@stlarenas Antigua sounds amazing! However - I asked the doctors in our family about these degrees and they say that the US medical establishment look down on degrees from the islands programs 
I thought they sounded like a great way to get a medical degree and have fun.
D’s list is now with 2 super reach schools, one of them will be ED. She will also apply EA to 2-3 higher ranked state schools who have potential to offer competitive merit. These schools all offer very strong engineeing programs. If she failed her ED choice, she should have acceptance into at least one of these state schools. Then she will round up with 3-4 RD (only apply if ED falied) private schools that has good programs and are either location friendly or merit potentials. The safety (acedemic and financial as well) will be our state flagship. The list now round up to about 8-9 schools.
Today is first day of school for DS. For the first time, I am not there to drop him. :((
Welcome @dcolosi. Our list is around 20!
Anyone hear of The Portara before? I have been looking at it since dd received an email from Truman inviting me to sign up for the free service. I have decided to do it just to see what they actually offer. They are working for the universities, but it sort of seems like it may be a simplified version of a headhunter service for schools?? Can’t quite wrap my head around it. I’m signing up now.
I’ve enjoyed the visits we’ve done so far and it helped us figure out what other schools to look at. Honestly, one of her choices we just happened to be passing by on the way to visit another school and we had some time to kill so I asked if she wanted to stop. We did and she really liked it but not the one we where on our way to see. After that weekend it showed us that the larger schools is where she felt the best so we shifted focus to only larger schools.
You can do all the research, look at the video’s, virtual tours, etc. but until you actually step on campus you just don’t know if the school feels right for the student. I’m happy with her choices and think she will do well at any of them so now we wait to hear.
QOTD:
Hardly anyone in our town goes to the state flagship. Some do, but most kids are looking elsewhere. There are tons of schools in New England so a lot of kids stay local. We do have some very good students at our school though and many of them end up leaving and going somewhere different. This year we had friends go to school in CA, Oxford England, McGill, and Texas. Most of son17s friends want to go to school in Boston, Tufts, BC, BU, NU, Bentley, Babson,WPI,MIT etc. i don’t think any of them are Ivy bound though.
So I don’t mind talking about it with people at all. I don’t think anybody will be snobby about my son’s choices and I never am. I like to hear what schools kids are thinking of and what kind of things they will be pursuing. I think it’s kind of fun. I’m proud of a lot of them. I coached a lot of the kids when they were younger and it’s been fun watching them grow up and make lives for themselves.
Mythical merit: My daughter has a few mythical merit schools on her list, but she also has guaranteed-merit schools on it. In a very real way, I’m thinking the whole reach~match~safety idea should be thought of as more a financial calculation thing, and so the mythical-merit schools are reaches or high matches, depending on how mythical the merit actually is.
How many on the list: There are eleven schools on the Spreadsheet of Serendipity; there will be no ED applications, for both financial and ethical reasons. Of the eleven, one (Colgate) is basically my daughter’s for-fun application to see if she gets in even though she knows she won’t be going there, because we’re dependent on merit aid and they don’t have any; a good number are schools where her stats effectively guarantee admission where she could see herself enjoying going there and where there’s good guaranteed merit aid (Kansas, Alabama, St Thomas, Earlham), and the rest are schools that she likes but where the merit-aid possibilities are at the very least murkier (Smith, Mt Holyoke, Muhlenberg, Kenyon, Macalester, George Mason). Two applications are in, three more are ready and will go in the moment she gets confirmation from her second teacher that she’s still willing to write a LoR; I suspect one or two of those may fall off the list as she works through essays and all, but she recognized the merit-aid-related need to cast a fairly wide net early on. (FWIW, this comes after touring 25 schools over the last three summers.)
Reactions from family and friends: Mainly just polite interest. Most of my side of the family didn’t go to college and never entertained the possibility of going to college (interesting: until you get to the generation after mine—most of them have at least been working part-time toward a degree), so they already think college is a nice thing for someone to do but is enough of a different world that they aren’t interested in the details; my wife’s family is hypereducated, and are more interested in what my daughter wants to major in (with many loudly approving of it not being a business field, interestingly) than where exactly she’s going to college, since going to college is simply assumed.
