National Merit scholarships/finalist status is largely, but not entirely based on PSAT scores. I did have friends who made the cut on the PSATs, but who didn’t have the grades or take the other steps needed to make it to the finals.
Why not 2 years of Community Collge then transfer?
The OP was rather adamant in their objections to that path.
Functionally equivalent to “punish the children for the actions of their parents”.
Me, and two-thirds of Germany, and many other places in the first world.
That’s not to say I think every kid gets to go to Harvard–but making vocational training, or 2-year community college, or 2-year community college + 2yr state university free or dirt cheap would be a net benefit for everyone.
Cite? I’d believe “more than twice as much as inflation” or “7-8% and starting to accelerate” (since I provided hard numbers for that) but not 10-20%.
CSU itself has the numbers for 2001 to 2010. I average that out to be 13% annually, but I am not at all confident of my math.
ETA: To get the 13% figure, I averaged the last two columns to make an annual number in line with 01/02, 02/03 etc. Then I dived the 10/11 number by the 01/02 number and took the ninth root to get that.
$1428×1.13×1.13×1.13×1.13×1.13×1.13×1.13×1.13×1.13=$4290.
The OP is in California, where community colleges are $312 a semester for a full time California resident student . I think that qualifies as “dirt cheap.” (Granted, they are likely to skyrocket given the California budget problems, but its still dirt cheap at twice that).
But that isn’t an option for her, her daughter would be better off waitressing at Denny’s than spending two years in the California community college system, nor is it her complaint. Her complaint is that financial aid is not available to send her child to whatever school her child wishes to go to.
Trying to find a scholarship sucks. At my high school they had scholarships for African Americans, Asian Americans, Pacific Islanders, Catholics, Native Americans, and Mormons. If I’m every wealthy I’m making a WASP scholarship.
I have no idea what you think that demonstrates. To be clear, I was replying to your assertion that:
In point of fact, tuition has NOT “certainly increased much more than tuition has.” Just the opposite, in fact.
Christ, shut the fuck up, you self-satisfied blowhard. Whoop-dee-fucking-doo, you got a scholarship. Apparently it came with a lifetime supply of smug sanctimony, and a free pass to drop into any discussion on the difficulty of putting someone through college to share your tales of horror of working a part time job to supplement your state-supplied scholarship money! Because after all, there’s nothing more helpful to someone complaining about being unable to find financial aid for their child than the stories of how you got a scholarship back in the 80’s on account of how awesome you are and how they’d have no problems at all if only they were as awesome as you.
Cram an oil-stunk sock in it already.
Heh. Rather, *minimum wage *has NOT “certainly increased much more than tuition has.” Just the opposite, etc, etc.
OK, I’m going to be a bit naive here, but the FAFSA still exists, right? While you might not get a full-ride, private institutions are, from my experience, very generous with their aid if you truly have need and you’re the type of student they want. I went to a private college where today the average grant is $22,000 with 50% of the student body receiving institutional aid. Combined with other sources of aid, their average aid package is about $30,000 with a $5000 loan package. From what I can tell, this is not unusual. No merit scholarships existed at my school, and my own outside academic scholarship was a drop in a bucket compared to what the university gave us. There seemed to be a good mix of people from all sorts of economic backgrounds, and this was due mostly to the university’s institutional grants.
Is this no longer the case?
OMG . . . This was magnificent.
I have a hard time believing that anyone who got a full ride to college based on their performance on one test when they were 15 can really think luck wasn’t a major factor in their success.
I went to college on a full ride national merit scholarship, too, and I’m the first person who’ll tell you it was luck. My siblings are as smart as I am, but they didn’t happen to like school as much. I did. It wasn’t some kind of superior character. I just like school. I have another friend who’s at least as smart as I am, but has test anxiety. Others are better at math than verbal stuff, and (at least when I took it), they more heavily weighted the verbal score.
So, being born smart, enjoying standardized tests, taking the PSAT on a day where I was not sick, or tired, or otherwise underperforming, and having parents and counselors to help me make the most of it, and I’m supposed to pretend it wasn’t luck?
Because of ONE day in high school, I went to a private liberal arts school well-equipped to support girls in science (which I never could have afforded otherwise). As a result, I got into a top 5 Ivy League PhD program, the result of which is me having a job that I love. I also met my husband there, who is the best person I’ve ever met.
Everything that got me where I am now was because of one goddamned day in high school. One day, and you’re going to pretend it’s not luck? Fuck your bootstraps; they’re bullshit.
Yeah, work and such plays a role in these things, but that came later, when I was old enough to really understand what that meant. When you’re a kid you don’t really have the perspective for that shit. If you work hard, it’ll be because your parents drilled you or you liked school. All luck. Pretending it’s not is just a way for people to justify pretending that they’re better than everyone else, and so they can convince themselves that if they continue to do everything “right” that nothing bad can happen to them. That’s also bullshit.
Not all in state schools are a “bargain”. My son is going to a state school starting this fall. Tuition, room, etc, was supposed to be $25,000. Now, they want a 16 percent tuition increase. We’ve already done the loan thing, but now it’s held up until there’s a yea or nay on the tuition increase. They’re only increasing tuition for in state students. :mad:
My son scored in the high 1800s on his SAT, has a really good GPA, etc, but there isn’t much out there if you’re white and middle class. Many of his friends had lower GPAs and lower SAT scores, but they received substantially more help. It wasn’t need based, it was based on ethnicity or color. I feel like a shit saying that, but it’s true.
Yes, the FASFA exists, but it’s a complete joke!
I have a daughter attending the University of Washington too. So, this year, we had to fill out two FASFAs. BOTH came back saying the parents’ contribution level is $24,000. Yeah, if I had $48 grand lying around, I sure wouldn’t worry about the FASFA!
At any rate, all my son received towards schooling was $4500. We were expected to come up with the rest.
Look, we made some bad financial choices, but we spent many years just barely getting by, and whatever savings we had, were ate up by emergencies.
We’ve always been honest with our kids about our finances. We were honest so they don’t make the same mistakes we did. So far, they’ve been fairly smart about their money.
Do we feel like uttter shits because we don’t have the money for our kids? Absolutely! It doesn’t change the fact we don’t have it. Middle class isn’t so middle class anymore.
However, my son is a realist. He already knows he’s graduating with debt. He didn’t expect our help. He’s got a fantastic job lined up for this summer and he’ll do work study. The summer job will be waiting for him on every school break too.
It’s unfortunate, but it’s what most kids will have to do in order to receive a college education.
Uh… isn’t 1600 a perfect SAT score?
They added a writing component, afaik. After my time, though, so don’t quote me.
There are plenty of scholarships that are open to white people. What makes things more interesting is that in most cases, they’re also open to the specific minorities as well, so that say… a Pacific Islander can win the “Tongan Merit Scholarship”, and then turn around and get the “Chancellor’s Endowed Scholarship,” which doubles up the Islander kid, and (in all likelihood) cuts some white kid out.
I think it should be either/or- you get the minority scholarship OR you get the general one, not both.
If you pick a well endowed school (almost always private), and they have the major you are interested in (private liberal arts colleges aren’t known for being centers for biomedical engineering, however), and are an attractive student to them (i.e. those pesky SAT scores, that pesky diversity recruitment, the pesky legacy issues, the pesky getting beaten out by the student who organized her community’s clothing drive for Haiti while volunteering her Saturdays reading to blind Seniors and the one who placed third in the National Spelling Bee, etc.)…that is still the case. You may still end up with loans at the end of it as loans are likely to be part of the package to get some of your own skin in the game.
Perfect score is now 2400.