I doubt D will get her applications done before school starts. She’ll have about two weeks free between our family vacation and the start of her online English class. University classes and the classes with me begin the following week.
Her earliest deadlines are Nov 1, which we are switching to Oct 15 She needs to visit both those schools before spending the time applying. Luckily both are within driving distance, and one can be accomplished in just a day. We’ll have to stay overnight for Ohio State
Argh she needs/wants to make second visits to two schools to sit in on certain Arabic classes. That’s a whole day for each.
And then Oklahoma… Question about that: should she wait until after NMSF notifications to visit? Their Arabic Flagship plus auto scholarships (without NMSF) are the attraction. I’d want her to experience the school the way she’d attend, so not getting the whole NMSF tour (look at our shiny benefits!) if she doesn’t make it. Ok that was an awful sentence. I think I just answered my own question
(Home football games=more expensive hotel rooms and crowded restaurants the day(s) before. I live in a university town :)) )
D will not send in apps until mid-September, right after Nat’l merit announcement. But she will get them completed before school starts. She had 7 AP courses junior year (“annoying” also believes no one does well with a lot of AP courses) and senior year will be even harder with 6 AP, 1 IB, and 3 DE/CE classes (5 are one semester) plus the usual work and extra-currics. No senioritis here.
We’ve built in college apps into her summer schedule. She’s ready to hit the ground running on July 1.
After allowing D to work every.single.day from 7:30-5 last August, I vowed I would do a better job of protecting her August schedule and it worked. She will have work to do for school summer assignments and she has a three day IB research academy and two days to spend at Grandmas house …but otherwise August is open and she plans to get her apps completed then.
@carachel2 same with my daughter wrt math-she said she guessed on the last two and didn’t have time to go back and check her work.
She said it felt easier than the SAT from the week before, but by the time she got to the writing part she felt like her brain was drained, so she felt like she didn’t have as much flair to give to it as she usually would.
She said the science and reading parts were the easiest for her, and the math was “ugly”.
I hope we can be done with all of it-if I understand the ACT correctly anything 30 and over is pretty sweet.
It’s interesting that we can see the ACT scores starting June 21, but we have to wait until July 21 to see the SAT ones. I wonder why it’s so different for two very similar tests?
@2muchquan thanks for the zeemee link-I think there are two schools on there that use it (I sort of breezed through it to see if it would be something D would be interested in. On the one hand it seemed cool, on the other hand I had no interest in looking at those other kids’ zeemee’s, and I wonder if the adcoms will be like, just shoot me now more stuff to wade through…
From the kid’s point of view they’re happy to get the money and not overly picky about the delivery vector. If your DH didn’t like how you did it, then he’s welcome to deliver the money in whatever manner he sees fit-we have a “if you don’t like how I do it, you do it” mantra in our family. This extends to the dishwasher occasionally being re-run with the dishes being re-arranged because apparently I “do it wrong”. lol. Those dishes are super clean.
thank you’s to interviewers-of course yes. How to get the snail mail addy without sounding weird might be a challenge. Most of the people she’ll interview with don’t live within a thousand miles of the campus (alumni). I don’t know how to have her interview with the colleges she’s visiting over the summer when she hasn’t decided to apply to them yet.
I don’t think D17 will have the apps done over the summer. She comes back from camp on sat and gets on a plane with her dad and grandad sunday morning to go look at colleges for a week, then only has 2 weeks to potato out before school starts. D18 has a similar schedule, only looking at colleges first (well, mostly going to WDW for her sweet sixteen with her bff and looking at schools in Orlando because that’s her happy place), and then 4 days after she’s back from camp school starts.
The potato-ing becomes less and less the older they get. Welcome to adulting, kiddos.
QOTD: What are your child’s biggest fears about going off to college. And what are yours?
My D is a worrier and very random so every week is something new. This week it’s picking the right classes in college. My only worry is about her overall experience. I want her to be happy and have a fantastic experience. As a result, I’m going to really worry when she’s making the final decision …I. wondering whether she is making the right choice. While I have influenced the list, I plan to
step all the way back once admissions decisions are in hand and require her to make the final choice on her own.
When do you pay application fee to schools? When you start an application or when you click submit. You may not finish an application, it would be bad if you have to pay right away. I am just clueless with CA or application process in general.
@itsgettingreal17 , I don’t think D has any fears about going off to college yet. My fear is that she still thinks none of the boys are good enough for her
My daughter will totally take the challenge to finish her applications by the time school starts. The only thing will be getting her transcripts sent! We don’t start back until Sept. 7th, so hopefully the GC will get them out soon after that! We have already asked to see when we can get the transcript because she wants to apply to her #1 asap after the application goes live in July.
I don’t think DS will have made a dent in his essays by the time school starts, because of his 6-week summer program and a one week family vacation in August. Since half his classes with homework will be at the UC, which starts Sept 22, he will have a month after HS starts with some time on his hands for essays. First applications due Nov 1.
