@holycrayon - I agree with you 100% on International Medicine Olympiad. In fact I suspected that as soon as I found out that there is a camp associated with the event. By That time, My DS already committed to participate since teacher and his friend asked him to join. In Bowl part of the competition, his team couldn’t answer quickly since you need to know exact words to inteerupt and answer. The winner was able to do it but he drew blank against a Biology Olympiad top 20 guy even though he had severe headache! All 4 kids in our team won medals but DS is not going to show it in the college apps. DS spent more time on college essays than preparing for this. He already has enough science medals to show 
@oneundecided …that is WAY better than the $4K they are talking about on another string of posts. Congrats to your daughter.
I just added up the number of essays for D’s best-fit 6 schools: 3 main essays and 9 supplements (George Washington’s is not available).
She has a 12 part “student letter” for Rotary. I think there were 3 student essays for NSLI last year. I expect YES and CBYX would have similar number of essays.
I feel tired on her behalf.
@mtrosemom congratulations to you son for his eagle
number of essays no clue. She’s not even sure how many schools she will apply to. So far she knows of three definite, so I guess the essays for those are just 3.
@BlueAFMom I’m confused as how the ACT scores are higher without the writing score. Isn’t the writing score totally separate from the composite?
@greeny8 They are…but, her composite score from the ACT tests she took without the essay were better than the one time she took it with the essay. Emory’s previous policy was that they would only look at ACT composite scores from those dates it was taken with the essay–no superscoring. Does that make sense?
Wow @mtrosemom ! <:-P <:-P
Hope the Board of Review goes smooth sailing!
I organized three eagle BoRs last year. It snowed two feet on every one of them. None was canceled though, and everyone made it. We had them with hot chocolates X_X
Time to get those eagle palms every few months ! 
@flatKansas Totally have the perfect wife for your son here. Nothing is working–good cop, bad cop, indifferent cop. She takes 30 seconds to put something on the common app and thinks that’s enough for the day. I wouldn’t care except I know there isn’t time to do apps and school at the same time and school is starting soon.
D got a pack of cards from Harvey Mudd yesterday. I seem to remember a few here talking about them earlier. She’s not going to apply (and I’m sure they already know she wouldn’t get in!) but she said she’s going to keep the cards and see if she can make them into a game. Case Western has been D’s biggest stalker school for quite a while now. It’s fairly high on her list, so I hope the level of stalking translates into merit $$$! (That’s how it works, right?)
She and S18 start school this Friday. There is one major issue with D’s schedule which I hope can get worked out by then. I’m fairly optimistic as the school has been pretty good about fixing these kinds of problems in the past. She’ll be taking 2 concurrent enrollment classes. The registration window opens on Friday and college classes start the following Monday. Eek!
@picklesarenice, thanks for the great in-depth review of Smith! Wow, I’d read that 6% got merit which I thought was extremely low and now it’s actually 4%… I’m glad D and I have moved away from thinking much about Smith even though it’s still in the official #1 spot. Did your D do an interview while she was there? I’d love to hear how that went if she did. I’m going to encourage D to set up an interview with a local alumna. Then we’ll stop thinking about it and hopefully she’ll have gotten into some of her other top choice schools with enough merit by the time we see Smith’s decision.
@STEM2017, thanks for the info on Rose-Hulman. It was on D’s list but came off in general culling – not for any specific reason I can remember. I’ll see if she wants to put it back on. Two other good tech schools with no fee and no essay are Michigan Technological University and Clarkson University in upstate NY.
@payn4ward, I saw your comment after writing the above. Clarkson is tied with Rose-Hulman at 85% white and MTU is 89% white. Diversity is a positive, but not a deal-breaker for D. Bigotry certainly would be and maybe non-diverse schools should be looked at more closely to see why they are whiter than sour cream.
@CT1417, D and I visited U of Rochester and we were both impressed even though it hadn’t been on D’s list very long. We went mostly to see RIT (great!), and checked out UofR because we’d seen their spiel at a local visit they did in tandem with CWRU and a couple of other schools. They very really strongly (like I mean REALLY!) encourage interviews. My advice would be to go, but then again I’m not doing any of the driving!
