The counselor portion of the common app (including the counselor letter and transcript) is submitted to all schools as a single version. The student portion can be tailored per university, but not the high school portion.

Oy. I hope they know what they're doing financially then. Do have them run the price calculators anyway. Hopefully at least they start to realize that just because it's the same FAFSA everywhere it won't be the same price everywhere. If her state has state U's with good honors programs, try to have her put those on the list as affordable backups to a big-name big-price school.

In this case, the most important things are to run net price calculators first, and to apply to multiple schools so you can compare financial aid offers. Some forms of financial need "show up" better on the financial aid formulas and others just don't.

The early decision pool has a higher percentage of kids with special hooks: recruited athletes, children of alumni/donors, minority students who won a free visit fly-out trip and were given the sales pitch on early admissions. I don't know how to figure out how much of an advantage ED is for the 'nice well-rounded kid.'

My oldest graduated with a degree in art and theatre. Her dream jobs would be in either lighting or set carpentry ... but the industry is completely gone. She is back home and unhappy. She misses her college friends but doesn't know how to reach out to them for "real" conversations versus the superficial social media stuff. I'm trying to be patient and let her adjust to her situation. It's so hard.

It's a sleazy question to ask... and was for a time considered unethical, but the Department of Justice somehow labeled NACAC's Code of Ethics as anti-competitive so 'the rules are off' now. https://www.chronicle.com/article/Where-Else-Are-You-Applying-/233626

Just assume that you didn't win the outside scholarship. The typical practice is to just notify the winners. With that out of the way, are the remaining choices good schools or are you not sure? Do you have a reasonable gap-year plan? What will your child be doing to keep busy? I would not make too many decisions based on BA or BS in computer science -- there really isn't that much of a difference in most cases. I wouldn't even make too big of a deal as far as majors go, since your son has changed his mind about majors pretty wildly. Neither kid of mine majored in exactly what they said they were going to study on their college applications. However, make sure the schools are affordable and offer a variety of suitable opportunities before you commit. (My kid who changed from geology to engineering was very fortunate to get it, that major change is very difficult at her university.)

So, if you really want to make sure that a school will be around - use your state university system! There may be cuts, but they won't close 'em completely. Even if they shuttered an underused campus, it's easier to transfer credits within the same state university system than between private colleges. As far as private colleges go, kids can tell when a college they chose actually stinks -- if the freshman retention rate is terrible, or enrollment has dropped significantly even before this event, don't go there.

No refund on winter quarter housing, but we can break the housing agreement for spring with no penalty. (Spring has not been billed yet). If you broke winter quarter housing agreement early when they went online, you get refund on the 'early termination' penalty and pro-rated refund on the meal plan. Tuition for online classes is the same as it was for in person.

The Profile has a section for special circumstances, but the FAFSA does not. If, when you file your FAFSA, the relevant tax return significantly overstates your current income, you will have to file an appeal with the financial aid office of each school to which your child applies.

Depends on the size of the gap between undergrad and grad school. Someone who worked and wants to bring that experience back to class discussions is a more attractive grad student candidate over someone fresh out of undergrad with the same GPA.

My comment about timeline was not related to any particular year. When building your college list application deadlines and response times for admission and financial aid packages should be noted. My kid who applied to Arizona had that as her only safety - application opened in August, admission and automatic merit awarded three weeks after application complete. So before the end of September we knew we didn’t need any more safety schools (unless she wanted them more than Arizona). When your list is short, having rolling decision and/or early action schools helps reduce your risk: if for some reason decisions aren’t going your way, there is time fix your essay etc and apply elsewhere.

What are the admissions timelines like? If there are rolling admissions schools in your list, then you can have an answer and a merit scholarship early in the season, it can save you having to write applications later. However, if all four of these are "tell ya in the spring" you are in real trouble. I don't see any thing that is a true financial and admissions safety in your description.

My kid visited both - Arizona was her favorite (felt more friendly), and has an excellent business school. ASU better meets your 'urban environment' criteria, though. ASU felt too urban and too huge to my DD: the extra 10,000 students made for a more "you're a number here" visitor experience. Even just the honors college at ASU is larger than many liberal arts colleges.

