@carachel2 We got the Purdue Women invite and lots of other mail from them. My S15 was offered merit but it was his lowest offer of all his OOS schools. We know older students there from our HS with much lower stats that got far more than he was offered so I’m wondering if they are being more cautious about high stats OOS students. My son demonstrated interest by visiting and had individual meetings with professors in 2 depts who he spoke with and emailed afterwards as well as with some of their students. With the merit it would have only been a bit more than our state flagship which is rather expensive.
@Dave_N =)) Your post was hilarious; thanks for sharing. Looks like D has things well under control. Even though your helicopter has been grounded, it had to feel good to see she is on top of things.
RICE: S17 is not applying to RICE but Georgetown has the same requirement. The AO said it’s fair to expect kids to take each test a couple of times or maybe one test 2 - 3 times. It’s when the student engages in over testing that they become concerned. She didn’t say what they viewed as “over testing” and she didn’t say what specifically about it they find concerning. For the class of 2017, it would seem a student may take the SAT as many as 4 times if they were taking old and new each twice.
@greeny8 Oh you got me with the empty chair! Thank goodness for technology.
@greeny8 please hang in there – we know this is really hard and feel for you!! Hope you D has a great experience and shares much with you and comes home when possible.
@dave_N – what a post – oh how I would love that to happen in my house!! Feel humbled and PROUD!
Where are you @2muchquan ?? getting a bit worried – you’ve been gone awhile now.
@itsgettingreal17 – great progress with the LoRs! Must feel good to move along.
@dfbdfb – I am in awe of your lists and process - you must be amazing - hope it all works out well when you reach the final 1!!
@4beardolls & @carachel2 – got that Rice email too – felt very accusatory to me - not sure why they’d
be so tough in their wording. Seemed a bit out of character really.
I hear we might get some NMSF news soon bc going out to home schoolers next week . Official info in mid-Sept – time has passed - slowly at times but close now.
@CA1543 I agree! And literally like 20 minutes later another email from Rice “…COME VISIT!” Umm. No. Not on our list. Mama hates Houston! :))
@greeny8 …isn’t snapchat the best!! It first came out a few years ago and a lot of us parents were all “beware of Snapchat…kids can send nude pis of themselves and they disappear!” Flash forward a few years and now it is THE main way I keep in touch with my niece who sends me almost daily snaps of her precious new baby son and all my nieces and nephews and my kid. I absolutely love it.
Good luck to all of you waiting on NM news!! I’ll be holding my breath for all of you and hoping your kids either make it or if miss it by a ton of points. I think a one point miss would be UGH…so hard!
Thanks for the hugs and support. I told my D17 to be patient with me because I will be smothering her with love and affection. So far she is playing nice.
@carachel2 snap chat is the best. I follow all of my nieces and nephews and esp. with them all so far away I feel like I am a part of their everyday lives. It may seem intrusive but this is how things are today. I highly recommend it! I actually just got my hubby to install it so he can see our D16 too.
Good luck to those waiting for NM!!!
Interesting link: http://www.stateuniversity.com/rank/act_75pctl_rank.html It ranks schools by their 75% ACT score. I hadn’t seen a list like this before. I have been plugging schools into collegedata.com. Easy to just scroll through.
Thanks @acdchai ! Very helpful write up. I worry about the final cost too. I’m sure son will get some merit aid, but probably not enough to offset the big price tag. Make/female ratio is also a concern but it’s similar at most tech schools.
The good news is that Indianapolis airport is only an hour away. This is very helpful.
Reminder to self: it’s only 4 years.
@Mom2aphysicsgeek What a great list! Very helpful. Thanks for sharing.
@Mom2aphysicsgeek Thanks for posting the link. I hadn’t seen this, or any other compiled list, and had been looking it up school by school. It’s a very helpful list.
@Mom2aphysicsgeek thank you for the link – I like how the information is organized once you click into each individual school. This is just one of the reasons that CC is so amazing and helpful!
Well, D wasn’t lying; that diagnostic test for Math 2 that she took was ugly. 
Like a lower number than the math SAT she took when she was 12!
We figured out why pretty quickly; it’s math she hasn’t seen since 8th and 9th grade, and it was math she struggled through back then. This period she refers to her “math dark ages”-a tough combination of a bad teacher and a lack of self-confidence in 8th grade made for a shaky start. To her the math on the diagnostic test looked “tricky”, but she thinks she just needs to study it all again, so she’s pretty focused on doing that right now.
I pointed out to her that she’s a lot more mature now, and is capable of getting great scores in math once she gets it, so she went from being bummed about her ability there to being determined to figure it out.
Soooo, if you have a kid that’s good with calculus and doesn’t think they need to study for Math II, you might want to have them take a diagnostic test (we’re using the Barron’s book), just to make sure they really do have all the “old math” remembered well.
