Parents of the HS Class of 2017 (Part 1)

Parents of HS Class of 20xx
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@novicemom23kids That’s incredible! Maybe those moms should just worry about which schools their kids are going to and not worry about what your daughter, or other kids are considering. A successful college selection is where our kids find it’s a fit for them and they can thrive. It’s rather entertaining and I would have a hard time resisting having fun with it at this point. Then in a year from now when they realize you were being straight with them you can give them the finger wag for their behavior. [-X This finger wag not any other; well, unless you want to :smiley:

@dfbdfb Same here! Yesterday S17 must have looked at the binder before I got home from work and shortly after I walked through the door he asked if I thought the binder was complete. I knew it wasn’t but one school has not opened their app yet so the supplements are missing. It was nice to see he had gone through to assess what remains.

QOTD: S17 decided he wanted to go to school in Boston. We visited a good mix of schools. No list was created as we were just trying to figure out if Boston was really the place for him. Based on what he liked, I looked for similar schools outside of Boston and slightly expanded the search zone (geographically). No list was formed until January of jr year which is the deadline set by the college counselors. S17 and his CC met about 5 times (each time for 45 - 60 minutes) to discuss S17’s list and what he liked about each school. Right before spring break, the CCs provide a list of schools for the students/ family to consider. After the list marinates over spring break, the student/family come up with a potential list. The CC list in realistic likelihood of acceptance, budget family sets, geographical limitations parents may set, etc. S17 is our first time through this process and I understand they have been pretty spot on in their selections. There was significant overlap of our list and the CC list and the CC added some schools that we hadn’t considered. On paper, those schools are probably perfect matches with the exception of location. Our list was basically a group effort (S17, parents and CC).

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@mamaedefamilia I too think that’s a lot of pressure but I wish we had some of that advising from S’s school. There is virtually none.

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QOTD: List building

D’s parameters of enough Arabic and International Relations/Studies made the list building process both easy (simple to google “Arabic” plus school name to read their offerings) and hard (whoa, high-level Arabic is uncommon).

I had learned about Language Flagships years ago through a homeschooling forum–in fact, it may have been from @Mom2aphysicsgeek :slight_smile: --so I started with those schools. I then searched more than 100 schools (still use the same notepad lol) over a period of months. Some schools, notably Georgetown and UCs, were eliminated due to financial reasons.

As I would come up with a new possibility, D would read the website in great detail to give me a thumbs up or thumbs down. She has spent more time in detailed research and discussion with faculty. I just provided the grunt work :wink:

The list stands at 6 Big State Schools and 2 freaking expensive midsized DC privates.

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QOTD - D and I sat down just after she came home from her first SAT (cold - what were we thinking?) and looked through some websites. We made up a few hypothetical kids for Stats purposes - from the kid had amazing stats to the kid that didn’t test well and bombed (we knew her GPA up to that point). It helped to sit together and try to interpret the %'s and the numbers for enrollment, acceptances, applications. That afternoon my H and I also had a very open and honest discussion about $ and how much she had to work with - and how lucky she was. We wanted to do this before she started looking at $50K-$70K schools and then feel later that she doesn’t have any valid choices. She had a healthy, amazing (in our opinion) budget. Then I went back to laundry and forgot all about it – thought we had tons of time and we were ahead of the game.

D then came to us a few weeks later, perhaps after scores came out, and brought up UA - she had read about it here on CC and she was intrigued and excited. She pulled up a virtual tour and several sites with their stats and then asked if we could go visit. That day I was introduced to CC and FREAKED OUT – I realized we were so behind everyone else and had already missed several opportunities (never imagined PSATs were important at all, had not visited schools, had not even thought about anything for colleges except to save, save, save). I have since calmed down, but I have learned a TON from this site. D continued to be in charge - she gave us a list of schools she wanted to visit and it was all from reading here. Her list started with close by schools that were rural, suburban, and urban – large and small – a few universities and a few LACs. We did those on long weekends and did some of their Saturday tour sessions. She also really wanted a trip south to see southern schools. She put together the 4 schools to see during spring break.

