holy moly. Thanks! Wasn’t expecting so much good advice.
I will definitely be reading up on this. It is quite different from what I know.
To add to what’s been answered - canadian universities are only a bit cheaper than what I’ve seen the state colleges here charge. Main help is the student loans backed by provinces and fed government. They really help when it comes time to repay them. (low interest or no interest depending on your circumstances). Also tution between the higher and lower schools isn’t as different as from what I’ve seen here.
As for my kid, shes only in grade 10 right now so I guess she has time, though will get her working on her practice testing. She’s got a good gpa (4.something she said), so I’m happy about that. She’s still in the “I don’t know what to study” stage though so selecting a particular school to chase may be premature.
Any suggestions on prep guides and processes?
Any particular suggestions for scholarship and grant processes she should look into?
Thanks again guys! I really appreciate this.
The standard system for GPA maxes out at 4.0. If she’s getting a “4.something”, that means her school is using a nonstandard system. Find out what that nonstandard system is, and what her GPA actually means, before you get too complacent.
Some schools use a weighted GPA to compensate for students taking more difficult courses. I believe a recent trend is for AP classes to be on a 5-point scale (A = 5, B = 4, and so on).
Colleges don’t really care and, based on what I read here, they want to see an “unweighted” GPA, which is sometimes also reported on transcripts from the high school.
When I was in high school, we did NOT have a weighted GPA system. There was much wailing and gnashing of teeth when a student who didn’t take any AP classes was a valedictorian and others who took such classes were not. In the end, though, we all took soul-sucking jobs and now just resemble shells of our former, vibrant, interesting selves.
Early in grade 11, get her Cracking the SAT and/or Cracking the ACT, both put out by the company called The Princeton Review. They’re guides to how the SAT and ACT tests work and how she can do her best on them. Which one of those tests she takes or if she takes both depends on what colleges she applies to. Before the summer between grades 11 and 12, get her a guide to the selective colleges, something like The Insider’s Guide to the Colleges. This assumes that she’s smart enough to get into a top college. This will give her some ideas about what colleges to apply to.
If she gets into a top college, she will get enough financial aid relative to your and your spouse’s income to be able to afford it. Please understand what I’m saying though. If you and your spouse make $45,000 a year total and you have just two kids, your daughter and a son in high school, your daughter will get everything paid for - tuition, books, room and board. You will still have to supply some personal expenses and her transportation to the college. You will thus be just barely scraping by, just like you were before she entered college. If your and your spouse make $155,000 total, your daughter will get a fair amount of financial aid. You will have to come up with a fair amount of money and your daughter might have to take out a fair amount of loans. It will hurt, but you’re not going to starve. If you and your spouse make $315,000 total, your daughter won’t get any financial aid. You will be paying enough that it will be bothersome, but you’re still going to be doing well.
It’s very common for American high schools to weigh Advanced Placement (AP) and Honors courses differently from other courses, making it possible to have a GPA above 4.0. However, colleges usually care about the unweighted GPA, where A = 4.0 regardless of the course.
I agree with this. Stanford, for example, is explicit about it. If the parents make less than $60,000, the parents will not be expected to pay for tuition or room and board. If the parents make less than $100,000, they won’t be expected to pay for tuition. So as I said earlier, ignore for now the sticker prices on colleges, since a big fraction of the applicants receive scholarships.
And to the OP; check if her high school has a college fair. These are events in which various colleges set up tables in the gym or cafeteria and offer literature and answer questions about their schools. If she’s a sophomore, she should go to the college fair this year and then try to plan some campus visits this summer, before her junior year.
Right, a higher point total for AP or honors classes is the most likely explanation for a GPA above 4, but even at that, that still leaves a lot unsaid. The bonus might be an extra 1 point, or an extra half point. It might apply only to AP classes, or to all honors classes. There might be a distinct grade of A-plus, that’s scored higher than an A. Or, of course, the school might be using some completely unrelated scale designed to make their students look better than they are.
If she is taking AP classes, though, that’s likely to mean more in itself to colleges she’s looking at than the raw numbers. Most colleges will have numerical cutoffs that they won’t look at all at anyone below those cutoffs, but above that, you need something that makes you stand out from other applicants.
I have taught high school for the last decade, so I am pretty familiar with the process. A couple things off the top of my head:
Ignore any personal anecdotes more than ten years old. The whole situation has changed significantly since then.
Remember that people tend to be pretty invested in the idea that they made the right choice all those years ago. So take all advice with a grain of salt.
Remember, there isn’t a “right” choice, there’s a best fit for a particular child with particular goals.
Make sure you do have options you can afford: if you household income is in the $160K+ range, you will likely be paying out of pocket. Don’t let your daughter only apply to places you can’t afford to send her.
She probably took the PSAT in October. It “counts” your junior year, but many schools administer it to sophomores (in fact, I am almost certain she did, and that is why you are getting letters). If you have her score, I can be more specific in my advice. It’s also VERY useful for her to go on line with her score report; she can go over the questions she missed, and that’s great to know for when she takes it again next.
