<p>Blueiguana, that is Huge! Congrats to your son. Can’t remember where Auburn fits on his list, but great school and what a cause for celebration to have that acceptance in hand. Cheers!</p>
<p>Heck every 11/1 deadline can be pushed back…can’t it? Gosh only two are rolling, so who’s in such a rush?? What gets me is the AP english teacher assigned the Common app essay as homework (I’m thinking GREAT!!! There’s some motivation from a different source!), he stays up til 12:30 (after EC practice until 9:30), I had cked in at 11 and he had two sentances! Two!! So he sets the alarm for 5 am and writes the rest and you know what? It was awesome, tears in my eyes as I hand it to him off the printer. He has it in him, it just has to be yanked out. He has to churn out 2 more essays for differing prompts for a few apps. Then 3 more for an honors college app (luckily that has until 11/30).</p>
<p>Drinks all around!</p>
<p>Not every 11/1 deadline can be pushed back because some of these applications are scholarship applications with strict deadlines (rather than EA deadlines that could be missed and allow application for RD instead). For example, Morehead-Cain was due 10/1; National Merit, 10/1 at D’s school; Jefferson, 11/1. Some require more essays than Common App ones with supplements, and not all can be reused.</p>
<p>Send that pitcher of margaritas over. We spent a late night last night getting everything ready for the teachers who will be writing recs. Decided that maybe S will not get it all to his teachers by today and will give ourselves one more day to make sure everything is correct. Three schools out of his twelve do not use common app. One of those schools wants a letter of rec, does not supply a form and states it will not condsider more than one letter of rec “do not send more”. It also states that this letter MUST be sent with school transcript or it will not be considered. Now I am nervous we missed others instructions like this. I now undertand how the billing folks at medical offices feel with all these different instructions and dos and don’ts. It is a wonder the GC’s can keep it all straight.</p>
<p>Congrats to BI’s S!!! And glad to read your D nailed her audition, MOSB! OMom- I am jealous, your older S will have a great year. </p>
<p>As for the summer, S would love to go to Ireland and we may indulge him, figuring it may be our last trip as a family with him. He will have to work though. He should be able to get a job working at a local camp but it is only for 8 weeks so we may have him look for something else PT or an entirely new job that will give him more weeks.</p>
<p>Congrats to BI and MOSB. It’s nice to hear such good news.</p>
<p>Mamom: It is a big job getting all the LOR stuff organized and turned in. Then we have to hope that the teachers can keep it all straight and mail the letters on time. </p>
<p>My daughter had an application meltdown yesterday. She met with her English teacher to review 2 essays that she thought were ready to send. The teacher said that one “had potential” and the other needed a complete rewrite. Meanwhile she has several tests this week, it’s spirit week, and homecoming is Saturday. She has several November 1st deadlines and 2 rolling safeties that we’d like to get submitted. Ugh!</p>
<p>Today starts “spirit week” with homecoming on Fri. Ds is in the court and leader of the pep band, drum major of the marching band… So, although I might have gotten thru to him a bit after a talk last night, I don’t think it will stick given the nature of this week. Going to spend some time today realistically looking at those dates and which could, if necessary, slide. It’s funny, I made him take a Myers-Briggs personality test last year and basically our major communication/understanding problems with him can be explained in part that my dh and me have the complete opposite personality type. Doesn’t make it less frustrating, just makes the differences a little understandable. He has one task today, to get the $%%^&&K% transcript request forms from the GC. Let’s see if he can follow through on that!</p>
<p>Yesterday was a day off and my son was charged with working on applications. He did and now has 6 submitted but boy, the teacher and GC rec’s seem awfully cumbersome. I’m not sure our school will really have the teachers do them and not just send out the LOR’s that are on-file. Son was planning on using the common app. but so far either the schools don’t take them or they sent us a streamlined app that was easier to do then the common one.</p>
<p>Big Congrat’s to BI and MOSB!!</p>
<p>Momjr we had something similar. My son’s common app essay was done as far as we were concerned. He likes it, I like it, my friend who is a college prof likes it and his private counselor likes it. Apparently his counselor and another teacher read it and decided it needed significant rewriting. I think we may just ignore, cant please everyone or write by committee. But certainly this added tremendous stress. And my son lots of supplement essays to do, which have barely been started. Arggh.</p>
<p>On the Common App issue, it was not the common app at all. D started one school’s specific on-line app and didn’t finish it when the school went to the common app; that is what expires in two months.</p>
<p>Hi everybody, congratulations to mosb! love hearing your story of the audition. BI, gosh how wonderful it must be to have one school bagged! </p>
<p>to everyone else: i hear you. UT and momjr we too have had our essay meltdowns. there was a point i’ve written about here in early sept when my son thought his CA essays and his long essay to his ED school were done after several drafts but when he showed them to my cousin, once an admissions reader at harvard and yale, she told him she loved the topics but they all needed a rewrite. he was able to keep a lot of what he wrote but needed to restructure and take some out/add some in. that was a bad weekend. </p>
