<p>Mrs. Pepper - Congratulations on your son’s National Merit award!! What a huge accomplishment! So sorry to hear the school didn’t recognize it publicly as they should have. Hopefully, their oversight will occur to them and he will be recognized at the end-of-school awards ceremony.</p>
<p>4beardolls - Congratulations on your DS’s nomination for the Presidential Scholar’s Program!!</p>
<p>Not done here either. We have one application done–to an instate school that will be his safety. He will definitely get in and will probably qualify for a lot of $$. And he likes it, yay! The only schools he’s liked before were OOS publics which are fine if he can get merit money but if he can’t, not so much. They do rolling admission so we should hear soon and they also do some early scholarship awards in November/December so hopefully we can have a good option squared away early.</p>
<p>No other apps are submitted yet. He is also NMSF and he submitted that app Sunday so now it is time to get back to college apps. He has started on his first choice which is a TX school, so he started the Apply Texas a while back. Hoping I can get him to finish that this week so that one more is out of the way.</p>
<p>His NM essay will also (mostly) work as a CA essay so that’s good. He originally wrote it for common app, then made some improvements I suggested and tweaked to answer the NM question. At this point he only has 3 definite schools one of which is CA. There are a few more he’s considered. And I want him to add one more instate public because we know those are affordable–so worst case, he has a choice of them.</p>
<p>mrspepper and 4beardolls–I wanted to shout out a CONGRATULATIONS to your kiddos for NM and Presidential. That is so wonderful!</p>
<p>Mrs. Peppers: I understand how you feel. Being NM is a big deal! And your student’s school should have made a big deal over it. When my oldest son got NM, the local newspaper did a story on him, although much of the story had nothing to do with the achievement. At least it was mentioned. Later in the year, we had a scholarship assembly. He almost did not go because he did not think he received anything, but our guidance counselor assured me that he needed to be there. He would not say why. Well the admissions rep for our area for the U. of Alabama surprised him by showing up and presenting him his NM award in front of 500 or so people. She even read all the goodies that the award entailed – full tuition and honors housing, a laptop, study aboard money and a yearly stipend. The place went wild! The kids could not believe his good fortune. Of course, he worked hard all those years and it paid dividends. </p>
<p>This year, my younger son’s school had a NM kid. One of his friends, too. Our principal insisted on congratulating the young man on camera during the morning news. It was cool.</p>
<p>4beardolls - congrats on the Presidential Scholar nomination!</p>
<p>dory123 - can you bottle some of that water your DD is drinking and send it on over?</p>
<p>Moonmaid - Great progress! Way to go!</p>
<p>Just spent the evening with many of DD’s friends’ parents. Lots of talk of college applications and where they are all applying. And despite the fact that they’re all pretty much the top students at their schools (3 different ones), NONE of them have finished their essays and all are stressing about them! So I guess those who have actually finished their essays and submitted some applications are way ahead of the curve! DD is really hoping to finish this weekend as she has 4 days off and will be able to commit a good deal of time to essays despite Homecoming!</p>
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<p>I hear you. My D is taking 5 APs, 1 honor and another online, plus EC’s/volunteer, band etc. So I know exactly what you’re saying. </p>
<p>My daughter is on the team that haven’t completed any essays on CA. The closest completion that she has is her personal statement for UCs.</p>
<p>@worrytoomuch
UC requires you to submit all your SAT I scores but as I understood since SAT II subject tests are optional, you can select which one to submit. </p>
<p>On the UC app, we only mentioned 2, her 2 bests. She just recently retook the third one, hopelly she can improve it a little bit so that we can mention it on her UC and CA app.</p>
<p>^
I agree to the post above. My daughter did the same thing.</p>
<p>My D haven’t completed any essays either. I have to keep reminding her that Nov 1 is the deadline for EA schools.</p>
<p>One question on the self-reporting scores…DD is applying to several schools which are test optional. Since her scores so far (still waiting for last weekend’s SATs) do not reflect the student she is, there are some schools that she doesn’t want to send her scores. But there are some where they are required and some that she is willing to submit.</p>
<p>If she self-reports on the main CA but indicates on the supplement that she doesn’t want her scores considered, does that work? Can she change the CA to self-report when she sends it to some schools but not others? The first applications she will submit are all EA ones to schools where her scores are at or above their 75% so sending/self-reporting the scores wouldn’t hurt. And some of the remaining schools require scores so she might as well self-report those. It’s just two others where her application is really strong in every area except her scores that I am questioning. I talked with an admissions rep recently for one of the schools which is test optional who said not to have her submit her scores if the rest of her application is strong (of course, the essays are not finalized). So should she change the self-reporting part of the CA or just indicate on the supplement she doesn’t want her scores considered?</p>
<p>We frequently read posts talking about “hooks”. What kind things are considered as hooks?</p>
<p>I think the list of hooks includes (but is not limited to) anything that makes your application stand out from the pile, such as:
being a legacy
being the first one in your family to go to college
being a recruited athlete
being exceptional in some way
having overcome adversity (disability; poverty; homelessness; discrimination)</p>
<p>I’m sure there are other hooks I haven’t thought of…</p>
<p>Some other hooks:
being a URM (under-represented minority)
fluent in several languages
getting perfect scores in BOTH SAT and ACT</p>
<p>Legacy
African-American
Hispanic
Native-American
First generation your family to go to college
Recruited athlete
Nationally ranked musician
Child of a very famous VIP</p>
<p>akmom – I’m in the same boat with S – he has 4 schools that are test optional and the others require scores. All the test optional ones use the common app. I believe you can self-report scores in one section of the common app but then when you’re “within” the college’s app in the common app (you know what I mean, right? you click the tab of a specific school and their questions and supplement if any pop up) you can then select to send scores or not for each specific school. </p>
<p>I asked GC that question yesterday and he said don’t send them to the test optional schools. This was after hearing S’s score…</p>
<p>Re hooks: I wish that it weren’t still the case, but coming from a family that is willing and able to donate huge sums of money to the school is a hook (they call it “developmental”).</p>
<p>^^^I think another hook is if parents are willing and able to pay full tuition.</p>
<p>traditionally speaking, the only true hooks are legacy, development, recruited athlete, URM/first generation</p>
<p>Classof2015 - Just wondering where your DS’s scores fell in relation to the schools’ 25-75% range? If they were below or at the lower end I can understand. But if they were at 50-75% or above would you send them? Thanks!</p>