<p>We had an enlightening trip to Missoula over the weekend and I must say it is pretty amazing out there. Re: the limbo–that would so not be pretty if I ever attempted it!</p>
<p>BTW–the WSJ girl was on the Today show this morning.</p>
<p>Good morning!! I am sorry I am a little late for my shift today but I do have coffee, orange juice, Bloody Mary’s, etc… for anyone on deck. </p>
<p>For our listening pleasure we have Jimmy Buffett up on the Lido Deck for our LIMBO participants! </p>
<p>MyLB: So happy to have another server, Go Griz!!</p>
<p>W2BeHome: Holy Cow! How awesome!!</p>
<p>Music: My dad was a Johnny Cash fan, my sister was a John Denver fan. My dad went on a date with Grace Slick, so my kids joke that that could have been their grandmother. I love Queen, speaking of which have you seen the Youtube video of the family singing bohemian rhapsody in the car? Definitely a favorite.</p>
<p>CC: Some of the other threads can be very scary. Proceed with caution!</p>
<p>Congrats MyLB. I had great chinese food in Missoula many years back. Love it out there.</p>
<p>I keep my head down when I go to other threads. Some of the stuff is useful, but well meaning threads often get hijacked and the conversation takes a turn for the worse. Hurray for this safe haven.</p>
<p>I’ll offer up fresh squeezed Florida OJ today.</p>
<p>ldog - you will not be happy with me when I tell you I am an Orange fan from way, way back. I grew up not far away from Syracuse, my sister went there and have you ever been to upstate NY? The Orange are THE team for miles and miles, particularly basketball. So I’ll be cheering for the 'Cuse this weekend (while at a baseball game - that wasn’t great planning).</p>
<p>can anyone point me in the direction or explain the process of trying to wrangle more money out of one school with what another is offering? please and thank you!</p>
<p>MyLB…</p>
<p>Glad you liked Montana and Missoula. We visited Montana and Montana State last summer. I really like Missoula. We had a great breakfast at Food for Thought right near campus. We hiked up M mountain. I had a few beers at some of the dive bars downtown one evening while son was off playing MTG. </p>
<p>Unfortunately, son was pretty ho-hum about it and liked Montana State better. I thought that it would be a great place for school. It probably would have been my choice.</p>
<p>I do the same thing dad does…when I see a thread suddenly jump to 5 or more pages, it’s usually because someone guided a well meaning discussion towards a hotly contested topic. That’s the universal signal for “get the h out of there”!</p>
<p>Continuing with the theme of Queen’s classic hits…Another One Bites the Dust!</p>
<p>We have been crossing through several more choices and have things narrowing down to 4 options. All are amazing in their own unique way and certainly feel, like others here, that it will be hard turning down the ones that easily could be wonderful choices. We feel like the shoe is on the other foot so to speak with respect to the adcoms. Of course, obviously our kids are now the ones doing the choosing, but we see how very hard it is to say yes to one when all are just as equally plausible. Can’t imagine now how they really do select a class to put together because anyone can just be the one.</p>
<p>Couple of observations about this stage of the college selection cycle:</p>
<p>Some schools have amazing reach-outs to encourage your decision to “yes” – like all the stops with handwritten notes, daily emails about amazing opportunities on campus, webinars to learn what it’s like to attend, alumni phone calls and welcome receptions in your local area. Others not so much. Kind of like let us know what your answer is when you know and that’s it. Foretelling the future relationship with school?</p>
<p>The financial packages ARE all over the place. Who the heck knows how they come up with their magic number? Some schools that we expected to be better with aid disappointed severely. Others were pleasant surprises. Not sure why as our numbers are generally straightforward when running the NPCs. It really is true that different schools do look at things differently.</p>
<p>Know how just a few weeks ago we were talking about how kids are supposed to juggle being awesome with fitting in all those invites and visits? Well, now it’s worse! They need to kick the tires so to speak and attend accepted days because of the huge financial commitment involved, but how do they keep up with being amazing and all their responsibilities, schoolwork for those AP classes they are in, and deal with school policies on absences which border on the absurd in our district!! I mean they expect you to limit the college visit day to one per campus but what about the travel time to and from? Like we have private airplanes at our disposal to get us out and back in 24 hours? Just shaking my head and waiting to go all Walker on them if they push me too far!!</p>