I have taken over a bit now, she seems overwhelmed and not sure – some early favorites have fallen off but she was worried about telling us. We were able to help her focus on what she liked and didn’t like about the schools and did the research to find other schools that were similar enough to check off the “likes” but fixed the “dislikes”. So far it has worked pretty well - but I see her losing interest in writing all of these essays for her “reach” or maybe schools and when some EA admissions actually come in, I imagine she will be finished - happily. She currently has 3 that she would be happy to attend. She can get into all 3 easily - she is far above all their stats. She can easily afford 2 of the 3 with money left over and the 3rd she is so far above the stats that we are counting on her receiving some significant merit $. She is applying to another 3 or 4 that have bigger name recognition and more “wow” factor - she really liked them and she is in their acceptance band but they either have lower acceptance rates (5-30%) and/or money would be a factor and she would be really competing for some scarce merit $ — I think once the first 3 are in she will narrow that reach list down to just 1 or maybe 2 because she hates this part of the process. I think the only reason the other schools are on her list are to impress (or shut up) her friends when they start parading their expensive well known school acceptances around.

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@novicemom23kids …loved reading your story. I think it is the journey of many of us here. While I do wish I would’ve known about CC and all the details, I am kind of glad we were ignorant for two years. D had two years of mostly pressure free high school and she chose things to do and paths to follow that were only based on her interests with zero eye to rank, gPA and college applications. It was nice.

I want D to be proud of where she is going to school. She has worked so darn hard. There should be SOME element of pride when she drops a name. But to so many people around here the only “zing” factor with college names is either a mythical Ivy or our state flagships. The mythical Ivy will not happen here and while our state flagships might hold a zing factor to others, they hold no zing factor to her…so she realizes she will have to make up for the lack of zing factor with the sheer way SHE presents herself and her school of choice.

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@mamaedefamilia Good point - I should add that S17’s CC has also stated the kids should apply to 6 - 8 schools. My son is hanging on to that because I just think he should apply to the whole list which currently sits at 13. Realistically, I suspect he will drop 2 or 3 by the time he finalizes his list. His “final” list is due next Wednesday so I suspect there will be movement on the list this weekend. I’m told by other parents that 6 - 8 is a solid number because the CCs have been spot on in their recommendations. Given how crazy things have been this year, I need more assurance that that.

@Mom2aphysicsgeek “final” is a loose term, at least at our school, and I am sure at most. For kids who are going to be adding/ deleting a school from the list because they are waiting to see what merit scholarships are available, those would be on the list as a potential add/ drop.

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@IABooks and @mamaedefamilia I wish we had some help to. Right now I feel like our list is still very much my list. I think my D is feeling overwhelmed and is trusting me to take the lead (which I have). But we are at the point now that she needs to take action and write some essays and submit some apps. Plus I am very nervous that my matches are really reaches and she doesn’t really care for any of the safeties. Along with the added stress that I convinced her to aim higher than one of the small state directional.

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@stlarenas wrote

Yeah, I enjoy vigorous, spirited discussion, but not on this thread-this thread is for support and learning :), as far as I’m concerned.

I popped into the girls’ school this morning after working out because I wanted to ask the head secretary about what I had been told about illnesses being unexcused. I showed her the email I got last year about it and she said that it was wrong, and that the absences should have been excused when I sent the email in saying “she’s sick”. There’s a downside to sending those emails to “attendance” rather than a person. Luckily it was only 3 sick absences last year and she said she’d adjust them for D.

Funniest part was that D18 saw me walking in to school (in workout gear, aka yoga pants) all sweaty and gross, and was TOTALLY scandalized. Lol. I was like “just keep walking and pretend you don’t know me, I’m not here for you”.

I am well known in our family/friends for being the obsessive researcher (really, I should have been a research librarian). So it was pretty much assumed I’d present a curated selection to the D’s based on their stated likes and our ability to pay. D did add one on her own-Drexel- and has pulled a few off of the list (Clark springs to mind), but has been satisfied with my initial list.

To her the schools are just an aggregate of numbers and stats, so whatever her mom does to put together a list that has those requirements are a good place for her to start. Considering she liked all 4 of the schools in MA that she went to visit (and was SUPER surprised that she liked them all), I’d say I’m on target for this.

I believe D18 will actually be much easier since I found that BS in Theme Park Management at UCF-this may be the only college she applies to because she’s starting to really focus on that as a potential major. Considering the kid has visited WDW 45 times since her birth (road trips, not a local!), and talks all the time about how stuff could run better (events, rides, line queues), she may have found her thing. And we can afford UCF.

