@mtrosemom D13 had a lofted bed last year. She loved and hated it. This year, even though her roo, was smaller, she did not loft but just had the bed at the tallest height possible, tall enough that totes and her pop-up hamper would fit underneath.
@eandesmom I really should add up the application fees and costs to send test scores…
I think I’ll wait until next week to do so %-( (I count this guy as the “lalala I can’t hear you” dude)
Our app fees are going to be $865 if she applies to all (doesn’t get in ED) but that doesn’t include sending all the test scores so I’m sure that will up it a couple hundred! Ouch.
@Mommertons I want a donut every time I see your avatar. Alas, I live in a gluten-, rice-free, amd soy-free house when d13 is home from college (no gf yummies as they almost always contain rice flour)
I am in complete and total denial about application fees. I’m hoping for a final list of 8-10 so it shouldn’t be too, too bad. A couple have no fee or no fee if you apply by a certain date.
@whataboutcollege Naviance just compares the kids in your school (although I do remember someone up thread who disputed this). So recalculating GPA doesn’t really come into play too much. The difference in recalculated GOAs won’t be too great if I understand your Q. So, 2 people with a 4.1 W GPA would probably have a very similar recalculated GPA. Close enough, anyway.
@MotherOfDragons If Temple is otherwise a good fit, move it back into the BoD. I’d rather a school be proactive in communicating about crime with their students than trying to pretend it doesn’t exist. (FIL and a BIL are Temple grads.) Drexel and Temple are in different parts of Philly, but I doubt crime is nonexistent near the Drexel (and Penn!) campuses.
@itsgettingreal17 Our Ds (and us) should definitely meet if they end up on the same campus!
@mamaedefamilia More Arabic–awesome! :-bd (closest emoji to one dancing)
Agree with @2muchquan about Naviance and GPA recalculation.
@whataboutcollege – it does become difficult to compare a college’s quoted GPA acceptance range with your own child’s stats because HS GPAs are all over the map, as we see here with this small CC sample size.
But @2muchquan is correct that your own Naviance data is solid (or close enough), even if a college recalculates.
@MotherOfDragons – we also switched to GEICO when first son was added to coverage. GEICO charged half of what our carrier wanted to charge and they have continued to drop their rates each year. Excellent ‘100 miles away at college’ discount.
I cannot believe you all have moved onto dorms, gifts, and grad parties. Yikes! We still don’t have a list, other than one rattled off out loud.
RE: app fees. The year end CC statement is quite enlightening between the college visit hotel stays, endless charges to College Board, app fees, and with any luck, a deposit fee of that ED school! All on one year end statement. More plane travel with this child so I don’t plan to add up the total expenditure.
I’m hoping all those app fees will lead to a decent merit award, so I’m not going to worry about it and treat it as a cost of doing business. It’s not an insignificant amount of money, for sure, but hopefully it’s well spent. Well spent, like a lottery ticket! :)) (I need some new emojis)
Part of the college application is/should be a school profile which explains how the school calculates GPA. (4.0 scale, 5.0 scale, etc.) The profile should also tell the college how it weights. The colleges use this info to recalculate GPAs. That way schools that don’t give extra points for a plus or minus grade can be normalized with those that do. For example, S’s school give points for + or -, but only weight a 200 level college class by 0.5 additional points. So the highest grade possible is a 4.5 in a class. I can imagine how confusing it must be to try to normalize between different schools in different districts or states.
And I am thinking along your lines @2muchquan, the app and test fees are the cost of doing the business of applying or school. And they need an emoji for “shelling out the bucks” (perhaps throwing $$ into the wind???)
