@sally22 thanks! She ran slower than she could have or should have, I was expecting her to be done about 35-40 minutes sooner than she was. But, she did not train as well as she normally would have, she had the MCAT two days before the race and her priority was to study for that. And, she had just spent three weeks in the midwest over winter break, not the most conducive weather to running outside.
This is the child of mine that has had lung surgery on both lungs, the right one 7 years ago and the left one 6 years ago. She is missing parts of both lungs. I am just happy that she is able to run a marathon and has the potential to qualify for Boston if she wants to train carefully and right.
We spent this past weekend in Washington visiting with S so we could celebrate his birthday (it is today) before leaving ahead of the storm for sunny Florida. His sister (HS-2014) was able to join us as she took the train from Philly, joined us for the Saturday night dinner and then returned on Sunday afternoon.After we dropped D at the station, we took S shopping and made a couple of museum stops before going to dinner and back to our hotel. S called yesterday to say he was on the priority wait list at one of his reach law schools (Duke) and that I would need to file FAFSA even though the law schools consider their students independent. He also got word that he was accepted to our state flagship’s law school and was invited to apply for their top scholarship. This year is turning out to be deja vu from the fall/winter of 2011 all over again! SS Indecision - here we come again!!!
Both my boys will have a new chapter this year. After graduation, S1 will move to a city that is 1200 miles away to start his engineer career with a major U.S. company. S2 will graduate from HS and start college in the fall. What an exciting year for them!
@sunnydayfun Me too! Congrats to your S1!! My S will graduate college in August, D graduates high school in June. We had originally planned to take a celebratory trip abroad somewhere - D has never been out of the country - but then S found out he was short of his May grad requirements. So the money will not be there for a big trip after paying for summer classes. We may still surprise D with a small trip to London or Paris as a graduation gift. It is still a very exciting time. S is studying music composition, and just landed an internship which we hope will become regular contract work after graduation, with a studio that handles music and sound for films and TV. He is 800 miles away but loves the city where he is, and so do we, so much that we might move there eventually. D is 3 for 3 in college acceptances so far, waiting on one more and may do another last minute application this week. Her first two choices are local to us, yay!
The strength of indecision is growing. So far S is 7-0-1 with law school admissions with the “1” being a “preferential” wait list. (If you ak me, a wait list is a wait list untuil you are accepted or closed out.) Most law schools want a FAFSA and their version of the CSS by mid to late February so I am not in crunch mode trying to get a preliminary tax return prepared so I have initial date for the FAFSA. We can always update later. So far he has acceptances at Washington U, Temple, Ohio State, Georgetown, Wake Forest, George Washington and Vanderbilt. So far Temple, Wake and OSU have offered him merit money. The evaluation spreadsheet has been re-created for law schools. As I predicted, SS Indecision - 2015, here we come. I will say that the process is much different with graduate/professional schools and the stress level at home is much lower as the student is not here with us and law school costs are basically his.
D had a phone interview this morning for a job in Chicagoland. She called after and said she was offered the job and accepted it. It is through our church denomination, at their national headquarters, assisting in organizing the 2016 summer work camps in inner cities and weather related devastations.
It is a year long commitment. She will spend this summer applying to med schools while being the health director at a large church camp, then she will start this job in late August. Hopefully she will spend some long weekends this fall on med school interviews.
@bajamm - Congrats on the new job for your D. Chicago is a great town for the young professionals. Other than the winters, I am sure she will enjoy it.
Well, all of the taxes, FAFSA and needaccess.org (similar to CSS but for law, med and some grad schools) forms and data are submitted. It has been a brutal past week with time spent every evening and on the weekend finalizing everything for submittal. A couple of his “initial deadlines” were the 15th but that was a Sunday and yesterday was a holiday and today was a snow day at half of his prospective schools so I think we will be fine. He is heading south this Friday for an interview with the law school dean at one of his reach schools where he is on the “priority reserve” wait list. He contacted them to show interest and requested the interview and they responded within a day so that is positive. The question is not if he gets in, but where he picks to attend coupled with the final best offer. Stay tuned.
ShawD had her first interview yesterday. The interviewer said “I would hire you right now but we need to check references.” Got the offer one hour later. Probably a good job at a hospital 12 minutes walk from her apartment. She had to have a job by mid-April as a condition of her nurse practitioner program. So she is relieved.