Speaking of lists, I think I’m going to pull University of Miami from D17’s list. It just really makes no sense other than the fact that H went there for graduate school. It’s too hot, there aren’t enough nerds, I don’t feel like the computer science undergrad degree is anything special, and they’re notorious for front loading merit. I’m just not feeling it. She’s totally meh about it. And I think the University of Richmond sort of checks the same LAC box and offers a better match for her, so why have both on the list? So that leaves her with 8, which I think is fine.

She’s been futzing around and not working on the applications this week because there’s been drama in TSA (tech student association). The new teacher heading it up pillaged her position as historian and she’s fighting to get control back over the wiki page. The teacher wants to do things completely differently than the previous one, and the officers are all struggilng to deal with it, and it’s causing a lot of stress and divisiveness within the association. H noted that work is like that sometimes, and to try and stay cool and ride it out. Today I asked her to get the emails for the teachers she wants recommendations from. Hopefully she’ll get that done.

@paveyourpath wrote

That’s really nice, I wish we had GC’s like that. Last year D17 met with the GC for five minutes and brought home the paperwork from that meeting. The only two colleges she had put on the list at that point were UA and UM. GC wrote “looks good!” and didn’t add any others. Grrr. Really. Just the fact that those two schools basically have nothing in common should have raised a red flag for the woman. I’ll be asking a lot more pointed questions when we schedule another meeting with her next month…

@novicemom23kids wrote

Same!

X_X

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QOTD - Not really sure about the school’s attendance policy re visits, but I think that they are excused. We really have very few long weekends on the schedule, but have tried to use them when at all possible because DS hates missing school.

With respect to list, I think we have a pretty final list of 7 or 8 (depends if he throws in Stanford as a crazy reach). We have one scheduled visit and still need to visit the local flagship. I also want him to return to his planned ED school for an overnight visit before making that commitment. With regard to responses from others, DS doesn’t really talk with peers about his choices. That was the advice that the school GC gave him because she said that sometimes students will move as a herd and all apply to a school and then the student who gave them the idea may not get in. I don’t think his friend group talks about it much anyway. Maybe that’s a male thing?

With respect to family, my mother is the worst. She repeats things she hears from her friends and places more stock in their opinions than in what we tell her. My DS wants a warm weather college and she keeps saying how her friend who went for cancer treatment at MD Anderson said that Houston was cold in the winter . I just keep telling her that there are statistics on weather data and DS is worried that Houston might be too hot, not too cold. My in-laws focus most on prestige and location. They have said that they would love to visit DS if he were at Duke, but they don’t care for Houston or New Orleans, for example. My one sister-in-law expresses concern that DS may be going too far and wouldn’t we miss being able to visit him on his birthday. My kids would not want me visiting on their birthdays so they think that’s crazy. It’s interesting to hear how everyone views this process so differently!

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@BigPapiofthree – I could have written most of your post, except son has been home all summer. He is a procrastinator and a perfectionist, so most writing takes place close to midnight. Much research, thinking, pondering, and then he sits down and pounds away at a pace a stenographer would envy.

I have asked him to assemble his essay prompts into a single document but I don’t know if he has. Every school has one or more additional essay prompts (I think), many are single digit admit rates and those that are not, practice yield protection, so I predict a long ride to May 1st.

He is on day five this week of summer research that he thought he would be submitting two days ago. Apparently it is more difficult than he anticipated. He has another week and a half of summer after we drop off older son tomorrow, so I may have to rant and force him to look at essays…& put aside the coding/math whatever he is doing.

I am repeating myself here. Nothing new.