Uhh, the “lasts”!! There were 8 girls on D15’s dance company graduating and parents started talking about “the last” this or that very early. I couldn’t handle a year of dwelling on how hard it was all going to be, so taking a cue from Don Draper (If you don’t like what they’re saying then change the conversation) D and I purposely put the focus on it being the best year, not the last. And sure enough she did have a wonderful year, achieving many of her goals for school, dance & music. I wanted us to enjoy and celebrate her special moments, not bring her down or make it about how sad I was going to be. There’s plenty of time for that after they are settled into their new lives and start their journey (and trust me, I was very, very sad then). Sincerely hope that S stays within a reasonable drive, but he’s been talking about applying to the same school as D, which is on the opposite coast. Either they are super-independent kids or they really want to get far away from home!
Care package idea - as mentioned, there were 8 seniors from her dance company and over the years the dance moms had become friends. We got together before midterms and holidays and each mom contributed something different for a care package. Simple things, like lip balm, a nice saying on canvas, candy, etc. We made cards using pictures from dance events (once we used a picture of us) that we all signed. The girls liked getting the packages and it was a nice way to stay connected.
Re dorms - agree that corridor dorms are great for the first year. Very social and easy to meet people whether you are in a single or a double, introvert or extrovert. I wasn’t willing to spend the extra $$ for a single, but D wanted the full freshman experience so she was fine with getting a random roomie. For decorations, some people go all out Pinterest style. D stuck with simple decorations and photos on the bulletin board. We adjusted the bed to almost full height and had plenty of room for storage drawers and books underneath.
Re: # of schools - D applied to 10, no ED. Everything was submitted by Dec 1, even the RD schools primarily because of merit deadlines. Nine were common app, only one had a school app. In the “learn from my mistakes” category, I didn’t realize it takes two or three weeks for CB to send out scores and ended up paying extra to have them rushed so we didn’t miss deadlines. Won’t make that mistake again!
@motherofdragons - most of the time you find out your merit award in the EA acceptance letter or within a few weeks afterward in a separate letter. However, it varies by school and I have heard of some that make you wait until spring, but for some reason I think those were ED schools.
Re: Insurance - A good friend who is in the insurance business just switched to GEICO - said she got a much lower price for same coverage.
S is officially a Senior! Exams are done, but his grades aren’t available online so we’ll have to wait for an email. Fingers crossed that he did as well as he thinks!! He is scheduled to take the ACT on Saturday, but waiting for a final time to be announced for a LAX playoff game (still in it after a big surprise win yesterday). Sincerely hope that the interscholastic athletic association realizes it’s an ACT day and schedules a late afternoon game to avoid conflicts.
@canypava I like your Bethe story. 
Hans Bethe gave a talk at a conference to a thousand physicists late 90s, maybe 1999. He brought and used a slide deck projector. 
In case anyone recognizes one of those, it looks like this
http://www.porterelectronics.com/kodak-ektapro-7000-slide-projector/
Everyone was already using Powerpoint at the conferences by mid 90s. Over Head Projectors had been retired.
I thought I haven’t seen one of those being used since 70s =))
Digression of the Day:
Stephen Hawking attended a physics conference in Atlanta, GA. He must have stayed at the same hotel as I stayed. I rode the elevator with him and his nurse twice on a day. I just stared and smiled at him because I did not know what to say. It is not exactly like he could give me an autograph or anything. :)) Oh, it was 1999 before I had a camera phone. No photos, darn. >:P
Our high school Naviance uses the Weighted 10-12 GPA. I thought that was an odd comparative. I think they do it because the UC’s use 10-12 grades…
School ended today. My S took care of his business. Done with all testing, He will work at a camp far away all summer. Not sure he will be able to work on Essays. Not sure how he will get them all done(12 schools) by EA deadlines…Also the couple of rolling schools need to be done as soon as possible…With all his AP’s, his senior year first semester will be far more stressful than Junior year. Oh. Well…
Not ready to think about dorms at all yet, although I love the idea of buying things when they go on clearance this year. We are thinking about laptops. Do engineering types ever use Apple computers? or are they strictly PC people?
Not thinking about graduation parties, but considering bringing friends on a senior spring break trip (not sure if spring break is prime time for admitted student days).
Settled in and (largely) recovered from ket lag, and over 200 posts to scan through on this thread alone!
