Parents of the HS Class of 2017 (Part 1)

Parents of HS Class of 20xx
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@MotherOfDragons We had a bit ACLU suit and a shake down about fee’s a fews years back. The public school is general can’t charge “FEE’s” anymore. Instead most of those are call donations, that can’t require them or keep a student from an event/class. They can’t even ask for summer reading any more, just recommend it because they can’t ask the students to buy the book. On the other hand their are “donations” asked left and right. I donate for most of them because without them our band couldn’t compete in competitions, and our science classes wouldn’t have labs. But it’s frustrating that the schools are just not funded enough.

Also as to a notary… I know others have also suggested the same thing. I bet someone at each university she is visiting is a notary and probably even someone in the admissions department. But that does does like an unnecessary & possibly costly step because the last time i needed a notary it was $20 a signature.

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First of all, I don’t understand why we can’t do CSS profile now, second, I am surprised (should I be) that you pay for submitting it to each school? It is worse than the scores! At least scores are slightly cheaper. But you need CSS profile if you apply merit aid, right?

I also started Fafsa, but abandoned that after realizing that it is still probably not open for 2017 graduates. Why don’t they have it open already? I probably will just let it go, as I don’t want to time on something with no returns.

15523

The FAFSA opens Oct 1 for our kids. I think the CSS profile opens the same day. Make sure whatever day you submit it that you save a printout of your account balances for all bank accounts and investment accounts so that if you are asked to verify you have the info from the exact date. We know someone who was verified and they had submitted on a very down market day but by the time they were audited the amounts were very different. I know I submitted after I paid every possible bill for the month too. Some schools require 1 or both for merit but most only require them if you are applying for need based aid. For the CSS many schools send you supplemental questions too which were generally more complicated.

15524

@snoozn All right!! My H will be 55 in 4 years so maybe I can tag along and be able to live in 55+ community if we so choose!! I like quiet living. Then again, we had a hard-of-hearing senior neighbor before and he blasted his TV every night!

@eandesmom I think I know which 55+ apartment you are talking about. That one is in the noisiest part of the city!! (I have actually toured it when it was brand new. It has nice business center, common lounge area and fitness room plus nice pool by the lake!)

15525

i cannot believe some of your kids have completely done their own apps/applying. they are my new heros. there is NO FREAKING WAY my kid could do this alone.

either i’m overcomplicating things or i need a class in applying. i’m finding this entire process extraordinarily complex and i seriously am ready to quit.

so far today–

*i have all green checkmarks on the common app–i think its complete.

*i set up a slideroom account specific to one school.

*i cant figure out if i can somehow make a general portfolio account, but i sort of gave up at this point.

*i sent my kid to upload and annote her images, now that i’ve figured out that YES, its fluid and we can delete if needed. she really just wants to play terraria and was irritated that i made her work on this. she already spent the morning working on the CA essay.

*i went to naviance to consider linking. i get prompted to go back to common app to ferpa. i dont want to do that yet.

*i try to look for LORs in Naviance. we know we had at least one. its gone. there are none. thanks for the enhancing!
i dont even know wtf to say about this.

*since some of her apps are rolling, i’m afraid to start them because she’s retaking the SAT one more time in Oct and i’ll need those scores. i dont want the guidance guy to make a mistake and submit until complete (i dont even know WHY i think this will be a problem–our dept is hardly proactive!).

*i am scared to do the fafsa id’s. i’m sure this is probably the easiest part but i now have a pounding headache.

so basically…

i’m a grown woman who accomplished nothing in roughly 6 hours, with the exception of cutting and pasting an essay into the common app.

oh, and i added a bunch more post-its with passwords to my wall o’ college.

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Congrats on the acceptances, possible acceptances, and applications submitted! <:-P

Transcript fees: I don’t know what our high school’s transcript fee is if any. As with @curiositycat333, the school can’t charge fees or require purchases of books and has to include legalese about donations being optional whenever a school organization asks for money. I don’t know if that extends to transcripts for us, since sending transcripts is not part of participating in and graduating from high school. The website just says to ask the registrar unless you are already a graduate. Our GC doesn’t trust the registrar, and may want to just send them herself. That’s what she did for summer programs.

But … I will need to send transcripts from all three of the colleges where DS has taken classes (2 community colleges and a UC). Those transcript charges are $3, $6, and $16 (UC-ouch $-) ). The high school transcript only lists dual enrollment course numbers. What college is going to want to look up Math 150, 160, 251, 4A, etc?

I may need to have DS email the various admissions offices to see who needs all the transcripts and who will be happy with just the HS transcript. The UC system needs them all, but only in June after you decide where you are attending.

