@itsgettingreal17 Ohio State’s on her list? She vetoed Michigan State right away due to weather (she has Reynaud’s) so I didn’t get a chance to dig into their offerings :lol: I do have a soft spot for MSU as I lived there while my dad did his postdoc 
@MichiganGeorgia …poo! I was hoping it was because of his PSAT score.
re; UChicago stalking. I do know kids who have attended or are attending U Chicago. It’s a great school for math & I do think highly of the school. But S17 has a 0.001% of getting in though even with his stellar math standardized test grades. Plus he has zero interest.
@payn4ward …the only school that has not given S a t-shirt was UNT. OU gave him 2 t-shirts while we were there. Texas A&M gave him 1 t-shirt. I am telling you OU is a head of the game when it comes to NMF kids.
@mtrosemom Yes very expensive “free” t-shirt. It’s like the collage tours where the students repeatedly tell you about all the free stuff available. (Ie… the fitness center is free.) I keep mumbling “included with cost of tuition” to myself. None of it’s free, it’s only available if you have already paid them lots of $$ first.
@curiositycat333 …agree 100% about nothing being FREE! I know University of Chicago is a great school and super hard to get into. I was just hoping that was a sign that they had some insight on NMSF cutoff. Sounds like they are just doing some massive recruiting.
SAT essay
So am I understanding that you can have this score deleted? D got a 6/3/6 which does not seem too great. Only one of D’s schools even recommends it. So can we actually delete it, or choose not to send the writing portion?
CWRU
I’m not sure what to think of Case, though certainly not a safety for D. Her stats fall right around their 50%. But their NPC shows surprisingly generous aid. UofR is her other reachy school of similar stats and their NPC shows $17,000 less merit aid/year than CWRU. We won’t be able to visit, but did go to an event they hosted locally. D is also going to try to interview with a local alumni. But back to the original point, I guess I’d call it a “high target” or “low reach” when thinking in terms of admit + afford.
@RightCoaster, don’t be scared! D17 is going into engineering and none of the 15 schools on her list require subject tests and only one recommends them. None of the schools we’ve had in serious consideration required them. So, plenty of hope for your S19 not to have to take them.
@curiositycat333 – not disagreeing with your comment that nothing is free, but wanted to add more to say that some of those things still are not free even after paying tuition!
Older son’s school has a two semester PE requirement. Most classes have a fee. If one wishes to use the athletic facilities and not enrolled in a PE class that includes these facilities, there is an annual fee. The county operates a bus that the students use to travel from dorms to campus. After freshman year, the bus pass is $200/year. No one is required to purchase a bus pass and as I point out to my son, I walked the same distance on the same campus w/o a bus…
Bursar bill includes a student activity fee and a health facility fee, even for those who have health insurance. (But that last one could end up saving one money if own health insurance plan has high copays or deductible b/c health facility visits are covered by a $10 copay.)
@snoozn I think you can choose not to send it. But I’m not 100% sure. Probably can’t delete it unless you delete the whole test. Only about 1/2 of S17’s schools ask for it, and of those a few it’s optional.
What I was told was that schools mostly weren’t taking this essay test too seriously because they don’t know what to do with the scores either. But we really don’t know do we? But I decided I’m not having S17 take the SAT again just for this part.
RE: U Chicago solicitations…I don’t think anyone will ever know what UC’s strategy is other than as @Tgirlfriend wrote about massive recruiting, and I think I have commented this before…but older son received entertaining and frequent mail from UC (wall poster, colorful post cards, brochures, etc). Older son was NM Commended, and younger son will be NMSF (or so I think), but younger son has seen nothing from UC. No book from Yale, and he is conducting research with a Yale prof and participated in a National Linguistics competition at Yale…so, I really do not know what to think. He has had a CB account since 9th grade when he took AP CS and Bio subject tests. His scores are all tippy top but the mail he receives is often from schools where he would be in the top 1/10th of one percent of the student body.
Yea, I always mumble “prepaid” when a school mentions that something is free. “We have free laundry!” Nope, it’s just prepaid laundry facilities.
