Am I unreasonable? H and S were discussing that transcripts were sent. (The school caved to parents and changed their ‘no transcripts til end of Sept’ policy, hahahaha.) I suggested that after a reasonable wait S should check that the transcripts were received by the colleges. I literally got 2 variations on “why would you check if something was received if you know it was sent?”
I’m absolutely not a Type A spreadsheet-y type person, but these guys make me twitchy.
@flatKansas …our school doesn’t send transcripts directly from the school office. You have to go to a central transcript office OR pick up a sealed copy at the school and address and mail it yourself.
So D did this. Stamped it, mailed it, etc.
Three weeks later she gets a call from the central transcript office saying her transcripts that were addressed to UA were returned!
What if that had been for some crucial scholarship deadline? So thankful it is early in the game.
Fortunately her other schools have been great about checking it off in the portal once they were received.
** Transcripts: ** While I fully understand that schools want an official, signed copy sent directly from the high school, I have an “unofficial” copy. I made a pdf version and we have emailed it to every school that he has applied to. At least they have something to look at while they wait for his GC to hit the send button.
Re: Pitt thread, I understand completely that it is hard to wait. But as soon as some of those posters get their acceptance letter they will start posting, asking about merit. It might take months until you hear. The committee looks at a lot of application files. It is very hard to wait, if Pitt is your first choice and you depend on enough merit to afford it.
And then there are the people that actually get awarded a very selective Stamps Scholarship, or a Chancellor’s scholarship, a free ride, and then go somewhere else.
I think the schools (both the high schools and the colleges) are all over the place in terms of their process. Part of the reason S17 submitted his first app over the weekend was to test the waters, so to speak, about how/whether the LORs, test scores, and transcripts show up (all of which the buttons have been pushed). He chose a mid to high match private institution, thinking the risk of a screw up would be surmountable, if there’s a glitch.
Now I have to laugh…DS just got an email acknowledging receipt of his app, but then goes on to say…now sit tight as we won’t start coordinating all the various pieces or even creating a portal until early October. Really rather surprising to me given that this is a high ranked private institution (top 50 USNWR)with 25K or so applicants. So now sit and spin…maybe he’ll try another school that actually ties the initial app submission to gaining access to the scholarship apps at the school…hmmm.
@flatKansas I don’t think it’s unreasonable. For us, we have to request them through Naviance and it just shows a “transcript requested” and “pending”. I figure since the apps aren’t in I am not going to nag the school yet but at some point if those statuses aren’t updated, I definitely will. I’ll then want to know that the colleges received them. So far we have sent scores to 5 schools and only one has acknowledged receipt. I figure that once the apps are in we should be able to log in through each schools portal and confirm what they have and don’t have but having never done this before I really have no clue!
I do have a spot n the spreadsheet to mark off that things were sent and confirmed as received though.
Frankly I’ll just be happy if our Naviance updates to show a different welcome message that is not the Spring Commencement one from 2016! UGH
@HiToWaMom I don’t see an announcement yet for ours, wah! Super annoying though for your D.
I sometimes forget the CC is owned by the same company as Naviance.
D has only applied to large state schools and the mystatus pages have been good at telling her what they receive and what is missing. She contacted a few schools about seemingly missing SAT scores and they quickly located it (we sent well before she submitted applications). Naviance has been up to date for us. And the schools have been informing teachers when they receive the LOR, and D’s teachers have been forwarding the confirmation notices to D. So far, everything is running mostly smoothly.
I don’t think it’s unreasonable to expect confirmation that items were sent and received.
Has anyone looked at the PDF generated when you do a Review of your Common App prior to sending it? I looked at one today, and it does not contain all the information from the actual Common App tab. For instance, in the “Testing” section of the generated PDF document, all I see are the testing dates, how many tests were taken/planned, and whether the Writing section was completed. No scores! What use is it to review this document if it doesn’t contain all the information being sent to the schools when you hit Submit!?
Am I missing something?
@cruisecontrol – I just logged in to look, as my son is NOWHERE near filing an app or finishing a single essay…but the testing section has been completed.
When I hit preview, I can see his entire testing history, including dates and scores, for every SAT I, SAT II & AP exam.
Did your student enter all of the scores?
And I just noticed that it superscores the SAT—wow!
I must take this opportunity to comment once again how blessedly easy it is to print preview on the CA now. Print Preview would have been a 30 minute process, at a minimum, three years ago. Filing this thing will be a breeze, if someone ever writes his essays…
@flatKansas I’d say trust but verify.
Speaking of which, for the online transcript request through our school the address for ua was different than the one ua has on its website for transcripts. I used the ua one, not the one my kids school had. No telling j how many years of of date that is.
:-w
DS just got an approval signature from the CS professor whose class he wants to take at the UC this fall! <:-P The prof gave him 3-4 questions on sets and probability to make sure he was ready. Prof said, “I’m willing to try it, but you won’t get any special attention. You know the rest of the class are juniors, right?”
So, we finally know his full fall schedule – yay! UC classes start in a couple weeks.
(Just remember how late this seems if your kids ends up at a college with the quarter system!)
@Ynotgo Two years ago they didn’t start class until October 2. Next year it’s even later than this year - Sept 28.
@flatKansas – I absolutely would verify. Also, rumor has it that colleges can see if a student has never logged in to check his profile (or whatever it is called). Last stab at demonstrating interest! Ignoring that, I think it would be shortsighted to just assume that every bit of info got to its intended location, but perhaps I am too much of a skeptic.
I was super excited that my daughter was meeting with her language arts teacher to talk about her essays. All the teacher did was help her cross out a few words to get under the word count. Time to call in a professional.
Well, we are slowly but surely starting to come up with an honest to goodness list around here. 8-} It currently stands at 12, but some of those will probably come off depending on a couple of planned upcoming visits, potential early results, and application fatigue.
D17’s got 3 EA schools (Georgetown, Northeastern, and SUNY Binghamton) and it seems like RIT is actually rolling, so provided she actually gets her essays finished in time, lol, she should have some answers in hand before deciding how many RD schools to move forward with. We’ve got our first scheduled meeting with her GC next week to go over the plan, so fingers crossed she approves of all the homework I’ve been doing, lol.
@cruisecontrol, @CT1417 wow, it seems like we are all seeing different things which is a bit freaky. For self reporting ACT it only asks how many testing dates you reporting and then the highest score and date for composite each section. Which I hit preview, that’s all I see., plus the AP self reported scores. It does not ask for the full testing history, just the highest in each and does not superscore for you.
For those of you who are concerned about number of schools on your list, watch out for essay exhaustion. Make sure they prioritize and apply to the ones they care about first. IU-B bit the dust here. Going for the Wells was a long shot, she didn’t want to live in IN, and the 3.5 renewal GPA was a huge downside. She decided she didn’t care enough to put in the effort. She is reserving her essay energy for the schools she really cares about.
@CT1417, @eandesmom OK that is weird. Now that you mention it, I didn’t see any AP scores at all. I wonder if the print preview differs for each school? Time to investigate more. It makes the ‘Review’ a little more difficult it seems. I’m not going to trust the PDF for now.