<p>Hello - it’s been such a long time since I’ve visited this thread that I am woefully behind. </p>
<p>First off, congratulations to all your kids who have had recent acceptances. Way to go! I hope they have lots of fabulous choices in April. Secondly, my sympathies to those who have received rejections. I know your kids will find the right school for them, even if it doesn’t feel that way right now. And to those of you with deferrals, my fingers remain crossed that the admissions gods smile upon you come April!</p>
<p>My deepest condolences to those of you who have recently lost someone: ldinct, momofsongbird, and anyone else I have missed. I wish you peace and comfort.</p>
<p>My daughter received a fat envelope from Chapman University today, with a huge annual scholarship. This will be hard to turn down! She’s waiting on 9 other decisions at the end of March/early April, and most of them are reaches, so we’ll see what happens then. But I’m so happy for her, and she is happy too!</p>
<p>Congratulations, oregonianmom! That’s wonderful news. It must feel terrific to have such a good offer, while waiting on the other news.</p>
<p>My son received a fat envelope from Colorado College in late December, with a more modest but still much appreciated merit scholarship. I think after all the work of applications, it’s a great feeling to know that there is at least one excellent option available.</p>
<p>Good news on both the parental health and financial aid front.</p>
<p>My mom’s skin grafts are healing nicely. She seems to understand her new medication schedule for blood pressure and cholesterol control. The visiting nurse comes daily now to change her dressings and check on her. We will worry about next steps in fighting the cancer once she is healed.</p>
<p>I am a presenter today in a workshop for 250 college women, related to my job. Another presenter lives near my mom and I drove with her yesterday to another corner of the state for the workshop. Yet another presenter will return me to within 20 miles of my home tonight. For any of you wondering if sorority/fraternity membership is truly a lifetime experience, the answer is yes. I work for my sorority and the other presenters are my alumnae sisters who arranged all my travel plans and put together a “de-stressing package” for me when I arrived here. </p>
<p>Anyway, last night in the midst of a texting session with our son, he randomly says, “Oh, and I got $10,000 from Purdue.” That’s the OOS Presidential Scholarship. It was just so funny to get that in the midst of a stream of messages about school, work, friends, etc. It’s a nice amount but not the complete waiver of OOS tuition that had made Purdue appealing in the first place. They changed the award rules after our visit in April–and sort of buried that information, I think, within the website.</p>
<p>Presentation in two hours and I am truly not prepared. I will remind myself that I am the “expert” and they are the students. It’s going to be fine, right?</p>
<p>OWM - So glad to hear that your mom is doing better and mending! Good luck with your presentation! What’s it on? And congrats on the purdue scholarship even if it wasn’t the big one.
omom and calreader - Congrats!!
Ds is at SATIIs AGAIN this am trying to bring up that dismal chem score. Crammed a bit last night but other than that, he kind of isn’t feeling that Cornell love so he’s not too vested in doing better. C’est lavie right?</p>
<p>D: Mom, I thought you told me I’d would have 2 weeks to write my scholarship essay if I made semifinalist.
Me: Yes, why do you say that?
D: Well, because in this email I got, it says I have only one week.</p>
<p>And last night she received her first college acceptance, which I found out only when her brother told me.</p>
<p>S got his first acceptance late yesterday. We are all excited to know he will not be living at home next year Now we get to wait about 2 months before any other replies.</p>
<p>Congrats to all the news about acceptances and $$.</p>
<p>amanda my S declined to take another test after his less than stellar December ones. He has not looked back. He told me they are covering their hardest part of Chem right now-and he is finally grasping the concept and feels this is a big part of why his own Chem teacher told him he wouldn’t be ready for the Chem SAT Subject test until they were through most of second semester. I think she was right-and so does he.</p>
<p>I hope your S does well today! :)</p>
<p>He is back discussing his new novel and why he is stuck. He should be studying for midterms but this seems to have taken on a great deal of importance-and when I asked him why he was thinking about this right now when he had midterms next week he just said “Oh Mom…that’s a tricky one” with his smile and then headed outside with the dog to play in the snow.</p>
<p>No college stuff here. Five acceptances so far-not to any top choices but if he doesn’t get into the other six (three I think he will, one no way, two maybe) he already has a nice array of choices. </p>
<p>Nothing really to do until everything is in, and that won’t be until April so I am just leaving him be and not thinking too much about it-just enjoying our last year together as a family
before he begins his own journey.</p>
