Congrats and sorry to your son @happymochi !!
@bookmom7 Our net was small, but just the right size for realistic options, enough choices with finding the " perfect fit" in the end. Good luck .
S has five accepts and one wait, and weāre bracing for the inevitable āIf he got into everywhere he applied, did he not really stretch himself enough? Shouldnāt he have applied to more schools?ā noise from a few well-meaning but irritating people if that news ever gets out. He had two, maybe three that were pretty much guaranteed to be safety schools, but theyāre also schools he loves. Had he made it in to just those, heād have been perfectly content. One more was a bit of a reach, and the fifth was truly one of the crapshoots. #6 is an Ivy, and he doesnāt even want to hold off on a few other plans for a week to see if heās accepted, because heās got his top 3, and the Ivy wouldnāt be in it.
Looking at where his friends who applied to more schools got in (& didnāt), Iām pretty sure I can identify some places that wouldāve rejected him. Stanford, UCLA, Caltech, Mudd - wouldnāt have happened. Theyāre also places where he realized that they didnāt fit him quite as exactly. He doesnāt have stunning ECs, didnāt start anything new or break any exciting ground. Heās not done any original research, or even anything close to it. He looked at who didnāt get in where last year, and made his plans accordingly this year.
So weāre down to three, all of which weāll visit. Should be an interesting few weeks.
Stanford was a ānoā today for D16. It really is fine, and I was able to finalize the college tour flights, so hooray.
Weāre the ones with the huge list, 17 acceptances, 1 rejection (Stanford), and waiting on 1 more.
At the moment there are three āmost likelyā candidates, one strong contender that is dependent on winning a scholarship, one that will be a contender if acceptance happens, and four safeties that would be fine affordable choices.
@happymochi Super-congrats on Rice and best luck on Stanford ! ! ! !
DD got her first rejection today-Stanford. She also got into Rice. We have 15 acceptances and one rejection. 3 more schools on Ivy day, but it will not change anything. The final list is UCLA (my H favorite and the least expensive one), MIT, Caltech and Harvey Mudd if she gets full tuition scholarship she is running for.
@Ballerina016 I am SO sorry to hear that. I know it was her dream school. So thankful she has incredible choices before her!
@Ballerina016, Iām sorry to hear about Stanford; I know that was a hoped-for acceptance for both of you. They must have had an exceptionally strong group of female engineering/CS applicants this year! She certainly has amazing other choices.
I just realized our daughtersā application lists have the same number of schools, and they are both in the running for highly competitive scholarships (at different schools) here at the end. And both got their first rejections from Stanford!
A very roller coaster day!. Hugs to those that heard what they wanted and Hugs to those that did not!
@Ballerina016 chocolate fondue with strawberries for your DD, @Ballerina016 I was hoping for a mini-pi day today.
Well, talking about good and bad. As you know, S got a very early NO from Caltech back in Dec. and a WL (soft rejection) from UChicago this past week.
Weāll see what happens next week. Although, at the end money will be the deciding factor.
We began selecting orientation days, housing choices and planning for move in weekend, and it all became very real as I began requesting time off from work. Yāall just wait, itās only beginning.
Just remember each rejection and acceptance will help bring clarity to your childās decision.
@Ballerina016, just had to pop onto this forum to say that my 2012 son was very tempted by Mudd after he won the full tuition scholarship. He got into Princeton SCEA, but Mudd ended up being second behind MIT. We loved our visit to Mudd for scholarship/admitted studentās day.
In the end, he chose MIT for several reasons. One, he liked the bigger size; two, he loved the energy there of the students and had about 6-7 friends from math and chess there; three, it was in a large city; and four, financially, it worked out much better than Mudd even with the full tuition scholarship.
Hard to explain, but in a nutshell, because weāre Cal Grant recipients, Mudd would not let him bring in his 6K a year Corporate NM Scholarship, and MIT did. So the cost at Mudd would have been about 8K more a year. But we loved Mudd.
I wish you the best on the decision making!
Congrats to all who got accepted today and hugs for those who didnāt! Especially those who got waitlisted or rejected at Stanfordā¦heheā¦
Lots of news today. Congrats to those with good news today and more ice cream for those with disappointing news.
Seems like most have lots of choices to sift through in the next few weeks. Iām waiting for DS and DH to get back from an admitted student day and hear how it went. S is 9 for 9, with 5 of those acceptances coming in the past 7 days so we have not wrapped our heads around all of it yet. Waiting on one more that is likely off the list anyway. I think S is totally overwhelmed with all the recent news . I think the wait was so long he was waiting to see where he got in before thinking about what he liked best. Of course, it is a great that he has options and I think at least 4 are off the list but the next few weeks will be a bit crazy as we figure out which schools to go back to - they are all in different directions and there are not too many weekends left.
Congrats on NMS, @bookmom7, @GoodGrief16, @fretfulmother, @aacvj103, @Skates76.
