You might have heard that private college scholarships are not as great as they seem because many schools will require that they be reported and will then just reduce the student's aid package by the same amount as the scholarship. I have an offspring about to enter freshman year, got a story like that except actually it's worse.
They have this 3k private scholarship, but it came with a couple conditions: the money must be transferred directly to the school and cannot leave its system, I assume to prevent it from being spent on anything fun, and it expires after 1 year, anything remaining is returned to the board. They're attending the University of Texas, a school where less than 20% of students stay in the dorms because they're ridiculously expensive and there aren't nearly enough of them, and since we didn't think to apply for housing back in like February my kid didn't even have that option. They ended up landing in a non affiliated coop with its own meal program, aren't paying tuition the first year due to another award, so all they were planning to spend to the school this year was for fees and books. As it turns out, nearly all of the money from this scholarship just ended up displacing grants that come with no conditions, which could have been used to pay for rent and gas, buy marijuanas etc.
So I guess the correct course of action would have been to retroactively decline the scholarship before the money hit the school, but we didn't have the information required to make that decision, even theoretically, until about a month before everything was doled out, and that's supposing we actually knew the rules they use when re-computing the aid package which I don't believe is published anywhere and even after several calls to financial aid we didn't get until 1 week ago, it's like getting blood from a stone, and honestly I didn't have any inkling that accepting a scholarship could actually hurt you financially so it didn't even occur to either of us to press them harder for the information.
Anyway at least I'm glad my kid has learned this lesson early, that life is actually an incredibly intricate yet boring game of spreadsheets where you have to wait on hold for 3 hours and then roll a 20 to learn the formula used to populate each cell. On an unrelated note, does anyone know where I could offload around 150 hook-em horns T-shirts size XXL to XXXXL?
Line breaks are helpful
Sir, this is a rant
Yeah, but you want people to read it, right?
Hmm, I was thinking more of just pushing it into the ether for the cathartic effect but I suppose someone might actually read it. Breaks added
I read every word. My kid is entering junior year of high school. This is sobering, timely information for me - thank you.
Anything else you've been surprised by?
I guess the main thing is just how little aid they actually got and the fact they didn't even get admitted to one of the schools applied to. #1 ranked student in class despite doing it on hard mode (taking as many AP classes as possible), got 4s and 5s on all but one exam, excelled in vocal performance, 2 year all stater there, talented essayist, very good SAT score, and legitimate volunteer work junior and senior year. I think to get a really good package nowadays you have to specifically optimize for it, padding out the volunteer experience with bs, doing multiple sports or other school based extracurriculars, and possibly lying through your teeth on the essay...
This shouldn't have been a surprise because you can look that stuff up but it's quite the change from my day, wish I'd realized how lucky I was to land what I did because I then proceeded to throw it away by smoking 24/7 instead of going to class
I don't want to sound bitter, I think higher education should be free regardless of how good a student you are, and it very much isn't, they're lucky to not be taking on a lot of debt and I'm grateful for that. Also I definitely wouldn't encourage them to do anything different if I could go back in time because they would have been pretty miserable.
How did you all choose which schools to apply to? Just based on personal interest / program availability or were there other factors?
Mine is sorta dead set on going to the university here in the town we live in, which isn't a competitive or prestigious school at all for the programs that interest him, so hopefully not super choosy and requiring a bunch of extracurriculars in addition to his great grades. I do worry sometimes that he's not doing enough stuff outside school, but also, I want him to enjoy being a teen and not be overwhelmed, so I hesitate to push anything. He did 4H from k-10th, started participating in drama club last year, and now is on student council.
Does yours drive? Mine still declines every opportunity to take the written test, and I'm still trying to get to the bottom of that reluctance, I'm very confused. We live outside a small town in rural Ohio, public transportation mostly isn't a thing here.
Schools were kinda random, although UT is the town university for me, applying to that one was partly my ex pushing them to stay close to home, and I believe that was the factor that won out over the other school that would have been affordable. The program was the other main factor, a lot of schools got rejected based on that. Also my side of the family has some university employees who were able to make suggestions. Round mid-late junior year they'll be getting a trees worth of shiny pamphlets in the mail and tons of emails assuming they've interacted with, say, college board (corporation that administers the SAT), so I think a few caught their eye, suggestions from family, schools close by, a couple chosen based on being in cool cities (Minneapolis, Chicago, Seattle), and whittled down from there based on fit/culture/program. They really took the reigns for the most part, a stark contrast from me at that age, so I didn't have to do a lot of pushing, I don't expect it will be so easy for the other two kids lol.
I guess it all depends on their goals and what type of program, mine has a somewhat different philosophy from the average student, not interested in money it seems but does want to make a positive impact on the world. I actually tried to shield my kids from the finer details of my ideology, wanted them to form their own opinions, but they seem to be communists anyway lol. If your only goal is to learn, imo what college should actually be for, you can do that just about anywhere. Especially for undergrad, there are just a glut of people who are qualified to teach these classes and enthusiastic about doing so pretty much regardless of the subject.
The driving thing really reminds me of my kid, tons of anxiety around that and we had to push to get them to drive, it really was almost a necessity for practical reasons since public transport in texas is also terrible even in the big cities. Weirdly a lot of other kids at the school were the same way, I'd say about half of them were driving by graduation, not sure how it is in other areas but it's eerie. Idk, the kids seem to understand things which I cannot, most people don't see the world as fundamentally different than it was when they were 20 years younger but it really really is, it's hard but I tell myself to err on the side of trusting their instincts.
It sounds like our parenting styles and our kids have a lot in common. This has all been super helpful, thank you so much for your time.