Emails are out to the two teachers for recommendations, email out to the GC to set up a meeting, she’s working on one application at a time (we realized the shotgun approach does not work well with her rather careless approach to some stuff-it’ll end up that a WPI essay will be sent to UMD instead kind of thing), and she’s working on the Slideroom supplement (which she says is a lot of fun).
I go back and forth about how worried I am about the NMSF. It’s mostly just for scholarship potential, but having that “hook” might make the difference in whether some schools want her or not. I keep reminding myself it will be what it will be, and it won’t change her applications at all.
D18’s bf has two parents that didn’t go to college, and are in the dark about what needs to happen. They have an older kid who sucked the college fund dry (it was a textbook case of an unprepared kid going to a prestigious expensive school and and failing out halfway through, ugh), so D18 is becoming surprisingly focused on making sure BF doesn’t miss opportunities. Which has the awesome side effect of her becoming more engaged in the entire process. I’ve told her that I’ll give whatever help I can to BF (he’s a good kid and very smart), and that he’s always welcome to go along on whatever road trips and info sessions we do for D18. Heck, if I can get the two of them studying Magoosh together, that would be a win!
Appreciate the link @Mom2aphysicsgeek I had read that last year but forgot to bookmark, silly me.
@MotherOfDragons The diagnostic and practice tests in Barrons books tend to be very difficult. Like, made-my-kid-cry difficult. I think your d will have plenty of time to gain confidence to rock Math 2 
I love that d18 is helping her bf You have great kids!
@WhereIsMyKindle Any thoughts on the ** Barron’s ** ACT 6 Test book? We’re getting close to September test and my son is about to take a few of the Barron’s tests under real-test conditions.
He’s basically exhausted all the “official” practice tests and sections.
@STEM2017 …have you printed all the practice tests on the crack.com site? Also, does he have the ACT online prep? They have an amazing math test bank. It took me awhile to figure out how to print the crack tests but I did.
Also, did he take the June ACT? If not, message me.
My daughter will not allow a Barrons book in the house except for her IB review books. A week before the PSAT I had her do a Barrons PSAT review book test and I kid you not it almost caused a breakdown. The questions (according to her) were so off the wall and so hard it pulled up a whole new level of self-doubt!
@STEM2017 D didn’t use Barrons for the ACT, just for SAT 2 (Bio) and for extra AP m/c practice. Frankly, she only used 3 total of the red book practice tests before her 2 separate ACT sittings.
@Mom2aphysicsgeek Thanks for the link! I notice that if you click on a major near the bottom of the page for an individual school, you get a list of how many students graduate in that major for many schools, with both number and percent of students. That’s data we’d been looking for for physics and might be helpful to those of you looking for less common majors.
@MotherOfDragons I’ve also read that the Barron’s tests are harder and trickier than the real ones. Has she taken the couple sample Math 2 tests available from the College Board?
@ynotgo I noticed that as well. I found it interesting bc one of her current to schools offers Russian as a major but had 0 students listed. Makes me question that option. I haven’t had an opportunity to show her the link and she is babysitting all day. I’ll have to show her tonight.
Well I believe it’s a wrap on college visits for this household. In the span of 3 weeks we’ve been as far west as Pasadena CA, as far northeast as Hanover NH, and as far south as Durham, NC. I believe over the course of the process for S14 and S17 we’ve stepped foot on nearly 30 campuses…yes, crazy I know. Many were tied into vacations or at the least a weekend to visit museums, etc. We got to experience many parts of the country we wouldn’t otherwise be likely to visit (eg St. Louis). Obviously I have enjoyed the process, but the best part is that S17’s list has only schools that he absolutely could see himself happy attending…admittedly based on an interval of a day and a handful of people. EA and ED apps about half done; Common App thankfully wrapped up. School begins tomorrow!
@Mom2aphysicsgeek It may be that the major data is not completely accurate. I’d have her check with the department in question if you see an anomaly like that.
@payn4ward Those security questions are really NOT very secure. (Ask someone who really knows how to do security.) My husband usually just answers gibberish… if they are free form. And has gotten locked out from a few accounts that suddenly require you to input it even when you didn’t forget your password. Many ask you questions aren’t supposed to put in a password like pet’s names or your kids.
If they ARE secure it’s because no one can figure them out even me. Many of those questions ask things there are more than one way to answer. I could answer it one way one day and differently on another. Did I decided my favorite food was chocolate or ice-cream that day. Or was it chocolate ice-cream? Even something like where were your born, did I put down state or city? How did a spell it with all caps? How am I supposed to even remember my 1st grade teachers name? Or what I wanted to be when I grew up, and at what age when I was 7, 10, 14?