Congrats to your son! And I think many in this board have crap reading comprehension and can’t tell the difference between UW and W. |
We are full pay anywhere. We found that with our kids' stats, they got merit at schools more in the T80 range and chose to attend those schools over full pay at U Roch, though we would have paid for U Roch if they had wanted to go. Rejected from Villanova a few yrs ago, but with 3.5/1500.
I admit I do not understand why Villanova wouldn't take a 3.9/1480 ED full pay, and that is the frustration of the opaque admissions process, we just don't know the reason. The 3.9 should have been enough. BC and Villanova are looking for top grades moreso than scores, close to 4.0 unweighted. Large chunk admitted without scores at BC, not sure about Villanova. |
Thank you ![]() |
It's going to depend a lot on your kids and their needs. My kids had academic interests that were STEM based and both were most interested in larger research universities. We are Maryland residents, and they could get into UMD, which was very good for their interests. We were only willing to pay more than that if the educational experience or opportunities were better than they would have at UMD. That was a pretty small list of schools. It included Haverford, MIT, Caltech, Princeton, etc. We let them apply to two other large public universities that were comparable to UMD, so they would have a backup (for both in was Minnesota and Wisconsin), but we told them flat out we would not pay for UCLA, for example. They both got into one of the schools we agreed we would pay more for, and that's where they went. If they had expressed different interests, or had some other compelling needs, our "worth it" list would have changed. |
Looking at DS's jesuit HS stats for BC average accepted was a 4.3GPA --but I see now you were talking about Villanova. |
That was my kid ... I will say that coming from his small school, there is one student who got in ED1 - female, psych major (my kid applied to Business). She had an UW 4.0 but weighted was not much higher - no rigor whatsoever (e.g., now as a senior she is in standard precalc, no AP sciences ever, and no AP language.) Legacy and test optional. In the EA round that was just released, literally no one from the class (at least 5 kids applied) was accepted. Perhaps Villanova doesn't like our high school? I dunno. Thankfully my son has moved on mentally/emotionally. |
Why would you say he's a 3.9? But I agree that you just move on from a rejection. There's plenty other schools and your kid will do great. |
3.9 unweighted and 4.4 weighted. (Our school only gives +0.67 for weighted classes). |
When my kid was looking at Villanova, and looked at all the naviance data, all I could conclude was that it hated her Catholic HS. |
and thank you ![]() |
You way undersold your kid when you were trying to make your point. The schools report GPA's based on weighted GPAs. But no matter now. Villanova admissions are weird anyway. You guys dodged a bullet. |
We are full pay at a private school that is lower than your list. It is the right fit for my DC.
When you have a child that has a hard path in getting through MS and HS - you rethink a lot of assumptions on costs. |
It is weird, considering he was accepted EA at Tulane, which I think statistically is more difficult than Villanova. (Not saying that Tulane is a better school than Villanova; only that their EA acceptance rate is much lower than Villanova's ED acceptance rate.) |
Fortunately child 1 is at a public with merit and child number 2 is only considering publics, BUT I honestly think we would have only considered full pay for Ivy, Stanford and MIT. Last year child 1 turned down BU, CWRU and Lehigh after 25-30k merit because they were still too pricey. |
DC1 was interested in STEM so we were OK with full pay for T20ish schools as long as they were good in that domain and of course other personal factors.. This eliminated schools like Emory, Wash U, etc. but added in USC and Harvey Mudd. This also included the top 3 Publics (all OOS). UVA also made the cut because it was in-state. DC2 does not have the grades for Tier1 schools and there's no way we are paying full fare at those levels (60K+ tuition) for a lower-tier school. Don't mind paying if tuition is down to the $40K level as long there's a good fit and strong programs. This is pretty much every OOS public university (with a few exceptions) and lower-tier Privates (after merit) out there. |