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@stlarenas Maybe you can set time to do (walk, drive, eat ice cream) whatever it is that gets your daughter talking about the list in the situation that she is most comfortable? I probably didn’t articulate that very well but for S17 he is a walker/ talker. When he is stressed or if there are things he is conflicted about, he likes to take a walk. We have a good 3 mile path that gives us enough time to just walk and chat about general things and at some point when he is ready, he will get into whatever is on his mind. It might be worth a try and really it’s whatever puts her in her comfort zone. If I recall correctly your daughter is the intelligent/ artistic type? My son is an excellent and creative writer. I printed all of the essays for him and placed them in a binder. My approach would have been to tackle them by app due date. As I watched how he approached it, I realized the creative side of him doesn’t work that way. I’m more methodical and lack creativity. :slight_smile: He read each essay prompt. He then wrote essays based on which prompt he felt inspired to write about. He then used the content of that essay as a starting point for similar prompts. Maybe she will start with the prompt that intrigues her the most. It’s also really, really, early in the year so depending on deadlines for schools she’s applying to she has 2 - 4 months.

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QOTD List creation.

Again, so interesting to see the variety of guidance offered by the GC’s. To none, to well, too much in some cases to what seems like a lovely lovely mix of thought and time. We fall into the pretty much none category. It will be interesting to see what they do, if anything, once school starts.

Our search really started last winter break. S’s precalc teacher assigned the kids a project that required them to pick a school, and figure out how they were going to pay for it. They had to interview the parents, understand what their budget really was, factor in inflation, loan costs, repayment plans and all of it, for all 4 years. While I have a DS and SD that have gone through the process, the finances are handled by my H and the kids mom so I’ve not truly been involved. It was incredibly eye opening to both of us but also showed me what kind of skin my kid had in the game. Best homework assignment ever. I will be making S19 do it if he doesn’t get this teacher. I wasn’t thrilled with the school S chose for the homework but it was affordable and a starting point. That got us both thinking and occasionally this or that school would come up in conversation but beyond that we didn’t really do a thing until maybe last March. S had one dream school on his radar most of junior year, an in state favorite, and the homework school and had been pretty content with those 3 and general talk of adding about 2-3 more but wasn’t in any rush. Over our mid winter break as I noticed how many schools his friends were visiting and as he started to realize what he wanted to study and that ideally he wanted out of state I realized we needed to get moving as practically speaking leaving all tours till senior year seemed a poor idea.

I started doing research, based on his input and preferences. I started with WUE in hopes to find affordable fits that way. S pulled the dream school off the list, jointly we both pulled the homework school off the list so really, started with a list of 1 (which is still on the list and a definite apply, financial and academic safety so a great list of one lol!). He contributed ideas and rejected ideas but I will say that I did a lot of the homework. For a couple of reasons. One, I enjoy it (the family knows this and expects it on everything, S would have been very disappointed if I did not lol) and two, NPC’s had to be run for all schools and I knew if left in his hands, it might not be and he’d reject actual possibilities by just looking at the list prices. Our initial lists were 100% focused on state schools given the desired area of interest and our budget at the time. We toured 3 over spring break, OOS near family and turned it into a vacation and then 2 locally a month later. During this time, another parent who was taking a college counselor class, looking to add that as a line of business for herself (so basically a CIT lol), asked if S would work with her and help her with her class needs as student XX. She’d put together a list for him as well and do a few other things, for free. They met 3-4 times in total I think and she came back with a list that had some of our schools on it and some wildly different. Some were schools I’d already proposed and he had rejected. Most of those he rejected again but meeting with her really expanded his list geographically and by school type. I went and ran her list through NPC’s and chopped several off, though we’d had the budget talk I think she fell into the “generous with merit” rep of some schools and well, merit and aid are two different things. One we may get and one we will not. One of the schools on her list we toured in May and the success of that school spurned a whole new set of research to do . Around then I found CC in earnest and based on our results from tours learned a ton from CC that helped add (and subtract) schools.

Since then it’s been refining, refining, refining. Jointly, but I am running point for sure. While it is S’s list…it is my wallet! The 5 tours helped S understand what he likes and does not like in a school. A summer program at one refined that further, as well as refined the area of study, and we went back to the drawing board a bit following that program as it opened up his options. And, while many of the schools on the CIT’s list were not affordable, the types of schools she found had merit and forced us to look for similar options that were and we would never have done that had she not put those schools on there in the first place.

