Would love some thoughts and advice . . .
My S16 applied to 6 schools; 2 reaches (rejected), 3 matches (1 acceptance, and waiting on 2 others), 2 safeties (accepted), and one super-safety state flagship (accepted).
We are fortunate enough to not qualify for financial aid, and we have saved (and saved!) to be able to afford full freight at all of the schools on his list. While we love him completely, we didn't expect that he would receive much other than maybe token merit at the schools he applied to. We were wrong.
State flagship offered him a modest merit award, and the 2 safeties came in with what to us feels like giant awards (1 for $22K/year, the other for $25.5K/year). Holy cow. We self-toured one of his safeties, but don't really have a sense for the student community there. The other safety is close to home, so we'll visit at the end of the week.
So now, we're trying to figure out how much more his matches would be worth paying for vs. his safeties with merit. The one EA match is his sister's alma mater -- she loved it there, but not sure it's worth $100K more than a safety. We've visited the other 2 matches a couple of times, so we do have a better sense of them than the safeties. I think any of the match schools would be great fits for S16, but am not sure about the safeties.
S16 is flexible and practical, so is leaning toward picking a safety, but I don't want him making a decision that would make him miserable in order to save us $$. I've been doing as much research about his safeties as I can online, and there are some not-so-great comments about both, but then again, there are some (not as many, though) similar comments about my daughter's alma mater that don't sync up with what I know of the school.
If he loved one of the safeties, I'd be all for it, of course. He doesn't appear to be completely in love with any of the schools on his list, though.
Gaah.
↧