An Obamacare healthcare navigator may be able to help. These are people trained to assist difficult-to-insure people. https://localhelp.healthcare.gov/#/

I dunno. My "spiky" kid (mars, mars, mars), also someone who didn't want to "brag about herself" on her essay and quite frankly gets that from her mom so maybe I didn't brag about her enough in her counselor letter -- was rejected/waitlisted by her reach schools and wound up at her state U after she backed out of going too far from home. (Arizona is amazing for planetary science and she got merit there.) She's getting the challenge she needs from her participation in L'SPACE, has a good but not amazing GPA (due to so many hours of her time being spent on L'SPACE) and being lost in the crowd in big classes, and I wonder all the time whether her insistence on doing thing "her way" rather than "the way that gets you into elite schools" held her back. I don't know. We turned down the waitlist primarily because we hadn't been able to visit that particular school and we are also in the "don't want to pay that PROFILE EFC" bracket which made it harder to say "if you take me off the waitlist I'll definitely come." So, she's getting great research experience via NASA (her team won the proposal writing contest, so they've got a 10,000 research budget to spend this year to continue when the rest of the class is done with the program!), but she hasn't joined a lab at her big state U and she hasn't connected with any professors enough to feel comfortable asking them to write a letter of recommendation for summer programs. I feel like she's learning a ton, but not maybe not getting the most out of the school she's attending. You're right to be concerned. Lewelma's advice that finding that "story" or "hook" is critical and DON'T BE SHY about it is on point. Good luck.

Utah is pretty good. No experience with the other two. In state, consider Western, which is the backup school for a lot of UW "couldn't get CS" students who don't want to go to WSU. Agree NAU is worth a peek. U of Arizona isn't in WUE, but does give good merit, attracts a number of Washington students each year, and has trip clubs to the nearby mountains as well. Not as "mountainy" as NAU, though.

I see three, possibly four options here: 1. Go to Brooklyn college to study physics and music. Get a job that is not as an engineer afterwards. He should look into building as many computer, business, or data science skills as he can with his electives to improve his starting salary prospects, but that might be hard with the music minor taking up a lot of his elective slots. 2. Explore other more career-focused majors at Brooklyn 3. Commute to the engineering program. But, an hour and forty minute commute each way is really hard for a student. That's over three hours per day you can't study or cook or make music or do laundry... 4. Could he live on campus at the engineering program with a basic federal student loan? An hour and forty minute commute isn't bad if it's just once a week to come home for the weekends and make music and go to his usual church, and two years of the direct student loans is not a terrible burden for an engineer. Anyway, my advice is to just keep brainstorming options for now. You don't sound like you're ready to decide yet.

Wishing her the best success in her new college! Happy rest-of-summer to you both!

Command hooks. Bags or collapsible boxes to pack everything in.

There are structured gap year programs for kids who need structure, but you can also roll your own. A trip to Europe would be awesome but putting a kid and a backpack on a plane overseas is probably even more scary than going off to a local college. I'm guessing you suggested that because it might look good on a college application? Don't think that way; think about how you want your child to learn and grow over the gap year instead. Kids don't mature just with the passage of time; they mature with being nudged out of their comfort zones into new experiences. Does he need to work to gain real-world experiences in some field, or to work to earn the most money towards tuition? Does he need to live outside the home for a while and see the challenges of independence? Does he need to volunteer with the less fortunate to understand how lucky he is? Are there specific "soft skills" which are not college-ready? What situations cause people to develop those skills?

I didn't do the counselor part of the Coalition app. Sorry. It has had another year to shake out, so hopefully they have answers for your questions now. I found Common App customer support quite responsive. The trick is to start early before "crunch time" hits.

Pitt is a great school: You can always check for apartments within walking distance and/or people scrambling for last minute roommates. Good luck with the SLU transfer credits and making a final choice.

@whitestavern Thinking of you! How's the school hunt going? I hope your DD ends up with some good choices!

All of your college testing questions answered here: https://www.compassprep.com/compass-guide/ Compass Prep updates this at least a couple times a year with what schools require which tests each admissions cycle. Their testing blog is also very helpful.