College application lessons learned

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Understand that if your UMC but not mega rich (HHI $200K-$350K), there's probably no way you'll be able to afford to send your kid to the top 10-15 elite private schools unless you saved a lot by the time the are a college freshman. These schools cost $82K/year and they do not give out money for anything but financial need. And financial need at these schools will usually scaled and taper off at $200K.

Know that merit aid is given to kids with grades all over the place. Kids with below a 3.0 unweighted can get merit aid at many schools in the 75+ rankings. This is true even if they are not in the schools top 25%.

Lots of schools won't require SATs for admission purposes. But if you're hoping for some merit aid to make it more affordable, you'll probably need scores on record.

Be cognizant of where a school is pulling its students from. If most students are from that state, they're probably going to stay in that state. This will impact on your child's networking prospects down the line. Lots of small schools actually pull students from across the country and because of this have a much more cosmopolitan vibe. If you send your kid from the DMV to a state school in Indiana, don't be surprised that most of the kids will be from Indiana and plan to stay there. Unless your kid decides to stay and build their life in Indiana, they'll probably only see their college friends when they go to visit Indiana.

Look into which cities the graduates of the college tend to move to upon graduation. There will be a pull to those cities on your child.

Don't think of a major as a job. Lots of jobs are held by people who studied a variety of things in college. Unless you're planning to be an engineer or a nurse, your undergrad degree isn't something to fixate on.

Thanks for this insight.

[Anonymous]

Fwiw, it’s important to take the tax structure into account. How much do you take home after taxes? Where we live, 300k gross would mean 150k net.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Understand that if your UMC but not mega rich (HHI $200K-$350K), there's probably no way you'll be able to afford to send your kid to the top 10-15 elite private schools unless you saved a lot by the time the are a college freshman. These schools cost $82K/year and they do not give out money for anything but financial need. And financial need at these schools will usually scaled and taper off at $200K.

Know that merit aid is given to kids with grades all over the place. Kids with below a 3.0 unweighted can get merit aid at many schools in the 75+ rankings. This is true even if they are not in the schools top 25%.

Lots of schools won't require SATs for admission purposes. But if you're hoping for some merit aid to make it more affordable, you'll probably need scores on record.

Be cognizant of where a school is pulling its students from. If most students are from that state, they're probably going to stay in that state. This will impact on your child's networking prospects down the line. Lots of small schools actually pull students from across the country and because of this have a much more cosmopolitan vibe. If you send your kid from the DMV to a state school in Indiana, don't be surprised that most of the kids will be from Indiana and plan to stay there. Unless your kid decides to stay and build their life in Indiana, they'll probably only see their college friends when they go to visit Indiana.

Look into which cities the graduates of the college tend to move to upon graduation. There will be a pull to those cities on your child.

Don't think of a major as a job. Lots of jobs are held by people who studied a variety of things in college. Unless you're planning to be an engineer or a nurse, your undergrad degree isn't something to fixate on.

Hmm. As someone from the under 150k bracket, I would consider 300k+ pretty rich! At 100-150k, we should be able to save/pay 40k/year for 2 kids. I would expect that someone on double could save double.

But, agree with the rest!!!

[Anonymous]

Another lesson learned - you can only guess from stats what admissions results will be. This is unfortunately why kids have to apply to 9 to 10 schools.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I haven't caught up on the whole thread. But here is something we learned first hand - if you are applying to CS or some other high demand majors, make sure you apply to at least 10+ colleges. Majors like CS can make your safeties look like a reach especially in this test optional era where unweighted 4.0 galore.

What are other high demand majors other than CS?

[Anonymous]

CS isn't going to be the same in a few years thanks to AI. CS will be like majoring in Journalism soon.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

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Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My kid has a rough time in Covid but a silver lining has been this: if you let go of the idea of going to a "top" or competitive school, the process is actually easy and fairly stress-free (and you'll get a lot of merit money too). There are a ton of schools with high acceptance rates that are eager to have your kid.

This. The school doesn’t matter as much as what you do once you’re there.

I think that really only applies to non elite colleges. Let's be honest here.. elite colleges buy you the connections and network not readily available to the rest of the colleges.

My kid didn't apply to HYP, but they did to Stanford and MIT (deferred). I'm not holding my breath, though.

It really doesn’t. i think it may be lifechanging for a small group, but not that significant for most. Not to pull out the old “my spouse and I went to HYP” line, but although there are several high fliers among our classmates there are many more normal people living normal lives working at normal professional jobs. Lots of my college friends work PT and stay home with kids—and while they are doing fine (and they are interesting and scintillating people with many talents), they are not rich or fancy by any means.

Agree, my spouse and I also went to the same level of schools, for undergrad and grad school. I think people who did not overestimate the value of the experience and name. Plenty of our classmates went on to completely average careers and plenty of the high flyers we know went to schools not in the T30.
Some of the people who make it into the elite colleges peak in high school.

