I believe El Paso is in a different timezone?
My DD started filling the CA form today and finished most of the area except CA essay and school specific supplementary. She said she decided the CA prompt to write which is different prompt from few days ago. Anyway, she seems like to check all the school specific essay prompts, which is a relief for me.
My daughter has a hard choice regarding supplementary recommendation letter. She finished her summer camp which considered as one of the best humanity program few weeks ago. During the camp, she really had a good relation with one of professors who taught her and the professor promised my daughter to write a good letter when my daughter asked her for college recommendation at the end of summer camp.
While filling CA, my daughter realize that a recommendation letter from the professor from her summer program is more or less the same as the recommendation letters from her English teacher because they will talk about her literature analysis. My daughter wanted to add another dimension of her application.
One of her EC is related to creative writing program outside of her school. The program is quite well known and is recognized twice by Presidentâs Committee on the Arts and Humanities for best after school or out of school program. Sheâs not only a mentee there but also youth board member and enrollment committee. My daughterâs mentor is an associate producer of Huffington Post Live. She mentored my daughter for two years and will continue another year. She knows my daughter very well and understand my daughter, especially my daughterâs care of socio-economic, ethnic, or gender minorities. She wrote few essays and letters to teachers and other students in her school which show well about her interest. If my daughter asks her a letter, we are sure she will incorporate my daughterâs political aspect which cannot be captured well in her application.
My daughter is not sure which letter is better and I also donât have a lot of insight in this case. In the end, it may not be important at all. However, it will come back again when my daughter asks a letter. I suggested my daughter to consult with her GC and hope it works.
No progress on applications here but son is planning to apply ED to his 1st choice so we have some time. He also recently stated that if he doesnât get into one of his 5 reach schools that heâd just as soon stay instate. That leaves about 3 match schools to apply to. I may exercise parental choice and insist on 1-2 more matches. His safety school apps arenât due until Feb.
Jumping onto this list since I saw my name tagged. @kittymom1102, my son is a rising senior at MIT. Unlike a lot of kids who apply to MIT, my son hadnât planned to apply until October of his senior year when he visited MIT via a program called the WISE program (Weekend Immersion in Science and Engineering), which targets URMs (including low income, women, and first gen students). He didnât think he wanted to attend a STEM school, but in the end, thatâs exactly what he wanted.
After that visit, he decided to apply as he had a really good time there. My son is 1/2 Puerto Rican, had SAT 2300+, SAT II, 2300+ for three tests, national achievements in math, physics and chess, and was very involved in music and leadership. He also began college classses in 7th grade and did physics research in high school.
However, we approached college applications with no expectations whatsoever since he was my first and was homeschooled. Community college was his ultimate safety even with him having taken all the community college math and physics courses by 10th grade. Maybe I was being too much of âgloomy gusâ, but that was how we did it.
He was fortunate to get into all his colleges including Princeton, Penn, Harvey Mudd, Caltech, MIT and some others. (Applied to 10 schools)
In the end, he chose MIT for the people most of all, and then for the location and size. I think academics came in 4th. He had a number of friends from math circle there, so his transition onto campus was pretty smooth.
Itâs been an amazing, amazing experience in so many ways, but MIT is a very intense place and there have been plenty of bumps along the way. Itâs been a most challenging three years in so many ways.
Weâre very, very grateful to have gotten incredible need-based aid plus a great outside NM Corporate Scholarship, and thus weâve paid very little each year and heâll graduate debt-free.
HTH and I wish you the best!
Though I am not a parent, I can talk about my experience of being within range yet ultimately rejected from a variety of boarding schools.
The best advice I can give to parents is to make sure your child does not become too emotionally invested in one specific school before decisions come out as it can be traumatic if they do not get accepted.
As far as deciding on which colleges to apply to, the reach, match and safety school method is a good bet yet try to be realistic with your child. Ex. If he/she has a 2.7 GPA it may not be the best use of money to apply to the ivies.
I hope my advice will help parents navigate the emotionally taxing terrain of the admission season! Goodluck
My, arenât you all chatty!
Welcome @kittymom1102
@sbjdorlo, thank you for sharing your story! My daughter is not interested in MIT, but is homeschooled, and I always enjoy hearing the college admission stories. And thanks for the reminder that there are plenty of obstacles to overcome after college admission is achieved. My oldest is entering her junior year of college, and I know that part of it all too well.
@NYDad513, I really love the care and concern you demonstrate for your daughter! Wherever she ends up, she is going to be okay, because she knows she has her dad on her side. On top of that, she sounds very intelligent in a variety of ways, and is clearly being very thoughtful about her applications. It will be fun to see where she ends up.
