@STEM2017 S17’s school wants all students to stick with Common App this year, so that’s what he is doing (except for the few schools that have their own apps).
@longwood I agree with your S’s school. The ONLY reason we even signed up with Coalition was for UF. With UF, its Coalition or nothing.
I would worry that if the Coalition app is painful on the student side this year, it might also be painful on the college’s side. Do we know if colleges just get a PDF? They might also get some database importable file. I don’t know how these things work actually, just guessing. Can you see the PDF it generates for the college?
As much as I don’t want to fill out a parent brag sheet I do wish our school asked for them. We have apps due in 6 weeks, and brand new GC who has yet to meet my kid. Not that the previous one had much interaction beyond a couple of schedule questions at registration time.
I cannot imagine how they can fill out those counselor forms/letter on such limited data!
Nor can I imagine it will add a thing to S’s app 
@Ynotgo Son was not able to print a preview of his UF application. Honestly, the Coalition App stinks. It was obviously rushed because very few schools are live this year. They really should have done a test run this year to work out all the kinks. I’m still not really sure why someone felt the need to initiate the thing.
** Coalition for Access, Affordability, and Success **
Access - strike one!
Affordability - $35 - strike two!
Success - we’ll see
@eandesmom Would it be worth showing a brag sheet to the new GC and asking if he/she thought it might be helpful?
Our school does ask for one - I’m actually going to be filling it out this weekend as we’ve got our first big college meeting with the GC on Tuesday. We are also at a school where the GCs while well meaning, couldn’t pick my kid out of a police lineup. There’s something kind of Groundhog Day about it. Every time we sit down with this woman, she seems pleased and delighted anew to see D17’s grades and activities. :))
@thermom maybe. However given that I’ve been in contact with her on other things and she always refers up to the college and career counselor ( who is not the one who writes the letters ) I don’t have high hopes. In theory the kids will have a late October planning meeting but that’s too late imho for EA. We only started back last week so I plan to wait a week before asking
The main college counselor is aware he has EA apps and has suggested a thing, all she does is confirm what I am suggesting are great ideas.
Sigh.
@STEM2017 Our college counselors told us very clearly NOT to use the Coalition App (unless of course you have to, as in your case) because it’s in its inaugural year, and everyone remembers the headaches and glitches and delays caused during the first year of the Common App not too long ago. Good for you for starting on it so early!
And congrats re your S19 --what a meaningful honor.
During last night’s Open House (or as I still call it ‘Back-to-school-night’), the GC confirmed that Naviance has still not fixed the LOR glitch. Guidance is hoping that Naviance fixes it soon, but in the meantime, individual teachers must push out the LORs instead of allowing them to be pulled from Naviance. Now that feature worked three years ago so I do not view this as progress!
But no worries here as still no essays…
@STEM2017 Our GC groans when anybody mentions the Coalition App. She advised us to avoid it, if possible. From what I have read, I don’t think it will help the lower SES population it is supposed to serve. Rather I think it will cause more anxiety about college applications and push that stress back to the 9th grade. I predict substantial tweaks following the roll out.
Hi, everyone! I have been lurking on and off, and decided to post today as a stress reliever. I’m really freaking out over all the stuff outside a student’s control that can impact GPA, test scores, and EC accomplishments!! So far there are a lot of potential issues for D17 that could be problematic this year. 4 of her AP classes have teachers who never taught their respective courses before, and 2 were given the AP class last minute in August and so are having to “learn the material” themselves. They said so at Back to School Night. Just lovely. How well will they teach and prepare the kids for the AP exam? Then her language AP is a split class. That means one teacher, one block, but two different classes at different levels he has to teach at the same time. So each class only gets half a block of instruction. This wouldn’t be so bad if her freshman year they hadn’t lost 5 months of instruction when the teacher left and no replacement could be found. So they are already behind and not up to the AP level, and now will get shafted again. This language is a potential college major for her, so this is not good at all.