+1 to this. My husband works on Wall Street and they love their elite feeder schools, but they also love Division 1 athletes or even athletes from lower tiered schools. Think lacrosse bro at Mary Washington.

Yes. And don’t forget that successful people from “no name” colleges like to recruit smart, yet humble kids who went to similar type schools. This is especially prevalent among men in their 40s and up. They are sick and tired of the pretentious kids from name brand schools.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My kid has a rough time in Covid but a silver lining has been this: if you let go of the idea of going to a "top" or competitive school, the process is actually easy and fairly stress-free (and you'll get a lot of merit money too). There are a ton of schools with high acceptance rates that are eager to have your kid.

+1000

Focus on helping your kid build strengths for handling college, seizing opportunities, figuring out what they want to do with their life, and developing optimism and self-efficacy for their future rather than trying to optimize their admission into selective colleges. Every time they seem to be sucked into the college competition game, return them into thinking about what they want to do and why they want to do it.
Let the chips fall where they may with college admissions, but don't let your kid leave home into a massive financial and energy investment of college without feeling like they have some sense of control, purpose and excitement over their future and some visions for what that might be. Not just pride or disappointment because they got/didn't get some brass ring of college admission. It's very easy to just be good at school and think you need to just continue being good at school--it's harder to make that transition to building a life/career.

It's not either/or. Most kids at selective colleges know what they want and are ready for careers.

It's just jealousy to pretend otherwise.

Au contraire! I have yet to meet a conventional-age, residential undergraduate college student who was ready for a career. Or adult life in general, for that matter. Psychological age and chronological age are still factors alongside talent and hard work. It takes all of those things, along with a community of support, to make a successful grownup. Simply attending a selective college doesn't do it.

--College prof

College Prof, Do you believe they are ready by the time they graduate?

[Anonymous]

Yes. And don’t forget that successful people from “no name” colleges like to recruit smart, yet humble kids who went to similar type schools. This is especially prevalent among men in their 40s and up. They are sick and tired of the pretentious kids from name brand schools.

PP wrote Wall Street firms love grads from elite schools and D1 athletes. Yet your post attempts to assert the exact opposite.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Yes. And don’t forget that successful people from “no name” colleges like to recruit smart, yet humble kids who went to similar type schools. This is especially prevalent among men in their 40s and up. They are sick and tired of the pretentious kids from name brand schools.

PP wrote Wall Street firms love grads from elite schools and D1 athletes. Yet your post attempts to assert the exact opposite.

You suffer from poor reading comprehension.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Never admit having a disability. It will automatically get you removed from competitive schools. You would think collages would be impressed as kids with physical disabilities are doing things on “hard mode”, but it’s a LIE. Always check the box “No”.

What if you have a prosthetic arm? Don’t check the box?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I haven't caught up on the whole thread. But here is something we learned first hand - if you are applying to CS or some other high demand majors, make sure you apply to at least 10+ colleges. Majors like CS can make your safeties look like a reach especially in this test optional era where unweighted 4.0 galore.

What are other high demand majors other than CS?

I am not sure. But I am guessing business and other engineering majors are also in high demand. But CS seems to be off-the-charts this year.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:CS isn't going to be the same in a few years thanks to AI. CS will be like majoring in Journalism soon.

Ha ha. When I joined the SW industry some 25 years back, we had similar fears. CASE tools (automated software tools which analyze your code) were a rage during those days. We were also worried about our own jobs vanishing due to automation. I had one desktop at home during those days. Today I have 20 odd "computers" at home, counting my mobile phones, tablets, laptops, smart TV's, car etc etc, which are running diverse software and are significantly more powerful than my little desktop from 25 years back. So I don't think CS will become obsolete like journalism, at least not for another 20-30 years. But if the software engineers don't keep up with the rapid changes in the industry, they could easily become obsolete. But that is true of many other professions.

[Anonymous]

Have a back-up plan. Be prepared to submit some RD applications close to the January (or February) deadline in the event you start receiving a bunch of referrals or rejections from your EA schools.

This is a journey. As you wind through this application process, you will learn a heck of a lot about yourself; you may totally change direction -- maybe even towards something you never imagined before -- and it will all work out just fine.

[Anonymous]

The SLACs like Grinnell, Hamilton, Reed, and Colorado College are going to have probably half of the class from major metro areas like NYC, DC, LA, SF, Austin, and Chicago. These schools aren't packed with mainly kids from small towns and cities even if the college happens to be located in the middle of nowhere. That's why they have a cosmopolitan vibe. Attending school there doesn't suddenly make their students forget how to ride the subway.

[Anonymous]

"This is a journey. As you wind through this application process, you will learn a heck of a lot about yourself; you may totally change direction -- maybe even towards something you never imagined before -- and it will all work out just fine."

This is what happened to us and I'm so glad that I didn't make it hard for my kid to change directions just because it wasn't the plan we'd made at the beginning. There will be schools you've never heard of that show up to a college fair you attend in order to talk with the reps from a different school. That new school might be exactly what you never knew you were looking for.