Most of the colleges on his list have essays that will be released around Aug 1st. The essay organizer website says 34 essays!! :!!
He has a phone call scheduled with his college counselor on Monday. I think they will talk about his list of schools and ways to fit his activities into the number of slots on the applications.
We went clothes shopping at Macys yesterday and got him basically a whole new wardrobe for the summer program (except T-shirts and suit, which he’s already set for). $-)
He’s studying orbital calculations in prep for the program. :-B They sent the kids some material to read and Python programs to run yesterday. The Facebook group for the program has gotten pretty active, he says. (Though not as active as this thread, I’ll bet!)
@SincererLove: Isn’t a handmade card generally seen as more heartfelt and sincere than a storebought one, anyway?
Application timing: It’s the essays that are the problem, really.
My daughter will do the ones that are drop-dead simple (the non-honors parts of certain state flagships, basically) in early July, after they open. After that it’s frantic work on essays until we leave on our family vacation to the lower 48 in mid-July, and since we’re down there traveling around between sights and family for better than three weeks, she won’t really get a chance to write any essays, but should get a chance to at least build outlines. Then, once we get back with two weeks to go before school starts, she’ll be all essay writing all the time—the object is to get them out before classes start. We’ll see how successfully it goes.
Orlando: Before we moved to Alaska, we lived in the Orlando metro area. I have a friend who’s a person of note in the quite vibrant indie music scene centered there. Anyway, this is the second tragedy to hit that network of mine in a very short period of time—a couple days before this latest one someone was shot at a multi-artist music event my friend was performing at.
Something’s going very, very wrong. Who decides to kill people who are enjoying themselves?
(And that was a rhetorical question. I already know too many of the actual answers to it.)
@SincererLove cards aren’t necessary. My D16 didn’t save any given to her. Money is king!
You pay the application fee when you submit the application to the school.
@MotherOfDragons the SAT used to take about 19 days to get scores released, but with it being so new and they don’t know how to score/curve because CB appears to be a cluster…
fears of going to college none at the moment. She’s more excited to be away and on her own. I think since her sister is leaving this year, she’s happy to see someone go first so she can get feedback. My fears are just missing my babies and hoping they are happy.
I don’t think my D will get much of the essays done before school starts. We talked about it last night and already I got the eye roll.
Mine is that she’ll work too hard and not stop to have fun on the way. That is why overly intense places like Reed and Chicago aren’t under consideration (above and beyond selectivity and money considerations).
As she’s female, I fear the possibility of sexual assault. She’s not interested in partying, so that should help to reduce the risks. I’m really hoping that the media outcry against the Stanford swimmer will raise awareness and produce positive change on campuses, even if it’s too late for that poor girl who was victimized.
Orlando, part 2: My Facebook network—which has a lot of Orlando-area representation—is starting to check themselves in as safe. I’m not a fan of Facebook as a corporate entity, but I’ll give them credit, that’s an incredibly useful service to provide.
ACT writing scoring: Just got word that my daughter’s appeal of her ACT writing score was successful, and it gots raised to a 28, which doesn’t necessarily sound that great until you realize that it’s 95th percentile.
College fears: I have two and a half: The first, as @mamaedefamilia mentioned for hers, is sexual assault. The second is that she has shown some depressive tendencies (though those were recently diagnosed as seasonal affective disorder, and so it can hopefully be taken care of easily enough) plus she has a tendency to keep entirely to herself unless she’s pushed out of that, and I worry that the stress of adjusting to college and then college itself could exacerbate both of those.
We will have most (hopefully ‘all’) of the essays done over the summer, but can’t submit anything without LORs. All teachers have been asked, and 2 of 3 provided with brag sheets. The other should go in this week. But, we won’t expect LORs to be complete for 2-3 weeks after school starts. Does anyone know, for CA apps, can you hit the ‘submit’ button before required (or optional) LORs are submitted? Maybe it’s a separate submission for each?
@MotherOfDragons As for ZeeMee, I think that schools that list it as an optional addition to an app will absolutely NOT look at it as just more ‘stuff’ for them to look at. That doesn’t mean they will look at it, or enjoy looking at it, but that is their job, IMO. I totally enjoyed looking at some of the ZeeMee videos on YouTube. Check this one out (not sure you can link utube vides): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rrT2GKI0G6A
@itsgettingreal17 My D is nervous with regards to new situations. So, I anticipate some interesting emotions come decision-time. I, too, want her to have a good experience, first and foremost. The pressure is kind of off her, as I don’t feel senior year comes into play in the admissions process nearly as much as junior year did. She’s still taking a pretty rigorous load, but the push for a 4.0 will not be the same. No testing, except for APs. She can hopefully enjoy her senior year. I know she’ll make a fine choice in the end, because all the schools on the list are great schools. There are so many out there, it’s hard to go wrong if you feel there is a fit.
She needs to visit both those schools before spending the time applying. Luckily both are within driving distance, and one can be accomplished in just a day. We’ll have to stay overnight for Ohio State 