NEU EA without visiting. My daughter and several others from her school were accepted EA to Northeastern with merit without visiting. The same is true for Tulane. With those two schools it’s mostly about the GPA and test scores.</p>