Parents of the HS Class of 2016 (Part 1)

@crowlady There was one psychological weight lifted and another dropped. It felt so surreal to hit that button knowing I actually applied to college but at the same time it was " Now I have to wait until 12/15 before I know anything. Ugh"

Joining the lost patience club. D will happily let her dad or me rescue her if she can manage it (which is why I really want her to go away for school, even though the CC may be a valid choice in her case). She tried playing dumb with her university app Saturday. I managed to get through to the “establishing residency” section, and gave her to her dad
who promptly lost it by the third question. I left to run errands anyway and they had it sorted by the time I got back.
Since then, she’s done another entirely unaided except for forgetting her social security number.One, possibly two to go.

@Cheeringsection even cheerleaders usually take the 3rd quarter off. Staying relentlessly positive when dealing with teenagers is something beyond my comprehension. GOOOOOOO PARENTS!!! :slight_smile:

D is going to a black college fair in town this weekend and is off-campus today so asked me to register her. The form had a place to list activities
I ran out of space. Let’s hope that at least one of the colleges she has on her list is there and doing “on the spot” acceptances. What a relief that would be!

I don’t have to bug her about doing much of anything, except writing the papers for her PE credit. Why she is putting off writing 2 300-word summaries, I can’t guess. She has full control of the topics and the rest of the PE requirements are long done. ERGH!

That would be incredible if she got an acceptance on the spot! @sseamom

@crowlady , if there are changes he wants to make or updates, he can e mail the admissions office at the school. My daughter has had to update a couple of things (the downside of being super early with apps), but the admissions offices seem happy enough to hear from her.

Re: press releases, I would suggest trying to work something like that into one of the places most of the colleges offer for extra information. It seems to me that something like that would make the app more memorable.

Side note that might help someone: my daughter has gotten offers from a couple places to help with travel expenses associated with a visit. One place specified that she would have to attend an event on a particular day, which we could not do. However, when she e mailed to ask if she could utilize the voucher for a visit on another day, they agreed readily to the change (and this is a big help for us, as the travel associated with the few visits planned is incredibly expensive.) Anyway, just an FYI that the conditions of these offers are not necessarily set in stone.

Also, for the NMSF, we learned that OU offers a hotel room for one night when doing a visit. That will be helpful as well!

D16 got her SCEA app in, except for the arts supplement (it’s ready, just waiting on a LOR to attach with it.)

@GoodGrief16 – Best of luck to your daughter on that SCEA. If that school has any sort of smarts they’ll grab her while they can.

@Cheeringsection Procrastination could well be because your DS isn’t sure about the top choice but doesn’t want to disappoint you, that’s the situation we might be in. The scholarship situation makes it tougher for you, I’m sure. I’m backing off my S16 a little, we’ll see how much he wants this on his own (famous last words).

@lvmjac1 That’s why we started with one that was less critical. But we’re always waiting to hear about something!

@NYDad513 Which schools is your daughter applying to?

Thanks to all for your support. We will get through this. I am resisting a strong urge to refuse to pay for any application not done with best effort and submitted by Friday. [-(

@ceceliahearst, welcome to the boards, just an FYI, on these boards a lot of times we try to keep our colleges confidential. (Get it? Colleges Confidential lol) sorry I couldn’t resist.

On another note, good to see others losing their patience, although S has taken a lot of initiative lately, we have done our fair share of “spirited debate.”

S submitted his first app to a school last week. This is the one that guaranteed a full tuition scholarship. I was hoping it was going to be one of those real quick turn-around acceptance schools, but I guess not. The nice thing about my school is that the counsellors pull the kids into the computer lab and walk them through the application so the kids know how to fill it out.

Final note, finally got to pay for S last SAT subject test he took last week. Results come out on the 22nd, so here’s hoping for something good.

Just realized we just passed 7,000 posts, we went through the 6,000’s pretty quick.

