<p>Not sure if this will work but someone asked me for a photo of the gingerbread house, this is not done but the main construction part is done so I posted these pics. [Pictures</a> by amandakayak - Photobucket](<a href=“Photo and Video Storage | Photobucket”>Photo and Video Storage | Photobucket)</p>
<p>amanda - That is one heck of a gingerbread house!! Real talent and dedication! So glad you got pictures. :)</p>
<p>Thanks Blue!! Not nearly done because this house sits on top a hill, down the hill leads to the little island with a boat dock. My 9 yr old has a ton of ideas of what to build the kayak from, but I still have to solve for the elevation issue. Took me around 3 hrs to draw the house plans. Nice to have a distraction from doing Profile, isn’t it? :)</p>
<p>Congratulations on new admissions.</p>
<p>madbean, I feel for you. We did that two years ago. We created an assembly line – 3 adults and one kid and each had to get an art portfolio and then later a homeschool portfolio.</p>
<p>mamom, to manage a number of acceptances, ShawSon created categories of schools after acceptances (he had quite a few because he applied to quite a few schools). Then, within each category, he only visited the top school in the category. Seemed to be a really good way to do things.</p>
<p>mamom: Congrats on the acceptance and hoping the deferral turns into an acceptance in the spring!</p>
<p>Will: Congrats! Maybe the school will come up with some FA that will make this one a possibility.</p>
<p>Amanda: I’m so impressed with your gingerbread house! thanks for sharing the photos! We do one each year at Thankgiving but it’s nothing as elaborate as yours. We’ve been doing one each year for the past 13 years or so. The first year my husband decided that it would be fun to film the production. I was a bit of a perfectionist and had a vision of what this thing was going to look like. Their vision had a lot to do with covering it with as much candy as possible. I can be heard in the background saying over and over, “not that way, do it this way.” Not my finest moment! Over the years, I’ve adjusted my standards and they’ve matured, so we’ve met in the middle somewhere between my vision and theirs. I’m just happy that they’re still interested in making one! I’d love to see a picture of your finished product.</p>
<p>Anyone a good Photo Shopper (is there such as word)? Maybe we can all send a picture of ourselves and a separate one of our senior to one person and someone can create a lineup or a collage of each. We can have a contest to see who puts the right ‘name’ to the right face. We can even throw in a few $$ each to make it more fun. Thoughts?</p>
<p>Thanks all! In our area, there is a gingerbread competition of sorts right after Thanksgiving and they display these amazing houses, this year there was a taj mahal - all covered in white fondant that was meticulous. I will post a few pics from that on photobucket - and you’ll see what I am working towards!!</p>
<p>Good news here - Cornell is done!!! :O</p>
<p>Shawbridge, I’m curious - what was your son’s category system for his colleges? Did the categories fall on traditional lines (size, location), or something more idiosyncratic?</p>
<p>Shawbridge–what schools’ art portfolios did your S submit? Did you feel they had an impact on his acceptances?</p>
<p>Amanda - Wow, as one who used to do elaborate gingerbread houses, I am impressed! </p>
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<p>great idea, unfortunately I am useless in that area. I am in though if someone else wants to put the id</p>
<p>Shaw- we definitely have to get a spreadsheet started with critical pieces of info. S’s list is made up of places he has already told us he will gladly attend, most of which he has already visited. He has two schools that he are his number 1. I know, but one is just a great LAC that has a great program in his major, other is a great school for his major. He says he will choose the LAC if he gets in. Our delemma is younger sis who will be in 6th grade next year. S has attended private school his whole academic career. If we are paying full boat at an expensive LAC we can’t pay for an expensive private for D without borrowing and we don’t want to borrow. Of course, with his high SAT scores if he had better grades S would be offered more merit. But, if wishes were fishes… So we don’t want to lay the guilt trip on S, and don’t want to deny D what her big bro had… S’s list deliberately includes schools that will offer him merit. Decisions, decisions. D will be very happy at the local public, she is a very social kid with lots of friends, I am just concerned she will be too social. H & I are deep into discussions about where we will have to cut.</p>
<p>Calreader, his categorizations were idiosyncratic. He said he didn’t want to fall in love with schools that had a 10% probability of admitting him, so he didn’t want to visit. He knew Harvard since we live near there and I have an affiliation (and we’re friends with lots of folks there), Tufts (friends go there, we’re friends with faculty/administration), and Princeton (which would have been a terrible fit). But, we had only two visits (Brown and Tufts).</p>
<p>He made his own categories: There were small traditional LACs (Amherst, Bowdoin, Bates), edgier LACs (Wesleyan, Vassar, Sarah Lawrence), Ivies/somewhat larger(Dartmouth, Brown, Tufts, Harvard, University of Rochester), etc. He waited until he got acceptances and then picked the one he thought was the best for him in each category based upon reading their websites, the Yale Daily News book, and talking to kids who went there in some cases . He had one practice Admitted Students Day visit (Brandeis) and then went to admitted students shindigs at three schools. It saved lots of angst, time and money.</p>
<p>madbean, I think he sent art portfolios every place. I have no idea whether it made any difference at all. Brown actually tells you it can hurt but cannot help. We do know that when he got to orientation, the head of admissions was talking about what an interesting freshman class they had and described a few kids. One was obviously my son, but the artistic part they mentioned was that he was writing a novel. They didn’t mention the art.</p>
