@thermom I think it would be fine to ask the GC which teacher writes better LoRs.
@MotherOfDragons Note that the regular meningitis vaccine (meningitis A, I think) and the meningitis B vaccine are different things.
@snoozn In our Naviance, which I know is probably different from other Naviances, the Brag Sheet link is in the left column on the “About Me” tab under “surveys to take”, not in any of the larger sections below the tab.
Re: GC review – That’s interesting. I’ll maybe ask our GC if she reads them. The only one we aren’t so confident about is the English teacher vs. possibly using the APUSH teacher.
@srk2017 We also got kind of a “Well a 36C would be nice” reaction to “Should he retake a 35C?” When I saw the 35, I thought he was done for sure. But, a 36 gets you nomination for U.S. Presidential Scholars, which the district does a press release about, and I think his school would like to have more of those than the rival school. S is not a big fan of test prep, so I don’t know. What is your S’s lowest subscore? A lot of selective colleges don’t superscore, but do look at the highest subscore in each area. S has 2 34s and 2 36s. P.S. A 31 on the ACT essay is amazing! Congrats on that!
@canypa His applications will include Caltech, and if there’s any school that sees a 36 as different from a 35, that’s the one.
Our outside counselor wants to talk with him on the phone the week after school gets out to plan his college application strategy (I think we have the dates already at least) and how to find a way to include all his various activities on the applications.
@Ynotgo - His subscores are 35E,35M,33R,36S. He didn’t prepare for M & S and was consistently getting 36 in practice tests. He is not a good reader of literature. For same reason he has 220 SI in PSAT. Is presidential scholar has any value? I know it is not useful for colleges. I am also trying to minimize the testing.
SUNY @ Stony Brook is the one which looks @ SAT only. I am not sure if S wants to study in Long Island even though he was born in a Long Island hospital
@srk2017, his time might be better spent working on engaging and well written essays rather than trying to bump up the ACT by one point. You mentioned getting a consultant, so they could probably give you the best advice on whether it’s worth the effort. Regardless, congratulations to your son!!
I say “hell no!” on a 35 retake at this point. Give him a break and let him use the study/prep time to focus on some other things related to his applications.
Congrats to your son, that score is awesome.
I’m at the point with son that I want him to retake it one more time and then it’s “you are what you are son” time.
Just roll with what you’ve got. It’ll all work out.
Unless it has changed, the meningitis vaccine is only good for 5 yrs. All of my older kids got it when we moved to Brazil, but all have gotten boosters before going to college.
@snoozn We lived in Brazil for 2 yrs and my language skills never really improved very much. I used our oldest as a translator (and he hated it.) He was completely fluent and people had no idea he was American unless he told them. All of his friends were Brazilian, so he only spoke English at home. He used to sleep walk when we lived there and it was so bizarre b/c he would speak Portuguese in his sleep!
But maintaining a language takes a lot of effort. We moved back stateside when he was 10 and by 16 he had forgotten all of it. He took Spanish in high school and had flawless pronunciation, though. I suspect if he moved back to Brazil that he would reacquire his language fairly rapidly. But he says he currently doesn’t remember any of it.
@srk2017 Gosh, count me as a parent who would say good riddance to a school that would consider a 36 better than a 35. Seriously, the idea that the ACT/SAT tests reveal that level of valid information is ludicrous. I can see schools like Cal Tech wanting AIME type scores for a reason to provide additional info, but any school filtering with a distinction between a 35 and a 36 would make me say the admission criteria are flawed.
I agree about the ACT advice (though I’m certainly no expert, and might be swayed if a GC gave a good reason for trying for the 36).
When we visited MIT last summer, the admissions person leading our info session talked about an applicant who took the ACT multiple times, clearly chasing a 36 (or maybe a perfect score, which I have since learned is 36 on all subtests…I’m not sure which she said since at the time I thought they were the same thing). Anyway, she explicitly advised against doing this (commenting that there are a lot of better ways to spend your time, and implying that those things would help admissions chances more). I don’t think re-taking once would be frowned upon the way this applicant’s behavior was (sounds like there were MANY attempts), but the message I took away was consistent with what people on this board are saying…there are a lot of better ways to spend your time than chasing a high/perfect score on the ACT.
The only reason I can think of to retake a 35 in the hopes of getting a 36, is if the 36 was worth big cash money in a guaranteed scholarship or something. I would side-eye a GC who suggested it, to be honest. If my D can fix her science score and get her 33 to a 35 in June she is done, done, and done with the ACT, lol.
@Ynotgo thanks, I think I am going to just go ahead and ask her. I hadn’t realized until recently that the LORs seem to actually carry quite a bit of weight in some instances. That was one facet of the application I was really pretty ignorant about. Yet another thing I’ve learned on CC!
@Mom2aphysicsgeek, this new Meningitis B vaccine is not the same vaccine as the Meningitis vaccine routinely given in middle school at age 11 and recently recommended that a booster be given at 16. That one covers serogroups A, C, Y, W. The new one covers serogroup B.
There have been some outbreaks of Men B on college campuses in recent years.
