Kudos to those that are plowing through, in addition to or in spite of recent news. Congrats to those who are done or have great options already in the bank. My D is whittling down on her apps. I think there are only a handful left. We are among the group that won’t have a final answer until the April, but it would really be nice if something came through early so I can stop teasing her about community college as her only option so far. Even our rolling admission state school hasn’t released its first wave a decisions yet. Last year my son heard from them in early November.
My D was really surprised that some of her friends had really banked on ED or EA decisions and hadn’t started any other apps. Those poor kids are going to be very busy in the next few weeks. Have you checked out some of the results threads here on CC? One school deferred a 4.0/2400. I know it happens, but it certainly makes you wonder what on earth are these adcoms looking for.
Muggle Dad and I were trying to figure out our Jan-April schedule this morning (yes, its pretty booked already-- if you ever had a student in FIRST robotics you understand) and trying to figure out how to get D for visits to places she is likely to need to see again. Are you planning on having your kids go to accepted students days or visits without the dog and pony show to help them choose? My D says that she gets sooo much more out of her overnight visits than just a tour or a class. I’m worried about high school absences. State mandate says only a few per class before they threaten to have the class not count. I’m sure we can go over by a few, but some of these accepted student things are 3 days long (mid week!). How many can you do? Yes, I’m being optimistic that she’ll have choices, but even if its just her safeties, that’s 4 schools. I was just wondering if anyone else had considered it.
For those awaiting news this week, my fingers are crossed for you.
Don’t forget, this is just the tip of the iceberg!
@AsleepAtTheWheel when I was growing up, we swore there were birdies that came and carried everyone to Florida right after they retired. My grandparents were part of a group of 40+ family and friends that moved together. It was like a mass exodus from Brooklyn. They all remained close until the end.
Re: old parents: my step-daughters are in their 30s, and Mr. Petrichor is a dozen or so years older than I am (in his early 60s). So he’s probably on the older end, and I’m somewhere in the middle, I think. At the kids’ school he definitely gets the “old dad” award, and it bugs him no end. On the other hand, there’s a huge cohort of parents who graduated high school themselves in the late eighties and early nineties, so the bar on that isn’t terribly high.
@MuggleMom We just went ahead and did all 9 of 'em EA - reach, matches, and safeties - so we’d have a pretty good picture of acceptances and initial merit aid offers by Christmas, and theoretically have nearly all application activity out of her hair and ours by Nov 15. No ED.
Of course it didn’t work out exactly that way, with several schools having Phase II application processes (two due tomorrow during Finals week! One went in two weeks ago, one about to go in tonight) for scholarships and/or Honors Colleges / Honors Programs. And now one due Feb 1. But she does have 7 acceptances and we expect the other two decisions by Christmas, including merit aid estimates, so that aspect of it seems to have worked out.
The CSS Profile was a pain in the butt, but was out of the way before the Dec 1 EA deadline and will help with our first foray into FAFSA-land.
So interesting comparing and contrasting the approaches of the various schools. One or two wanting to hold all the cards, everything is phased, you can’t apply for this until you’re admitted to that, essays galore, you have to wait for the invite to the admitted students days. Two or three at the other end of the spectrum, very welcoming, automatic merit and Honors decision based on the initial app. The rest in between.
@mugglemom our plan is to attend D’s top prospect admitted student days as she has only toured our instate schools. Hoping that that there are no overlaps.
@MuggleMom the jury is out for us a little bit, regarding accepted student days (ASD’s).
There’s one school that could be a finalist but we haven’t had a chance to visit at all yet, and we think it would be preferable to do so as an accepted student. Watching for that acceptance!!! 3 schools we’ve visited twice already, but two of them are within a couple hours drive so probably worth it (though one of those is the place where you have to wait to be invited).
The sticking point is the more distant ones that require flights and overnights. Those happen to coincide with initial visits that were rushed or not 100% positive impression - which could be turned around with an admitted students visit, or could be throwing good money and time after bad. No way to know. Two of them are automatic full tuition so we’d hate to see them flushed without adequate due diligence.
We’ve got some discernment efforts ahead of us to see how much distance she (and we) are comfortable with. It’s kinda funny because she was originally all about urban campuses in blue states, and now some of those are the ones she’s hesitant about. At the same time we’re seeing friends’ choices seeming to bear more on her preferences than we had envisioned or hoped, and those are clustering around 3-4 schools within a 400-mile radius.
