@STEM2017 Congrats to your son’s soccer team!
@STEM2017 congrats on the huge soccer win.
Re UMD no worries- see these posts:
http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/discussion/comment/20028832/#Comment_20028832
and
http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/discussion/comment/20028862/#Comment_20028862
But super confusing portal info! Maybe our coding kids could fix that!
@ca1543 Thanks. Such a strange system…
Congrats to you Cubs fans, it must feel like the Boston area felt a while back when they won their 1st. People wer so happy and relieved.
We did not watch 1 baseball game. My kids have never once watched even an inning of baseball. I tried to get my son to play little league way back in the day, and after the first game he said it was the most boring thing he could think of and did not want to play ever again. Ha. He was pretty good too. I used to play wiffle ball with him in the back yard, just pitching hundreds of balls to him over and over. Then we would play catch. He realized how little action there was during an actual game and that was that. On to lax and he never looked back. Never even wasted time my younger son, just threw him into lax. We also have a weird thing going on in our town where there is some weird rivalry between baseball and lax, the 2 groups don’t like each other.
So since my kids and wife don’t watch I don’t watch either. It has been refreshing too. I don’t even pay attention to it.
I don’t think I could name 3 Red Sox players. My kids will watch the Patriots for about 15 minutes, the Celtics for about the same. They just don’t have a passion to be fans, although each of them is very talented and accomplished athletically. Kind of weird.
@RightCoaster We watch 2 innings of baseball a year. Those two innings happened between 11pm and 1am last night.
But what great innings!
Happy for Chicago! As a Red Sox fan, I remember what it was like in 2004. Can’t wait for Ken Burns to add an 11th inning to his Baseball series.!
I watched for about 10 minutes after returning from a boyscout committee meeting. That’s when Cleveland hit a home run. It must have been ME 
Usually if I watch a game, my team loses so I rarely watch a game. :))
What an interesting series although Indians lost. =D> =D>
Ugh, getting a lot of really upset texts this morning from D18, who says she was removed from the BEST Robotics team by the coach this morning. He re-assigned her to a “spirit” position, whatever that is, and gave her position to a freshman. The irony is she just found out yesterday that she made it to the state level for GHP in mechanical engineering, so she went from being super happy to devastated, especially since the competition is in two days and she’s been working on the robot with the rest of the team for the past six weeks.
I have an email in to the coach for some clarification, since sometimes D18 gets details wrong (sometimes in a big way which leads me to super embarrassing myself when I get mad and it turns out she just misrepresented what was happening), but wow.
In happier news, D17 got the official “you’re in the honors program” letter for UA.
December feels really far away. I need a vacation-Thanksgiving break can’t come soon enough.
@MotherOfDragons I agree some clarification is in order. I hope she was ‘misrepresenting’ the details and remains in the team but perhaps in a different position.
What do you all think about FAFSA submission? I played with a ton of on line calculators (Harvard, College board, FAFSA and other sites), and according to all of them we do not qualify for any need based financial aid. Can we really pay $60K a year for college? No. I am hesitant to submit FAFSA at this time since I fear that it might negatively effect my S’s chances for the merit scholarship. To me, merit scholarships are there to reward kids for their academics and ECs and should not be based on family’s financials. Your thoughts?
@educationfan Right, ‘merit’ awards should not be based on finances unless it specifically states there is a financial component. I guess there’s no way to 100% guarantee a school won’t take money into account, but I choose to accept the basic definition that it’s based on merit. Many awards are given out prior to FA documents being required (if they are at all). Check the deadlines, and wait if that makes you feel better. Or, don’t submit FAFSA at all if it’s not required and you are not interested in taking out government loans.
@educationfan I was completely against submitting the FAFSA, but gave in and did it since one of D’s top choices required it for certain merit awards (though the awards don’t consider need), but that was the only school that I submitted it to.
D has already received merit aid from schools that are well aware of what I do for a living, so I feel more comfortable now that family income isn’t taken into account for merit aid.
@educationfan – oh yeah, we’ve been playing with those online NPC calculators for over a year now. With a high EFC that we do not have and do not want to pay, we have allowed zero ED applications. Most of her apps are to schools where she is either in line to maybe get some merit aid based on previous years merit distribution OR where she would get some automatic merit based on stats.
We expect nothing other than some loans so we are really not in a hurry to get all that done.
The main school where she wants merit maintains merit is handed out regardless of financial need or not need.
@MotherOfDragons – sorry about the robotics situation – your description about getting clarity as there is sometimes misrepresentation makes me think my DS is your DD’s twin!! Had a similar situation with him last year with robotics – he ended up being very involved but at some point thought he was told he was not needed - at all. this year he is lead programmer. I am not expecting great things though this year bc other students I think are mostly novices. Not sure what this is —> “the state level for GHP in mechanical engineering” but it sounds awesome & she should stay proud!
I thought I’d be very organized today and start planning S18’s college visits for spring break, so we don’t wind up scrambling the way we did with D17. Our spring break is mid April. I looked up about 4 schools only to find they didn’t have any campus visits/tours scheduled past March. Is that typical? Surely there are still classes in session in April on most college campuses?
@Aida I remember some visit calendars not opening up until closer to the visit date. Check back at the beginning of every month to see if it opens up. Most schools should have tours all year long, although at times they may be only on weekends.
Thank you all! Glad we are on the same page. One of the moms I spoke with (her son is in Georgia Tech), had a very similar situation and didn’t plan on submitting FAFSA at all. However, one of the colleges where her son was accepted, requested her to submit FAFSA just for her to receive a confirmation from them that based on their income, they indeed did not qualify for financial aid. I guess these calculators are pretty accurate.
One interesting fact, there are some schools where OOS students get to study abroad at the cost of the IS tuition. Hope some of my S’s top choices offer this option!
@aida-- as @hadmeathello said, many schools do not post their calendars out that far, and some wait quite a while to post the next season’s calendar. (Here’s giving you the evil eye, CMU.)
It took creative planning to visit some campuses during that second full week of April this past year. IIRC, CMU only offered visits two days of the week, Hopkins only Friday (maybe?), Harvard blocked the last two days of the week, Cornell blocks almost the entire week, Penn & Columbia also had restrictions, etc, etc. The schools dedicated those days to wooing accepted seniors, but it made logical planning very complicated. I did not want to zig zag back and forth, so kept juggling my week of visits.
Classes were in session on all campuses, except for CMU who had some sort of spring fling thing for two days, I think.
The trouble you will encounter with March visits is that many campuses are empty due to students’ spring breaks.
Good luck!
Aaaah, as I suspected, she was not showing up for required meetings, hadn’t finished the engineering notebook on time, and hasn’t gotten safety certified to drive, and was demoted, but not removed.
So, lots of texts back and forth with her about accepting her demotion, apologizing to the coach, and learning how to be a better team player, and not quitting something when you were in the wrong.
For me this is one of those bellwether moments where she either sucks it up and learns to do better, or she quits and really misses out on some great maturing opportunities. I hope to heck she apologizes and stays (lead a horse to water, yadda yadda). It’s her decision, but I said to her take a hard look at why she was demoted, and to think about whether it was warranted (oh, it so was), and is that what she wants attitude-wise going forward in her life.
Thank goodness I stayed cool with the coach-I’ve known him for years and he’s a good guy, so I figured there was something else going on.
@Aida we didn’t see any in April either. I think they’re just not scheduling that far in advance.