@Mysonsdad My S got the UCLA open house postcard, and that was the first thing I noticed - no time mentioned. Looks like that was an oversight. He has another event on the same day, so it doesn’t look like we’ll be attending.
In the same mail batch, he also got an invite to the USC open house in November.
Not sure why, but a lot of “date-saver” cards list day/date only. Judging from my event planning days, it would have been because details/venue had not been locked down, except for the date.
@happymochi, what is the date of the USC open house? Although I don’t think S is interested in seeing more colleges. Notre Dame has something going on in the LA area and S doesn’t want to attend. He did want to go to the UCLA OH but it is the week before his SAT subject test and he said he would rather study.
DD got invite from MIT. They will be in LA in September if anyone interested.
@Mysonsdad - It’s Sun, November 22nd. Here’s the link if you want to RSVP: http://www.usc.edu/admission/undergraduate/firstyear/prospective/discoverusc.html
I think @dyiu13 is right about the lack of details because UCLA doesn’t have anything online about the open house yet.
@ballerina16 - just remembered that he got one of those too. That’s one we may attend, but I wonder how informative it’ll be. We went to a panel info session with several colleges in the spring, and it didn’t seem to provide anything substantative you couldn’t learn from the website.
Are any of your kids planning overnight visits?
@happymochi DD will be attending MIT one since we didn’t not visit MIT or any Boston area colleges for the past few years. DD attended Harvey Mudd FAST in the spring. She didn’t not apply for overnight visit since it is my understanding they do not want students to do both. We plan to travel up Northern California in September. Everything else will be done as accepted student visits.
DD is really reluctant to visit any of her choice of schools. A couple of days ago, while we talked about college application, she said she will go to Wellesley than Columbia if only two schools are available. So I asked her whether she wants to visit to Wellesley to see how they look like and she declined to visit.
We had not have any visit yet and she did not show any interest in visiting schools. She has all the prejudice regarding schools and does not want to to reality check. It seems that we have to visit after all the results are in our hands.
Thank you @Mysonsdad
We don’t have any pre-acceptance overnight visits planned (unless by some chance my daughter is accepted into one of the fly-in programs.) It’s a possibility after we see where she is accepted. Just not very feasible financially or logistically from our location. My oldest went on some visits after acceptance (though I am not sure that the overnights are terribly helpful, honestly.)
We’re in the same situation: overnights only after acceptances for S. With most of the schools being hundreds of miles away, it’s just not feasible, especially since there’s only one city on the list with more than one school.
D has seen a couple of her schools, since they’re mostly local (within a couple of hours’ drive).
S last picture day today.
@NYDad513 - while I happen to agree with your daughter that Wellesley is nicer than Columbia, they are totally different 
- so she probably ought to visit both!
Sometimes kids dont like local schools. My kids and Rice have similar “no way” kind of relationship.
@texaspg - that’s very interesting. We’re fighting that feeling about MIT which is less than a mile from us. I try to envision if we lived a state or two away, and then it’s like “of course MIT is great” but it seems so provincial to go to college in your back yard, right…? (Same is true about Harvard I guess.)
If we believe after receiving the financial aid award letter that D16 could actually afford to attend, then we’d be willing to travel to visit any colleges outside our area. But, realistically projecting the expected financial awards, that might be only one school in California.
@fretfulmother - you can try what we told the older kid - we will move to Austin if that is what it takes.
MIT is the greatest engineering school in the world. My kids don’t believe me when I tell them that growing up in India, we cared a lot more about MIT as aspiring engineers than any other school in US. The reverence factor simply didn’t apply to any other schools.
Ugh, we still have four schools to visit. DH and I will split them up. Between scheduling these and interviews, I am feeling a little stressed.
Yesterday the school had the application workshop to walk us through Naviance and the Common App. The kids will all meet in groups today with their counselors to learn how to request recommendations and transcripts. This is becoming way too real.
It’s the first day of school today and I think my D finally has her schedule worked out. We could not resolve the conflict between her instrument/ensemble class and German 4 but did reach a compromise that may work. She’ll be taking something called “Applied Music.” I’m not really sure how this class works, I just know it’s a performance class open to both band and orchestra students. D will be the only student on her instrument in this class and the teacher normally works with band students and is unlikely to have any experience with D’s instrument. The orchestra director would only approve it if she was going to continue taking private music instruction (which she’d be doing regardless). D is thinking it’s mostly going to be independent practice with some random assignments and a few solos at performances. It’s only offered 8th period, she was supposed to have 8th period as an off period so she has time to get to class at the CC for her DE class. Now we wait to see if the teacher will allow her to leave class 15 minutes early two days a week first semester so she can make it to class on time, if not she’ll have to drop the class and be ineligible to compete in music competitions. Now she has first period as and off period which really doesn’t help her because she drives her brother to school she so has to be there in time for first period anyway.
This is what she ended up, I’m crossing my fingers this Applied Music class will work!
Period1 OFF/EXCUSED
Period2 AP LITERATURE & COMP SEMINAR
Period3 PHYSICS 2 C AP
Period5 MULTI CALCULUS (first semester)
Period5 OFFICE AIDE (second semester)
Period6 AP MUSIC THEORY
Period7 AP GERMAN 4
Period8 APPLIED MUSIC 1
DE OFF CAMPUS - MW AM GOV T ECCO (first semester), CAL 3 (second semester)
@3scoutsmom - that looks like a good schedule, actually - potentially she can request, on those “leave 15 minutes early” days, that she do her practice during that extra first period instead? It sounds to me like the school/teacher trust her, and that they would let her be self-monitored to do something like that.
@fretfulmother that what I’m hoping! D been attempting to email the teacher but hasn’t gotten a reply. My guess is that the teacher will allow her to leave early those two days but doesn’t want to have any thing in writing;-)