@vandyeyes I’m glad to hear you are feeling better now. I’m also happy to learn your son has made an ED decision and I am hopeful that it will all work out. Good on you for staying focused,involved, and helpful during both of these stressful processes. You must be a very strong person! You should go out and celebrate this weekend!!! <:-P
@vandyeyes I’ll add my congratulations for the health news. What a relief that must be for you and your family. Here’s hoping everything works out well with your S’s application too!
There are so many inspirational stories on this board. @vandyeyes Congratulations to your victory on fighting against Cancer. I am sure your strength and determination will motivate your DS tremendously. Best of luck!!!
@MotherOfDragons UMD is on D’s list and its size is a concern. We haven’t visited yet but feedbacks from others have always started with “It is huge…”. Do you know if their honor program will make it feel a little bit cozy?
With all of the discussion on naviance stats, I went back and looked at naviance again. Previously, my focus was on the number of students accepted and the scattergrams in relation to S17s stats. Now looking at the School Stats tab, I am left wondering if schools will fatigue on accepting students if they too are looking at the stats and see they are consistently accepting kids from a school and in 4 years 2 out of 20 kids enrolled. Should this be a concern or am I overthinking this?
@paveyourpath At that level you’re overthinking it. Way too many kids coming from way too many schools to start making targeted admits/denials.
I disagree as schools care about yield, so I don’t think the concern is without merit.
I worry more about the schools that consistently reject our applicants
(Hopkins & Princeton come to mind).
Very, very gentle hugs @vandyeyes
Wrt UMD-CP and its size: have you visited any large schools before? We thought the campus was a nice size, but then again, we live adjacent to a state flagship with 23,000 undergraduates :lol: UMD campus is attractive, lots of green and trees and paths and brick buildings. Lots of construction on- and immediately off-campus when we visited. D liked that there are shops (Including a Target!) and restuarants (chain and local, coffee on up) right next to campus. There are some pricey-looking new apartment buildings north (or is it east? I get turned around there) of campus.
I thought only top tier schools play yield games.
@MotherOfDragons – thanks for the UMD report - it was on our radar as a possibility but we have not visited and the info you shared along with report from a friend whose son is there now - help me decide to leave it off the list. Too big, hard to really connect with others unless in honors college most likely.
@srk2017 - the tippy top tier schools don’t have to play yield games…it’s just the mid tier ones that do (i.e., the ones whose admitted students end up going to the tippy top schools if they get in and are using the mid tier as safeties.)
About large schools–keep in mind that (as the saying goes) you can make a large campus smaller, but you can’t make a small campus larger. I went to a huge state flagship (IU) and never felt that it was too large.
@whataboutcollege wrote
I tried to find an honors college tour for UMD (a la UA), but I couldn’t find one.
D said the only mention of the honors college on the general tour was the guide pointing to one of the dorms in the 90+ degree heat and going “those are the honors dorms, they have a/c”, at which point D was hopeful they’d go IN the building to escape the heat, but to no avail, lol.
I’m not saying there isn’t an honors tour, but I couldn’t find it.
They’ve toured Northeastern, and it might be that the campus there is more compact because of Boston’s smaller footprint, but they weren’t getting the same vibe as they got from UMD. We’ve been on the UGA campus dozens of times, and UMD seems to be more of a commuter/keep your own stuff together/pave your own path kind of school than NEU or UGA.
It definitely stays on her list, though, because she liked the CS department people she talked to, and she’s not bothered by the amount of people that attend.
@vandyeyes Congratulations on your news and speedy and painless healing.
@fun1234: Thanks for that Reuters article. Could you please post that on the National Merit 2017 Predictions thread? There were pages and pages of discussion about the topics of the article early in the year.
Have been reading here but didn’t have time to log in. NMSF got announced in our local newspaper today. Interestingly, our HS has less semifinalists than usual (3 instead of 5) and the best HS in town has about double than usual (9 instead of 5).
Fingers crossed and today or tomorrow my kid will finally submit the first application. Yay!
@vandyeyes Rejoicing with you for the good news and the completed app! Wishing you a full and speedy recovery.
So I was just wondering if when someone apply’s regular or early action. There transcript is weighted and the class ranking given. Would they also throw in first quarter ranking some how after the early action date or are they just going to look at these grades. At my son’s school they only do weighting after each semester so it would not come out until February sometime.
@vandyeyes I am happy for your good news and its great news your son has one completed app and it is his favoriteI hope my son will be doing that soon. It just seems like he always has so much to do each weekend.
@funn1234 I believe most ED/EA decisions are based on junior year transcripts. Schools do not typically want quarter grades. Check with the individual school because this can really depend on school. But since most ED/EA decisions are made before the first semester is over, they aren’t waiting for those grades.
Thank you to everyone for all the kind and supportive words; my strength continues to improve daily…
carry on…
@curiositycat333 – I was wondering about quarter grades. Counselors only update the school report for semester grades? Apparently our school also recalculates GPAs after 1st semester but I wonder if they are treated as 1/2 a course credit -should not count as a full year grade, right?
Re Northeastern campus - it was relatively compact and easy to navigate - frankly a pleasant surprise.