<p>Pepper - GC suggested that it couldn’t hurt to try again even if Cornell says they may or may not be able to use Jan testing in their decisions. He thinks he did much much better and didn’t freak out this time, so hopefully, cross your fingers…
Oh and he’s thinking about changing his major right now, “how would it be if I was a music major?” (Shoot me, pls?)</p>
<p>CC comes through again…I went over to the financial aid forum and found a link to the list of Presidential Scholarship nominees; now I don’t have to scald my fingers.</p>
<p>We haven’t gotten the letter yet re Presidential Scholars but the candidate list is available online. Will your kid be applying? Prety heavy duty application. I think I convinced my son to go for it…</p>
<p>I haven’t seen the application, but can’t imagine a compelling rationale he could construct for not applying. He got deferred from his EA school, so this might be the nudge over the top.</p>
<p>Results come in after college decisions. Suppose it cd be helpful if he is wait listed somewhere but it won’t help in normal admissions cycle. So no obvious major payoff.</p>
<p>How many of us are waiting (patiently? ha!) for decisions in April? Seems like such a long way off, at this point.</p>
<p>What are you all doing to pass the time? I am self-studying basic accounting. I am changing careers – and am going to start a post-baccalaureate certificate in accounting program next fall. The prerequisites are a bachelors degree in business, which I have, and two semesters of basic financial and managerial accounting classes, which I also have. Trouble is, I took those accounting classes a couple of dozen years ago. My new college is crediting me for them, which is great! But I’ve forgotten everything I learned and am not about to walk into an upper division accounting class without brushing up. So I bought a couple of brand new textbooks and am going through them one chapter at time for the next 8 months. I think it’s fun, I’m learning a lot, and it’s keeping me busy.</p>
<p>Good for you, o-mom! I think a lot of us would do ourselves good to branch out into new approaches to work, or other interests. Lots of us will be empty-nesters next year; all of us will have new expenses (hopefully not too high!), and even those with younger kids will start to see the time when the last one goes.</p>
<p>I’ve got a few new irons on the fire - in the last couple of years I’ve tried to get away from my schedule being dominated by stuff I do because of my kids. I’m trying to keep connected with kids in general, because I do like them, and will miss the contact when this D goes off to school. But I’m also building connections in activities that have nothing to do with kids, and that is very refreshing.</p>
<p>OK, just back from teaching a composites merit badge to 40 boy scouts. I fell on the ice while bringing in 8K lbs of “stuff” but made it through the day will the hwlp of 3 coworkers and one coworkers wonderful wife. I know I will not do this again next year…til they ask me in Sept and I forget about how much work is involved. </p>
<p>Anyway, congrats to your D OMOM. How nice to have that in your pocket while waiting for the other schools.</p>
<p>UT84321 - Isn’t the internet wonderful?? I love being able to find stuff out. I was able to find out S was accepted to one school because they allowed him to register for housing even though they said decisions would not be posted online. Well someone in cyberland figured it out and I knew S was accepted 2 days before hie did. ;-)</p>
<p>Amanda - better to change majors now than after you have spent many dollars on tuition. My S has surprised us with his choice of majors, finance and math. We had him pegged for a history or journalism major. I totally don’t get it, he is not a wall street kind of guy imo, but he thinks he is. I just hope he doesn’t figure out 2 years in, he isn’t. BTW, S took the SAT 2 for chem and did OK by normal standards, but miserable by CC. We just let sleeeping dogs lie. It was one score we did not report. Good luck to your D!</p>
<p>OWM- Hey I’ll take 10K. It is funny how they slip these things in, isnt it?? Glad to read your Mother is doing better. Have fun with your sorority sisters!</p>
<p>Pepper - at least your S is doing somethign constructive…writing a novel…playing with the dog are memories, studying for midterms isn’t</p>
<p>Schoklade - Scholarship apps will wait till after midterms/finals. Except for one schools scholarship apps, I am not going to pressure S to work on them til he is over this hump. So much pressure on these kids, I can’t ask him to write one more essay write now.</p>
<p>o-Mom - I have volunteered for S and D’s school auctions. Very contrary. One is up scale and will raise many hundreds of thousands and other will raise 20-30 thousand. Tonight I get to call all the folks from my town who have kids in the school and beg, I mean ask them to attend a gift giving party for the upcoming auction. So I have two auctions to keep me busy til S hears back ffom his RA schools. At this point I don’t think he cares, he likes his EA/rolling schools and will gladly attend them.</p>
<p>Emmy - I am still sucked into the kid stuff, re the auctions. I am hoping next year when S is away and D is a year older I might find time to exercise. OTOH, I could shut off my laptop and excercise now…but this online time is for the kids…</p>
Now we get to wait about 2 months before any other replies.</p>
).