@itsgettingreal17 - It appears PITT is open. I casually went to PITT site and it showed “Apply Now”
How did your invitation for Wash U’s fly-in come? by e-mail or snail mail? Kinda sad D didn’t get invited. :-< , but I may have missed it. I don’t have access to D’s e-mail and DH tends to toss mail from schools he hasn’t heard of.
Mines is really close to Denver (~25 minutes) , so plenty of dining choices.
@ct1417 - Thanks for the link. Even Harvard site says you can apply to public universities. Standford is more interesting, it says you can apply EA to other schools if it’s required to get scholarships.
FYI, Pitt is not yet open (i.e., Fall 2017 is not an option). I believe they are using the Coalition App this year, but maybe also their own school app. We were told that D would receive an email as soon as the application open and no email received as yet.
Ok, we have a curveball in our midst. D2 came home from a national music symposium with a yearning to major in music, even though she realizes she doesn’t want to teach and doesn’t have the extreme talent to make it as a musician. She’d been heading down the engineering path, and we suggested music technology or audio engineering, but that isn’t what she wants, either. She likes the physical input of mechanical engineering. Is there a major out there that would satisfy both passions? Do engineers work to refine/redesign musical instruments? Can some bright CC parent suggest a career that combines the two?
Political professors: As a quite left-leaning faculty member, I have three usual responses to articles like the one linked above:
[ul][]Well, if adherents of a particular political philosophy are going to spend so much time attacking the academy, it does make sense that adherents of that particular philosophy will gravitate away from academia, you know? (And there’s decent evidence that that’s the temporal relationship—conservative critiques of academics as leftists predates the leftward shift of the professoriate.)
[]Of course, the leftward shift of the professoriate is pretty limited—at open-access institutions (you know, the kind most students go to), there has been no such shift. However, at the sort of institutions New York Times columnists generally went to, and aspire to send their children to, yes, there has been a leftward shift. So the more interesting question is why there has been a leftward shift among academics who work in a specific, relatively small corner of academia—but that isn’t as clickworthy, I figure.
[*]And, additionally, such articles ignore the rightward shift of faculty in business schools (and the continued rightward lean without a shift in engineering). Intriguingly: You know where one of the most pronounced leftward faculty shifts has been? Journalism.[/ul]
@itsgettingreal17 - that explains PITT y2k problem
@lovethebard - the deadline for USC is December 1st and these are considered early admits. The scholarship announcements come by end of January with an admission while their RD results come out towards end of March.
Dd and I made a pact tonight. No more college stuff for at least 1 week. I have got to start planning for our next school yr (we start in a month! Yikes!! I am way behind in that dept!) She needs to really dedicate some serious time to her project.
At this point, I think we are scrapping any other trips until after school starts. I just dont’ see how we can fit any in. Jeepers, our 8 weeks of summer will have evaporated into thin air!!
@itsgettingreal17, @srk2017: I, for one, entered college at 16. It’s quite possible for people entering college this past fall to have been born in 2000 (or even 2001, for the very young).
New intros – great idea and I have been loving them!
**Brief(?) Intro **
H and I have a D11, D17 and S18
D11 is the reason colleges show those “6-year graduation rates.” She is also an artsy hippy vegan belly dancer, double majoring in dance and integrative physiology. She hopes to go into physical therapy and continue dancing (both as an instructor and performer).
D17 has had quite a road to get where she is. She was diagnosed with pervasive developmental disorder at age 2 and then with autism (a subset of PDD) at age 5. She went to a special needs pre-school and we managed to get her into our top choice K-8 charter school because the school decided that year to take on two kids with much more serious challenges than usual. D started kindergarten with a one-on-one para-pro and academic scores around 16%. In an attempt not to drone on too much here, there were many therapies and specialists both in and out of school. We are fortunate to live in an area with top-notch support for special needs.
When she was five, her neuro-psychologist told us she would likely never be able to live independently or at best could perhaps live in an apartment and hold down a simple job. However, D is the most independent-minded, stubborn and determined person I know (can be a blessing and a curse!) She hasn’t done it alone, but she has been the driving force behind her progress and never stopped moving forward and proving she can do what might have seemed impossible. She won’t be going to an Ivy, but in HS she has kicked butt in advanced STEM courses as well as English, and done great at general levels across the board. She still has pretty serious social issues, but I hope college will be a good place to re-boot and put some serious effort into social life.
(Wow, that sounded kinda like a movie-of-the-week recap – sorry!)
She’s going into electrical engineering and looking at programs that have a focus on renewable energy. This is what she’s wanted to do since she started her HS’s engineering program in 9th grade!
She is also very nerdy/geeky and loves Marvel Comics, Dr. Who, Firefly, Star Wars, etc… But she takes Brazilian Jiu Jitsu (since age 8), Muay Thai, and does CrossFit, so she is one a**-kicking beast-nerd!
S18 is my most “mainstream” kiddo. He’s high-achieving but not super-competitive. He is kind of a cool, charismatic geek. College-wise he wants to double major in business and CS and start his own cyber-security business. Not sure he’ll stay with that exact plan, but he does want to be an entrepreneur.
Okay, no, that was NOT brief.
@nw2this my daughter received an email telling her to save the date and look for more details to arrive via snail mail. However, she received an email back in the Spring with a questionnaire/short application that she filled out and submitted.
@snoozn Wow. It’s quite a story, and very inspiring! Your daughter sounds awesome.