@RightCoaster We come across that same issue being a small school/district. There are less than 100 in each graduating class. Half of the schools ds is considering have no data. UGH!
In common app, once the recommender loads the letter, it is possible to keep assigning it to other schools. So if you have more than 2 recommenders loading their letter, you can pick and choose or send all based on each school’s allowed number of recommenders. However, those who have naviance usually have to get the teachers to submit one school at a time. So if you don’t have a full list at once, you have to keep asking them to add a school.
Unfortunately, schools not part of common app require the teachers to keep submitting letters to them, one school at a time on their portals.
My son has asked for his LOR since he will need them starting July 1st when he applies for ROTC scholarships. Our GC told him to send the requests through Naviance and then provide each teacher with a resume to follow up on the request. Can you see in Naviance when they have indeed uploaded one? Does anyone know?
Something we heard on college visits last summer re: letters of rec is to ask people who like you (kid), with the implication being that some letter writers don’t necessarily like the all of the students they are writing for and this comes across to the ad comm! DS has identified teachers whom he likes, and thinks will write good letters (in the sense of being good writers), but I’ve been obsessed with the question of which teachers like him the best (and -yikes - what if someone he asks doesn’t really like him all that much?) DH thinks I’m being ridiculous, that DS is a great kid and all his teachers like him, but I can’t help but worry about this! LOL Seriously, though, I wonder if getting a less well-written letter from someone who likes the student a lot is more helpful in admissions than a well-written letter from the teacher who writes for everyone but may have a more neutral/average opinion of the student.
I am pages behind again but will pass along the little I recall from the application process two years ago.
Our school uses Naviance linked to CA. AFAIK, the student does not have any control over which teacher’s LOR is uploaded to a college if that college only asks for one teacher LOR. I would assume that it would be the LOR of the teacher who uploaded her letter to Naviance first, but no guarantees.
Now, this next bit may have changed since my older son applied, so if there are any 2015 parents here, please speak up. (If there are 2016 parents on the 2017 forum, I feel really bad for you!)
My son had one or two colleges that allowed students to submit a third or optional LOR. In order to do so, he had to extend an invitation via the CA system to the email of the LOR writer. LOR writer then had to upload her LOR directly to Naviance. That special LOR would only go to the college that allowed a third or supplemental LOR.
I also vaguely recall a couple of colleges that wanted resumes and I recall some glitch with that upload. CA was completely revamped Fall 2013, and the ED & EA applicants experienced all kinds of administrative issues. Most colleges extended their app deadlines to Nov 7th b/c CA kept crashing.
Soooo…as someone said above, one STEM and one Humanities LOR for the two primaries. No elective or language LORs (noting home schooling exception).
Importance of brag sheet has already been touched upon (I am only at post 5160), but worth mentioning that counselors have been known to lift sentences almost verbatim from the Jr Packet (AKA brag sheet) when writing GC LOR, so it is worth bragging with proper grammar.
And, yes, different school purchase and use Naviance differently. I find it interesting to see the different ways the data is reported across high schools.
FWIW, if any of you are interested, there are tons of videos on youtube about the admissions process. If you search youtube for elite college admissions, I am sure you will find more than you ever want to even know about.
@snoozn My son had ACT accomodations and I can’t remember the exact amount of time they said it would be but each time he took it the scores came only like a day or two before the last possible day. Unless they take the test on the national testing day they do get a totally different test. It depends on which accomodations they have if they take it that day or a weekday. For the SAT it seems like they came at pretty much the normal time.
@RightCoaster usually the student needs to waive their right to read the rec or it is not given as much weight by the college. We were lucky that both teachers that did my older son’s recs gave him a copy so we could read them but that is not normal in our school at all.
@CT1417 I think there are 3 or 4 of us lucky parents with a 16 and a 17 on here For extra recs from an employer, coach, research adviser, etc my son had the person send them in directly rather than go through the common app. A lot of schools say no extras though. I feel like to some extent the extras my son had were probably repetitive anyway as his strengths were pretty clear and consistent in and out of school. My daughter is more complicated person and would probably be better served with an extra letter for schools that allow it.
So…what I am gathering here is that it is pretty critical that the first LOR you ask for is likely to be rock solid, as is #2 if you need more than one since you cannot control which school gets which LOR. And you are more likely than not, not to ever see them. GC’s might carry weight if they know your child but if in a large HS where they are lucky to know your kids name…it’s likely to be a form letter possibly pulling from the brag sheet.
I can see where the “like” factor would seep through regardless of academics.
My D had an external non-teacher recommender load a letter to CA. There were several colleges which allowed her to submit that letter on CA once loaded. For most people without naviance, the teacher recommendation would work the same way where the teacher would load it and the student can keep assigning the letter to schools.
For extra recs from an employer, coach, research adviser, etc my son had the person send them in directly rather than go through the common app. A lot of schools say no extras though. I feel like to some extent the extras my son had were probably repetitive anyway as his strengths were pretty clear and consistent in and out of school. My daughter is more complicated person and would probably be better served with an extra letter for schools that allow it.