@dyiu13 That’s exactly the reason my son is applying early. November is going to be crazy at his HS and most merit opportunities have early deadlines.
Thanks, all. @Booajo We are in NYC and but Daughter won’t apply to Columbia. Having grown up here, she wants college to be a chance to live somewhere else, which I completely understand. But it’s a great school. Good luck to your child. @AsleepAtTheWheel @NYDad513 @Ballerina2016 @texaspg You all raise interesting points regarding interviews. Maybe only do interviews if they are offered (might look funny to turn one down if the school makes the first overture) or required, or if there is great confidence going in. Otherwise it may be prudent to consider the risk of a little upside versus a lot of downside. @bajamm Thanks, if we can’t figure out away to “start” an application via the College App that the colleges are aware of before submitting it, maybe we should try to finalize our college list – still not 100% – and then send test scores. @petrichor11 Yes, I guess I’ll just keep pointing out the acceptance rate, which is so very low. I do wish schools would get rid of ED and SCEA and let everyone apply to other schools at the same time as some unrestricted EA schools allow. Thanks everyone.
Regarding interviews. I am sitting in the parking lot of yet another school. We are 45 minutes early for S’s interview. It will be his third one in 2 weeks. All the schools are within driving distance so not taking an interview would be seen as lack of interest. He has a fourth lined up for an out of state school in two weeks. Yesterday (yes he had an interview yesterday) the office of the school was packed with kids waiting for the interviews. It seems important. The interview are going extremely well.
One thing we did, which I think made a huge difference in S’s preperation was creating a resume. So far he has handed the resume to two people, neither looked at it, but both filed it away. So it is not actually having the resume that is important. It is the act of making it. We started with a job resume template and worked on the “objective” first. He used it to state why he was interested in a specific school. This took quite a bit of work to write out and made him really consider why that school. It prepared him for the “Why _____” question. Then he created a section on personally traits, followed by hobbies and ECs. Lastly he added stats. The entire process took about two hours and included a lot of brainstorming. It was 10X better than a mock interview because it cemented the ideas in his head.
So far the two interviews were night and day. The first was a student and she had a clip board of questions including, what public figure would you consider a good role model and if you were unable to fail, what would you do. The second interview was simply a conversation, very informal and relaxed. I will be able to tell you about the third in less than an hour! Almost there.
^^^this! I’d say the same for my D16–preparing the resume was huge. It got her to put all of her accomplishments in one place, organized, described, and ready to share, and not just on paper but in her head as well. It’s also organized and ready to go on the common app.
She also did interviews at the school’s we visited this summer and they were all different. One was with a student and gave her a good feel for the school. The student did take notes for her admissions file. Another was essentially an individual info session. The third was much more of an official interview with an admissions officer and was both about her and gave her the opportunity to ask questions.
@LKnomad, I would love to hear more specifics about your son’s experience with the interview at Harvey Mudd. My D has an interview there in late October and I want to be sure she knows (at least as much as possible) what to expect so she can be prepared. As you may recall, I asked a while back whether the interview would be detrimental or not since she has communication issues, but she’s willing to give it a go. She’s been working on her resume for an English class assignment, so I’m glad to hear that’s really useful. I was interested to see that hobbies and personal traits were included on your son’s resume–I’ll have to ask D if she’s included those categories, since I haven’t seen her resume yet.
Watch your mail! DD got her National AP Scholar Award in the mail today. It was sent first class in a manila envelope;-)
They said early September, wasn’t expecting the first day of September!
Congrats @3scoutsmom D! That’s great news!
Interesting. The AP scholar award reached our home on Saturday…
Confirms my suspension that our mail is always late!
DD got her National AP scholar mailing yesterday. It is so strange that they still use snail mail these days. Look at this agony on NMSF cut off forum. Why this information has to be mailed to school principals? Why not submitted electronically?
Because they want to torture us? They want the school to feel ‘in control’ so the school will value the award more? Just guesses…
My daughter took 1 AP duringl junior and 2 APs as senior. Her school makes it almost impossible to take AP class until junior. Even junior year, 1-2 APs are common in her school. I think no students from my daughter’s school have AP scholar awards.
NMSF case, I heard around 40% of students qualify from my daughter’s school.
There’s a few AP scholars each year in my school(3-4). We had our first ever NMSF last year.
@NYDad513 This must be very strong school! From our school only 15% qualified in April and 2% made it to NMSF yesterday. But again, our state cut off is one of the highest
Is that % of senior class or % of total 9-12?
@Ballerina2016 SAT average of my daughter’s school is over 2200. It was like… 2235 for seniors last year if I remember correctly.It’s a very competitive school.
@3scoutsmom for our school it is % of senior class.
Our school hasn’t released numbers for this year but if I had to guess I’d say touch less than 5%, maybe 25ish out of a class of 602? I’m sure they won’t release numbers until 9/9. I was thinking that was high, can’t imagine 40%!
@NYDad513 is yours a magnet school? Our high school is the only one in the district so some of the senior class are in special ed and English as a second language. Even though our school is very competitive, I be shocked to see it hit over 10% NMSF. Possibly the % that took the PSAT in 11th grade could be higher, but certainly not the % of the entire class size.
@NYDad513 It would be great if your daughter’s English teacher wrote about that incident. It shows a lot about her character, problem solving abilities, knowledge, independence, maturity, etc.
@smilla @asleepAtTheWheel I get the impression a couple of years ago that colleges are aware of who has added them to their CA “workspace” even if the student hasn’t submitted anything. This is because we got emails from said schools saying “We noticed you haven’t finished your application, if you need more time we’ll grant you an extension.” A bit of clever Googling and I found this CA page that confirms my understanding https://appsupport.commonapp.org/link/portal/33011/33013/Article/18/What-information-can-schools-see-about-my-application-before-I-submit-it