<p>Last item is a question to you all with siblings of your prospie : Do I worry now that any school my kid turns down now will blacklist our family for yield calcs when it comes to the next child? Like how do you keep things smooth with the regional adcom for the next child who might really pick their school if things work out? Does next kid make a completely different list deliberately?</p>
<p>First world problems!</p>
<p>Congrats to all of you getting off the lounge chairs and turning into servers. Think it’ll be better to stick to a non-alcoholic beverage for me as I need my wits about me to make sense of this whole exciting mess!</p>
<p>SAHP, funny that you asked about turning down schools other siblings may also want to apply to down then line. I’m stressing about that too. I am thinking that it probably does not matter assuming there are a lot of acceptance letters going out (not 200!). But, D’s safety was S14’s #1. They have an admissions rep for our area, and I’m going to have S open a dialogue and mention the fact that while D appreciated but rejected the offer, it is by far his #1 choice. Since FA is not coming our way, I think it will be an ok plan. Honestly if anyone REALLY knows the answer, I’d love to hear it. D has acceptances to the #1 choices (different schools) for both S14 and S17, and isn’t going to either.</p>
<p>I thought about that, but have no experience. In the big state school cases, I’m not sure it makes a difference or that they will even notice. But some of the smaller places and those with very active regional adcoms may notice. So S’13 is writing nice emails to those few thanking them for their time and interest and not trying to burn bridges. What more could you do?</p>
<p>Maybe we should write glowing letters to the adcoms’ supervisor so they get promoted to a different job by the time the next one rolls around - potential problem solved :)</p>
<p>dadotwo…Syracuse fan! What! A Duke AND a Syracuse fan! Uuuugggghhhh ; ) And yes, I have heard that The Orange is really the only game in town, so it’s understandable that they have quite a following! It will be interesting to see what the makeup of the crowd in Atlanta is…Michigan always travels well but do does 'Cuse and Louisville. </p>
<p>Someoldguy and MyLB: Because of your posts on the last page, I sought out the WSJ writer’s appearance on the Today Show this morning. I have to say that I really really liked her and her attitude and especially her poise. Of course, at the end of the interview I came to LOVE HER when she announced she was headed for MICHIGAN!!! ha ha Thanks for pointing me towards that interview. I don’t watch the Today Show and probably wouldn’t have run across it until 300 Michigan people emailed it to me later…(ha) 
</p>
<p>Wahoo, dad and sahp - I so can see this as a worry! I don’t have any advice, but IMHO you are not crazy for thinking about this!</p>
<p>D1 and D2 had the same safety, but it is big enough that I didn’t worry. Now, D1 was rejected by Georgetown, so I never mentioned that school to D2 as a possibility. I would not have prevented her from applying, but would not encourage it either! I hold a grudge. It never came up anyway.</p>
<p>The pendulum swings here on a daily basis between the 2 favorites. A very nice e-mail came from a coach yesterday about how they would love to have her. I think I’m getting a little seasick on this ship!</p>
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<p>I think in most cases it probably wouldn’t matter. The colleges can’t be too thin-skinned about being rejected by applicants to whom they’ve offered admission. Most schools (except those at the tippy-top) get turned down by something like 2 out of every 3 admitted students; in some cases it’s closer to 3 out of every 4. They understand that it’s a big, competitive market in which most students end up having choices, and lots of factors go into that decision for every admitted student who decides not to enroll. They also understand that each applicant is different–even siblings, who will have a different range of choices and different personal preferences. So I wouldn’t lose too much sleep over it, because I’m sure the colleges don’t. They deal with rejection all the time, and build it into their admissions model. And if they start rejecting every sibling of an admitted student who rejected them somewhere along the line, they could end up with a much smaller pool to choose from.</p>
<p>Now it could be there are some special circumstances where an applicant’s turning down a school might affect a sibling’s chances. For example, if the school gives legacy preferences in part because it calculates its yield is higher with legacy admits, and the first sib got admitted (in part) on a legacy preference then turns the school down, it could mean the later-applying sib won’t get the same legacy bounce, because it looks like the legacy ties in the family may not be all that strong. Or possibly if the school hopes to lure the first sib with a big merit award and gets turned down anyway, a similar big merit award might not be in the offing for the later-applying sib, because the school might calculate that money is more likely to have its desired effect elsewhere. But frankly, I’m not sure adcoms have the time or the capacity to track all that information across multiple admissions cycles. An individual admissions rep assigned to the same area for an extended period might have that kind of memory, but even that is probably pretty rare. And in general, I suspect they’re so busy trying to reel in the ones they’ve hooked that they don’t have much time to worry about the much larger number that got away.</p>