The remaining list is a combination of my initial research, S’s evolving preferences, the CIT’s input, CC ideas and other schools that came up as options from additional research based on all of those inputs. At the moment the list is at 13 with only 2 as definite applications. One of those two would not be on the list were it not for the CIT (it “replicates” one that she had but is likely affordable and geographically desirable to S), CC (who introduced me to CTCL) and mom forcing him to go to a CTCL college fair. It takes a village! S had taken the school off the list back in the spring and only added it back on right before the fair to even talk to them. And came home from a “forced” event that we fought about attending incredibly excited about a school that he has not visited and will not until accepted. At this point he has to pick at least 3 more to apply to from his list and I won’t be surprised if something else pops up once he goes back to school but it’s a really solid list to work with, he should get into most if not all and while the affordability varies, all have potential to work.

He is supposed to cut the list down. I made him a cheat sheet yesterday do help him to that and he LOVED it. At this point it is in his hands but I will be imposing some deadlines and the mom made up 5 school minimum application rule.

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@MotherOfDragons – would your younger D consider hospitality management degrees? I think there is a program in Nevada, maybe even Las Vegas, and BU has one also. May be too broad for her.

I missed the question about who created the list of schools. Mostly my son, based on his research of the strength of the CS departments, but I added a couple that weren’t super reaches or state schools, as those were the only schools he had selected. After visiting the ones I suggested, he has approved their addition to the list (minus one). He is more interested in the strength of the CS dept and I am trying to step back and view the total U/G experience.

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@CT1417 I think she might, IF I didn’t present it as “hospitality management”, lol. I think she might have a flair for anything that mixes marketing/psychology/logistics.

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@Mom2aphysicsgeek That is so great to hear about your daughter’s transition from supplicant to informed consumer as she continues her college search!

As for the advising at my kid’s school, they have a year-long college seminar over the course of their junior year - everything from FAFSA and CSS Profile to the implications of EA/ED/RD to “what is demonstrated interest?” They start working on researching their list in January so they have many months to work on it. And it’s not rigidly cast in stone. Some adding and dropping can certainly happen. The early deadline gives the GC time to review the lists for each student to make sure that they are realistic and to tweak accordingly.

Personally, I like the system because they aren’t then flailing in October or November or identifying a dream school too late, only to realize that the ED or merit scholarship application deadline has passed. They have plenty of time to work on their essays and to fulfill their academic requirements, which include a substantial senior thesis.

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Hugs, @greeny8 I feel your pain.

We moved D15 into her first apartment yesterday and said goodbye. Ugh. All I could think on the way home was that maybe D17 should forget this college thing altogether, hah! I expected to feel sad, but it’s always a little more painful in real life than I imagine.

Therefore, we are all going out for lunch and ice cream here. I do much better if I stay busy. Luckily, D17’s wisdom teeth are healing nicely, so it’s party time!

D17’s list is really small - only 4 or 5 in-state schools. It’s possible that she will change her mind and decide to venture farther (the list right now is all schools close by because of her health issues). Most of them don’t offer all of the programs she is interested in, and the ones that do don’t thrill her for other reasons, but despite this, she seems pretty excited about the process! A year ago we didn’t know if she would even be well enough to apply, so we are incredibly thankful!

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Delaware has a great program in Hospitality Management. The number one school for that is Cornell.
@CT1417, your son is much better… Your son sounds like he is prolific when he focuses. My son merely procrastinates. I fear he can’t find a voice and narrative for his essays…He thinks he has not had adversity, and is just a good student with great leadership. He is looking for a hook, and there is not one…

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My daughter did most of her own research and came up with initial list of schools. I suggested some others based on what she told me she was looking for. We started at the beginning of her Junior year really looking. Our HS does a good job with programs throughout the year with lots of information. She did several visits with college reps that came to her HS her Junior year as well. Our State is a member of the Midwest Exchange Program so we looked at schools that participated as well to see if they were fits or options.

The best thing we did was to actually go see some schools of different size and locations. After visintging a large, medium and small school my daughter started to become more clear on what she was looking for and what turned her off. That allowed us to really narrow down our searching instead of casting a wide net.

We have used Naviance to compare how she stands with her schools of interest and for the most part, only 1 seems like a stretch. Two schools invited her to special events this summer. We did one but the other conflicted with a prior commitment so we are visiting later this fall.

It helps that she knows what she wants to study so that also allowed us to knock out some schools right away. The only other thing we talked about was job prospects after college. If she goes OOS would she want to live and work in that State after college since she will be making connections in the local communities with her program of studies.

