<p>Congrats to ugadog99 and socialdramamama! I have acceptance envy! ;)</p>
<p>dd took SAT today. She did not like the essay question. Thougth one passage in reading was “tough”, thought math was okay. “I already know I got one or two wrong in the CR”…she didn’t say much about math. She is SOOOOO HAPPPY “no more 4 hour standardized tests!”. She is planning to retake ACT…I guess that’s a bit shorter…
she’s asleep now.</p>
<p>East coast college visits, too tired to post. Congrats to ugadog and socialdramamama’s kids.</p>
<p>Rings- We didn’t get one mostly due to the fact that DD would have to take it off everyday to row so she would end up never wearing it. Also as one of her IB teachers pointed out - high school rings were more a tradition back when HS was the end of your education. I would gladly buy her a college ring but then she plans to go straight to grad school. So which ring do we buy? </p>
<p>DD is at the homecoming dance right now with her best friend. The football team won today and are 6-0. Best season in a long time.</p>
<p>Congrats ugadog and socialdramamama on acceptances. </p>
<p>Still waiting for teachers to upload references to Naviance and UCAS…they have had all D’s info since the end of August and transcripts are not sent at our school until references have been submitted. Gotten two emails from CA schools asking for trasncripts to complete file. Oh well!</p>
<p>D on East Coast visits and interviews. She enjoyed her interview in New York and felt good there. All good so far but determined that she will not be applying ED. </p>
<p>Napalm- D got the “Call me maybe?” letter and T Shirt. I saved the letter because it was so clever! Their campaigning has been brilliant! </p>
<p>I saw The Perks of Being a Wallflower with my S15 and at the end I was crying. He looked at me like I had lost my mind. It is about a Freshman and a group of Seniors in their last year of High School. It hit me that the movie is like our year. It all feels theoretical right now and then bam, they get in and off they go…Yikes! Last Homecoming next week. I am weepy already.</p>
<p>First time on this site, and I am jolted into consciousness by the news that acceptances are already being received! ALREADY! Congrats to you all, and we better get cracking here. Oh, and one of my S’s subject tests was not available today at the test site, so he bravely tackled another instead. I would have freaked…</p>
<p>wherenext, for UCAS, can’t you self-report grades? The teacher will have to upload the recommendation, but you can go ahead with the grades if you have any with the 10/15 deadline. St A’s wants the transcript, but that can be sent directly to them later if necessary.</p>
<p>I hope all the test-takers today had successful exams!</p>
<p>walnutcreek-your s signed up before the test date, walks in to take it and there’s no test available? what’s their explanation? Are you sure he preregistered for it?</p>
<p>I asked this in the FA forum but have yet to get a response. I was never asked to record my wages for this year when I filled out the form. It did ask me about my expected 2013 earnings though. I can’t figure out what I might have missed.</p>
<p>Congratulations ugadog and socialdramamama!! And anyone else I may have missed.</p>
<p>Busy weekend around here. Homecoming. And D2 is home from college this weekend. We’ve only had one day, really to enjoy her, so needless to say, I haven’t spent much time online this weekend.</p>
<p>I took lots of pictures of homecoming…with the realization that this is the last homecoming dress I buy, and the last homecoming dance excitement, etc. <strong>sniff</strong></p>
<p>D made some good progress on essays yesterday. There are just so many to do, with the common app, all of the individual school supplements, plus a few schools on her list are not on the common app. Early action deadlines are approaching…</p>
<p>ugg–we know a couple kids at Coastal Carolina and they just love it there! Congrats.</p>
<p>DS got 2 acceptances in the mail yesterday. Still waiting on the common app answers for both kids.</p>
<p>Froze our patooties off yesterday at band, burrrrrrrrr.</p>
<p>We didn’t do class rings, none of the kids would wear them so why bother.