For nursing, one submits resumes to an online resume sorter at each hospital and she hasn’t gotten many calls, which baffles me. I certainly don’t know what the sorting algorithm is looking for. She is the only kid in the nursing program to graduate summa cum laude and be inducted into the school’s equivalent of phi beta kappa so she’s got the science/factual and academic knowledge down. Her references are great and she had social skills out the wazoo. With both her prior job and this one, as soon as they interview her, she gets the offer. But somehow the resume screening algorithm doesn’t like her. The head of HR at her last hospital employer is going to contact his peer at a sister hospital (where ShawD did her preceptorship) to see if she can get an interview. But she is pleased to have a good offer and she is almost surprised that it pays adult level salary.
Good news for S. His previously arranged interview this morning went well (see post 9748 above). He reported this afternoon that he spent approximately an hour and ten minutes with the Duke law school Dean of Admissions. He said it went pretty well and he indicated that the Dean complimented him on his interviewing skills. Since he is on the “priority reserve” list he asked what the schedule might be for a change in his status. He was advised that it could be as soon as next week or as late as August right before orientation. The positive news was that the application deadline has now passed and there would be no more new applications that could possibly prevent him from further consideration.
AvonMom and I were out at dinner this evening and I got a text from S asking us to call him ASAP. Since he had rented a car for his trip from Washington to Durham, we were concerned it was about the rental car. It turns out that at 6:30 PM he received an email directly from the Dean with his letter of acceptance! He was more than excited at this quick turn of events and now has a real dilemma and decision to make once he hears what kind of scholarships he may receive. This was certainly a situation where showing additional interest in the school and taking the initiative to set up the interview paid off in a big way. Needless to say, we are quite proud of this achievement and his efforts in obtaining the acceptance. My, how far these kids have come in the past 3 1/2 to 4 years.
S got his first law school app rejection. U of Chicago. He said it was somewhat expected and really helps as it’s one less school to evaluate in the month of indecision.
But today was better. He has no classes on Fridays so he sent an email to the UVA law school admissions office yesterday to see if he could arrange a visit and an interview either this Friday or next Friday before he heads home for break. He got a reply this morning asking when he would be free to receive a call from their office. He replied and this afternoon between classes he got a call back. It turns out is was the assistant dean of admissions who called him not to set up a visit and interview but to interrview him right then and there on the phone. He said the talked for about 20 minutes and in closing the Dean said congratulations, you have just been accepted. He is now 10-1-1 with three decisions still outstanding. The law school process is certainly much different than the undergraduate admissions process we all went through 3 plus years ago.
Yay, @AvonHSDad! I hope my son has such happy news when he applies to grad school next year. He was offered a lab position at Cornell med school last week but turned it down because it’s not related to neuroscience. It was in immunology. It’s looking like he may take the offer at a Columbia med neuro lab but he’s still waiting to hear back from another institution. So, for now, nothing finalized.
D texted today to say that she has ordered her cap and gown for graduation. She then told me that there was a free formal picture being offered to graduates wearing their cap and gown. She said she didn’t care if it was free, she wasn’t going to do it because the photography place made some offensive remark about girls and make up. (she isn’t a girl, she is a woman that chooses to not wear makeup.)
She then texted again and said that maybe she would get the picture taken. She said she was so offended that she wrote an email to the company and told them exactly why she didn’t think their free picture was worth it. (very uncharacteristic of her). That prompted the company to write an email to the entire graduating class apologizing.
I will be interested to see if she gets the picture taken and what she does with it if she does take it.
Thanks. Fortunately he has honed his speaking, presentation, interviewing and writing skills and articulates and presents himself very well. It appears the job interviwing prep and the real interviews he did last fall have been very beneficial. But as you said, the key is being proactive. He has learned that things aren’t handed out but that you have to work for them if you really want them and the results he achieved due to his proactivity help prove that statement.
We may still surprise D with a small trip to London or Paris as a graduation gift. It is still a very exciting time. S is studying music composition, and just landed an internship which we hope will become regular contract work after graduation, with a studio that handles music and sound for films and TV. He is 800 miles away but loves the city where he is, and so do we, so much that we might move there eventually. D is 3 for 3 in college acceptances so far, waiting on one more and may do another last minute application this week. Her first two choices are local to us, yay!
He has no classes on Fridays so he sent an email to the UVA law school admissions office yesterday to see if he could arrange a visit and an interview either this Friday or next Friday before he heads home for break. He got a reply this morning asking when he would be free to receive a call from their office. He replied and this afternoon between classes he got a call back. It turns out is was the assistant dean of admissions who called him not to set up a visit and interview but to interrview him right then and there on the phone. He said the talked for about 20 minutes and in closing the Dean said congratulations, you have just been accepted. He is now 10-1-1 with three decisions still outstanding. The law school process is certainly much different than the undergraduate admissions process we all went through 3 plus years ago. 