Differences from when I was applying (in 1987): I was a first-generation student, so I went into it with less cultural capital on how to play the admissions game. Even so, though I didn’t apply to as many as my daughter is, I applied to several (and probably would have applied to more if I hadn’t had to use a manual typewriter to type each of them!), and merit aid was the deciding factor—so not actually as big a difference as one might expect, given thirty years passage. The main difference, I’d say, is simply that I didn’t have access to the web, and so I didn’t really have knowledge of any schools west of the Mississippi—coming from the east coast, there was no way my parents were going to road-trip that far just to tour a college, you know?
D17’s list currently sits at 7. We’ll see how long that takes to change. The new fascination is USC (the Trojan one). Taking her and a friend to see a concert at Staples Center next month, and we are going to squeeze in a campus tour while we are there. She is likely to be NMSF, so looking at half tuition at least for USC, with the possibility of full tuition. She has UKy as her safety/no debt option, and will be applying to 5 other top tier/reach schools. She is applying for a few scholarships that, though they are long shots, might make those reaches affordable should she get in. School started on Monday, so now she needs to fit all of these essays around homework, tennis practice, and her other extracurricular activities.
QOTD: Grandparents were not thrilled with D’s interest in Kentucky. They feel that going into debt for college is something that everybody does, and feel she should be aiming much higher. Grandpa went with D on a tour of UPenn, Lehigh and Princeton, and was impressed with the idea of schools that meet full need. He doesn’t realize that most EFC’s have us around 30-35K, which is nowhere near what we can actually afford. Currently they don’t intend to contribute anything toward her college, so we are seeking as much merit money as we can find.
QOTD Sharing/reactions D doesn’t care what others think. She just stares at them until they get flustered :)) I have shared the reasons (Arabic options for someone already studying) which more than half then understand. The others tend to say “but what about Harvard? Georgetown? Princeton?”
My parents are gone but they would have been supportive of anything a grandchild would choose. My inlaws have yet to ask about D’s future.
@dcolosi I agree with you! One school is absolutely perfect for D on paper. She strongly disliked the dorm and dining arrangements once she was actually there, so much so that it would take a major, very major, merit award for her to consider it.
S17 currently has 10 U’s on the list: 3 instate (1 safety, 1 match–which he’ll apply ED, & 1 reach) & 7 out of state (1 safety, 5 matches, 1 reach). In the past year we’ve officially toured 8 instate & 5 out of state campuses – several of those have been removed from the list. Of the 10, 5 use the C/A & the remaining 5 use their own app. We hired a college consultant to reviews his essays – he’s completed the C/A essay, tweaked it for a 500 word count essay, & is currently working on a 3rd 250 word count essay. 3 of the U’s haven’t opened their apps yet, which really doesn’t matter at this point since our school uses Naviance and the LOR & transcripts won’t be available until mid-September.
QOTD reactions: Most reactions to our potential schools fall under “but why not KU/KSU like everyone else” or “why aim so low” We live in an area where people go for the biggest prestige school they can get into, or take the acceptable flagship fallback. They don’t grasp anything outside that track.
@dcolosi we dont have a list exactly. S has 3 apps (that I forced on him) either completed or in progress. I have no idea what he’s doing beyond that. NMSF would add a couple more to the possible list.
QOTD: reactions to Ds school list
Friends just don’t understand why she wants to go so far away. If they are genuinely interested then she/I will explain and they do seem to get it after all factors are explained. My mom is slowly starting to come around although she still maintains that Ds safety “is a party school.”
We just had a senior who applied to all Ivy schools and actually got in. So now all the kids in the top 15 seem to be focused on that. I’m actually more curious than I should be to know if they really understand the process and the $$. We have had people ask if D is considering doing the same and my response is no…she is an unhooked middle class cauc. girl and even if she did get in, those schools expect us to have X amount of $$ and we just do not have that saved up."
Question … has your child taken AP Music Theory? Any pros/cons of the class (not the exam)?
S17 found out last week from his newly assigned GC (3rd one in 4 years), that one of his electives won’t fit into his schedule. GC suggested a dozen options (none of which S17 likes) & AP MT. The main concern at this time is the summer assignment that is due in 2 weeks.
FYI … S17 has played a musical instrument in the middle school & high school bands & has been in marching band in high school. He’s not planning to major in music, but hopes to continue w/MB in college.
QQTD It’s not that grandparents are unsupportive. It’s that they are unrealistic as to what makes a good reach school. And it can be maddening because they give a lot of outdated advice that everyone already knows. Like EC’s look good on college apps. My parents spent a bit of time with S17 this summer, and he found their advice tedious.