@texaspg - No, applications by the December 1st deadline do not constitute early admission to USC - students receive early notification at the end of January/beginning of February if they are being considered for merit scholarships - otherwise, they get notification at the end of March with everyone else.
Moreover, the December 1st deadline - regardless of any Merit Aid consideration - is the
“First-year deadline for all Dramatic Arts, Cinematic Arts and Music programs, Kaufman School of Dance, the Iovine and Young Academy, and the World Bachelor of Business (WBB) program.”
From the USC website:
“… USC does not have an Early Decision or Early Action program.”
Hence, it’s not an early admission.
The early scholarship notification is standard for many schools, esp. if interviews and campus visits are necessary for advancing from a semifinalist to a finalist round.
Irrespective of what their website says and how they call the process, they are admitting some people early like last of week of January which usually is tied to some level of scholarship.
@texaspg - The issue was not about early notification, it was whether applying to USC by December 1st counts as “Early Action” application and would therefore preclude someone from applying to USC for merit under any or all ivy or ivy-equivalent’s SCEA or REA plans, which it does neither.
And, in general, one is better off heeding what colleges’ websites say rather than taking random CCers’ experiences as gospel.
@mdcmom wrote
I would make that its own thread, if I were you-that’s a really interesting article, and it seems to bear out our experiences so far with regards to looking at colleges. D17 had considered herself liberal, and H had been talking to her about how he’s considered liberal here in Atlanta, but when he’s at one of the offices up in Philly, they consider him conservative.
She took Clark and Brown off of her list (MA and RI) after doing some research on them and concluded that she was not, in fact, that liberal. She is keeping 4 MA schools on her list because their focus is less political /social justice warrior and more practical (you’ll have a job when you graduate from here).
@dfbdfb , I like your input on the article a lot. I’d say that most of my current professors at my regional directional uni in the area where Deliverance was filmed (no joke!) are surprisingly neutral, although my Surrealism teacher from Argentina was stridently and exhaustively left leaning with regards to her obsessions with inculcating us into Freudian methodology. On the other side of that is my CS teacher, who puts in a link to her evangelical christian website and urges us to “check in with God” on it. Both are deeply annoying and, I feel, a distraction from learning, but my moral compass is pretty much set (although not dogmatically so), and I resent both of their attempts to move the needle.
@NerdMom88 wrote
My kids both have strong artistic talent, but they see how I struggle with making money using my artistic talent, so I advise them to incorporate that talent into their strengths (stem) rather than pursue it primarily. D17 is loving ceramics right now, and I say to her, good, get a degree in CS and you can afford to throw as many pots as you want and even have your own kiln. I think sometimes it’s good to do something you love purely for the love of it, rather than try and monetize it. I will probably work in a gallery or a museum once I graduate, so I won’t produce art for a living, but I’ll still be producing art because I love it. Make money with the stuff you’re good at (I’m super good at organizing and visual displays, and sorting through tons of information, which works with a gallery/curator/museum postion).
D18 got homesick and we went and picked her up early from her vacation with her BFF. I think it was really a case of too much togetherness and not enough privacy, lol. It was in a million dollar beachfront condo, but they had a LOT of people crammed into it, and both D’s are used to having their space and quiet time, and it just got to be too much noise and hustle and bustle for her. H and I got to dip our toes in the sand, sigh longingly at the beach, then turn around and drive back with her. I’m glad she’s home-I can get her to her orthodontist appt before she heads out again in a few days for camp (another reason she came back early-the original plan was a 1 day turnound from vacation to camp and she was like, I need some decompression before camp!). And I missed her! She grew!
@nerdmom88 that’s some curve ball. I have no career path suggestions for you but want to share my friend’s similar story. Her daughter was all set to major in physical therapy. All colleges visited were with that focus in mind. She wentt to admitted weekend and came home saying she was going to major in music. It was totally out of left field, no real music talent (played guitar up in her room), going to school upstate NY and has no connections in the music industry whatsoever. She is starting her junior year, and yes she forged ahead with this plan to major in music, and has had no real internship or summer opportunities arise. She is on the school radio as a DJ but that’s the extent of it. Maybe your daughter can pursue this passion as part of her college experience but not as a major? I’d worry about the ability to support herself and the cost benefit of what college costs vs what her earnings potential would be. Other smart cc parents probably have creative ideas for you, I’m just not one of them but wanted to share my friend’s curve ball.
@Mom2aphysicsgeek amazing how quickly summer is flying by. My son made the same pack last weekend. We went to San Diego for a long weekend to decompress, enjoy a few days together, no college talk. 5-hr plane rides never were as enjoyable. Good luck with the school yr planning and project. I think our trip to PA to visit UPenn and Swarthmore are going to be on hold until we can find a weekend after school starts. I scheduled two visits for later in the month but they are in-state so just a few hours on two different days.
@snoozn Your D17 sounds amazing!! That is quite the inspiring story.
I dropped my son off at his 6 week summer program yesterday. He is only an hour away from home, so it doesn’t seem as bad as if he was far away. They run optional college planning seminars once a week in the evenings as part of the program. I strongly encouraged him to take advantage of those, so hopefully he will come back with more motivation to get going on stuff like the essay. He tends to believe things he hears from other adults more than what he hears from me. Hopefully by the time he gets back all the scholarship changes at various schools will be up and he can finalize his list.
@snoozn Your daughter’s story is inspirational and I have no doubt that some on-point parenting also has contributed to her surpassing the pessimistic predictions made in early childhood. She sounds like an extraordinary young woman.