Ugh--like you need the extra pressure of limited housing while you're trying to make a decision!

DS didn't apply to Princeton (and didn't get in to Harvard, where he did apply), but the NPCs I ran for both showed EFCs similar to our FAFSA EFC (which is under $5000)....DS's package at Macalester is pretty closely in line with our FAFSA EFC as well; St. Olaf is somewhat higher, but not by a lot. Waitlisted at Carleton, so their financial aid remains a mystery for us as well--I'll just pretend it would have been terrible so I won't feel as bad about DS not getting in 😉

I opted not to get approval; I e-mailed the University of Georgia admissions dept and asked if they'd weight grades listed on a transcript as "XXXX with AP exam" the same as an official AP class, and they said they would. Just did college applications, and it doesn't seem to have been an issue anywhere.

OP indicated an EFC of less than $5,000 when she ran the NPC for Princeton. That doesn't sound like someone with a FAFSA EFC of $40,000 (as noted, Princeton is very generous with financial aid, but in my experience their NPCs were not THAT far off what we were offered at needs met schools). It's very similar to my own situation, in fact, and my son was awarded financial aid at Macalester and St. Olaf that make them affordable for us. The vast majority of needs met schools do include the federal loans in their packages (I haven't encountered any that include anything beyond the federal loans while claiming to meet need), which I think is reasonable (although not ideal). So my post was directed specifically to the OPs situation, which sounds like my own; for us, the financial aid packages at needs met schools generally make them cheaper than virtually any other school, no matter what merit aid they award.

My son got excellent merit and need based aid at Macalester and St. Olaf (somewhat better at Macalester than St. Olaf), and all three are 100% needs met (definitely Carleton and Macalester; I've seen St. Olaf on lists of needs met schools and also seen it reported that it meets an average of 98% of need. It came in middle of the pack amongst our packages from needs-met schools).

I think that's a lot of it for my DS, too. He likes to frame it in negative terms, because he's a bit of an Eeyore, but really I think he has genuine affection for every school and will be sad about what might have been for the ones he doesn't go to!

This part is less agonizing than the waiting for decisions to come in part, but it's still tough! I think we're down to Macalester, Oberlin, and Hamilton (with the possibility that he'll decide at the last minute to stay close to home and go for UGA). Vassar is out because it would be something like at least 10,000/yr more than any of the others, and they're not willing to budge on financial aid. We just visited St. Olaf a few days ago; they were the next most expensive net price, so they would have had to really wow him to stay on the list. He liked it fine, but nothing stood out enough to keep it on the list (I'm glad we saw it, though, for my 9th grader who's interested in music). We visited Macalester and Oberlin over the past week, too. We're all big Macalester fans now. The location is great--in a city, in a nice neighborhood, AND easy access to cheap flights home. It seemed like a lot of smart kids who don't take themselves too seriously. I really appreciate how they say they're committed to internationalism and diversity, and they seem to mean it. Significantly higher percentage domestic students of color and international students than either Hamilton or Oberlin, and that's quite an accomplishment for a school in Minnesota--not exactly a state known for diversity. From what we've been told, the math department is strong and growing rapidly with lots of new hires over the past few years. He wasn't crazy about the food, but I don't think any of the schools left on the list (except UGA) are known for great food. Same thing with the weather--it's a drawback, but Hamilton wouldn't be much better (less cold but more snow), and Oberlin would only be marginally better. I can really see him at Macalester, and I can't think of any serious red flags....I do think he was hoping to feel more of a real immediate connection and didn't. But I don't know that that's a realistic thing to hope for in a one day visit. Oberlin is an interesting one. We were there for admitted student days; he went to two classes, chatted with several math professors, listened to a welcome talk from the president. We dropped him off for his overnight visit Friday night, and I had the impression that he was feeling very pro-Oberlin. I spied on him by checking his phone's location at midnight and he was still out somewhere, not in the dorm. The next morning I texted and my very introverted, historically somewhat anti-social kid told me to take my time getting there to pick him up. I thought that was going to be it; he was going to tell us he was set on Oberlin. But it turned out that he'd actually spent all his time the night before with two other prospective students while his host stayed in his room (to be fair, he had a broken leg and probably wasn't up for wandering campus for hours) and that a big topic of discussion had been their hesitations about Oberlin (interestingly, both of them also have Macalester on their short lists, and one also has Hamilton). So what I gather is that he DOES really love a lot about Oberlin, but that might not be enough to overcome his concerns. My husband graduated from Oberlin, and I lived there for a year, and I think his concerns are valid and the same criticisms I had of the school, coming there after having just graduated from a big public U in the 90s. I don't have a good sense of how different things would really be at either of the other small LACs he's looking at, though. Oberlin gets the press because it has the reputation already. There's also a ton to like about Oberlin; a bigger student body and the conservatory mean there's always something going on on campus. He really enjoyed the math class he sat in on on and liked the profs he spoke with. It's the closest to home and the best financial aid package. He flies up to see Hamilton in a week and a half. He's flying by himself, but his grandfather is going to meet him at the airport and go with him on the visit. Hamilton doesn't offer overnights except to students traveling alone, but he's going to e-mail and see if they'll make an exception. But he'll at least get to sit in on a class or two and talk to a math professor (his grandfather knows one there and can make an introduction; he did that at Oberlin, too, and it was very helpful). We saw Hamilton last summer, but without many students around. I'm very interested to see what he thinks of it after a revisit. If there's one school out of all our visits that it seems like he did feel an immediate connection with, it was Hamilton. But an empty campus full of gorgeous buildings is very different from one with all the actual people he'd be living with for four years. I really think he has three great choices and that he could be happy at any of them. But, of course, it feels huge and overwhelming to him. It's funny--Hamilton is the only school out of his original top 4 favorites that he got into, but it's definitely not a shoo in now. I just want to know where he's going to be next year already! But I'm not going to find that out for at least a couple more weeks it looks like. Okay that got long--who else has a kid still trying to decide? Are we the only ones? I need commiseration!

