Your daughter @palm715 and mine! Exactly the same attitude. We are having long dinner table discussions every day now. MIT is a front runner at this time. Just yesterday DH was raising a concern that it is going to be extremely challenging, maybe to the breaking point. DD got very offended. She told him that he doesn’t believe in women engineers. On a serious note, his friend just had to take his UCB DD home because she could not continue due to the mental breakdown.
Regarding apparel, we have lots of items from the University of Maryland (College Park), where our daughter is a junior in the Honors College. I particularly like the socks, they’re so cool! It’s just the Maryland flag with its beautiful colors, no words printed on them. Hoping our son will decide to take the Banneker Key and attend UMD! Then he can go on to a masters or PhD at UMD or at any other prestigious university of his choice.
Woohoo for reaching the finish line @BeeDAre (and sounds-pretty-darn-likely @kittymom1102 )
@me29034 D’s moved to the same wardrobe - chic black - which doesn’t really fit in well with college spirit wear. I was a cheerleader back in the day but was awful at understanding the nuances of the games I was supposed to be cheering for. Now, I love and actually understand football and basketball, just a little to late. 
@Ballerina016, I must say I can understand your H’s concern, especially after what happened to his friend’s D.
@EastGrad Symbolism Edition:
Hugs to @WhereTwo for the LAC decision and crossed fingers for the rest of the nonLAC list.
@allboyz, @oneundecided, and @CAMidwestMom, I bet your wholehearted embrace of spirit items/logowear makes your dear children feel great, even if they act too cool about it.
Very true, and (lol) it reminded me of the famous saying, “sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.” Of course, for @kittymom1102 's sake, we hoping a t-shirt means more than a t-shirt.
@palm715, tell your DD that postmodern feminism means being everyone being able to wear glitter whenever s/he wants. (Not sure she’ll buy it, but it’s worth a try.) @me29034, my daughter’s wardrobe also has a lot of black–also not goth–it’s the main color of her dance clothes. Sometimes a cigar is not a cigar.
@mommdc I forgot to mention that his friend DD was an English major. It all comes to the fact that girls are very emotional.
Crossposted with a bunch of others:
Congrats, @BeeDAre, on the decision. In the cheer mode: “Ball State Sounds Great!”, which goes along with the cheer @ReminiscingDad already created for his S, “Take the Ban’ker Key; Attend UMD!”
So sorry to hear about your DH’s dear friend’s daughter, @Ballerina016. Scary stuff.
@EastGrad well, I buy it. It’s a wonderful point. Which leads kinda-sorta to @Ballerina016 's comment about letting kids go where they want despite worrying about them picking the most stressful/challenging/intense choice. Could the “best” school turn out to be the worst?
@Ballerina016 that story about your friend’s daughter is scary. I know my spouse feels that my D should not go to her lottery school, should she get in, because of stress concerns. I’m more ambivalent.D16 told me she isn’t going anyway (easy to say now, when she assumes she won’t get in).
Ah, with all this substituting of terms, @Palm715, my head is spinning. At the beginning of this process, best>worst, but then as we near final decisions deconstructively, worst>best, and then finally in our post-deconstruction era, all schools become both best and worst, good and bad.
@EastGrad It’s early here in Hawaii. Only one cup of coffee thus far. No decision making > decision making
@ReminiscingDad Thank you so much! We are definitely happy beyond words. We talk about and can’t still believe it is true :D/
@BeeDAre Congratulations on the decision being made and moving on tot he next steps in the wonderfully wacky journey this is. Go Cardinals!!
@palm715 Whenever my D sees a picture of herself wearing something like the Cheerleader U shirt in a picture from when she was, ahem, young, she usually smirks and remarks about what a wonderfully sarcastic sense of humor she was showing even back then. Her favorite colors were always pink and black, hence her nickname since early childhood of the Princess of Darkness. She wears a lot of black now too, nothing close to goth, she just thinks it is a classic color and tends to dress up a lot…oddly enough she dresses up most often when there are grimy chores to be done, as if somehow she is too pristinely clothes as to have to perform such menial tasks. And no, that never actually works for her, since Dad has his own sarcastic sense of humor too.
After D’s scholarship news yesterday, she dropped another school off of her list and is down to three, with what she describes as a 75-80% chance of attending her current favorite. And lo and behold, now she wants to do an overnight at that school, ignoring the fact that she turned one down one a few weeks ago when they were offered, to be certain she wants to commit. At this point I placed the onus back on her to call about setting that up if she can do that.
Congrats @BeeDAre on the decision! I
hope your DS is very close as well @kittymom1102 !!
DS only bought a shirt at 2 of the schools he was admitted to and was given one from a third. He still wears them but he now has three from his chosen school so
Those definitely give that school more frequent showcasing. He is openly telling his choice so he wears them proudly. The big celebration and picture taking opportunity at school
has been announced so now we just need to be sure the one he wants to wear is clean on the appointed day.
Congratulations everyone on decisions!
MIT is hard for men too. In order to get the students used to their rigor and not overestimate their own capabilities, MIT does first semester as pass/fail and allows some leeway during the second semester.
DD is a product of public education and she did not realized it’s limitations until she met kids from Thomas Jefferson High School (VA) and IMSA at her summer program. So while a superstar at her HS, she might very well be below average at MIT.
@Ballerina016 I’m more than sure that your DD will be just fine. We know kids from very poor schools who have gone to MIT and made it! One graduated last year w/ degrees in CS and EE and the other is graduating this year with something similar. Both kids did it in 4 years. Did they have to work their bottom off? YOU BET! Was it impossible? Absolutely not!
Your DD looks like a tough cookie to me. She’ll be more than fine 
@Ballerina016 Universities that are so attentive to the admission process don’t select students who won’t succeed.
Congrats to all with decisions! We appear to be headed out further to sea on the SS Indecision. After being fairly laid back for most of this, DS is now totally stressed over making a decision. He’s headed to an accepted student day this week for the school that he had always said was his #2 choice (# 1 is a super reach that won’t come out until next week). Hoping he still loves it and will be closer to commiting.