high school girl doesn't get to be valedictorian

[PeppyGPhiB]

Originally Posted by epchick

Yeah that is what I had figured in the first place, but I was told to ask anyways. So when I called up the university, I make it crystal clear the situation. I mean being a HS senior, I was unaware of how financial aid worked. I asked to speak to the director and I assumed that is who they had transferred me to, so I pretty much took their word as truth. Looking back on it, I wish I had applied at more places, then I would have had more schools (more financially affordable schools) to fall back on.

Also, I talked to my mom about this yesterday and she told me that in the letter the Dean had sent, he said that even if I just put myself down, that the 'scholarships' would have been taken away from me anyways because my parents make too much money. FYI: My mom works as a teacher and my dad works in maintenance at the Post Office. They struggle to stay financially afloat, but suuure they are able to pay $38,000+ a year.

Well, I can tell you flat-out that's not true. Pepp's scholarships are mostly merit based...or for kids from the Church of Christ. The rest of the gift aid is grant aid, which is based on financial need AND merit. But you should think about this: though your parents may not be well off, they probably are compared to many other students that come from a single parent household.

I'm not sure why the Dean of Seaver would be getting involved in financial aid matters, anyway; that's not his job at all. The financial aid office has counselors assigned to students and prospective students. I don't know who you were transferred to when you called, and I don't know all the specifics of your case, but I can tell you that your experience is a 180 from what I experienced as a prospective student and student. True story: my mom was so appreciative of my financial aid counselor that she brought her a plant on Family Weekend my freshman year. And just the other day she asked me if I knew if she still worked there!

[DSTCHAOS]

Originally Posted by epchick

Yeah that is what I had figured in the first place, but I was told to ask anyways. So when I called up the university, I make it crystal clear the situation. I mean being a HS senior, I was unaware of how financial aid worked. I asked to speak to the director and I assumed that is who they had transferred me to, so I pretty much took their word as truth. Looking back on it, I wish I had applied at more places, then I would have had more schools (more financially affordable schools) to fall back on.

Also, I talked to my mom about this yesterday and she told me that in the letter the Dean had sent, he said that even if I just put myself down, that the 'scholarships' would have been taken away from me anyways because my parents make too much money. FYI: My mom works as a teacher and my dad works in maintenance at the Post Office. They struggle to stay financially afloat, but suuure they are able to pay $38,000+ a year.

This financial aid and scholarships business is very tricky. It's almost a matter of "who you know" and how much information you have access to.

It is annoying when an official says something inaccurate and then you must bear the cost of believing the person knew what she/he was talking about.

[srmom]

DANG - that girl is one bright cookie!!!

The scholarship that she won was not for being the val, it is for that PLUS all the other things that she brought to the table. Being one of 6 students to win this scholarship is a HUGE honor, expecially since there are thousands of incoming freshmen at UT every year. In her case - forget about the one year scholarship they give to some vals - she won the jackpot!!!

The University of Texas notified the 16-year-old girl Wednesday that she was one of six students awarded a Dedman Distinguished Scholarship, which awards $13,000 per academic year for four years and includes supplemental funding for study abroad programs.

Plus, according to the article, she had these other offers to boot -

In addition to UT, Southern Methodist University, Rice University and the University of Texas at Dallas offered Anjali full or near-full scholarship packages. The Texas Education Agency has also awarded her a $3,000 scholarship, Mr. Datta said.

Good for her!!! Now where can my kids sign up?

[alum]

Munchkin is absolutely correct. Schools want geographic diversity as well as ethnic and socioeconomic diversity. I interview DC area prospectives for my alma mater. These kids' resumes are amazing. My sibling is about to move to the midAtlantic region from the Upper Peninsula. This will make my sib's kid's Dartmouth dream so much more difficult. However, the kids will now have a much vaster choice of AP classes, ECs, etc than at the UP high school. It will just be tougher to stand out amongst the competition in our area.


In terms of merit-based scholarships, look at colleges' 25-75 ranges. If your child has scores that supercede the 75 percentile scores for the SAT/ACT, that is an initial indicator that s/he may be in the running for merit aid at that school. Be aware that not all schools offer merit-based scholarships. Most of the top 20 research unis and the top 10 LACs only offer need-based as they do not need to entice top students with merit $.

That being said, if your family DOES qualify for FA and the aid package at one school is less generous than another in terms of how they meet the COA need, you can show schools best offers from other schools and see if they can match it.

[Senusret I]

^^^When I was choosing between Hampshire College and Georgetown, I really really hoped Hampshire could match Georgetown's aid.

They were virtually identical, except GU had a special grant for DC residents that replaced my need for work-study. Hampshire didn't/couldn't cough up the 5 Gs.... Georgetown it was.

I wouldn't trade it for anything, but I'll always wonder.

ETA: GU didn't really have merit-based aid, but did have these super-secret grants that the needy could use to replace loans and work-study with grants.

[Munchkin03]

Originally Posted by alum

Munchkin is absolutely correct. Schools want geographic diversity as well as ethnic and socioeconomic diversity. I interview DC area prospectives for my alma mater. These kids' resumes are amazing. My sibling is about to move to the midAtlantic region from the Upper Peninsula. This will make my sib's kid's Dartmouth dream so much more difficult. However, the kids will now have a much vaster choice of AP classes, ECs, etc than at the UP high school. It will just be tougher to stand out amongst the competition in our area.

This is a little off-topic, but when you interview, do you see that certain kids just don't stand out, and you can almost predict what ECs they're going to have, what they major in, etc? I've only been interviewing for a few years now, but I can almost predict which ones are going to get in, and which ones aren't.

Again off-topic...did you find the Alexandra Robbins book to be pretty true of what it's like for kids at top DC schools? It's definitely true of my hometown kids, but nowhere near what it's like for these NYC kids. Scary! Unless I have a lot of money, I don't think I can raise my kids in NYC and expect them to follow in my footsteps.

[alum]

I see many cases of grand slam scores (800s on all sections of SAT and the SAT II subject exams), perfect GPAs loaded with APs in the transcripts. CMU is somewhat techy so instead of getting the kids doing community service in 3rd World countries, we get the kids who are holding patents in their names for some piece of hardware/software they developed. The student who is applying to CFA is many times already a professional performer with the appropriate licensure. Because CMU's individual schools are so different, the applicants are very different. The commonality is that many have already achieved something in their intended field of study. I have to keep that in the forefront of my mind. The applicant has to apply to a college within the university. They can't choose all the colleges, but they can choose more than one. You see a lot of crossover with our engineering school and CS school.

Do you interview mostly Westchester kids? How do Stuyvesant and Bronx High School of Science do as opposed to kids from non-magnet publics vs. the kids from Dalton et. al.? My Manhattan cousins went to boarding school in New England. I think I would do the same for my kids if I lived in NYC and had the financial means to do so.

Although I thought Robbins was way off the mark with her sorority book, she did seem to hit the nail on the head with The Overachievers. I recognized a lot of students and their parents in that book. Acceptance by Susan Coll is a fictional account of a couple of students from a Montgomery County high school. It's somewhat amusing and fairly accurate despite it being fiction.