Reply to thread

Message: [QUOTE="upstater, post: 4279280, member: 153"] When tuition was cheaper, people never used to ask 16 year olds what they were going to do, what they were going to major in. Now students are forced into it. Amazes me to think I went to university without an idea of what I'd be doing, I took a variety of classes and gravitated to what I liked most. It was a more pure learning experience. For those with children younger than HS seniors, there are indeed some tricks to the admissions games, but it's mostly for people of means. 1. Private colleges need to lock in their full payers quickly, so if you have an athlete or artist, make contact with coaches or fine arts faculty early so they can send your kid to the special admissions pile (which is done by summer before senior year). This is the easiest way to be admitted for those who don't have grades or scores. 2. If your kid doesn't have high SATs, apply test-optional but do NOT fill out a FAFSA form for aid-- this signals to the schools that you are willing to pay full price. 3. Do not fill out a FAFSA form if you're rich and can afford to pay full price. 4. Show the school you have a very high level of interest in the school in a variety of ways. Go on school tours, take interviews at the school, do an interview locally with alumni. Visit the school webpage frequently and investigate the department you want frequently (the schools track your visits, they know you're visiting, they know your level of interest). Also, click and read every single email they send you--they know whether you are reading their emails. 5. Apply early decision: schools like to lock in their full payers early so they know exactly how much they can dole out in aid in the spring. For the rest of us who don't have $360k to spend on each of our multiple kids, do #4 and then cross your fingers. One more for those needing aid at private schools, go to the DOE database and look up the total amount of aid granted to incoming freshman, divide by the number of freshman. Then go to that same school's numbers for sophomores. Look up the same numbers: total aid / number of sophomores. Is there a great divergence between the average award to freshman and sophomores? If so, that school is practicing a bait-and-switch approach by bringing in freshman to game their acceptance rate, but in the ensuing years it's giving less money to continuing students. Totally unethical and disgusting, but it happens. If the 40% of students admitted to Boston U. were testing optionals last year, they did NOT receive any financial aid: this means that there will be a lot of pretty rich kids making up the class. Maybe they were already there so BU can justify it since this is what they were doing anyway, but now the kids without the scores won't drag down the average SAT. [/QUOTE]

Verification: First name of men's bb coach