Well, the fact that I’ve been a college professor for better than fifteen years helps—I have an insider’s view not so much of the admissions process but of the way colleges work. It’s particularly helpful on college tours—I’m busy looking at some things (like semi-hidden cut corners on physical plant, for example, or the interfaces between faculty-oriented and student-oriented parts of campus) that other parents aren’t necessarily thinking about.
That insider status, combined with my own tendencies as a knowledge junkie, also helps me know what other sources to take with a grain of salt, because I suspect I’m more likely to catch boneheaded gaffes like the Fiske or Insider’s Guide (I forget which, off the top of my head) statement that the University of Alaska Fairbanks provides its students with the amenities of Alaska’s largest city (um, no, that’d be the University of Alaska Anchorage, a few hundred miles away) or—though this one was corrected recently—claims that the University of Maryland Baltimore County houses most of Maryland’s public professional schools (no, that’d be the University of Maryland at Baltimore, actually located within Baltimore rather than the suburbs). I mean, I’d probably have caught the Alaska one anyway given my location, but I’d have gotten it before I moved here, too.
(Of course, some such things are more obvious to non-academics than others. After touring Miami of Ohio, my oldest said that the only way the Fiske or Insider’s—whichever it was—writeup made sense was if they had based the entirety of it solely on interviews with three scholarship athletes who were members of fraternities or sororities.)
Also, the Spreadsheet of Serendipity has links to the sources for everything on it, which includes USNWR, CollegeData, Niche, Wikipedia, and the rest of the likely suspects, so that it’ll be easier to recreate for the younger siblings.
@nw2this: UCF as a whole has what is politely called a “mixed” reputation, but the honors college is seen as quite good, and they do some stuff that’s been a model for other places. The entertainment infrastructure of the area is most excellent for a college student, I must say.
@2muchquan: I mentioned your fake Twitter account to my daughter before I left for my trip, and so she’s now made a fake Twitter account (linked to her for-college-spam email address) to follow the colleges on her shortlist.
Drivers licenses: Here in Alaska, if you are 18 or have reached 16 after holding your learners permit for at least six months (and you can get your permit at 14!) and claim to have driven for 40 hours (no documentation required), you can take your road test and get a license. There are restrictions on times of day and who can be in the passenger seat, but no requirements for drivers ed or anything like that.
of apps and app fees: It's looking more and more like the 11 remaining on the SOS will be the 11 applied to, pending one last college visit in July (which could knock it down to 10, but probably won't). Several of them are free to apply, though, so we're not too stressed out about app fees—it's other things like score reporting and college transcript fees that bother us, because she'll have credit from two different colleges (due to quirks in the way dual enrollment has worked in her school) to send.
Dorms and transitions: No in-depth talk of dorms here yet, though my daughter has expressed a preference for the traditional rooms-on-a-hall with a communal washroom style rather than suites—she sees it as more conducive to meeting people, and feels that’s half the purpose of college, and that suite-style housing would keep her introvert-tendency self from talking to anybody (so there’s a vote on your side, @STEM2017). Also, I’m with @2muchquan, in that I see the past 17+ years as preparation for kicking her out of the house sending her out into the world as a pretty much independent actor, and so there won’t be too much in the way of sadness and tears, because it’s simply the next natural step. (But her mother and me are both scientists at heart, and so tend to be rather clinical, for lack of a better word, about emotional things. So it goes.)
This thread has to be the hottest thread on CC. :))
Dorm rooms, parties, grad present:
D wants a single and is in love with the suite-style singles at Bama. But she’s shy around new people and an introvert, so a single, at least freshman year, is a bad idea. She’s definitely getting a double at my insistence. I also prefer the corridor style dorms for her for the same reason and she doesn’t care about having a semi-private bathroom. She is into the pinterest/catalog-style decorating and is making a list of items she wants to decorate, so those are going on the sale alert list.
