I want to start this off with a big “Thank You” to everyone who has contributed to the wealth of information on these forums. I learned a lot from you all and hope maybe in the future someone else can learn from this post. I’ve purposefully kept it a bit light on details on the schools and ECs, in order to focus on the actual lessons learned during the process. Maybe others can add their lessons on to this.
So here’s how CC helped me guide my kiddo through the college application process:
1 – I came to accept that my amazing daughter is one of approximately 45,853 amazing kids who are graduating this year. And they all wanted to go to the same top schools. I learned about hooked kids, recruited athletes and pointy kids - and that she really wasn’t any of these. At first, it was hard to take, (“But my snowflake really is special!”) but I think it was for the best because it made both of us realize just how competitive admission was to top colleges and that she was going to have to work on it if she really wanted it.
2 – I’d heard of safety, match and reach schools, but it wasn’t until I dug through these forums that I really and truly came to understand what it meant to select them and how important the NPC was in picking which ones to apply to. The list of potential schools got shorter as D agreed to only apply to one school that was both an academic and financial reach where there was a remote possibility of a scholarship. No reason to spend time and money on schools that weren’t financially feasible.
3 – I was motivated to get a little more involved in research and guiding my D. I felt justified after learning about all the professional counselors, essay proofreaders, and tutors, etc. that people hire. Was also surprised that some schools even have helpful GCs (not ours!). I mostly just guided D, but I did get hands on for that @#! Zee Mee profile that one school wanted.She picked what pictures and artwork she wanted included, recorded a video, and I did the photographing of artwork and uploading of everything. She just had to type descriptions of everything. (Side lesson - I don't think it made a darn lick of a difference to have the ZeeMee profile.)
4 – I learned the importance of awards and recognition outside of school and passed that on to D. Painting was always a personal thing for D, but one day she told me she'd entered a competition outside of school. She also told me she was going to put more effort into MUN in order to win a delegate award. She was successful and it did give her something to report on her update from an ED deferral.
5 – This is probably the biggest impact on her acceptances – I was able to figure out how to help my child package herself. Research told me she was likely to get dinged for academic rigor. Throughout high school, she has taken a bunch of art classes (but never AP art), theatre classes, and study halls. She also had some really scattered ECs and I believed some of them would have been considered "padding." (A term I learned from CC.) I stressed quality over quantity when listing her ECs. She created a giant EC of "visual and performing arts" (with a nice write up mentioning how important the arts were in her life). She pared down the list of ECs to include only ones she had actually done something with and/or were in line with her intended field of study and showed that in the tiny space they give you for descriptions. It gave her application focus it otherwise might not have had.
6 – And probably the biggest impact on her future - Through these forums, I was introduced to schools that hadn’t previously been on my radar. Let’s face it, there are many good schools and programs out there that just don’t get the press that they deserve. One of those schools turned out to be a good fit for my D, and they awarded her a full ride.
One more I’ll add that is a lesson I learned the hard way that will actually help the next kiddo in line:
7 – I learned that by the beginning of Junior year, we should have had a plan for when to take ACT, SAT, etc. This is one area where we went wrong and I wished I’d found CC earlier in the process. Waited until Spring of Junior year to take the SAT for the first time. Heck, we didn’t even learn about the SAT IIs until the end of May Junior year. (Did I mention the school GC is no help?) This caused a scramble and undue stress when she had to sacrifice an SAT retake for the SAT IIs in order to meet the ED deadline.
Overall, it was a heck of a journey (that started with wanting to be an engineer, moved to only wanting a tiny LAC, to looking at a school in the SEC, a surprise love of an Ivy, a last-minute decision to get a minor in a language a lot of colleges don’t offer, and other twists and turns) and I can’t imagine we’d be at the same place without CC.