If she (and you) have ambitions and are in a position to do so, paying for a single consult with a professional college counselor is not a bad idea. It won’t be cheap–expect to pay $150-$200 for an hour–but it can help in several ways. One, they know schools. There may be small or regional schools that she hasn’t thought about, would have no way to know about, that might be a great match. Two, a college counselor will be able to take a look at her whole “package” as an applicant and can often make suggestions of fairly small things that help a lot. Three, a college counselor will calibrate your expectations and explain the system to you and four, she will believe a college counselor saying the exact same things she thinks are crazy when you say them.
Rank matters more than GPA. Her class probably hasn’t been “ranked” yet: it’ll be after this semester, or after first semester next year.
I personally think college honors programs–especially the ones in big, flagship state universities–are often overlooked and can be fantastic fits. They tend to have the advantages of a big state school–little cheaper, little closer to home, big campus, lots of alternatives if you grown in unexpected directions, great community–with the advantages of the tier I schools: highly selective admissions means solid classmates, you have contact with great professors, research opportunities, small classes, and, at the end, access to recruiters from top firms on par with those that recruit out of the top private schools.
Huh… totally had the wrong idea about costs. Was totally clueless about it. Good to know. Will do proper research now.
Chronos: I think it’s weighted. She says it’s out of 5. Which makes her grades less impressive than I thought. Still she’s gotten mostly A’s on her last report card (the remainders being B’s) so going to have to get her to kick it up a notch. She has taken honors in all classes where it was an option but not any AP classes.
Manda: wow, thanks! That’s a lot of good info.
She did take the PSAT but it was one of those “things” about which I knew nothing about. I always heard about SAT and such but not something I ever dealt with when I went through it so never really paid any attention. She has no idea what her marks were so going to have to look into it.
Tom Tildrum, note that those six are the only ones that are “need-blind” for international students. That means that they don’t think about the amount of financial aid that an international student will need when they accept or reject that student. Many colleges will meet full demonstrated need for everyone including international students if they decide to accept them. It’s worth it for cptsquid’s daughter to apply to a lot of top colleges. At worst, they won’t accept her. Or they may accept her but not offer her enough financial aid. At best, they might accept her and offer her enough financial aid. She can’t find out what will happen until she applies. She should try to find out what the policies of the colleges she applies to are if possible before she applies.
I do want to point out that application fees are not insignificant and can add up. There’s no point in applying to a ton of schools that you’ve no chance of getting in to. I will agree than financial aid is a crap shoot, and hard to predict. However, in many ways it’s the worst at your sorta very good but not tier I private schools–your USCs and SMUs and Vanderbuilts. Small liberal arts schools also often really need tuition paying kids: they don’t have the ungodly endowments of the Ivy Leagues.
So if the OP’s daughter has as Sophomore PSAT of 225 and is looking at really, really good schools, then your advice is solid. If, as is much more likely, she has a top mid-range score of 175 or so, there are suddenly a whole lot of schools that she could certainly get into but that run $40K a year and are not falling all over themselves to offer her financial aid unless she has something else to distinguish herself from the crowd. If she has a perfectly solid, perfectly respectable 145-165, it’s another game again.
That said, it’s absolutely essential to apply to at least a couple places that you’d love to go even if both the finances and the admissions are a reach, but also, please, to a couple where you’d be happy to go and that you know you can afford. I’ve known one or two kids that didn’t and that really, really sucks.
ETA: Huh. USC and Vandy both show up as “Demonstrated need met”, but it seems like I’ve known kids that had “gaps” they couldn’t overcome on both of those. I’ve certainly had kids that were accepted to SMU but could not afford to go, and SMU didn’t meet them.
Interesting fact: college financial aid packages are actually negotiable. If it’s close, you can call and bargain, and they will, sometimes, come up.
You could always send her to study in the UK. Fees, even at the better colleges, are pretty good, even for non EU students, and accommodation costs would likely be similar. We also pretty much share a language.
Also note that “100% financial aid” doesn’t necessarily mean grants and scholarships. It can also be work study, basically a guaranteed part-time job on campus, so you’re still working for that money. Which can be regarded as a feature, not a bug.
Indeed. Working in the campus library during college I still consider one of my best jobs ever.
Except for the visa stuff, do most schools even distinguish between foreign students and Americans? I mean with state institutions, it seems to be divided into residents of that state alone and everyone else in the world. I’ve run into a lot of misconceptions among non-Americans that these schools charge three rates – one for state residents, a more expensive one for other Americans and a more expensive one still for foreigners. But I don’t think that’s true. And private schools will just charge everyone the same high rate? Or no?
I think state-run colleges charge one rate (for tuition) for people from that state and a second (and always higher) rate (for tuition) for anyone else, whether American or foreign. Private colleges always charge the same rate (for tuition) for everyone, regardless of what state or country they come from. I think state-run and private colleges all charge the same rate for room and board for everyone, regardless of what state or country they come from. There’s no way for them to charge differently for the books for the courses depending on where the person comes from, although obviously some courses require more expensive books than other courses.
The more important differences are in the amount of financial aid offered. I assume that state-run colleges usually offer more financial aid to people from that state than those from other states or countries. Private schools don’t distinguish between what states people come from in deciding how much financial aid to offer to students. I assume that there’s a tendency to offer less money to foreign students, and that’s true for both state-run or private colleges. This is why there has been a trend recently for state-run colleges to recruit and admit well-off out-of-state and foreign students, reducing the percentage of in-state students. Those out-of-state and foreign students pay more tuition and get less financial aid.
It’s been known to happen.