And I do have to say S came back from OU’s visit completely WOWed. For him it is between OU and ASU, which had a completely awesome honors college facility. And best of all, we can afford either school! <:-P
I agree with @RightCoaster (and others now that I have a chance to finish this) about UChicago not ‘stalking’ due to PSAT numbers. What’s the saying? Correlation does not imply causation. I don’t think UChicago goes after NMF kids, as I don’t think those upper tier schools really care that much about it. Maybe I’m wrong, but it’s just another test to them. They have better ways to measure possible student success is my guess. Like those super-awesome essays! Yes, a lot of NMF’s may go there, but that’s just because they get friggin’ smart kids.
@mtrosemom – I believe it is Washington & Lee that washed the students’ laundry until a year or two ago. And when my cousin went to Notre Dame, he needed name tags in all of his clothing as ND washed the students’ laundry also.
I am stockpiling quarters for older son as he will be in off-campus housing using machines that take quarters.
@2muchquan – where is your emoticon (is that what those smiley things are called?) after this line:
They have better ways to measure possible student success is my guess. Like those super-awesome essays
@WhereIsMyKindle Great list! Really solid and well thought out. Best of luck!!!
re: QOTD
No phone numbers to anyone at this point, they have asked and we have declined texts or to provide that number yet. I killed the landline 2 days ago. For actual apps it will be S17’s cell. We did not create a separate college email as frankly they need the real one on apps and to communicate and it seemed unnecessary.
@STEM2017 I suspect Honors is more highly ranked but I would confirm
@SoccerMomGenie welcome!
@2muchquan I echo @payn4ward about the leg cramps…S would kill me if I entered anything for him into any app, or start an app lol but I am jealous that you get to “see” it all.
@fun1234 S19 earned the wilderness first aid merit a couple of years ago. I am not sure where he is at with the camping nights but will exceed the 100 miles on the backpacking next month. That said, he wouldn’t try for the cycling aspect and don’t know if kids earn partial credit or if it has to be everything.
@disshar yes, we are much in the same boat. No one school checks all the boxes.
My son is heading out to Niagara Falls in two weeks. They will be biking up to 50 miles a day going from Canada to New York eventually ending up at the Scout masters camp in Albany new York. It is the big boy scout trip of the summer. boy he loves the outings and they are great exercise. Hopefully where ever he ends up having an outing club. I am sure he will miss his boy scout troop and want to get involved in a new one wherever he ends up If possible.
We get occasional post card from U Chicago. We thought of going to their local visit but forgot. Eliminated that due to their grade deflation since DS is going for pre-med. Harvard, Stanford and U Penn are still in our list for now.
Thanks @STEM2017 It’s the result of a lot of research. A lot. Oh my goodness.
DD gets quite a bit of mail from UChicago (not sure if she gets emails). More last year actually. I don’t think it’s NMF since she didn’t make cutoff for our state (CA). She did get a 34 ACT but she seems to have gotten less mail from them since her ACT score. I noticed when going through the college mail the other day she got a ton from Washington University in St. Louis. Like 5 or 6 things. They are the new leader for stalking. LoL. I get weekly emails from Fordham inviting us to their visit days, which are on Weds (not traveling to NY from CA mid-week, not convenient and can’t really afford it anyways). I don’t even know if she’s still interested in applying for Fordham, though she may want to as they do have some merit aid.
@CT1417, it was Davidson. Their theory was all gentlemen should be well presented (back in the day). We got a kick out of that, but we visited with D in 2014 and they had just shut down the laundry services and replaced them with “no cost” laundry machines. D ended up at W&L and it is sorely lacking in either a laundry facility or “free” laundry machines. She add $$ to her student card and swipes to pay for loads.
S is (finally) finishing up his paperwork for Eagle Scout. He was one of the lucky Scouts that got to spend 10 days backpacking at Philmont a couple of years ago. He had a really great experience backpacking 82 miles. BSA knows how to do it right. They enjoyed the activities at each camping spot. He also got to do a BSA Sea Base adventure and sailed around St. John for a week last summer. He has been very lucky with his Boy Scout adventures.