College visits: @MotherOfDragons Ouch on the notary thing. For us, college visits are always unexcused absences. So, families just learn to call their kids in sick :-& or “has an appointment”.

FTC: DS’ FTC team is not associated with the school. It’s just 6-7 friends who got salty (like that term the kids use) about the school FRC team being cancelled and decided to do it on their own. They have a sort-of-coach who knows how the paperwork stuff works but not the robot stuff. There’s also a startup FRC team full of very salty kids, but they are having trouble finding a location this year. The muddy barn with an extension cord to the house nearby wasn’t so good last year.

Yes, we also have an old Mindstorms set gathering dust. It was just a toy, no FLL teams for us.

Come to think of it, most of the ECs DS does don’t really have a “coach” – just a teacher in the “You can meet in my classroom at lunch. Otherwise, I just drive” role. At least, that’s true for debate, math club, and science club. Hacking club doesn’t even have an “I just drive” teacher, so their competition absences are unexcused. The science club/Science Bowl/Science Olympiad advisor teaches “regular” biology and coaches volleyball. He freely admits he has no clue about the answers to any Science Bowl questions. Sports and Mock Trial are the ECs with professional-quality coaches here, and DS doesn’t do those.

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Books: I’m constantly getting around to reading books about a month after the book group on the Parent Cafe thread reads them. I’ve read Station Eleven, Seveneves, and the Fireman after them. Someday I will ready a book in time to participate on their thread.

Commuter schools: @fun1234 I don’t know about Hustville, but you would need to count both the kids in dorms and the kids that live in privately-owned housing next to the campus to determine whether it’s a commuter school. Lots of colleges have a lot of kids who live just next to, but not on, campus. There’s also the category of “suitcase schools” where a lot of kids live on or near campus during the week but drive home for the weekend to hang out with friends from high school and have mom do their laundry.

Political climate: It’s actually kinda important to DS, I think. He hasn’t seriously considered any colleges in red states, though I suppose Pennsylvania is a swing state. His college list is basically in Calif. and Mass. Can’t get much bluer unless you go to Hawai’i. His counselor suggested he consider Rice. Since both his parents tell stories about college in Texas (A&M for us also), he’s not that interested–though I know Rice is quite different from A&M. (Houston weather is also a negative for him.)

Old folks communities: We bought a condo in a 55+ community near us so that MIL could move to California. So, I guess we might end up there someday. Feels weird to be almost old enough to live there.

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I would be supremely annoyed if our HS charged for transcripts. I am more concerned about the fact that we have to request them through Naviance and 3 of S’s schools are newly added EA schools and Naviance does NOT have those dates in the system so basically no due date is showing up! I’ve alerted the CC on 2 out of the 3 and we will need to keep an eye on the transcripts being sent. None have gone out so far but school only started last week.

@kac425 I’m not sure how yours is set up but we cannot request LOR’s until the FERPA is waived in the common app. At that point the schools seem to link up and we can then at LOR writer by school. We haven’t actually linked specific teachers yet but plan to this week once S finishes asking his additional LOR writer(s).

The FAFSA ID is a bit of a pita, No real need to do it quite yet but the form does go live 10/1 so I figured why not do that part now as there is a verification period which I guess can be up to 3 days. I’ve created mine but S has not done his yet.

@HiToWaMom I can think of 3 in our area and all are on very busy streets with access to shopping, public transportation etc, within walking distances (some more so than others) so pretty urban and not at all what I would consider quiet. I know one that seems closest to your side of the district is actually a mixed use development, my ex BIL used to live in an apartment there after he and my sister divorced but one of the towers (ok tower is an overstatement) was dedicated 55+. I remember when they were building it and my H and going 55+??? Really??? I am quite sure my house, at the end of a cul de sac, with 10 acres of protected wetland is far more quiet! That said, I’d love (when it is time to move which will not be for at least 6 years) to be someplace that was walkable to some things. I hate driving. Of course we’d have to have a real plan as to what we want to do and where we want to go and are nowhere close to that. May depend on where the kids are scattered to.

@dcplanner that is really really good advice about the printouts (and after all bills are paid). Thank you!

15529

@eandesmom thx.

that part i understand.

what i’m saying is…

the LOR section is now blank. as in NO LOR’s. as in there will be nothing TO request. since they enhanced. there was definitely one there before enhancement. i was looking to see if any of the other teachers ever did their part and if we finally had 2 or if my kid needs to get on it.

it is now 3pm. mini hysterics due to working on the portfolio part…she decided she stinks and she only has 3 good examples. this from a kid who probably has 1,200,000 imagines on her portfolio drive…and a “best work” folder that definitely has enough to finish.

we both quit.

at least for the day.