Interesting what you’re observing about midweek ASD scheduling. 3 days long midweek during senior year seems presumptuous, unless they assume most seniors come from certain districts that they know will be on spring break. Most of the ASD’s we’re seeing are on Saturdays, haven’t yet run across one that’s during the week.
She’s not gonna like spending part or all of her last Spring Break in high school going to ASD’s (the distant ones are April 2 and April 9), but it’s either that or miss school days for travel. Stakes are pretty high so she just needs to suck it up. We can take vacation in the summer.
Exactly! My son’s school allows three days for college visits. We’ve used four already. We had to travel to the west coast and the east coast from St Louis. I’m just assuming by spring, they will understand that these visits are really important for some kids. I truly don’t think he will know for sure until he gets a closer look.
AARP invited me to join two weeks before turning the big 5-0 earlier this year, while Mrs. Skates is a mere 43. Not necessarily planned this way, but my oldest S is a college senior, DD is the high school senior driving me batty this year and our youngest S is in 7th grade, so one in college at a time for us, thank you very much.
DD finished up all of her initial apps early for rolling admit and EA schools, so those are all done. She is nearly done with the second phase, i.e. honors college and scholarship applications, with one scholarship invite having just come in and one more honor’s app, with the latter having to be done on paper, although it can be scanned for submission. Her two remaining EA schools all have mid-December notification dates and we are waiting to hear from one more rolling admit that was the last one she submitted. She should be completely apped out, so to speak, by Christmas break, thank goodness.
Her list of eight schools applied to is realistically down to five at this point still in contention, and depending on scholarship and financial packages/costs, the rest will work themselves out. None of her schools were really academic reaches, we classified schools her schools more on financial reaches versus matches/safeties. So for her the stress is more in what the schools are offering, not on the acceptance side, but with one full tuition (applying for full ride), one full tuition plus and one automatic full ride offer already in hand, the stress really is more of making that final decision when the time comes.
DD has two parental financing options to choose from as well, and no essays required! If she chooses a school that is less than a full ride, then we split the remaining costs with her dollar for dollar, but if she chooses a full ride school, not only will we cover incidentals and things like insurance that we already cover (wow that car insurance jump when she got her license was a frighteningly amazing thing to witness, lol), we will make monthly payments of a pre-set amount into a savings account for her that will be hers to use once she finishes undergrad.
On the age thing. My son is turning 27 this week, but I had him right after I graduated college. When we moved to US I was among youngest parents, but now with DD, not so much.
Week of finals at DD’s school. She has 3 classes with 88-89% grade. 90% is an “A” so it can go either way after finals. She never was in this position before. Having cold does not help also.
My son also has 88-89s in two classes going into the final. He’s been in that boat all semester. At first he was very upset, but now he is resigned to the fact that all he can do is his best. In some ways, I think it might be better to get this over with now than in college.
@4kids2graduate that’s a relief to hear, I thought I had the only high-achieving kid who is blase’ when acceptances come in. This weekend I lined up all 7 acceptance packages on the dining room table, hoping her reaction to them in the aggregate would be amplified (I know mine was!) No dice.
LOL, maybe we did too good a job creating our list - we are seeking a lot of merit aid, so no real admission reaches, and a lot of preliminary merit data and Honors qualifications were already known from Web site information or NPC’s - so it’s just anticlimactic. Or she dreads the kickoff of another Phase II app (more essays!) for scholarships or honors.
Whatever. I’d rather manage that than what her reaction would be to rejections or deferrals, particularly during finals week and just before the holidays.
@MuggleMom, I have been looking at some of the results threads. Judging strictly from Facebook postings, it does seem necessary to have a hook at certain schools.
Re: school visits, I suspect we have two-four more ahead. It is a little stressful, as traveling from our location is a big deal, inevitably involving redeyes, and D16’s schedule just doesn’t have much give. Three of the larger scholarships she’s applied for will require a visit if she is a finalist (and the only way she could afford the schools is with their scholarship, so somewhat necessary to play along.)One of those is scheduled in January. If selected for another, she will have to travel without us, as we have plans to go to younger daughter’s cheer comp out of state at that time (tickets bought before we knew abt scholarship, but not sure I would have done anything differently anyway.) So, I guess we are planning on more of the special visit days, out of necessity, though not the Accepted Student Days.
Between our family college tour trip and another HS spring break tour D went on last year, she’s seen most of the colleges she’s applying to. The only likely additional visit would be to one of the ones she has NOT seen if it becomes a top contender. She’s already provisionally into her top choice, so if we get the merit she’s in contention for, we’re done. One of the others would have to top that in some way ( a couple are so affordable that even though they give little merit they’d be places we could send her) and then some to be worth visiting, in her opinion. I love traveling so I’m kind of hoping we need to go SOMEPLACE before school is out. We’d likely visit during her spring break, but her school is really flexible about kids doing what they need to do, especially since nearly all assignments can be done online.