So great to hear about your Sās resilience, O Noble Founder @arisamp. Good luck with your waiting, @PAO2008
As usual, I agree wholeheartedly with @critter. And thanks for the advice, @sbjdorlo.
Congrats, @bookmom7 on Rice with a Trustee scholarship; @kittymom1102 on Stanford; @frenchtoastlover on Amherst; @Mysonsdad on UVa; @happymochi and @Ballerina016 on Rice, which rounds out a lot of success for both of your kids!
Ice cream to those who got bad news today.
Hugs and chocolate fondue to all those who were waitlistedāI am starting to think that this is worse than not getting in.
@carolinamom2boys is so smart:
And thatās why waitlists are so evilāno clarity.
Hoping for the best, @bouders, although it seems Iām hearing about a lot of Americans who might want to move to Canada in November. Is your daughter sure she wants to go the other way? 
I have a bunch of big projects, and probably wonāt do a summary for a few days or maybe a little longerā¦though I may check in and chime in occasionallyā¦apologies in advanceā¦
I am not sure who mentioned several times a few pages back that they hope eventually folks will list their info on the class of 2020 acceptance threads. Finally today we have our last decision (it was an acceptance - yeah!). I still contemplate whether I want to post details on that site. I would like to list everything at this time and the eventual choice of where to attendā¦but am also hesitant for a variety of reasons. I do think that in doing so there is a chance someone will ārecognizeā usā¦and I have been very careful up to this point in being somewhat secretive in my (and my S16) identity.
My S16 is 11 for 11 acceptances, which is an unplanned miracle for us. His strategy was to apply to a wide variety of schools with several who had automatic stats based scholarships, or NMF scholarshipsā¦so for the most part we chased the money at less selective schools and had a greater chance of acceptances. There were a handful of exceptions to the āchasing the moneyā plan, including the one school he heard from today that has a less than 10% acceptance rate.
Now he has some hard decisions to make, even more so because of a couple more selective acceptancesā¦so we count ourselves as a one of the top crew members on the āSS Indecisionā. Perhaps they may even promote my S to captain!!!
I hesitate to post this here since so many are wrestling with some rejections or waitlist decisions from schools, and we are extremely fortunate to not have that issue. But I wanted to share that this 4th and final child of mine chose to apply to many āsafetiesā and he cast a āwide netā and for many of those safeties he also applied for the honors programs and other targeted programs to hopefully make a large school become a more intimate experience.
Each of our kids run their own unique raceā¦and for those of you whose journey has taken them to a more selective path with a greater chance of heartbreakā¦I really hope everyone can keep things in perspective and know things will work themselves out in the long run. Our kids will not be defined by the name of the school that they attend, but by the experience they create for themselves wherever they land.
@4kids2graduate Congrats on your Sās acceptances!
What a lovely post @4kids2graduate. I know that this has got to be a bittersweet time with you helping the baby get launched. Hereās to magnificent individual races for all!
@4kids2graduate ā That was me whoād posted the note hoping that more or less everyone would fill in their info on the acceptance page/list.
Many of us have been on this ride on this thread for quite a while now. Clearly many of us are very fond of many of the rest of us. We genuinely root for each otherās kids. Weāve also gotten to know each otherās kids to some extent ā their likes and dislikes, their strengths, their weaknesses. their quirks, etc.
On the Parents of the Class of 2014 thread, once May 1st passed pretty much everyone wrote a note simply listing the decisions that their kids had received. Some just listed acceptances. But it filled in all sorts of gaps and missing pieces from the prior years of notes. Truly no one seemed to care about the prestige, selectivity, etc. of any of the specific kidsā lists. It helped with the database for those of us who still had kids in high school (BTW, thatās no longer you or me). And more than anything it capped the celebratory feeling that all these kids had succeeded, regardless whether they ended up at their first choice or a later choice.
Also importantly, once it was clear where each kid was headed, many of the families on the thread had all sorts of direct experience with those schools that was helpful. Some families had an older sib at the school. Some lived nearby. Some parents were alumni. All sort of interesting connections that could be helpful.
Iām not advocating any sort of formal process. I think that the google doc works well. Just saying that Iād love to at least know where all of these kids are headed, for the selfish reason that it will bring me joy to have a mental hook on which to hang my picture for each of these kids, so I can get some vicarious thrills from their successes. Itās wonderful when good things happen to good people, and there is a lot of that going on here.
That all said, of course no worries to whoever doesnāt want to post this stuff.
When @AsleepAtTheWheel says that he gets āvicarious thrills from their successesā, he truly means it. I can also attest to relationships being formed , as I was able to assist another CC parent in locating a specialty physician for her son who attends a university close to me . We averted what couldāve been a very negative outcome had she not gotten timely evaluation of a medical condition . This is my first rodeo , and I used the wisdom of many of the posters on this thread to help guide me in this search . I would be very happy if I knew some of the info I posted could help someone else. That being said, I truly understand people who want to maintain their privacy and their childās privacy, and that it is a personal decision . If a new thread is started as a āreveal threadā Iāll be happy to share with the exception of specific monetary figures.