DS got home last night after visiting two more schools–loved the reach, meh on the match.
He’s also followed up with all of his rec writers, since none have been submitted yet. But everyone promised to meet the 11/1 deadline.
Common app essay is done, supplement essays still barely begun.
Congrats to those receiving acceptances. Helps lower those stress levels!
@texaspg Our reasoning at the time was that adcom hardly have enough time to read all the materials including all the supplementary meeting and it should be enough to mention the awards she got is enough to show her skill. Providing links to her published essays and short stories online with a list of all the published work was our decision at the time. We might need to talk with GC about submitting writing samples. Her school has many good writers - for example, more than 10 students get national medals in writing at Scholastic Awards each year - and I guess GC has experience regarding sending writing samples. Thanks for your input.
@nydad513 It all depends on where she is applying.
Writing samples at elite schools are usually passed on to the departments for evaluation. All applications are not equal and while I may not send a writing sample to SUNY Buffalo, I would want to check on what a Yale, Brown or Columbia says about submitting samples and decide whether it is worthwhile.
D’s school is at the national college fair today. She brought her transcript, resume, etc. just in case, but I told her not to come back with another 10 schools for her list. A friend from another district entirely will be there at the same time so they’re going to try to have lunch together. Friend is still looking for places to apply-she has a very specific major in mind, so hope this helps her.
Will any of your D’s colleges be there or will they be at the college event she is going to this weekend? @sseamom Either way your D sounds very busy and will probably be happy when she has a decision.
My daughter has 17 apps going. Most are in; have not pressed send on a few. Wide net being cast, for a few reasons. A few apps have been free. 
Oddly enough, the honors college/Pres Scholarship app at one state university/not at all selective school has had the most challenging essays, 500 words each for three of them, with ZERO overlap with any of the other colleges’ essays. Being able to reuse essays has been the saving grace for her, but it won’t help here. Unfortunately it IS a school that would be a good fit and is not really doable without the scholarship.
Does anyone know 1) how long the recommendations need to post to the common ap after they are sent by the teacher? and 2) if the teacher gave one to D16 can she upload it?
readingclaygirl, she is ALWAYS busy! I was looking at her resume-even leaving things out, it’s very long! The only school she’s looking at nationally that will be there is Temple. The in-states will be at the smaller fair on Sunday, with far fewer attendees, so she’ll talk to them then. So far the list doesn’t show any of her others, but the ones coming from out-of-state don’t usually decide at the last minute. We are playing “tour guide” for a friend of hers who is coming with us after church. She has no idea where she wants to go yet.
- It posts immediately. I helped one of the teachers to upload his rec.
- The teacher needs to upload the letter from his commonapp account, your daughter will not be able to do it.
@jupiter98 it was started. Does that sound right?
Started will change to Submitted, once the teacher presses submit button. He probably is not finished yet.
@kandcsmom: Like everyone has said, It seems to be pretty fast.
Our school uses Naviance. It did require the GC doing something (no idea what) for the teachers to appear as assigned. But once the teacher submitted and it showed up as “submitted” on the Common App almost immediately. One teacher submitted yesterday and by last night it appeared as “submitted” and by this morning most of the schools even showed it as “downloaded”.
Wish someone in D’16’s GC office/College Center had explained to us that the with Naviance and Common App when a teacher submits a rec is goes to ALL the schools listed on the Common App Dashboard.
D’16 applied for different majors at some schools and asked specific teachers for recommendations for specific schools/major. D’16 had wanted her food science teacher’s rec to go to a specific school where she applied to study food science that only takes 1 rec. Her social studies teacher got her rec done first so that is the rec that was submitted. ugh. Food science teacher submitted his rec second and now that rec has gone to schools were she applied for an unrelated major. Hoping that he didn’t say anything like D’16 will make a great food scientist…
If we had known that is how the system works we certainly would have approached things differently.
Good grief @goodgrief16. I thought my D’16 was on the high end at 15. 17 is a lot!. I know at least one school on D’16’s list showed up after some serious marketing by the school (and it was free.)
Brandies U and American U have been absolutely relentless in their marketing. at least a piece of mail and 1 email a day for the past month. Wish I had the dollars that go into all of this marketing. Maybe these schools could just stop the endless barrage of marketing material and lower tuition rates? I suspect that affordable tuition would bring in just as many applications/students.
We are at 0 applications as of now, but DD will be applying to 20 schools. 6 of them are state schools on one application. Unfortunately we are in this super competitive state so nobody can tell what going to happen.
Just got the email with the date/time/place for graduation.
Wow. It’s really gonna happen.
@petrichor11 We have a countdown app that counts it down to the second . That’s a little unsettling at times watching time tick away.
It’s sort of ridiculous, but there are reasons. First, our geographical location and her sports schedule make visiting difficult, so she doesn’t have a strong sense yet of the sort of campus she prefers (She did eliminate the two we were able to visit.) Several might be good fits, but going there will be dependent on earning a specific scholarship. So one cannot count on that, but it’s worth applying. A few are very selective, so, again, cannot count on admission there.
In the end, it’s resulted in a large number of apps. We will see where she gets in, how the money part plays out, hope for financial help for some accepted student weekends, and go from there.
@labegg Where do you see LOR as SUBMITTED in CommonApp ? Did you mean Naviance or CommonApp ?
We don’t see any LOR as submitted and SAT/ACT scores received by colleges in CommonApp. It may be because we didn’t submit to any college as of now. We see LOR as submitted in Naviance. S is still working on essays.
@indsfolax, in the “My Colleges” section of the CA, if you click on the recommenders bit of any college, you can see if your recommender submitted, and if it was downloaded by the college.
There was a video chat admissions session at son’s HS with Dartmouth. He was the only student (of a senior class of over 400) to show up so he got a private session and chat with the admissions officer for our area.
@NYDad513 UPenn AO said don’t send anything extra that is not required.