Letter jackets have cost about $1,939,993 here :D. First you buy the jacket at $170, then sewing on all the patches over the years (6 years for for DD).</p>
<p>DH just came into the house fuming…he backed his car into DS car parked into the driveway…oops. Dent on DS’ car (well our car that DS uses) and some scratches on DH’s car…crap.</p>
<p>Okay so I ran into an issue. I have no idea what to write about for my extra curric essay. I have three different activities I want to write about, and my problem is picking which one I can write a better paragraph about. Another thing that’s really messing me up is actually writing it. I looked up examples of extra curricular essays and they were all wayyy over the one thousand character word limit. Ahh!</p>
<p>The activities I could write about are:</p>
<ol>
<li><p>One of the things I want to write about is my communications class. I didn’t list it on the Common App under the activities section, but many of my extra curricular activities have either been done in (and outside of due to lack of time) or been inspired by my communications class. Things like being on the local news station, being a writer for hercampus.com, being involved with my town newspaper, and doing many, many projects from my town have all taken me lots of time to do, and it’s not exactly in my school’s “normal” curriculum.</p></li>
<li><p>I’m a part of this group that’s specifically for high school kids, but it’s part of an even bigger group that is very highly respected and well regarded in Connecticut. It puts on forums four times every year at this really, really big performing center in Hartford. I’m on the leadership board for this, and I’m a high school Ambassador. I got picked to be a speaker for a sold out show (3,000 people) where I’m going to give the opening remarks and introduce the panelists (Gloria Steinem, Ashley Judd, Connie Schultz, and Michelle Bernard…all women I aspire to be like when I grow up). I know that it would probably wiser for me to talk about my time with this organization, but I really don’t have the slightest idea on how to actually write a well-developed paragraph about it.</p></li>
<li><p>I could write about my time as the editor in chief of my school’s newspaper for three years. It’s been a long time coming, but I love it and it’s taught me some valuable lessons.</p></li>
</ol>
<p>Any help, suggestions, or guidance would be VERY much appreciated!</p>
<p>swizzle13–don’t stress about that. It’s a short blurb about an EC. It’s not even really an essay, it’s just not long enough to really do that much with. Write an opening statement with 2 or 3 points, write a sentence or two for each point, summarize. There is only so much detail you can do in under 150 words. When my kids are stressing over stuff like this I ask a simple question, if you had to decide in 2 seconds which topic to pick, which one is it? Whatever comes out of their mouth is what they do. Ask yourself the same question and just do it. Heck, some colleges won’t even look at that question :D. DD wrote her EC topic on teaching religion classes to 4th graders and how the questions they asked opened up ideas and thoughts for her. It was pretty simple but showed she was open to listing to the opinions of others and acting on those.</p>
<p>Last night was the first night that I lost sleep over ds’s college search. He’s changed his EA strategy, and I feel like we’re running out of time.</p>
<p>swizzle13–you just wrote your essay here-take your #2 choice, clean it up a bit and done. Start it out with "XYW Orginization was founded to do E, t, O, and Y. Then talk about, brifely, how you were drawn to those ideals and that being selected as ambassisor means you get to introduce the 4 women you admire the most, list their names and a couple qualities they have that you admire and how you strive to be like them.</p>
<p>Common app question–does anyone have any acceptances in from common apps? Did the college do anything on the common app site showing acceptance?</p>
<p>@SteveMA Thanks! lol, My guidance counselors decided to call twenty of us down to their office Friday (those of us applying to difficult colleges and who are almost done with the process) and freaked out on us, telling us that every word we write counts. This sent the majority of us into freak out mode. Sometimes all we want is for everyone to leave us alone, because, really, that’s all we need to sort things out. (Sorry for that little rant)</p>
<p>swizzle13–I think you need to get your GC in the head slappage line. Of course the words count but not THAT much. I don’t care what anyone here says, it’s still your GPA and test scores that get you looked at by every college. Your extra curricular involvement comes in after that and then your essays. Your essays count and can help but not all that much. If you have a well rounded list of schools, you will get into some of them if not all of them. If you go into this process with a realistic outlook and realized that if you are applying to Harvard, etc. that you not getting in is not because of you and it’s because of the 40,000 OTHER kids that applied there.</p>
<p>You are a great kid that shows a lot of potential and THAT is what is going to get you into schools, not 150 words on an application.</p>
<p>@SteveMA Agreeeeeeeed. I feel as if 90% of the time the GCs at my school have no idea what they’re talking about. They drive us all crazy. I’ve had to explain the difference between an EA and an ED school to my guidance counselor multiple times. She also loves telling me that school’s that aren’t restrictive EA are still restrictive. Yes, because that makes sense. She also enjoys telling me that since I’m applying ED somewhere that I can’t apply to any other schools because IT’S AGAINST THE RULES. Like. No. Nowhere does it explicitly say that. Anywhere. On any of the websites. Like. What. What is she even talking about. I know the difference between EA-restrictive, plain old EA, ED, Rolling, and RD. It’s such a shame. It drives me up a wall.</p>