We visited one school (EA in NYC, notified of provisional acceptance already) back over spring break. In November, we visited a couple others, both on the “Selective LAC” list here. S is applying RD to both, and has one application in; the other will probably get done late this week. A safety is nearby, and a school and campus he knows well. He applied EA, but possibly a few hours late (didn’t go by the Common App timezone, but the college’s timezone). Another EA app is in for another safety, and he’ll hear on the 23rd. The two selective schools don’t do EA, just ED, and he didn’t want to commit until he sees merit options from some of the others. So we’ll probably be looking at a crunched April with a few more visits potentially lined up as well. He’s contemplating applying RD to one Ivy - he’s got the stats and recs and scores for it, but probably not the snowflake uniqueness in an area they’d care about, and I’m not sure he’d go even if he got in. (He decided against applying to Columbia after looking at the other NYC school and realizing if he got in to both, he’d choose the other over Columbia.)
I’m probably watching this a bit more closely than he is right now - he still has finals, plus a huge senior project that’s due at the end of January. He knows he’ll go somewhere next year. I think the RD schools are probably his favorites, but he only gets to apply places he’d be happy to go (school policy ) - so it’ll all work out. His school is also quite willing to allow days off for college visits, pretty much anytime but over finals.
@ballerina016 and @CAMidwestMom My son is right there with your children , except at our school a 93 is an A. He’s never received Bs on any of his semester grades before, but he’s never had 5 AP classes at one time before. They are weighted so it shouldn’t hurt his GPA too badly. He’s taking it in stride, and we’ll have to wait and see. He’s currently ranked high enough to be in the running for salutatorian , but I don’t see it happening and he’s OK with that. Good luck to everyone as the end of the semester nears.
Like several other posters, our “reaches” are financial in nature. The question marks for us are merit opportunities and honors acceptances . We will be attending all accepted student days as we have only applied to instate schools and they are held on the weekends
D just got a call from her current #2 choice to confirm her graduation year. Then the woman said, “I’d hate to be admitting you if you can’t attend,” or something similar. Sounds like she’s at least in the “likely” pile. It’s an excellent school, she wrote a killer essay-very specific opinion piece required-and I like that it’s got a lot of oversight of the kids, with D being so young and all. OTOH, one of the schools for which she’d qualify for full tuition called her with a question 2 weeks ago and she has yet to reach a live person when calling back as requested…
D16 gets 2 college visit days per school year which is all well an good if you are visiting a school within a hundred miles or so, but we are in Texas (where visiting a school in Dallas means a day of travel just to get there!)
Unfortunately all of D16’s school are long distance OOS, a day to fly, a day to visit (just one school) and we are already out of time. We have several schools that will require a first time visit (Wooster/Purdue/ and possibly Marquette/Ithaca) and several that will need a 2nd visit (Pitt/Duquesne). Throw in lacrosse tournaments/games, D18’s cheer comps, and HS spring break conflicting with 50% of the colleges she needs to visit spring breaks and there are one or two possible weekends available before she needs to commit.
HS complicates this by allowing all juniors/seniors to be exempt from spring semester final exams if they have no unexcused absences. So of course D16 doesn’t want to miss any days. I going to put in a special request with Principal to allow some additional college visit days as we haven’t used any from soph/junior years.
S and D each get 4 college days, total. S used three of them for his one-and-only visit this semester. He’ll attend admitted student days this spring wherever it is he decides are the two likeliest candidates (assuming he gets in somewhere besides the state flagship). We’ll have to call him in sick, I suppose, since everywhere but Flagship U is a plane ride away. But…y’know…he’s a senior. It’ll be spring semester. They aren’t likely to care (based on past history, the school is just thrilled to see kids actually graduate), and even if they did, what are they going to do about it?
@Petrichor11 lol, wish I could just call her in sick. This year our school district instituted a new attendance policy and all senior “sick absences” over 1 day require a physician’s note you don’t necessarily have to actually visit the MD but you can just call the nurse and then the MD office can fax a note to the school.
As for what they are going to do about it… more than 3 unexcused absences senior year and you don’t get to walk for graduation. D16 has 1 unexcused so far for not attending school on PSAT day even though seniors did not actually have real classes that day.
) - so it’ll all work out. His school is also quite willing to allow days off for college visits, pretty much anytime but over finals.