Good news / bad news
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Got a call last night from Daughter Number Two. She’s the one who’s spending her senior year at the State School for Smart Kids. No kidding, she’s taking a course in genetics which is going to net her something like 8 or 10 hours of college credit. (Not that I’m bragging, or anything…)
Her call last night was to tell us about the College Fair she attended. There were representitives from I-don’t-know-how-many different colleges and universities there. She’s been getting lots of different college brochures in the mail (though this is nothing new … Duke University has been courting her since she was in 8th grade - or earlier).
She is pretty sure at this point that she wants to attend Yale. The rep told her that, because our income is less than $80,000/year and her grades are as good as they are, she’d qualify for a FULL SCHOLARSHIP. Then he dropped the bomb on her… She really, really needs to go to Conneticutt to visit their campus. He made it sound as though by not doing that she could kiss off any chance of being accepted there.
Sure, that’s only a 1,300 mile trip - each way. What the heck? I checked a couple of places last night. Air fare for her and one adult would run about $275 per person. Throw in the cost of a hotel room, meals, transportation and the ever-present “miscellaneous expenses” and you’re talking around $1,000.
I don’t know anybody who could come up with even half of that money without taking out of of those payday loans that I used to get into so much trouble with.
I find it really ironic that they’re willing to finance her education because they see us as “low income” but then they tell us we have to pull $1,000 out of thin air or we might as well forget the whole thing.
It’s not fair to my daughter that her college education is so dependant on my (rotten) financial situation. Every parent wants their kids to do better than they did, but if everything is based on the parents’ situation, then HOW are the kids supposed to do that?
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