Differences in when I was applying Back in the 80’s Most of the kids & I knew and applied to about 3-4 schools. One reach, two matches & a safety. DH was a special case, walked into a university (filling on the app was basically a formality) that is now consider an reach for even the 'best" students. And missed the deadline for the states flagship so didn’t even get in. He spent very little time or effort on apps & went to one of the top schools in the country.
I only applied to one. But I came up with the harebrained idea my junior year that actually worked. I had enough credit to graduate a year early, so I would apply to ONE school. If I got in I would go & graduate early otherwise I would stay in H.S. another year & try again with a more extensive list. In retrospect I probably should have waited, the school accepted me, I went and graduated in 4 years. I worked fine, but I wish I had given myself more options.
@MomStudent2017 AP Music Theory question. No my son hasn’t but he has considered it. At our school the band teacher is the one who teaches it and he discourages anyone who doesn’t have extensive keyboard/piano experience.
@stlarenas I’ve daydreamed about teaching art at a university in the Caribbean. That’d be a sweet deal!
@dcolosi hi! 9 schools, 4 visits. Will visit more after acceptances/rejections happen. No ED, but lots of EA’s.
Ugh, my computer updated itself last night and I was locked out for hours because it wouldn’t accept the pin. I LOATHE windows 10. Double ugh, it just took another 2 hours for me to revert back to an older version because the wi fi driver kept getting corrupted. Grrr. This one post is taking me hours. Good thing I have nothing else to do today (other than the usual cook clean foodshop laundry etc) I can’t wait for school to start. I so miss complaining about being too busy 
Senior night tonight, it’ll be interesting to see if I learn anything. I both hope I do and hope I don’t. I hope I do because that means the GC’s aren’t completely incompetent, I hope I don’t because I hate missing information.
QOTD: There doesn’t seem to be the same obsession with ivy leagues here in the south. People are more interested if your kid are going to a school that has a sports rivalry with their school. D17 has had a few of her friends pull away from her because they are applying to elite schools, and they’ve become very secretive about a lot of things. D is like, whatever, that’s sad that you think you need to do that.
MIL used to make noises about Harvard this and Harvard that, but has stopped since FIL came back from the Rationals Trip and he was so enthusiastic about how all the choices they’d looked at would be so great for her. I don’t think I’ve ever seen him so enthusiastic about anything, so that was pretty awesome.
My parents used to say college was for stuck up suckers, so that opinion is not conveyed to the girls, of course.
@RightCoaster I grew up in MA and about half stayed in-state. U-MA Amherst (I did NOT like it when I visited one of my older friends for a weekend-those high rise dorms just sucked the life out of me), Bridgewater State, Harvard, MIT, Emerson, Weslyan (I think I spelled it wrong, and I think it’s in CT, lol). The far reaching ones went to Georgetown, Lehigh, Stanford, CMU (me), Cornell. Oddly enough they all came back to MA except for the Cornell one (she’s a professor at UMiami now) and me :).
QOTD: Let’s assume your kid gets into all the schools they want to, and for the sake of argument they’re all equally affordable. How much of a factor are the dorms for your kid? I think my older kid would not be happy in a triple (loved her single suite at Valdosta State over the summer), and might jettison a school if she had to deal with that for her freshman year. Younger D had a double room in a suite one year at Oglethorpe (film camp) and was SO lonely-she said she’d definitely want a non-suite double or triple. So interesting how different they are.
@MomStudent2017 My S (multiple bands/classes HS and MS) has always had zero interest in AP MT. At our school its supposedly very dry and intense. Most kids steer clear unless they are aiming for careers in performance or music education.
QOTD - All things being equal (and the never are, of course), dorms (or rather, lack thereof) will be a huge factor for D17, who - after spending the summer at TASP - realized that she wants to live in something more house-like rather than dorm-like. So, she’s looking at schools with residential colleges or living-learning programs, preferably self-governing. A single room would be nice, and location and accessibility are also important. Obviously, programming, fit and $$ are the first considerations, but in the all-other-things-being-equal, housing is one of the driving considerations.
QOTD - For D15, the quality of the teachers and students would (and did) by far trump the quality of the dorms or food. (She got into all schools she applied to). For S, the financial (merit) package might weigh more heavily than the dorms, all else being equal. If the dorms were the factor, he would apply to ASU’s honors college on the Tempe campus and be done with it.