Congratulations @Mom2aphysicsgeek ! <:-P <:-P <:-P
Congrats @Mom2aphysicsgeek !!!
I re-bookmarked that National Merit thread and I can’t stop reading the updates! So proud of these kids and then heartbroken for the ones missing it by one point!!!
@Ldoponce I assume they get few thousand 14+ kids that they have to decide between.
@Mom2aphysicsgeek Woohoo! That’s great news - congrats to your D!
@Ldoponce I had the same thoughts about the way that PP treats the importance of the essay. Even going by this guy’s charts, there are still going to be too many applicants at the most selective schools with high enough number combinations to be considered highly qualified applicants. Unless AOs are just lying shamelessly when they talk about essays and recommendations being important, I think they have to matter more than this guy is making it seem.
Congrats @Mom2aphysicsgeek !! <:-P
Thanks for the PowerPoint. I agree – the academic chart is a lot easier to score than the non-academic one for us.
Re: the essay in the PP. I read the PP differently. I think the main issue the PP is addressing is that the #1 goal should be to generate a realistic list of schools to apply to. Once you apply and pass a certain threshold (like progressing to an actual reading of your file as described by @BigPapiofthree) then essays, LOR, awards, ECs, interview matter. They are what start to make a distinction among the students.
I read those numbers as saying 75% of applicants don’t gain pts for their essay, (if total pts matter, the essay didn’t help or could have even deducted based in the commentary for the bottom 50%) but 20% of students get some pts for their essay, and 5% get a significant increase in pts from their essay.
I don’t think it is saying that essays are insignificant. I personally think that they are of major importance when they are narrowing down the final top choices and those 5% of students making a big impact with their essay are probably getting positive scrutiny of their file whereas those 50% of students may have gone into the reject pile.
Without hearing the commentary accompanying the PP it is hard to say. That is just the way I interpreted based on my bias in expecting the essay to matter quite a bit.
Congrats @Mom2aphysicsgeek! My son got his National Merit letter today too, and it is nice to finally know for sure. Excitement is somewhat tempered because we are dealing with a pet who is very sick and probably will have to be euthanized, but at least we have some good news with the bad.
Tomorrow we are going to try to sit down and finally cut the school list based on the news. Also we got a phone call today from somewhere in Alabama, which we missed because we were at the vet. No message was left, has anyone gotten a phone call from the U of Alabama? Because we don’t know anyone who lives there or anything and can’t imagine why we’d get a phone call from there. S did send in the Alabama application last week, do they call to follow up?
** Brag sheet: ** Thousands of posts ago we discussed brag sheets and I posted one of the prompts from my sons high school which elicited a lot of fun banter on this thread…Please list four adjectives which you believe best describe your child.
I really like this prompt as it helps to give GC a quick head start on their letter.
@caroldanvers …congrats for your house too!!
We got a phone call from Alabama (not r/t NMF) but it was just to confirm if we are attending one of their special events.
Congrats to your D @Mom2aphysicsgeek! That is great news!
@caroldanvers congrats! Yay! Glad you can start finalizing your list, too. Sorry to hear about your pet. 
@Mom2aphysicsgeek Congratulations. YEAH for your DD.
I don’t expect to see S17’s commended letter for a few more weeks yet. S17’s school typically has a large number of NM and almost twice as many Commended. The staff that would get these letters out are still busy with new school year stuff. I already know he will make commended, but his score isn’t high enough for NM in CA. (Particularly if CA cutoff is anywhere near IL.)
@RightCoaster Yes, GPA & SAT/ACT together are more important than the rest of the list. But not SAT (test scores) over GPA is my point. Many of the local state schools, create a ranking number based off the two where GPA has more weight than SAT/ACT. They use a very standardized GPA calculator. In these schools this number is the main basis for acceptance/denial.
But I imagine schools are all different. A small LAC, an Ivy, a large state, even different admissions officers look at very different things first. Large state schools the application is probably sorted by computer and not even looked over by a person if the stats aren’t high enough.
@caroldanvers Congratulations to you S! I’m so sorry to hear about your pet. That is so hard to deal with.
Congrats to @Mom2aphysicsgeek and @caroldanvers, that is great news!
It was kind of cool that last night D17 came and found me and said “can we do the college stuff now?” 
(H and I were binge-watching Orphan Black. Wow is that a good show!).
D and I spent over 2 hours going over all the college stuff. Mostly it was peripherals like working on her resume (which all of her recommenders want to see), yelling at each other because neither of us could remember what awards she won in 9th grade because we didn’t know it would be important, her data-mining her emails to find out what she was doing each year awards-wise, lots of nitpicky stuff. The nice thing about the MIT app is it only asks where you graduated from-thank goodness! I look significantly less weird.
I commented “can you imagine trying to do this with a deadline breathing down your neck?” and she said “I know, thanks for setting this weekly thing up with me, otherwise I’d let it all pile up.” Seriously, can I have that engraved somewhere? Most of the time I feel like a bumbling idiot with my kids, so a benny every now and then feels amazing.
Oh, funny news-her guidance counselor is out on maternity leave! This is both good and bad news. Bad because it means the remaining GC’s now have an even heavier burden. Good because I didn’t love this GC who called D “one of those smart kids” the first time we met a few years ago. Not cool.
I need to see if U Bama is doing honors tours on labor day. Probably not, but it’d be a good way to sneak over there and knock that out.
@Mom2aphysicsgeek congratulations to your daughter! Well done! Thanks for the powerpoint. I like information, even when it makes me cry. :((
@caroldanvers so sorry about your sick pet.
Congrats to everyone who made the cut! I still have no idea if we did, I just got home from school and I went to this thread first. Well, second. I had to verbally frying pan someone who was telling her adult daughter how to dress on another thread (I was lurking on my 30 minutes for lunch).
I spent 2 hours yesterday cutting all the college flyers into 6x6 squares to turn them into origami cranes for my mixed media assignment. Tonight I’m supposed to fold them all into origami cranes. Hundreds of them. This may require wine.
I just realized D17 should probably put NM commended scholar on her resume-at the very least, she definitely has that…
Happy mail here today too! @caroldanvers I’m so sorry about your pet!
Question - Religion on the Common App? So my D has both ND and BC on her list. They both ask on the common app “In what religious tradition were you raised?” as an optional question. I was raised in a strict Catholic family. My D was baptized Catholic but like many “Catholics” we are not practicing. She was raised with basic Christian and Catholic beliefs and attended various churches over the years but I’d say she is pretty non-religious at this point in her life. However she clearly has a lot of respect for the Catholic faith. I would say in most applications she will likely leave this question blank or maybe pick non-Denomination Christian, but I am wondering if choosing Catholic for ND and BC would make more sense. Or is that dishonest? Does it even matter?
So sorry about your pet @caroldanvers – dealing with that is hard. Hard to celebrate National Merit when things are personally very tough, but Congrats on that. Hope you can make things comfortable for your pet.
I need some NC news. This is gonna be so hard. DD’s principal is an idiot and won’t share NMSF status until the day allowed (she apparently can’t read). DD wants to wait to proceed any more with apps until we know. OU is her top choice so I get it.
Got to trudge through the lovely first day of school pile for my middle schooler. How can a kid lose a handout on the first day in the first class. My youngest is gonna be the death of me.
@disshar …is there any way you could push hard with the “we need to know so she can register for the SAT or not?” line of questioning?
I would be going INSANE. Heck I’m dying of nosiness just to see if any kids from Ds school made it and I don’t even have a dog in the proverbial fight lol!