D doesn’t want a party. I love party planning and go all out, but D finds my parties over the top (though her friends always rave about them). :)) So we’ll probably just do a big family celebratory dinner and she’ll go out to another nice dinner with her closest friends. I promised her her choice of a new car or trip for graduation, but pulled the new car off the table when she decided on a college plan that is going to require very expensive study abroad practically every long break for 5 years. So a trip it is. She’s still deciding where she wants to go, but her top choices right now are South Africa and combined China/Japan.
The dorm room/bathroom discussion reminds me…So I’m creating a list of things to teach D before she graduates. Cleaning the bathroom is number 1 on the list. Budgeting, credit, and investing is on there too. So much to teach, so little time left.
Fees: D has 6 common app schools, 1 mandatory coalition app school (using the common for the others that are accepting both), and 7 separate school apps. App, transcript, and score reporting fees will be around $1000. Much better than when the list had 23 schools. Because she is applying for competitive merit scholarships at all schools, she will be applying EA at all schools where offered, and in any event, all apps will be submitted immediately after NMSF announcement is made. D has a very tough senior year so has no time to worry about college apps once the semester starts. We will submit score reports 2-3 weeks before the app to get her file started and completed at the school as soon as possible.
Gosh, we are on vacation after dd’s USC tour. I can’t keep up! A few of the topics that I managed to maintain in my brain after skimming all of the posts:
Dorms…that is a make it or break it issue for dd. Dd is an introvert who needs alone to rejuvenate. She also likes her privacy. In our household, sharing a bedroom and a bathroom is the norm, the younger crowd have often been often 3 to a room. Noise and a high level of activity are a given. This Dd knows what she needs to function and a large hall communal style will not work. She doesnt mind a roommate (she has only had a private bedroom for 2 yrs). She is really hoping she will be matched with someone who has a similar personality, though. But she does not want a communal bathroom. A suite bathroom is definitely her preference.
Costs…several (understatement!!) pages back, I wrote that we budget around $1000-$1500 for applications, test scores, etc. We also have ~$2000+ for college visits.
I have downloaded a book onto my iPad’s kindle that I have been reading in snatches on this trip, “The College Hook: Packaging yourself to win the college admissions game.” For those of us with humble, uncomfortable bragging about themselves kids, I think this is a good book for helping them understand the process and how to frame their gifts and talents in a way that really represents their strengths. (That is given with the caveat that I have not finished the book, but where I think she is going based on what I have read so far. I will share more when I finish it if anyone is interested. We are traveling a lot the next week or so, so it may be a few weeks before I actually get a chance to finish it.)
On Suite-style vs. corridor, our thinking is in line with @STEM2017. Suite-style tend to be far less social. My DD14 used a corridor style dorm her Freshman year, but then moved into an apartment in her 2nd year. I would recommend them for Freshman, but some students would really hate them…DD hated the communal bathroom, but really wanted to do it for the social aspects.
My DS17 would be perfectly happy sleeping on a couch (in fact he is in the other room sleeping on it now, even though he has a perfectly fine bedroom…go figure), and throwing all of his cloths into laundry basket. ~X(
@nw2this On UCF, it was/is our main safety, based on the strength of it’s Industrial Engineering program (DD14), Aerospace Engineering program (DS17), low in-state tuition ($6K+ a year), generous merit based aid (plus Bright Futures), location (who doesn’t like Orlando?, as long as you don’t have to deal with traffic), nice dorms, and on-campus recruitment/job placement.
But it has some negatives. It’s not as well funded as it’s peers (USF, FSU, etc.), the % of full-time faculty is low (66%), the student to faculty ratio is bad (24 to 1), and IMHO it can sometimes feel like an office park (the buildings, but the campus layout, in a wheel and spoke style is very nice). The Honor’s college, I think, helps compensate for some of these issues.
I could go on with more positives (it’s gotten much more selective/quality of students, respectable graduation rates) and negatives (did I mention traffic?), but you get the point.
@jmek15 I hope the lax game is scheduled for a good time. Congrats to your ds!
@Mom2aphysicsgeek That book sounds interesting. I’m going to take a look now 