<p>mamom, there was no real spreadsheet (except on requirements and deadlines). I think it was more holistic (based upon the sources described above) until the visits. He did not know his major at the time, although he is heading toward an interdisciplinary major that is in fact offered by his number two school. Interestingly, the key decisions followed in part from discomfort at one of the schools (“these are not my people”) and meetings with the Deans for Disabilities Services. </p>
<p>mamom, your choice could be tough. Do you sacrifice S’s college dream, D’s private HS, or your retirement savings? Our son went to private middle school and public HS/partial homeschool, our daughter to private middle and high school. We sent her to an expensive private HS, precisely as you are thinking because we were concerned that if she went to our excellent public HS, she’d fall in with a group of girls who were concerned solely about clothes and boys. She’s still concerned with clothes and boys, but she’s in a crowd of very serious students and the private school has really taught her to raise her game. We’re fortunate on the money standpoint, so college for both is covered, but our daughter, who had the more expensive private school education, has chosen to go to university in Canada, where it is generally very inexpensive by US standards for US citizens ($20K to $23K all in) and even cheaper for Canadian citizens ($14K to $15K all in and she’s a dual citizen). I did discuss with her the fact that since she chose not to apply to the top 15 US schools (which would have been reaches), the Canadian schools are equal to the US schools on her list and at 30% of the cost. But, the reason she chose that was she just thought the high pressure process in the US was too painful. So, we did not have the difficult trade-off you might have to make. I don’t think it is easy. Though I do recommend looking at some Canadian schools for attractive low-cost alternatives.</p>
<p>amandak, I’m impressed with your gingerbread houses.</p>
<p>Things are looking up here — only 2 more supplements to go! One of them, Cornell, we recently discovered much to our delight, has a very gracious deadline of 1/3, so I think my D will make it after all. I wasn’t so sure a few days ago. Cornell now holds a special place in my heart.</p>
<p>amandak awesome houses-is yours the one with the pretzel poles? That looks like a lot of fun!</p>
<p>Now get to that Profile. :)</p>
<p>I love the gingerbread houses!!!</p>
<p>Amandak: I love the gingerbread houses. It looks like a lot of fun.</p>
<p>Mamom: It sounds like you’ve got a tough dilema. We are fortunate to live in an area with good public schools and were able to save the money we might have spent on private school for college. I understand that you want to give your daughter the same opportunities her brother had, but sometimes you need to do what’s best for each kid at the time. I really don’t think the social pressures differ much between kids in private and public schools.</p>
<p>Just to clarify - the houses from the gingerbread competition that I WISH I could do are the pretty, detailed ones, with row boats and icicles. Our (me and dd3’s) house is the red/yellow windows with wreaths.</p>
<p>MaMom – My d went to private school, then a public magnet, then private boarding. There are social pressures and problems at both. Bullying goes on, regardless. Private school kids can (generally speaking) have less supervision than you might think and the pressure to wear the right labels, be thin, etc. can be brutal. Even in schools where the kids wear uniforms, there’s still label consciousness for things like watches, shoes, cars, vacations, and such. </p>
<p>If your daughter is social, she’s going to be that way no matter where she goes. She’s going to find her own level. Her odds of finding a group of serious students probably goes up at public as there’s a bigger pool of friends to choose from. But if she doesn’t want to be that person, it won’t matter where she goes.</p>
<p>AmandaKayak – As soon as I perfect the shrink ray, I will be moving into one of those gingerbread houses!</p>
<p>Hi guys,
Back on cc from my Christmas sabbatical, which was supposed to be more restful than whirlwind, but…oh well. It was merry.</p>
<p>So much getting done in your households! Those art portfolios sound similar in time and painstaking effort to our vocal audition and prep process. Hang in there. I imagine they are fantastic.</p>
<p>Amanda, wow! I loved all those houses, and spotted the kayak house right away. It is a thing of beauty for sure…please post more photos when done. It is amazing. (How many man-hours so far?)</p>
<p>Have to respectfully disagree with the comments about privates (hs) being about the same as publics in terms of social pressures, supervision, etc.</p>
<p>Our experience with a carefully chosen private has been outstanding, and can’t be matched by any public I know. Not even close. Single-sex, parochial, focused heavily on strong academics and a respectful, fun, wholesome, nurturing environment. Our family values are matched and reinforced there, and my d’s life has forever been enriched for having spent 4 years there. It is a gem. </p>
<p>Congrats to those who got good news over the past week or so. We are busy planning second visits for late winter/spring. I’m doing everything I can think of to avoid doing the tax/FAFSA/Profile work that awaits me. I just HATE and dread that stuff!!!</p>
<p>Amandakayak, I loved seeing your gingerbread house. I remember making graham cracker houses for my kids to decorate. Their favorite part was putting the candy on (“Oops, I guess I’ll have to eat that one…”) My 2011 son is only interested in Purdue and I am thankful to you all for helping me feel better about that. I really wanted him to consider some Eastern tech schools for computer science but our state school is at his comfort level. It helps to read the CC threads and see how many out of state students are eager to attend Purdue. I’ll admit that I submitted his IU app and dh submitted his Rose Hulman app. He was accepted to all three with full tuition to IU. We are still waiting to hear about merit aid for Purdue. Purdue’s website says it has until 2/15 to notify students regarding merit aid. Both Purdue and IU had automatic merit aid based on stats until Purdue changed their criteria this year. Dh thinks that 2012 son should take the better deal or take out a loan to make up the difference. We do have 5 more kids to send to college but I’m feeling more generous. We’ll see how that works out.</p>