@Mom2aphysicsgeek I am enjoying her report very much. My S would enjoy several of the schools, alas nothing on her list offers much in the way for merit at his stats and as such cannot be considered. I can’t wait to see the Midwest and west coast tours. Although I’m fairly sure they didn’t miss a thing skipping Evergreen.
Thanks to everyone for the welcome back!
@snoozn – yes, having access to a good GI and the medical facilities for her infusions, as well as good transportation, will be vital. Her GI is going to work with us to find what she needs as soon as she finalizes her school selection, and I will go interview doctors with her.
@Mom2aphysicsgeek – we all feel fortunate that she was diagnosed with time to go before college, especially since all of her college selections are 8 - 15 hours from home!
@carachel2 – yes, I know her procrastination isn’t unusual, but it sure is annoying! As for the resection, we need to decide very soon when to have it done. It will be a planned procedure, at some point before she leaves for school next year. If it’s done before she has a complete blockage she stands a much better chance of laprascopic surgery. Also, we need to time it between infusions. Her surgeon did say 3 - 7 days in the hospital, plus recovery time afterward, so according to you that sounds about right!
@What???!! Thanks for the tip!
@jedwards70 – the first place her GI directed us for reliable information was the ccfa. What a great resource!
I didn’t want to mention earlier that the reason my D1’s lack of communication was a worry is that she was diagnosed with some mental health issues this spring, and although we got her started with meds and counseling this summer, I’m still fretting. Hopefully she will follow through with the plan we laid out together (but the plan included contacting us, which she isn’t doing.)
Anyway, on to other topics. Has anyone completed the Coalition App? D2 is applying to UMD, which just switched to it this year, and I have no idea how it differs from the Common App.
I hope everyone in the U.S. has a wonderful holiday tomorrow, and that many of our kids will spend it productively!
^ I think UMD is coalition essay only for this year, not the full coalition app. D applied using the UMD app on their website.
@nerdmom88. My dd tried filling out the Coalition App, invited me as her counselor, etc. It was a complete disaster. After contacting their tech dept for help multiple times, the issues were never fixed (I could never even access the the counselor pages bc the link for “school not listed” was broken.). She gave up and is skipping applying that way and is applying via their individual school apps instead.
I think the only school that you have to use Coalition app is UF.
The hippie mom thread is pure awesomeness!
Son17 would not consider any hippie schools. I’ll have to read that thread though anyways. Son17 does like ,UVM which while isn’t a full blown hippie spot, has elements of granola types and a left leaning vibe. He didn’t think it was overbearing though. The schools he likes in the Boston area are more conservative and biz focused.
@nerdmom sorry to hear about your daughters illness. Hopefully she’ll get some good treatment soon and can start feeling better.
S17 would not consider any of hippie schools, even though his GF completely belongs at SLC.
I think the hippie schools sound awesome on paper/website and D certainly has a few hippie ideals and might find her people. But she is very much skeptical of going to a school that leans too far to the other side…in either direction. So the hippie schools are mostly off her list.
@Mom2aphysicsgeek Thank you for the heads up about the Hippie schools tour thread. So funny. (My D15 had Hampshire on her list early on in the process, until we visited and she found out that they had only 4 English teachers.)
@NerdMom88 So sorry to hear about your D’s struggles.
@itsgettingreal17 Thanks for the info on the common app. In spite of having been through this process two years ago, I didn’t know some of that. We are still waiting for the transcript to be added to S17’s Naviance.
Congrats to everyone getting essays done and applications sent! We have none of those yet, but S17 just added a few schools and took one off of the list. The list is evolving.
Catching up 
@carachel2 I enjoyed reading your visit report! Too bad Bama doesn’t have dd’s interests lol
@picklesarenice I hope your dd’s recovery path is smoother from now on. Jaw surgery just does not seem like a good time.
I’m impressed with your d’s progress on her apps @itsgettingreal17 Way to go!
@Mommertons Appreciated the OU details. We’ll book our trip there this week. Is the “Campus Corner” area walkable from campus (assuming one is not on the far side of campus)? D will not have a car at college so she’ll have to move around by foot or bike or bus. Since D did not make the NMSF cutoff, OU is on the very edge of our affordability line.
@NerdMom88 Massive, massive hugs to you and very gentle ones to your dd! Having a definitive diagnosis and a path forward makes such a difference, doesn’t it? My D experienced a health crisis in the winter/spring of 2015, and we didn’t have the final results until this summer (lots of genetic testing). D reminded me yesterday that it has been exactly a year since she starting feeling “better”. Please let us know when her surgery is scheduled so that we all can hold her in our thoughts and prayers.
^:)^
WE HAVE A ROUGH DRAFT! SOUND THE TRUMPETS!!
ok, so its realllly stinkin rough and on the short side with a paragraph that totally makes no sense, but i’ll take it. its on paper. there are sentences. and paragraphs. and a theme! it may not be about costco, but its an actual essay.
whew now i can move on to obsessing over the next thing…essay writing was getting old.
Huzzah @kac425
Dug deeper into Naviance for the first time yesterday. Kind of OD’d on that. I could get a little obsessed looking at all the stats, overlap info, etc.
@youcee – yes, one can fall down the rabbit hole of Naviance if digging deep for first time. It can become a massive time suck, but I spent a lot of time ‘analyzing’ it with my first son. Not as relevant for this son.
One hint, if your school uses this feature, is to have your child ‘register’ to attend the in-school campus rep visits. I think that even having a school in the ‘colleges I am thinking about’ category results in an auto-generated email reminding your student of the rep’s visit.
@Mom2aphysicsgeek Thank’s for pointing out that thread. :)) Wonder if she will include UCSC, doesn’t fit her theme of small LAC but it was defiantly a “hippy” school back in the day. I’ve heard it’s less so now.
Did get a grumbly “yes I talked with my teachers about letters of rec” the other day. S17 has started speaking in very short sentences to me and clearly stopped thinking I have valid things to say. That’s all he really needed right now was the commitment from the teachers, but as he doesn’t need letters for any ED/EA nothing will probably be done about them till November. It’s the only thing he’s done on the college front the past week that I know of.
A few weeks still till the H.S. senior parents meeting about the college app process. I’m hoping they explain there a bit more about if teachers letters & transcripts if they are going through Naviance. They only introduced Naviance the last semester of my D12’s senior year. And I though I’d heard we still use another company for official transcripts.
@youcee Yup… I’m fascinated by the stats. Got my S17’s counselor to get me a parent login back sophomore year.
One thing though that’s be bugging me. The GPA entered into Naviance isn’t the GPA they applied to colleges with but their GPA at the end of the senior year correct? This is also true of most stats on college websites. I guess one has to make the assumption than on average kids GPA stay the same? I’m honestly not convinced that’s true especially the Weighted GPA.
@WhereIsMyKindle - Campus Corner is walkable from campus. This link includes a map of Campus Corner, which is just north of campus. http://oucampuscorner.com/
D will not have a car on campus, either. We were told that the bus system is pretty lame. But it is VERY flat, so biking is easy. It looks like Uber and Lyft are available, too.
@Mommertons, your D might also be interested in U Delaware. They have some competitive awards.
@NerdMom88 - Hugs for you, and both of your daughters!