@srk2017 PM me if you want some specific examples of UCSB grading (can’t help with Bio though, but Math, Physics and Chem yes).
An on-campus webcam:
http://www.ucen.ucsb.edu/surfcam
If you are out of state plan on California schools being full pay. They are very competitive for admissions, we’ll see how D17 does at the UC’s in a few weeks. UCSB is a great location, I love Santa Barbara!
@srk2017 ! My alma mater 
Congrats to your S!
My D17 was just rejected from my alma mater, San Diego State. Weird as she’s gotten into some much stronger schools including UT Austin, Cal Poly SLO, Purdue, etc… I hope this isn’t a precursor to UC admissions. I guess this highlights how every school looks at an application differently. She’s fine with it, it was a back up to her, but wow.
Oh wow. @socalmom007 I figured SDSU would be a slam dunk for anyone who got in to SLO. How bizarre.
Right? I guess it’s different criteria. I’m not sure. I did tell D17 the next time she mocks my alma mater I will remind her she couldn’t even get in! :))
D17 was notified that she was accepted to her first choice Honors College option at UMD. It’s Design, Cultures and Creativity, and the participants are housed in a dorm built 2-3 years ago.
I pointed out to her their option for suites and singles, but she insists she wants a double room with a “regular” dorm bathroom. Granted, their “regular” bathrooms are pretty spiffy, but I still think it might be a tactical error on her part. (Living with Crohn’s has been fairly easy for her so far, but that can change from one day to the next.) I’ll let her make the final decision…
@socalmom007 Wow! Total bummer … and odd! But she has other (more) excellent options.
Eep, here’s the latest reminder to check those portals, folks!
D17 just had a go-round with her HS guidance office because Hamilton’s portal was still listing her application as incomplete, with Mid year grades outstanding. D emailed Hamilton admissions and it turned out that instead of sending her mid-year grade report the guidance office had sent a redundant 1st Q report instead. We got it taken care of today and had them double check that all her other schools got sent the right report. Fortunately, it was just Hamilton that got the mix up, but yikes.
I’m just glad Hamilton even lists the mid year grades on their checklist - not all of D’s schools do. If they hadn’t, she might never have known that was missing, and Hamilton is one of her top picks. Too many moving parts to this whole operation! :-SS
Hello all, I’ve been taking a bit of a break from CC, but congratulation to all those who are receiving good news on the Big MAC front!
Things are progressing slowly here -
- S is excited to attend UMD CP's accepted students events next week. There will be an engineering presentation Thursday evening, an overnight with a student, and then a more general presentation Friday morning. He received a Presidential scholarship which puts UMD in our affordability ballpark.
- S and I did general and engineering department tours at our state flagship last week. He agreed it could be okay if nothing else works out. Not a lot of enthusiasm there.
- Purdue & CU Boulder are still contenders, too, but it's difficult to find good travel times that are 1) convenient for us, 2) occur when airfares are reasonable and 3) coincide with accepted students events.
@rightcoaster, I toured UCSB informally 2 years ago with D15 (it was informal because admissions was closed that day, but when I called to make sure it would be okay for us to walk around campus one of the students volunteered to give us a tour - super nice kid). Beautiful campus environment, known to be a big party school, very competitive engineering program, particularly for OOS. D had reasonable stats but was only accepted for her second choice major (chemistry), and would have been full pay at $55k, so it fell off the radar. If you need an excuse to go to Santa Barbara it’s definitely worth a look. You probably found this already, but http://engineering-schools.startclass.com/d/e/California has a good listing of CA engineering programs, and you can use the filters on the left side of the page to refine the list by school size, etc. Of course, I am biased in favor of USC and recommend checking out the Viterbi School of Engineering.
@socalmom007 - so sorry - does seem strange. Glad she has so many other great options though!
@srk2017 and @NerdMom88 Congrats on the good news! Congrats and/or hugs to all that I may have missed - just checking in from work - so haven’t been able to read through everything!
@RightCoaster It is not true that out-of-state kids have no chance for a scholarship at a UC. Some of them still get scholarships, like Regents. It’s just that their chances of getting one are less than for the in-state kids now. People are advising out-of-state students to plan on being full pay because the chance of getting a scholarship is small.
A Regents scholarship barely puts a dent in the OOS costs though.
Regents is only like 6k, right? OOS UC cost of attendance is like 60k.
Regents is $6K at UCSB and $7.5K at Davis, otherwise at most of the campuses it’s $2-$2.5K per year.
@jmek15 congrats on good news at UMD, that’s great! Too bad about UMass, similar feeling in our household.
Thanks for the CA school info. Son19 has the dream of going west, but I think he’ll end up in New England. Just a hunch.
@NerdMom88 great news!
@socalmom007 bummer! Weird too. You’ll have to burn all of your alma mater apparel now
@RightCoaster and @jmek15 My S had a similar feeling re UMass - he liked UMLowell better that Amherst - though D16 is very happy at Amherst.
@socalmom007 Don’t know if you’ve seen this thread but its a very colorful and interesting discussion of legacy kids getting rejected at UF…
About a week after our oldest got rejected by his grandparents alma mater, they got a phone call from the school asking for a donation. I would not want to have been on the other end of that call.