@ceceliahearst As @Mysonsdad, most of the parents here try to keep the school our kids apply confidential even though we know some of those school based on our talk. Anyway, my daughter will apply Cornell as RD mostly because of her summer camp which makes Cornell almost a safety school. She’s going to apply few ultra competitive school with other relatively easy schools. Her high school limits the number of private school students can apply, therefore, we are very cautious when choosing schools. Anyway, I doubt she has high chance to be accepted those ultra competitive schools but trying.

English is not my language and sometimes I am very blatant because I am not good at handling nuanced sentence. Sorry if I look rude, which is not my intention.

I don’t know how representative the Parents of the Class of 2014 thread was, but on that thread once we hit May 1 and everyone’s child had made a final decision, most of the parents there posted a list of schools to which their child had been admitted, and where they’d chosen to attend. It was all done in good taste. Most of the parents had become quite fond of each other, and of all of the kids involved. All the kids were celebrated for their acceptances and college choice, with no emphasis on prestige, rankings, name cachet, etc.

After decisions had been made the discussions moved on to shopping, move in, roommates, etc., and it would have been somewhat difficult to discuss those topics without the context of the child’s destination. And there were lots of parents who had direct experience at schools where many of the kids were headed – alums, older sibs that were there, geographic proximity – and there was lots of sharing of good info/advice.

I don’t know that we’ll all ultimately go in that direction, but I hope so.

I hope so as well@AsleepAtTheWheel.

@AsleepAtTheWheel Yes I too hope this thread develops into that direction. After all the stress of applications, sending scores, LORs, etc., it would be nice for us all to relish in the great accomplishments that all our children have amassed and begin to talk of all you described.

A couple of weeks ago, DD added a school in her list which deadline is Oct. 15th. I asked her whether she’s ready to apply and she said, “No.” So, crossed out one school. It is OK because that school is a safety school and she already has enough safety schools but it bothered me a little bit because her tendency to delay everything at the last minute. Anyway, I told her it’s up to her whether she applies in time and write good essays or not. Just hope she handle everything with responsibility.

I know we have all vented about senior year workload but I feel like some of these teachers are just idiots. Our AP Lit teachers have for years taught Crime and Punishment at the end of the year when I’m sure cooperation was low since acceptances were in. So this year they are teaching it now! In addition to the college essay unit and other various stuff. So not only are app deadlines looming but there are hundreds of pages of really difficult reading plus a 10 page school based scholarship application with 2 500 word essays that don’t sync up with the common app. Let’s just stress them out to the max possible why don’t we? My son did most of his apps over the summer but it still takes hours and mental energy to edit them plus we look through each app carefully before he hits submit–which I’m glad I asked him to do as he had his year of birth wrong on the common app :wink:

@Cheeringsection – As I’ve posted here before, this process with S14 was punctuated with yelling, screaming, name-calling, as well as begging, pleading, and bribery. Most notably, S14 would not have applied to the school to which he matriculated (and is very happy) if I hadn’t been all over him to complete that specific application.

For me, the importance of him owning the process and sustaining consequences if he didn’t put forth the effort to get it done right was secondary to him potentially missing out on a chance to go to a school where, a year later, he may (and did) turn out to be more mature and to surprise us and himself with the seriousness with which he has approached his school work.

Every family handles this sort of thing in their own way, but I just wanted to add another voice saying that you’re not alone in fighting these sorts of battles, and that many times the ends do justify whatever means are necessary.

@AsleepAtTheWheel, I also hope we begin a list. When acceptances began rolling in, the Parents of the Class of 2013 began discussing specific schools, and we began an official list on April 24th:

http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/class-20xx-community/754591-parents-of-the-hs-class-of-2013-p1605.html

The good news: D met with GC last week to discuss LOR, so that’s finally in the works. One of D’s teachers completed a LOR. Now, we’re just waiting on one more. D has an alumni interview scheduled on Friday for a LAC and is now waiting to hear back from two others for possible interviews.

The bad news: Essays, procrastination, procrastination 
 Did I mention procrastination? D says she’s got this. Knows what needs to get done. Blah, blah, blah. :-S