Thanks! the music school where he's taking lessons lists preparing for theory exams as something they do on their website, which was one of the reasons I picked it....but so far there's not much evidence that they actually do all the stuff they list on the website

Thanks! He's auditioning for youth orchestra this spring....their website used to have a list of instructors, but they redid the site and I can't find the list anymore (there was only one clarinet person, IIRC)....but I can e-mail them to ask. I've looked for summer programs, but we're going to be on a trip all of June and I haven't been able to find anything that happens in July. I'll keep looking, though--my husband is a teacher, so we can go wherever in the summer and turn a music camp into a family trip.

Thank you! I do realize Oberlin would be a long shot, and I don't mean to imply that it's Oberlin or he'll be miserable (if I didn't already know enough to caution him against getting a dream school in his head, going through the college application process with my oldest this year would have taught me!) He did audition into advanced band (3rd of 4 levels) in the homeschool band program he plays in after a summer of learning clarinet on his own, so I think the piano gave him a good head start--but aside from that we don't have a lot of context for evaluating him yet. He's auditioning this spring for a local youth symphony and will be adding woodwind ensemble on to the concert band and jazz band he's doing now in the homeschool program (keyboards in jazz band, but I'm trying to talk him into switching to clarinet in there), so....year of music! We'll see at the end of it how much progress he's made and whether he still says he wants to do nothing but music 🙂 . The instructor knows he's interested in a music major, but I gather that most of his students are younger and it's not something he has much experience with. I was wondering whether cold calling music professors was a thing to do (we're just outside of Atlanta, so there are a number of colleges within striking distance). I'll get on that!

My 9th grader is thinking about majoring in music, so I'm scrambling to figure out what we need to be doing to prepare him for that. He plays clarinet and piano, but would be focusing on clarinet in college. He's had the same piano teacher for 4+ years now, but just started private clarinet lessons a couple of months ago (and has only been playing clarinet for about 10 months). His clarinet teacher is the guy who happened to be teaching at a local music school....he seems fine for the most part, but I don't think he has much/any experience preparing kids for college auditions and all that sort of thing, so I'm thinking of trying to find someone else. But I'm completely at a loss as to how to find The Best Clarinet Teacher (even though I've googled "how to find the best clarinet teacher" 😂). I don't even know where to start. When I try to look online I just get stuff like local music stores that have a whole mess of instructors listed; I feel like there must be some word of mouth kind of networking that I don't know about. Help? ETA: we're at Oberlin right now for admitted student days with my oldest, so we did a conservatory tour with my 9th grader. He loved it and says he can't think of anything he'd want to do except music. I'm so out of my element with music that I have no idea if Oberlin is a realistic thing to hope for or not....but I want to give him the best shot I can.