And then there’s the coach who is threatening not to name captains this year. He does this often (3rd kid so year 12 with him), and despite what he says is the reason, it has nothing to do with the caliber of the athlete and her leadership. It’s just him ranting and expressing frustration over the team’s performance. He pulled the same stunt the senior year of my Stanford-bound recruited athlete with great social skills. But now D17, who is the only senior on varsity and who was on varsity every year, and MVP twice, might not get the honor because the coach is being capricious. She is not nearly as academically or athletically accomplished as her sister and needs these small honors.
D’s GC retired over the summer and they don’t have a replacement yet. Supposedly someone has been hired, but has not yet been released by her current employer. So obviously, she won’t know D at all, which is not even my main concern. She may not even get here in time to handle counselor rec’s etc.
I could go on, but you get the idea. AHHHH!
Is the $35 Coalition App fee in addition to those from the schools?
@longwood No. The $35 fee is to apply to UF. Coalition App doesn’t charge any additional fee. I should have been more clear.
I guess my point is…what part of the Coalition App makes it “affordable” ?
@4beardolls - She didn’t mention any specific college. In general she thinks some colleges may consider that. I doubt that though esp highly selective colleges. Since my DS is a beta tester I thought it may suite him, but probably too risky. DS is getting I will explore it this weekend, but already I am hearing it’s a pain!
@STEM2017 I wish some of the schools our son was applying to were $35. Most of them he fills out one app for multiple schools, clicks a check box for which schools to send it to, and we get charged $70 for each school.
Ugh! After reading the stats from the post by @Mom2aphysicsgeek, I’m tempted to encourage my daughter to abandon her Georgia Tech app. At least with Princeton we know about what amount of merit she would get!
Does anyone have another reach school they would recommend for her? She’s got an unweighted GPA of 4.97, weighted is around 5.38, ACT score of 34 (superscore is 36) 6 or 7 APs (all 5’s so far), standard ECs. She wants to major in Aerospace Engineering and she’d need somewhere that would prioritize grades and scores over ECs, and that she’s got at least a 20% chance of full tuition or more…?
I’m throwing that figure out there because she has four other schools (UAH, UA, UMBC, and UMD) where she’s guaranteed at least full tuition, so it doesn’t seem worthwhile, unless the program is super-special, to put in the time for a less than 20% chance of getting equivalent merit.
She had recently cut The Ohio State University from her list. Would it be a good replacement for GT? Or maybe she goes for broke and uses MIT for her 2nd reach? (H and I had already run the calculations for each school and decided that if she got into Princeton or MIT and wanted to go, it would be worth the extra $$ – so the caveat about needing at least full-tuition merit doesn’t apply.)
@NerdMom88 Here’s a list of the “best” Aeronautical Engineering programs int the US. I know its not exactly Aerospace Engineering, but its close.
Take the rankings with a grain of salt, but the list is comprehensive…
http://best-engineering-colleges.com/aeronautical-engineering
@NerdMom88 For Aerospace Engineering with merit, look at Embry Riddle. There are two of them; one in Arizona and one in Florida. They give generous merit and are excellent schools, esp. in that particular field. There is a student here on CC - @CourtneyThurston - that was awarded $$ money in private scholarships, and then got into Embry Riddle with a generous scholarship, so she’s saving her private scholarships for grad school.
@TheGFG I feel your pain!
@STEM2017 my grandfather liked to say “never be the first to try the new or the last to try the old”. I think the coalition app falls under this. D is relieved UMDCP isn’t the coalition app this year, after all.
@NerdMom88 I second what @LoveTheBard says about Embry Riddle. We’ve heard vy good things about the one in Florida, to the point where we wish one of them would consider it (but neither has any interest in that area).
The GC for our school said that if you apply EA to Tech you better have super strong stats because there is no essay for EA apps for in-state public Georgia schools. And if you get rejected, that’s it. No RD for you. Take this with a grain of salt, but I was surprised to hear all of that.
@MotherOfDragons A wise man!