<p>Have any of your children participated in these on-line chats that are promoted regularly? Do the students just log into a ‘room’ and post questions and wait for responses? What is the benefit of this forum for applicants? I assume it is another point of demonstrated interest, but ignoring that, how is this supposed to help/educate the students?</p>
<p>Just curious as those emails arrive somewhat regularly also.</p>
<p>Well if they base it on the car, then we’ll get those as well even though we have said we would not be applying for financial aid either. But in our case it is NOT a rental - - we just drive beat up cars LOL. Three of our four cars have over 100K on them!</p>
<p>Glido - Thanks for the post. As secondtimers, I agree that you hit it right on point with your comments.</p>
<p>A second timer for me, too. Very different sons. Son '14 did little or no research on schools. I did most of it, and then suggested schools to him. We made several visits, and he liked all of them! He’s a pretty agreeable kid most of the time. He has minimal needs or wishes – nice rec facilities, college football, decent dorms and food and pretty girls. He just figures every school can work or he can make it work. The older son wanted top 10 schools. He settled for a National Merit offer to Alabama, and he loved it. He had done little or no research on Alabama before we visited. He was more worried about what the Ivies offered. </p>
<p>The one thing the two boys did was let me keep tabs on paperwork. Which is a good thing. One of Son '14’s schools just e-mailed him. They do not have a transcript. Guidance sent it three weeks ago. So it will be resent.</p>
<p>mozika – I was kind of “reading the tea leaves” and hoping it meant a positive decision too – as if “we want him but what if he turns us down 'cause he can’t afford it!”</p>
<p>CT1417 – his emails have died down considerably. He gets invitations for surveys and stuff from one school way more than others, plus he keeps getting invites from a school I know he’d be rejected at.</p>
<p>If I had a wish list for how this would play out, it would include at least one acceptance by Christmas Day. If he has one “yes”, he could weather a few "no"s or deferrals. But please don’t shower him with the college equivalent of coal in his stocking.</p>
<p>CT1415…participated in one of these real-time chats designed for both parents and applicants about a month ago (for Purdue). It was interesting and fairly informative. I suppose it all depends on how the school sets it up. Purdue had set aside about 45 minutes of time where they clearly had multiple people on their end fielding the barrage of text message questions coming their way. Since questions ranged all over the place and the questions and responses were intermixed (and consequently kinda jumbled up) it took a few minutes to get the hang of following the scroll. On the whole, it was helpful…I asked a couple of specific questions (was there a shuttle from the school to the airport at breaktimes?, etc)…it was interesting. I certainly don’t believe they gave a hoot who was on the other end and made no impact on admission decisions, etc.</p>
<p>also, last night son got an email giving time and date next week to access the school portal for the admission decision…sorta created a slight wave of nausea…you know the time, the place, but no idea of outcome…yikes!</p>
<p>good luck to all</p>
<p>Vandyeyes–thanks for the insight! </p>
<p>Good luck on the ED. Am trying to wait patiently (not!) for that decision and then scramble to come up with a revised RD plan, if needed.</p>
<p>Congrats to all the parents whose children have received their acceptances! My D is waiting for her EA result - mid December. </p>
<p>We haven’t sent the SAT scores to her RD schools. If we send it after she hears from her EA, will it be enough time? If we send it December 16, will it reach by RD date of January 1? </p>
<p>Good Luck to everyone on EA/ED results. Keeping fingers crossed for all our kids!</p>
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<p>Wow. That’s an excellent question. I’ve never even considered that!</p>
<p>Neither of my kids so far (DS’11 or DS’14) has done an online chat for a college, but I did one for parents for one school DS’11 had been accepted to, and the information I got was enough to eliminate it from the running, so it was valuable from that point of view (though I’m sure not what they wanted their chat to accomplish). But it became clear that what “looked good on paper” for a fairly new program wasn’t all it was cracked up to be in its real implementation.</p>
<p>@jasmineRose – If the school receives the results online, almost certainly. If they receive by snail mail, possibly not. One way to tell would be to check whether the schools state what the last test sitting they take scores from is – if they say scores from the December 7th sitting will get to them in time, then sending scores mid-December from any sitting should be fine.</p>
<p>Thanks for the reminders. I just sent the SAT scores for the 1/1 college deadlines. I don’t want to wait until 12/16 (our ED notification date). We’ll be scrambling enough for essays at that point assuming it’s a no. Also, one school (Renssalaer) has a deadline of 1/15 but says they want the scores by 12/31 and it looks like they get MAILED not transmitted electronically.</p>
<p>@mathmomvt, thank you. Good Idea! I will check the colleges SAT deadlines.</p>
<p>@crowlady, RPI actually says “All standardized tests must be <em>taken</em> by December 31.” (emphasis mine) So I would say ordered by December 16th should be just fine, but if in doubt call them. I just sent them my DS’s scores last night after he completed his application, and I was pretty shocked to see that they get scores snail mailed. The only other school my DS applied to that gets scores by mail is in Canada.</p>
<p>@mathmomvt, how do you find out if a particular school gets their SAT score by snail mail? - Thank you!</p>
<p>@jasmineRose, the way I found out was when I was putting in the order, it showed the delivery type for each school before I decided if I wanted to pay for expedited delivery. There may be another way to check, but I don’t know. You could go ahead and pretend you were ordering them, and just stop before paying.</p>
<p>JasmineRose: The official SAT report does not have to arrive by the application due date. You can self-report the SAT scores and then be sure to send the official College Report eventually. The admissions office readers will need that official report by late January maybe, but most likely not until February or, in some cases, early March. DO NOT spend the extra money to have College Board sent the SAT Report expedited. I have been told this many, many times by several admissions officers. Ordering the report on December 16th is PLENTY of time to get it to an RD school</p>
<p>100% agree with Glido and mathmomvt… my DS12 applied ED to a school and was deferred, I waited to send scores to all his other schools with a 1/1 deadline simply because I didn’t want to pay the $ if I didn’t have to. They all get there in PLENTY of time. Application due date is a firm date, but all other required materials can trickle in after that date. I have heard from a few admissions counselors that it sometimes takes 3 weeks after app deadline for them to even start to look at applications. </p>
<p>Here is my new fun fact. If your kids are waiting on EA/ED decision announcements or “in the mail” announcements, you can follow the schools admissions dept’s on Twitter and they usually will announce what is going on almost daily. Today I read a tweet from my DS’s ED school that they are in the second day of ED committee presentations…GULP! On second thought, maybe NOT knowing this stuff is better:)</p>
<p>Thanks for the second-timer’s posts. It really helped me put things into perspective. What’s killing me though is the waiting.</p>
<p>Right now I’m a nervous wreck. More so than my D and my wife. My nervousness also is attributed to the fact that my “baby” is soon to be adult and going away for college.</p>
<p>Yesterday, my D got the email confirmation that USC got her CA app and her USConnect login. Interesting that on her admission status, it’s showing that they don’t have her supplement yet. D submitted the supplement the same date as her CA app. USC thread indicates that it’s not just her that having this issue. I wonder if she can just upload the pdf file on USConnect.</p>
<p>2018dad, my son’s usconnect says the same thing. I called and they said as long as he has a green check mark on the Common Application, he is fine.</p>