The best advice I recevied was from the head of admissions at a local university. He said, parents you can do all the research, run all the numbers, etc. but at the end of the day, your student is going to know what school is right because they will feel it in their heart.

He said for the past 20 years, he calls incoming freshman to welcome them to campus and he always asks them why did you pick our school? The overwhelming answer: “It just felt like the right fit for me.”

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QOTD: List building
S started his list one his elective classes that focused on college planning. He had an idea of what he didn’t want after touring colleges with his sister. He also knew he wanted to go OOS, but he didn’t want to go aross the country as his sister did. He wanted a warm, not cool climate. From there we focued on western schools that gave WUE discounts. Many of those schools were eliminated because they were too far north in snow country (too cold). Once we saw his PSAT score we added some schools that provide good packages for NMF. We were able to visit most of the schools he was interested in. S is one of those kids who liked about every school we visited (except UT Dallas), so I feel he will be happy wherever he ends up. Some schools that I was hoping he’d really like, such as Western Washington (because I wouold love to have an excuse to visit), droped down, and then off the list. His list is now small, but affordable. That is probably good because he really doesn’t like writing essays…at all. We are planning to visit the final schools and sit in on classes next spring break (after he is accepted) so he can see what it would really be like to be a student at the school.

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QOTD: List building or ~X( Ze list! Ze list! :-/

We’re in Florida and DS17 is interested in Aerospace Engineering (thanks to Kerbal Space Program, I bet the next generation of AE’s would say this program/game is what got them interested in their major…).

For AE, our first in-state choice is UF, where DD14 is currently in the industrial engineering program. In-state tuition and fees is around $6.5K a year, plus we can expect about $3K a year in Bright Futures scholarship, so net is $3.5K. Cost of living is also fairly low in Gainesville. UF’s AE program is well recruited, but competitive. He’s GPA/Test scores are in the top quartile, he has ok EC’s, so he is likely to be accepted (match), but UF isn’t known for giving out much in-state merit.

Our first match, UF! :-bd

The rest of our list is built with UF in mind. Would another college offer a stronger AE program at a reasonable cost (in comparison to UF)?

First, our in-state safety, UCF. It offers a strong AE program (UCF was open in 1968, with a mission to provide personnel to the growing U.S. space program in Kennedy Space Center and Cape Canaveral). UCF admissions has gotten much more competitive, over the last several years, but it’s still much less competitive than UF. Tuition and fees match UF, but unlike UF, UCF does offer significant merit aid. It also has an honor’s program which would help elevate some of the schools weak points (such as crowding, high student to faculty ratios, etc.). We’ve known several kids that choose UCF over UF, based on merit/honor college (up to $7,500 a year in merit, not including the national merit COA scholarships. etc.).

Our Safety=UCF! $-)

Now, lets expand our search OOS, through the southeast (North Carolina to Louisiana). The 2nd best AE undergrad program in the country is at Georgia Tech, so lets add them to his list. However, OOS tuition and fee’s is $32,396/year and we can expect significant increase, each year, going forward. GT will require at least the Provost Scholarship (OOS tuition waiver) for it to be affordable. So, GT is on the list, but it’s a financial reach (it’s an OOS academic match).

Our first reach = Georgia Tech!:-?

The other solid engineering programs (public) in the southeast, include Auburn, Clemson, NC-State, etc., all are comparable to UF, but much more expensive. UA is only slightly less expensive (even with the full tuition scholarship), but it’s AE program isn’t as strong. Oh oh…list is hurting. In fact, expand it out to the rest of the country, and I run into the same issue. Public universities with better programs (Michigan, UIUC, etc.) are far to expensive, while comparable programs still more expensive and would require significant amounts of travel.

Public matches/safeties?= NONE :-S

How about private AE schools? They would need to have great financial aid (like the lottery schools), or offer significant merit aid (or some combination of the two). At this point, we’re trying to come up with a few, but I would think of them as all being reaches. Based on the NPC’s, only the lottery schools are affordable, the others would require some type of merit.

Private matches/reaches?=TBD :-??

Well, that’s a short list. At this point, we’re struggling to add a few more schools to the list, other than lottery school. We may need to revisit some of the public universities, and take a closer look at the “presidential” and “provost” type scholarships. How realistic are they? Guess we have some homework. ~X(