@carolinamom2boys Congrats on a solid number one! It sounds like a great choice.
@AsleepAtTheWheel I don’t think we’ve ever had a tour guide remotely like our kids. Luckily it hasn’t been a problem. A friend of ours recently toured Stanford and the tour got off to a rocky start (for our friend anyway) when the guide said, “Who doesn’t love sports?” And talked about the sports program for ten minutes. Um, the prospective math major with a decent shot at MIT and Chicago?
@carolinamom2boys I’m really impressed that your son figured that out for himself. That’s great. Too bad we can’t have him sit down and talk to my D. She is looking for something that I don’t think exists and I am afraid that she’ll be disappointed when all is said and done.
@AsleepAtTheWheel you would think colleges would know that their tour guide can make or break a decision. We have nixed a few schools due to disappointing tour guiges.
@AKFirefly your post made me laugh. I wish my D would start her essays. Last night she actually asked me to spend some time with her to go over her outlines. She seems to think that I know more about her life than she does.
D has been the recipient of some pretty disappointing news in the last few days. I hope that this doesn’t distract her from her essays and summer work. If it happened to me, I can assure you that I would be emotionally side lined for days.
Happy hump day!
@MuggleMom Thanks for the kind words . We’re heading to his very close second choice school in a few weeks and see if his opinion remains the same. He does have fairly good self awareness for a teenage boy . A very old soul. The interesting thing is he was just like this with his HS choice. He had applied to several magnet and charter schools prior to his Freshman year , but he was waitlisted . He said that if he started school prior to coming off of waitlist, he would not transfer. He was offered a spot 5 school days after school started, he declined the spot ( despite much push from me) Evidently his judgement was better than mine, and he thrived and excelled at his current school . He went from a shy, introverted boy to someone with strong connections to his small peer group and a strong participant in clubs and academic activities . Hope his intuition works for colleges too . I’m sure your daughter will find a perfect fit for her as well. Good luck in the process.
@MuggleMom Hugs to you and your DD! I hope she us able to cope and move on to enjoy her senior year.
Interestingly enough, both Chicago and MIT do sports recruiting. I was surprised to see an email from Chicago recently which talked about nothing but their sports glory. I guess gone are the days when they promoted themselves with oddball puzzles.
The problem with finding the “right” tour guides is that different tour guides appeal to different kids. So the admissions office can’t win! We had one tour where the tour guide said “Anyone interested in sports?” Pause, no replies “Good - let’s look at the performing arts spaces next”. That definitely worked for us, but wouldn’t have worked for lots of sports-oriented kids.
@texaspg My son would love to get promotional literature with “oddball puzzles”. College sports are not his thing. He recently got a large brochure/booklet from Harvey Mudd with some type of punch out pieces that build something. He hasn’t constructed it yet (because mom is nagging about summer homework not yet completed)…but you bet he will eventually. Johns Hopkins sends stacks of cards with slits on all sides so you can build a card structure in many configurations. Yup, you guessed it…he also thought that was cool. He loves that type of thing! Can you spell math/science nerd?
@MuggleMom huggs to your DD!
On a first day of school DD’s APEL teacher said they will be working on UC essays in class. I was hoping they will work on CA essays! DD is done with rough draft of her non CA essays but I was too tiered last night to read it.
Thanks everyone for the kind words. She can certainly use some kindness.
I hope everyone has a great day.
And @ballerina16 I wonder if she asks, can she do CA instead. A college essay is a college essay… right?
I hope D’s English teacher lets them write CA or any college essay for class. That would be awesome. My S15’s English teacher let them write college essays but it was in November. Most of his apps were done by then, and she only wanted them to write CA, and that was long over for him. Fingers crossed for this year.
Sorry for typos. Auto-correct! I was trying to say that I was too tired last night to read her essay. I have to say all those application forms are very complex and time consuming. Kudos to those kids who do it themselves.
As of an hour ago, S tells me this batch of essays (all the early ones plus the state uni system) are done and edited. He has two (which overlap) to do on Labor Day weekend, then he’s good until Thanksgiving. With any luck the Christmas break ones won’t have to be done at all.
He’s in there alternately doing the last of his summer homework and texting a girl, so it may take awhile to finish that.
Tomorrow we do the Common App and State Flagship app, then he gets three whole days in which to do nothing before school starts.
As for D…she’s working on her first essay. The same one she’s been working on for a week and a half. But in fairness, she’s not applying early anywhere, and doesn’t have the same after-school commitments, so she has time.
@MuggleMom we still have the opposite problem from your DD. He can see himself almost anywhere. My son has not been too influenced by tour guides because he is very focussed on academics which we find most tour guides aren’t too knowledgeable on outside their own major. That is what websites are for.
I tell myself either he’ll start to narrow his preferences as we move through the process or he really will be inclined to be happy and succeed anywhere. Wish we had time for more visits. At the moment he is leaning towards Philosophy (gulp)! His essay outlines sure reflect that.
Our school’s Naviance has old college counselor information. When CA and Naviance got synchronized an invitation to old college counselor was sent. The CA has new counselor information, but somehow invitation was sent based on Naviance information. How can this get fixed?
@crowlady – My older sister graduated as a philosophy major (doubled w psychology). When I was in college (Middle Ages) typically one needed eight semester courses in a dept to qualify for the major. I discovered in my last semester that I had taken seven philosophy courses, one short of the major, without realizing it. Oh well.
I have to imagine that philosophy depts are starved for students now that college has morphed into trade school. Can’t hurt him to highlight this piece of who he is, from both a strategic and truthfulness standpoint. Just boring pre-business and pre-med kids in our family.
@crowlady Philosophy of mind overlaps significantly with artificial intelligence. There are philosophy books that explain some programming concepts. There are other aspects of programming I can’t think of at the moment to which philosophy is relevant.
Is our school the only one out of this bunch * not* on Naviance?
@petrichor11 We don’t have Naviance either.
No Naviance. But the kids had to sign up for Parchment today at school. I think our school uses it instead.
@petrichor11 Our school went off Naviance last year, just in time to lock out our DS who would use it.
Minnesota is, supposedly, building a state-wide network designed to replace much of its functionality, but a) our school isn’t up on it yet, and b) from the descriptions I’ve seen, it’s more focused on career planning than college planning (not that the two are mutually exclusive, but differently focused).
I have a parchment account set up for son. It seems to be very generous with his chances at all the schools on the list.