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Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC. For our last minutes today, your pre-D-Day calls. What do I mean by D-Day? Decision day for those of you who are high school seniors or parents of high school seniors because tomorrow is May 1st and you have to have decided where you're going to college next fall or where your kids are going to college. That joint family decision, are you still figuring it out? Have you figured it out? What's on your mind as you're making this decision maybe even at the last minute? 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692.
If you or your child is planning on attending college for the first time in the fall, have you made your decision yet? Maybe it's an easy choice if you got into your dream school and you have the funds figured out, but this time of year is also coming with a lot of disappointment and some issues in the news that are affecting people's plans. We did a whole segment recently on FAFSA, the debacle with the federal financial student aid form. We acknowledged that many schools are pushing their decision day back from May 1st after glitches in the Federal Student Aid form delayed a lot of the offers.
CUNY has extended its deadline to June 1st if you haven't heard that yet, Amherst and Purdue, May 15th. However, all the Ivys have kept May 1st as their decision day. This is kind of all over the map. How has the FAFSA situation affected your D-Day, decision day planning, and also with the protests on college campuses and the general environment on college campuses let's say since the fall; occupations, encampments, protests, attacks on students of one kind or another, Palestinian students to be sure and the perception of antisemitism and experience of antisemitism that many Jewish students are reporting?
All this fervor has crescendoed to this moment. Obviously, we were talking about it on the show in the first hour today, if you were listening. A lot of it came just as students were touring campuses, that's maybe juniors, prospective students coming and seeing this as part of your college tour experience, some of you going to admitted students weekend trying to convince you to accept that school, whatever schools offer of admission instead of some others and seeing encampments or whatever.
Has that affected your decision one way or another? 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692. For our last few minutes today, call or text with whatever school you or if you're the parent your child has decided to go to with this May 1st decision day still in effect for so many colleges and universities. If you had a choice of schools, what went into your decision? 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692. We'll take your calls right after this.
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Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC. All right, for our last few minutes, your call is from the front of the college application process. Call right in, you'll get right on because we only have a few minutes. Your quick takes on how you've been deciding if you or your child got multiple offers to go to college. For many of you, the May 1st deadline applies and that's tomorrow. Where are you going? Where's your kid going? 212-433-WNYC.
What went into the decision? Did the post-October 7th environment one way or another have anything to do with the decision about what kind of college campus and did the FAFSA debacle have anything to do with where you're going or who you're still waiting to hear from with respect to your financial aid offer? 212-433-WNYC, 433-9692. Miriam in Westchester, you're on WNYC. Hi, Miriam.
Miriam: Hi. Yes, my daughter's dream school was and maybe still is GW in Washington DC. We were very nervous about it after October 7th with what some protestors had put on the library building and everything. We felt like, okay, the administration had hopefully suspended those kids and taken control of the situation, so my child said yes. They got an early decision. Now we're terrified to send them there. The administration is doing nothing. It's complete anarchy on the campus.
It's not just the extreme antisemitism, it's harming the majority of the students. People can't study. They don't know if they'll have graduations for the kids. My child had gotten offers from places like Lehigh, Maryland, Boston College that are doing a much better job with this, and we have a lot of regret now in terms of sending her there.
Brian Lehrer: Can you change if you actually want to change?
Miriam: You can.
Brian Lehrer: You lose the deposit.
Miriam: Early decision is binding.
Brian Lehrer: Oh, it was early decision. Sorry, I missed that point. Yes, that's binding.
Miriam: It's binding, but it's not legally binding. Under the circumstances, I think, yes, one can change and lose the deposit. It's really hard that we chose the school for a lot of wonderful reasons and wanted-- Oh, sorry.
Brian Lehrer: Miriam, I'm going to go and get some other calls in here in our short amount of time, but thank you for laying that out. I imagine you're not the only family having that kind of conversation right now. Lisa in Brooklyn, you're on WNYC. Hi, Lisa.
Lisa: Hi. Thank you for taking my call. I basically think the system's broken right now for kids. Let's say your kid is in public school like mine versus a private school, we have to go on a grade system basis. That is just a public school system. A lot of [unintelligible 00:07:08] grade system basis, so by the end of their tenure in a private school, they might have a 4 or 4.5 average.
In public school, you can't just create an average. When you start applying to schools, you have the Common App. The Common App is new this year, and you end up competing with people who are applying to 20, 22 schools for their kids. They're not actually looking at the specific school and seeing if it's right for their kid. They just want to apply to many as they can.
Brian Lehrer: Lisa, I'm going to jump in for time. I hear your critique of the process. I see you told our screener your son applied to eight schools and what's the answer?
Lisa: We're waitlisted at one. He's waitlisted at one so then we reapplied to six more schools, and he's gotten into four and we're making a decision. Some schools have pushed the decision-making until May 15th, so we have a couple of weeks.
Brian Lehrer: Yes. What's the number one criterion that you're looking at at this point since you do have a decision to make?
Lisa: Financial aid and a great school that fits my son.
Brian Lehrer: Lisa, thank you very much, and good luck with that. Before we run out of time, we're going to get a take from a college counselor who's calling in. Dominique in Bohemia, New York. Dominique, I think you've been on before, right-
Dominique: I have, Brian.
Brian Lehrer: -so you could give us maybe a little update on what do you think has changed as this application season has gone on?
Dominique: Sure. I just wanted to jump in and just mention the prior caller. The Common App is not new, even the essay questions were not new this year. In reference to Miriam in Westchester, she can change her child's decision, but she should just know that the colleges then ding future students from [unintelligible 00:09:19] high school. I don't know if that's an issue, but they might want to take that into account.
Brian Lehrer: Yes, I guess the question is whether this year will be seen as special circumstances in that respect but unknown.
Dominique: Right. What I see in my practice is that generally-- I have a private practice called Crimson Coaching, and lots of kids got into their first choice schools; Pitzer, Carleton, Cornell, Barnard, but I also have worked with a fair number of students, older students coming out of the Israeli Defense forces over the years.
Brian Lehrer: We have 30 seconds left in the show, so get us right to the end of that story.
Dominique: Sure. As you can imagine, they are really rethinking their decisions to apply to Ivy League schools. The FAFSA has just been a nightmare for other students on the other end of the economic spectrum.
Brian Lehrer: Dominique, I'm going to leave it there. Thank you for those insights. That's The Brian Lehrer Show for today, produced by Mary Croke, Lisa Allison, Amina Srna, Carl Boisrond, and Esperanza Rosenbaum. Zach Gottehrer-Cohen edits our National Politics Podcast. Our intern this term is Ethlyn Daniel-Scherz. Megan Ryan is the head of live radio. We had Juliana Fonda at the audio controls. Stay tuned for All Of It.
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