<p>now we’re dealing w/ the frustration of late teacher recommendations. they still haven’t submitted their letters to his rolling schools despite being asked last april and being given by hand and email the second week of school the list of early applications. my S worked hard, gave up homecoming weekend to finish those apps early, submitted them 2 weeks ago and they’re now just sitting at the admissions office b/c they’re not considered complete.</p>
<p>reading these posts makes me realize that this roller-coaster that my family is on is being played out in thousands of homes across the country. we’re all experiencing the highs/lows, the satisfactions and the frustrations. i really regret that the last year i have my son living w/ us has to be like this. i can’t wait for all the apps to be submitted and completed because I don’t think waiting for the decisions will affect my family like this prep period has. once it’s out of our hands, we’ll all chill.</p>
<p>Congrats to BI’s S and mosb’s D. Fantastic news on both. I am so relating to the procrastinating stories. D has time for everything but apps, and there is at least one EA that MUST get done by November 1st - it’s our only financial safety and if it’s not done in time, she’ll need to apply to state flagship which she says she definitely does not want to do. I told her yesterday that I am no longer going to be Nice Mom about this, and will be clamping down - tech week or no tech week. Lo and behold, she woke up sick this morning (legitimately sick) and I had to call her out from school. Tonight was scheduled to be press night for the school literary magazine she’s editor of; don’t know what’s going to happen with that (S is on the staff - so maybe he’ll substitute for her; now that would be interesting). I would feel so much better if D got just ONE application submitted. Hopefully she’ll sleep this bug off and be able to get back into things soon. Let’s see - tech week (she’s running sound for the fall play), literary magazine, homework, tests, college applications … which one is going to take priority? AACK!</p>
<p>D was ready to press Submit on the Common App this morning. We printed the app first to proof. Her ACT scores, and AP scores and subjects don’t print or show in print preview. We reentered and re-saved them, still nothing. Alos, a few other things (checked boxes, etc.) that show on the screen don’t show up. Help!</p>
<p>^ Can’t help on that one; is there a helpdesk you can call or email?</p>
<p>By the way, after Sunday’s essay meltdown, S2 stayed up late and wrote a new draft. It is much better–more emotion, voice, and coherence. I just don’t think he was used to someone saying that a draft was fatally flawed and there was no way to edit it into shape. So the meltdown may just be part of the journey.</p>
<p>Missypie - Just checked preview version of my S’s. Looks OK. Did you enter the dates as mm/yyyy and use drop down box for scores? Are you using the correct and updated Internet browser? Are errors listed on Signature page?</p>
<p>missypie, did you click the PDF Preview? Don’t go to “File/Print/Preview” on your web browser. That’s different. Also, if you could, use a standard browser (MS IE, for example). Sometimes other browsers don’t work well with PDF.</p>
<p>missypie, we used IE and looked at the pdf preview and everything did look ok. Some of the descriptions of her activities had gotten cut off - so she went back and edited them to be shorter so they would fit. Has she been hitting the “Save and Next” button on each page? I found that once D had made some changes, but just continued to the next page using the left navigation tree, without using the Save and Next button. So, no changes were being saved.</p>
<p>While we are on the common app, question about listing the scores. Should one list the scores here on the common app, even though you are sending the official score transcript? Would it be a red flag if you didn’t list them? Also, D did take SAT IIs, but was not planning to submit these since most of her schools don’t require them if you have taken the ACT with writing. Is this ok? She only listed her AP scores in that section.</p>
<p>Congratulations to mosb and blueiguana! Great to hear the good news! We are making progress here - slow, but are making progress. Getting the recommendations from the teachers seems to be the worst thing to coordinate! She added the teachers’ email addresses to the common app - so they must have received an email - but so far, we can’t see any updates from them. Apparently, they said they would do this online, but according to the GC, this cannot be done online (same GC says he has never looked at the common app!!!). Ugh…hoping D can straighten this out soon with all of them (before Nov 1st!!)</p>
<p>It’s so insane here right now. S just handed in his IB extended essay rough draft on Monday, plus an English paper; big IB Math essay due this coming Monday. His class is going through an emotional crisis (death of a classmate). He has a brand new guidance counselor…bad enough that this is a public school with many 100s of kids per each counselor. So, S is sort of navigating the Common App on his own with my help, and we are pretty confused (what parts do you mail in, whidh do you do online, can you do both?? We hope we are doing this right). </p>
<p>The whole GC thing…seems S is so behind the 8-ball coming from a school with a situation like this.</p>
<p>I’m pretty sure the teacher recommendations for CA can be done online, although ours still shows “pending.” The paperwork from our counseling office indicates the student is supposed to check with the teacher to see whether they prefer to mail it or do it online.</p>
<p>Congrats on the acceptance, blueiguana.</p>
<p>ShawD submitted her first application yesterday. They said they’ll tell her in about three weeks (and they said they’d accept her). If it works, tension should go away as it is one of her two first choice schools. With luck, the application to the second school should go out next week.</p>