@MotherOfDragons, if you love snow and sunshine come visit the beautiful Rocky Mountains of Colorado!
How many essays: It depends on what counts as an essay. If you have the broadest possible definition, it’s about 20, but that includes some prompts of the “Tell us your favorite joke, and why” type with a word count limit of 200 or so words—I don’t know if that’s really an essay the way people think of essays, you know?
Alabama’s application: I agree, @MotherOfDragons, it’s a somewhat frustrating process—first you apply and pay, then you really apply, then you apply for money, then you apply for honors, then you apply for money (again), then you apply for housing, then you apply for housing (again), then you…
Stalker schools: For a while it was Smith, but recently WUSTL has totally taken over this spot—my daughter has gotten 2½(!) shelf inches of mailings from them in the last month alone. It’s a little bit crazy, it is.
Oh, I knew I forgot something!
Love it – reminds me of [url = http://weknowmemes.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/nana-nana-nana-nana-batman.jpg]this comic.
![http://weknowmemes.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/nana-nana-nana-nana-batman.jpg]this](http://weknowmemes.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/nana-nana-nana-nana-batman.jpg%5Dthis){kind=link}
Now that I have the important stuff out of the way, I seek advice. Here is D’s scheduling problem. She has to take an engineering class to finish the four year program. She was going to take Engineering Senior Design, but it is only offered one period and won’t fit into her schedule. There are a few good solutions, but they may not work out. This would leave her with two possibilities:
- Take AP CS even though she already took regular CS before AP was offered
- Take a class in an engineering field she has no interest in (aerospace, civil/architectural or biomedical)
She’d rather do AP CS, but I’m not sure how it would look to colleges that she’s basically repeating a class.
Help? Anyone? :-/
Ok…what am I missing about the Alabama application? We filled out the application, paid the money, waited for our CWID number, filled out the scholarship applications and now wait. Is there some other application that we missed? I know my D will apply for honors after she is admitted and is not applying for the CBHC.
@BlueAFMom that makes sense
@snoozn She should take AP CS. That’s no different from kids taking regular bio or chem first and then taking the AP class later. There may be some repetition but probably not as much as you think. Plus there is the possibility of getting intro college credit for the AP exam.
Regarding the UA app, it really isn’t that complicated. The only real step is where they send you a CWID. The scholarship app is NOT for the automatic merit scholarships. That is for things like the alum association and the college specific awards. And every school we have looked at has a separate honors college app and requires a housing app/deposit. So what am I missing? I’m fairly certain we got it right since DD15 is starting her second year there.
That is what I thought too @disshar!
@snoozn – thanks so much for the UR info. Yes, I had read about how much they encourage interviews. An email arrived from UR yesterday announcing their ‘visits to your area’…and those visits include interviews held in nearby cities/towns. My son was able to log in and schedule a local interview, so I have taken UR off the visit list for now. These don’t appear to be alum interviews but interviews conducted by AOs while on tour. I am hopeful that this will ‘count’ enough b/c I am tired of driving.
@acdchai Match made in heaven! Think of the grandchildren - they’d probably never walk.
School has started and S is generally upbeat about his schedule and classes. I’m focusing on being excited with him. Band is busy. Now I wont see him til November. 
@snoozn What did the earlier CS class cover? The AP class is about learning to program in JAVA. If the earlier CS class taught a different language or was more general ‘how to program’ class than by all means takes the AP CS class. If you go to university you take multiple programming classes. Does she know how many students in AP CS will have already taken the CS course?
I would think AP CS wouldn’t look odd as long as the class descriptions are different. Should be easy if she’s already taken a CS class I would think all depends on what the teacher is teaching. S17 will be taking it this year, and we have been assuming that despite his never having taking a programing class it will be relatively easy for him. But I’m warning him that anyone’s FIRST programming class can be a bit time intensive.
@snoozn a lot of schools require students to take the non-AP version of a class before taking the AP version. At my DD’s school the requirement is two full credits of CS before AP.