Ours have ranged from very similar to NPC estimates to significantly lower. None of the actual FA packages have been more than we were expecting based on NPC.

We were at Macalester today and thought about going to the closest ice cream place....the website said it was still closed for winter 😞

Oxford is indeed very tiny, but everyone goes to the Atlanta campus after 2 years....of course, 2 years sounds like a lot longer when you're 17 or 18 than it does to old folks like me 😉 Sounds like she has a lot of good options, but that's probably not much consolation when you feel like your THIS close to your dream school 😞

If the gift is to the parents, it's not reportable on FAFSA, but it is on the CSS Profile, so Yale will know about it. I'll say that we get a substantial cash gift from my in-laws every year, which we reported to Profile schools, and most of them seem not to have taken it into account in making their financial aid calculations. In fact, at one school I noticed they didn't have his Pell Grant listed on his financial aid award. When I e-mailed them to tell them, they told me they'd added the amount I reported as gift income on the Profile onto his FAFSA. I explained why I hadn't included it there, and they agreed they'd made a mistake and took it off, and the financial aid award went up as if that money didn't exist at all, even though I'd very explicitly told them that we received it. All of this to say that it's possible Yale would not hold money given to the parents against the student, but it's not a sure thing. 3 out of 4 needs met schools seem not to have included it in our case. It was a very pleasant surprise. Another option is for the grandparents to offer to pay back any loans taken out after the student graduates. ETA: another option is to wait to give any money until second half of junior year, then it shouldn't affect financial aid calculations.

DS applied to (and/or we visited) a number of the schools on your match list: Macalester, Oberlin, Grinnell, Vassar...he applied to all and was accepted at all except Grinnell. We'll see Macalester and Oberlin next week, so I'll have more to report then--my husband graduated from Oberlin, and I lived there for 9 months after I graduated/during his senior year--but my information is a couple of decades out of date. One thing that strikes me is that these schools are all over the map in terms of political leanings and culture--you can't get much more opposite than Oberlin and Liberty University. Is that the kind of thing that's going to be a big factor in her decision?

It's a no from Harvard--not a shocker 🙂 . Onward to decisions! We leave tomorrow for our Macalester/St. Olaf/Oberlin road trip--SO MUCH DRIVING! And then we're about to buy him a plane ticket to go see Hamilton and Vassar (although Vassar's financial aid package came in way worse than any of the others; my husband's going to call tomorrow and see if they ever consider matching offers from peer schools--if they don't they may be out). His grandfather who lives in New Hampshire is going to meet him at the airport in Albany and go with him to the colleges.

Great news! So happy for her!!!

We have one "why not give it a shot?" Ivy out there (Harvard), but we're thinking of that as about the same as checking lottery numbers tonight 😉 . Good luck to everyone who's still waiting!

😂 DS keeps wishing there were some kind of market for swapping acceptances: "I'll trade you my Vassar for your Grinnell."

How exciting! I love good surprises!!!

Last night he read that math is the 10th most popular major at Vassar, so maybe it's mathier than he thought? At any rate, he suddenly got way more into it as soon as they accepted him 😉 . We thought we had found a good time for him to go up and see it and Hamilton again and then realized he has a physics test (dual enrollment) that day. He has a 100 average in the class, and the prof drops the lowest test....but he has one more test between now and then and won't know how he did on that until too late to buy plane tickets. Argh! So complicated!

So definitely not just our imaginations that it's way harder for kids today; that article says that a survey of 51 schools shows an average drop in acceptance rates of 37% between 2006 and 2018. yikes!

Oh, I hate that for her (and you)! Sending all my good thoughts that NYU comes through for her (and/or Dartmouth)!

DS accepted at Vassar. That's the last one except Harvard (which we're definitely not expecting an acceptance from!) so it's very nice to end on a high note after a couple of weeks with lots and up and downs 🙂 Now for visits and re-visits and decisions!