dualmindblade [he/him]
I have just skimmed this so maybe it’s answered, but seems the entire thing boils down to:
Storm-0558 acquired an inactive MSA consumer signing key
How?
I still sometimes struggle to pay bills and have a family to support but I’d burn 5% of my income for life just to have the knowledge that this is a thing erased from my brain
Now do the rest of the content
I guess the main thing is just how little aid they actually got and the fact they didn’t even get admitted to one of the schools applied to. #1 ranked student in class despite doing it on hard mode (taking as many AP classes as possible), got 4s and 5s on all but one exam, excelled in vocal performance, 2 year all stater there, talented essayist, very good SAT score, and legitimate volunteer work junior and senior year. I think to get a really good package nowadays you have to specifically optimize for it, padding out the volunteer experience with bs, doing multiple sports or other school based extracurriculars, and possibly lying through your teeth on the essay…
This shouldn’t have been a surprise because you can look that stuff up but it’s quite the change from my day, wish I’d realized how lucky I was to land what I did because I then proceeded to throw it away by smoking 24/7 instead of going to class
I don’t want to sound bitter, I think higher education should be free regardless of how good a student you are, and it very much isn’t, they’re lucky to not be taking on a lot of debt and I’m grateful for that. Also I definitely wouldn’t encourage them to do anything different if I could go back in time because they would have been pretty miserable.
Schools were kinda random, although UT is the town university for me, applying to that one was partly my ex pushing them to stay close to home, and I believe that was the factor that won out over the other school that would have been affordable. The program was the other main factor, a lot of schools got rejected based on that. Also my side of the family has some university employees who were able to make suggestions. Round mid-late junior year they’ll be getting a trees worth of shiny pamphlets in the mail and tons of emails assuming they’ve interacted with, say, college board (corporation that administers the SAT), so I think a few caught their eye, suggestions from family, schools close by, a couple chosen based on being in cool cities (Minneapolis, Chicago, Seattle), and whittled down from there based on fit/culture/program. They really took the reigns for the most part, a stark contrast from me at that age, so I didn’t have to do a lot of pushing, I don’t expect it will be so easy for the other two kids lol.
I guess it all depends on their goals and what type of program, mine has a somewhat different philosophy from the average student, not interested in money it seems but does want to make a positive impact on the world. I actually tried to shield my kids from the finer details of my ideology, wanted them to form their own opinions, but they seem to be communists anyway lol. If your only goal is to learn, imo what college should actually be for, you can do that just about anywhere. Especially for undergrad, there are just a glut of people who are qualified to teach these classes and enthusiastic about doing so pretty much regardless of the subject.
The driving thing really reminds me of my kid, tons of anxiety around that and we had to push to get them to drive, it really was almost a necessity for practical reasons since public transport in texas is also terrible even in the big cities. Weirdly a lot of other kids at the school were the same way, I’d say about half of them were driving by graduation, not sure how it is in other areas but it’s eerie. Idk, the kids seem to understand things which I cannot, most people don’t see the world as fundamentally different than it was when they were 20 years younger but it really really is, it’s hard but I tell myself to err on the side of trusting their instincts.