15530

Transcripts: We have to pay $3 per transcript sent to a school excluding the state school which is free. A little annoying since it is all done online through Naviance but understandable.

D requested LORs through Naviance for one teacher but the other teacher wasn’t listed for some reason. We had to contact the GC to ask about adding the other teacher and are still waiting for a response.

15531

Like @MotherOfDragons, my D’s school (of around 2200 students) charges for each transcript ($3 is the going rate) and each school on the Common App is a separate charge. Regarding fees, I was shocked when we moved here three years ago from a tiny school district! Lab fees, locker fees, student activity fees, and a $200/yr fee to participate in marching band – because they classify it as an EC. On the other hand, the education is far superior…

@fun1234 – my D2 visited UAH last spring and was very impressed with its engineering department. H also had an intern this summer who attends UAH. He confirmed the impression she got on her visit; it’s no Big Ten rah-rah school, but unless you’re looking for wild parties, you can find something to do on the weekend.

It seems a lot like UMBC, my other daughter’s school. Both started as commuter schools, but have a reasonable number of people who live on campus, although a fair number of them are close enough to go home on weekends. Still D1 really enjoys it, so I guess a lot would depend on your son’s personality. If he’s interested in engineering, it’s a great safety school! Hope this helps.

15532

@new2this - saw your post on NMSF applying to TAMU

Regarding impacted majors - For NMF some engineering departments have auto admits into your major especially if they have a department scholarship. Each department has different rules and they change each year, but NMF do get preference.

Regarding not enough merit - What A&M shows is the minimum offer for NMF. They can throw in additional department scholarships and other scholarships. If you do well you can get additional scholarships each year. Yes the GPA is high to maintain the scholarship 3.5. But if you fall below there is an appeal process and I know of cases where A&M has not taken away scholarships.

Regarding ranking - Yes they are the highest ranked school with NMF scholarships and the best engineering program. Some departments are very highly ranked 1st to 8th in the country. This translates to top companies coming to campus to recruit and the largest engineering fair in the nation.

UA, OU and even University of Tulsa have full-ride or near full-ride scholarships. But if for some reason your GPA falls below the limit one can end up paying full price for those schools (50K+ at Tulsa). If one is in-state for TAMU there is no GPA pressure as tuition is comparatively affordable if the scholarship is lost. If you are out-of-state for the other NMF schools there will be GPA pressure (even a 3.25 can be tough if you have a bad semester early).

(My son had the NMF packages at the other schools listed but ultimately choose A&M for engineering and in his case it was a good decision. The Aggie Network is also very strong and could help when one is looking for a job/internship in the future. Of course finding a college that is the right fit is important too).

15533

We definitely have fees, I paid close to $500 for the 2 kids between sports, asb, ipad, marching band uniform etc so I guess I am glad the transcripts are free.

@kac425 right but what I am seeing is I don’t think you can see anything until you complete FERPA. It doesn’t mean they are necessarily not there but that your view is blocked. The window will not show at all until you waive. At least in ours it will not.

15534

@cruisecontrol D applied to Pitt and has “admitted” on program status as well. She is interested in Neuroscience/neurobiology too. We’re taking it as her first acceptance even though I don’t think they intended for applicants to find out that way. Based on last year’s “pattern,” I’m predicting their first round of e-mails will come out later this week with mail notification to follow.

15535

@BlueAFMom Do you know when they send out scholarship notifications?

15536

In recent years the Pitt scholarship committee started meeting in November and weekly until March. I seem to have seen on a website that they might start earlier, like in October, this year since applications opened in July? Also I believe the application deadline to be considered for scholarships is earlier this year.

My D applied in Aug of ‘14 and got scholarship notification in December so be prepared for it to take a while. Some students’ files might go through several reviews.

15537

Info from the website
https://oafa.pitt.edu/financialaid/academic-scholarships/

15538

BTW transcripts are not free. Last I knew you get transcripts through Parchment. Parchment charges a fee per transcript. I don’t know if the school gets any of that money. The CA state schools don’t ask for an official transcript till you have been accepted, so you don’t have to pay a fee for each school you applied to.

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@NerdMom88 yes he is interested in engineering and he isn’t super outgoing so he kind of wants a small setting so he doesn’t feel like a number they said about 4000 live on campus and also they said he could be in the honors college rooms they seemed nice.

15540

This is from PITT thread.

Although you may see a status change in PSMobile, please wait for official communication.

Best of luck!
A Pitt Admissions Staffer