Re: word counts, yeah, they shut you down at the max word count. There have been a couple of essays though that specified âaboutâ so many words, and in that case, there was no absolute. My daughter has made great progress on the various essaysâŠin fact, the main Common App one has been done for a while, and submitted to a few places. Still plenty of supplementary essays to write and polish though. She has been pretty disciplined about working on it every night, along with trying to finalize work on her music portfolio.
As far as rec letters, we discovered yesterday that we had misunderstood what happens when a recommender opts for the âoffline form.â We assumed the form was sent from the school to the teacher. Not the case! It has to be printed off by us and given to the teacher, to be sent from there to the school.
" If your daughter wrote longer essay, just ⊠chop off something less important"
For some reason this struck me as inappropriately funny, because I have a boy⊠Ok, Iâm very very tired. 
p.s. Thank you for all the replies about essay length!!
Iâll admit I have not looked at the supplement, but when a school says they want a âpersonal statementâ is that all the guidance they give? Is this the place for the âwhy x schoolâ essay? I am hoping DS knows more about that than I do right now.
@sbjdorlo Thanks for your reply! Congratulations on your very, very accomplished son 
My son is far from being that impressive. He is just another regular kid, a regular Joe (Jose). He gets straight Aâs in school, takes all AP classes, does well on his AP tests (5âs and 4âs), took the SAT once got 2290 (800M, 770R, 720W), took Math Level 2 got 800, and is about to take Physics this October (took Bio and got 730, probably not sending). All his awards are county and school level, nothing national (unless you count NM and NHispanic). He has leadership positions at school in Math club and Honor societies and years of volunteering at one place. I mean, there is nothing unusual about my him. He is just a hardworking kid with love of learning. Nothing more If for some unexpected reason he were to get into MIT (insert prestigious school name), it will be the greatest proof that ânormalâ people can get in!
@LaxPrep, Hear you! Precisely, for the reasons you mentioned, we have a long lists of schools at all levels. He has preferences but is not âin loveâ with one school. He could see himself at any school. He is such a chill dude that the other day asked me whether he should apply to the Honors program at our hometown university, FIU. FIU is not even ranked, but it doesnât matter to him. Thatâs the kind of kid we are talking about here.
@LKnomad, Fortunately for his broke parents (us), my son doesnât have a preference regarding schools. As long as it has the program he wants (ME), he is fine with any school. His only preferences are best possible school (academic-wise) and a location where the life of someone who looks like him is not in danger (if you know what I mean :-() Those are pretty much the parameters.
@kittymom1102 I think there are a lot of ânormalâ kids that get into extraordinary colleges. Your son has great stats and for these âlotteryâ schools sometimes you just throw the darts.
Every school has a bunch of English teachers but there is only one elite English summer program in the nation and they only take so many students per year. If it were my daughter, I would tell her to forget English teacher and go with the summer person. I donât see having more than one person saying the same thing as an issue though.
I agree that there are a lot of "normal "people who get into top colleges. Itâs definitely worth applying to college if your student really wants to apply! My son has said that about MIT; there are a lot of hard workIng, caring, passionate kids that didnât have national awards.
@AKFirefly Thanks. Itâs hard to follow the college admission process which is very different from my own experience from another country. I am in the middle of learning phase and it will be a little bit relief when my second applies.
@fretfulmother I guess what you mean⊠oops.
@texaspg Thanks a lot for suggestion. I think it is a good option for my daughter and will talk about your suggestion with my daughter.
@NYDad513 My son was having trouble deciding between 2 teachers who both wanted to say he was one of their top few students in 20 years of teaching. Once he thought it more he realized that the subject where he is somewhat more talented (math) there were less examples the teacher could give in the rec than in science where there were labs and group work to discuss not just his problem solving ability. Perhaps there is some similar type of distinction between the 2 teachers that your daughter can find.
We just returned from Senior Information night where my son signed up for Naviance ( first year our school used this program) Unfortunately , he didnât realize last night when he was struggling with his resume , that heâd have the opportunity to build one on this program.
I guess I must be unclear on the definitions of âregularâ and ânormalâ.
@GoldenWest Normal comes from âNormâ and âNormâ according to Webster means: 1)average level of development or achievement, 2)something (such as a behavior or way of doing something) that is usual or expected
Regardless, ânormalâ and âregularâ sounds kind of the same to me
@dcplanner WOW. Your son looks really smart and talented in math. My daughter is not that much. Sheâs good to get in some exam school but not spectacular in grade or otherwise. Anyway, she formally asked the professor recommendation letter today.
There are some differences they will write. Last year, my daughter wrote a 5 page single spaced letter to her English teacher asking him to include more woman writers in his English class. He understand what my daughter cares and I think he will mention regarding my daughterâs letter in his recommendation. I was actually surprised when my daughter told me that she asked the English teacher for recommendation letter early this year because she shut down for the time being in his class.