<p>mamabear - LOL. Break out the dramamine!! :eek:</p>
<p>Edited to add: bclintonk - I don’t know that I agree. The rep who has FL for UMich can tell you every sibling of every alum family he’s had dealings with down there. He’s been the rep for that state for a long time and he knows his stuff. I know him well and know that he’s a true professional, so I don’t think he ‘game plays’ but if you ask him about someone he admitted in Y year from X family, he can tell you.</p>
<p>I am taking a break from my shift to try one of those fresh-squeezed cups of OJ. Yum!</p>
<p>Confetti, you have inspired me–I will sit down with kids today to watch <em>The Muppet Movie.</em></p>
<p>In honor of MyLB’s decision 2013, L-Dog, let’s sing: “I am the eagle that lives in high country, in rocky cathedrals that reach to the sky…”</p>
<p>Re turning down a school and having later siblings apply: SAHP and 89Wahoo, like DadO, I think it depends on the school, but I know it matters to some of them (especially the ones that are conscious of yield numbers) and since our family is only in Round One of a Four Round Game, I worry about it. It is one reason why when DS got into his 1st choice school early, he didn’t submit any more apps besides the few he had already sent.</p>
<p>SomeOldGuy, quoting 89Wahoo, says (I still haven’t figured out how to do the box):</p>
<p>"‘CC is definitely not for the faint of heart, is it?’</p>
<p>It certainly isn’t. This week’s hot discussion (the WSJ article kid) leaves me wondering whether some of these folks are real people, single-issue cranks, or long-form trolls. And I’m not sure which answer I’d find most disturbing."</p>
<p>Absolutely! And the time these folks have! I am on vacation, and I still can’t keep up. I am really glad there is a lot of overlap here with the 2016 list–hope it ends up having the same flavor as this list.</p>
<p>Break over…back to my serving shift! There are plenty of people with drinks, so I have tea sandwiches and tiny cakes today!</p>
<p>Cross-posted with laurendog and bclintonk: as you see, I’m with the L-Dog on this one, Clint.</p>
<p>mamabear, ds is deciding btw 2 schools, one a D3 where he will be on a team and one a D1, where he will not. He’s developed such a nice relationship with the D3 coach. Even I will miss hearing from him if ds goes the D1 way.</p>
<p>Our ship changes course every other day.</p>
<p>And ds was rejected from Georgetown, too, and I will hold a grudge. Darn Jesuits! (I say this as a Catholic ;: )</p>
<p>EastGrad - I could never listen to The Eagle and the Hawk. Sounds like JD is just yelling the entire song. But - you are right - it IS apropos to MyLB’s news 
How about “Rocky Mountain High” wait - are the Rockies in Montana as well? Shameful that I do not know if that’s true or not…</p>
<p>Do we get to eat the tea sandwiches and tiny cakes too? I didn’t eat enough lunch and I am hungry! (ha)</p>
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<p>I’m not sure we’re disagreeing. You’re describing something I also talked about: the “individual admissions rep assigned to the same area for an extended period” who has a long memory. I just said that was likely to be somewhat rare–not that it doesn’t exist. My sense is that overall, turnover in these jobs is quite high. Some people do it for a few years then move on to something else; my niece was an admissions rep for her alma mater for a few years and she found the travel schedule brutal, so she switched to a more sedentary job. Territories get reassigned frequently, and there’s probably a lot of competition for the territories that are, for one reason or another, deemed more desirable. People with seniority move up in the hierarchy and may spend less time out on the hustings. People change schools. And so on. </p>
<p>It sounds like Michigan’s regional rep for Florida has found a territory he likes and is content to stay there. Good for him, and good for the school. I still maintain that, across the industry as a whole, that’s not the norm.</p>
<p>Laurendog, the Rockies stretch from British Columbia to New Mexico…I just looked it up on wiki! As a Westerner, I should know this already.</p>
<p>Bclintonk, I guess I still believe that there are a lot of small LACs that will remember this despite AdCom officer turnover. I agree with you that sibling choices will be tracked at competitive colleges. I also think having a later child not receive a scholarship at a big school because an older sib turned it down is a big deal…</p>
<p>Forgot to add that there are plenty sandwiches and cakes in the kitchen…help yourself!</p>