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[quote=ABQMom] If your child does not get a merit scholarship, it does NOT mean he did try his best in high school. The most selective schools, including the Ivies, MIT, and Stanford, do not offer merit scholarships.
Just wanted to clarify that quote attributed to me wasn't actually by me.
Just an aside - while those colleges may not offer merit scholarships, there are organizations separate from colleges that do offer merit-based scholarships that can be used at whichever university or college a student enrolls in - my dh is on the board of one of those organizations that offers scholarships to graduating high school seniors in our area.
I don't know what it's like now, but in 1986, I tried to fund an education at MIT with those type of scholarships. I applied for dozens, and got four, I think. They were generally prestigious scholarships, but they didn't total as much as one semester's tuition. Then MIT just reduced my financial aid by the amount of the scholarships, so it really didn't help me at all.
I went to Berkeley for a year, then transferred. Once my parents had two kids in college, instead of one, they could afford the amount that MIT wanted them to contribute (also, they'd been able to observe me being miserable at Berkeley for a year).
Then MIT just reduced my financial aid by the amount of the scholarships, so it really didn't help me at all.
Yep, same thing happened to me. The college reduced my grant, not my loan. I was pretty angry about it. The money was supposed to help ME, not the college! The scholarship people were going to give me money every semester for four years. I wrote them after I got a new financial aid package that reduced the college grant and told them to give the scholarship to someone else who really needed it.
Well, I was being a bit snarky about Meyers. True, if you measure intelligence by ability to make a buck producing bad art--then she's a genius. I agree that it's a skill. But if I were a scholarship organization trying to prove how erudite my recipients turned out to be, I'm not sure I'd point to her in particular.
The equity in your primary residence does not affect your expected contribution. The calculator at http://npc.fas.harvard.edu/ has a box for "real estate equity", but the accompanying note says "This should represent the fair market value of your ownership share of any real estate (excluding your primary residence) not already reflected in the Business/Farm section, less your share of any debts."
Harvard says at http://www.fao.fas.harvard.edu/icb/icb.do that "We do not consider home equity or retirement accounts as resources in our determination of a family contribution, and aid packages do not include any loans."
My husband is supposed to retire in less than a year and is old enough to draw early social security now. There is no way we will be able to afford to take out a home equity loan when our 13 year old is ready for college. We have not been able to save much money for college because our son has medical issues, our house needed expensive repairs last year and our almost 14 year old car needed thousands of dollars of repairs which wiped out the little savings we had, and we live in a rural area where nothing is close to us so that means we have to use a lot of very expensive gas to go anywhere. I am also homeschooling my son and taking care of my elderly dad who lives next door which means I can't go out and get a job. My son will have difficulty working a part time job to help with college expenses because of his medical issues.
I absolutely have to find a way to get my son through college without leaving him in debt. He is saying now that he thinks he shouldn't go to college because of our finances. Because of his disabilities he will not be able to work at any job that requires any kind of physical endurance--even standing for more than 30 minutes is painful.
I don't know if he will be able to take the ACT or SAT that might qualify him for scholarships because he would have difficulty sitting and paying attention for that long in a very uncomfortable brace. There is only one chair in our house that he can sit in comfortably and even then he takes breaks and lies down in bed to get through the pain. If he takes the brace off, he has back pain after about 30 minutes. When you add in the dysgraphia it just looks like it would be very difficult for him to take such a long test.
Given his documented diagnoses, including his difficulties sitting for extended periods of time, your son would almost certainly qualify for accomodations on the ACT and SAT, including large block answer sheet (no bubbling!), frequent breaks, taking the test in short sessions across mulitple days, and use of a keyboard on the SAT writing section. He'd probably also get a private testing room, just because the frequent breaks and extended time would make it impractical to test him in the same room with students who didn't have the same accomodations, so any hesitancy you or he might have about making him look diferent in front of his peers shouldn't play into it. He's old enough that you should start applying now - it can take a few months to get accomodations approved, but for the SAT at least, once the accomodations are approved, the approval is good through the end of high school.
I want to point out that the only way he is guaranteed to not make the scores he wants on the SAT and ACT is if he doesn't take them. If he completely bombs the tests, well, then he needs to either figure out a way to do better the next time (you can retake the tests) or figure out another way to accomplish his goals and show what he can do. But not trying is a terrible approach, and a nasty habit to get into so young.
Lori H., it sounds like your son definitely has been exposed to the financial concerns faced by your family, which probably couldn't be helped. My mother was the oldest of a bunch and was needed to deal with things based on lack of money and parental illness as young as 11 or 12. I can tell you from being raised by her that these things stick with a person for a lifetime.
If you can take any advice people on this board give you (like aculady's very constructive advice) and any and all info gathered regarding scholarships and things, and go over it step-by-step with your son, it would help counteract what your son has internalized so far and help him re-visualize his dream to attend college in several years. I know it's easier for me to write this than for you to do it. Wish you luck...
About 2/3 through this video there is a profile of a man who is helping college students get the accommodations they need. Maybe watching videos like this will help change your son's view of what is possible.
