@rtidwell ^^ =))
@paveyourpath - D17 loved the school. She had already been there for a day and a half on a fly-in program; I was meeting up with her and we were going to leave together that night.
I didn’t get to see much of the school, but I must say, the people there were beyond attentive. I was also pretty impressed with the ER - it was one of many in the area. Given that D17 has some medical issues, it’s good to know that there are good medical facilities in the area. One hopes never to need them, of course, but good to know they’re there. I’m glad D17 was able to finish up her visit and get to sit in on some classes the following day.
But for the dislocated shoulder part, it was a great visit!
@rtidwell Keep in mind that many professors know who else is good in their field, what departments are good in that field but very little about undergraduate admissions processes even in their own schools. (Graduate admissions is completely different.) And they can be very out of touch with how much college admissions have changed over the years. And have little idea how merit & financial aid is handed out.
@LMHS73 wrote
It felt very safe and not “sketchy” to us. The surrounding area ranged from strip malls to…more strip malls. We saw campus police around, but not intrusively so. Many of the streets were restricted access, and there were just TONS of people walking everywhere.
The area around UGA (Athens) felt sketchier, but not to the point where it would be an issue, more of a point of comparison.
My first computer was a Commodore 64, and I had a book with programs that you could type in. Arduously. My brother and I spent an entire summer taking turns at the computer typing them in, line by line, so we could play something that looked a little like Pong :). H’s first computer was an Apple or Apple 2, I can’t remember. He was on it so much his mom used to take it out of his room and hide it because she was mad about the time he spent on it.
Our first computer together was one with a 25 mb hard drive, and it cost us $2k in 1990. I worked in Japan over the summer, and we used the money I made to buy a computer, adopt a cat, and pay for H’s first semester back at college (as a CS major). It was a good investment! Except for maybe the cat.
@HiToWaMom wrote
That is one of the reasons for us. Another reason is to slightly bump her chances at her first choice school, and another is that if all the EA’s come back full pay or with rejections, it gives her time to apply RD to several more schools. Also almost all the merit stuff is EA, so that’s probably 80% of the reason. I fully recognize that this totals more than 100%, but math is not my strong suit :D.
Although now that I think about it, with the UA acceptance/scholarship in hand it most likely means that if none of the EA’s come through (or Olin on RD because they don’t do EA), she’ll just go to UA because she likes it, and won’t apply any other places RD.
@rtidwell wrote
I would totally use it and keep the word. It’s probably a great story, and tampon is not a dirty word.
@LoveTheBard wrote
Dude!!! I hope you’re ok.
D17 is taking the Sat 2’s today (math2 and mole bio), she feels confident about the math one. D18’s boyfriend was asking me this morning about why score higher on the SAT when “1350 is fine” (that’s what he got cold as a sophomore, which is fine but won’t get you any scholarships). D18 groaned because she knew it meant the next 30 minutes of me talking about it. In the car. With a captive audience. Mwah ha ha.
I had to put money in the Swear Jar, but I think I was,um, what’s the police word? Entrapped? Enticed? Sheesh, you can’t ask me about SAT’s and expect the word “college” not to creep in there, lol.
Good luck to your kids taking the SAT and SAT IIs today!
@LoveTheBard Wishing you and your shoulder the speediest of recoveries!
<:-P
**We FAFSA’d today.
Winning at Adulting**
now how long til we find out when we get our $11 in aid?
i’m just happy its one thing that its completed in its entirety–ready to move onward and upward.
for anyone else doing it–the site seemed stable, and it probably took around 1/2 hour, but i prepped as best i could yesterday totalling accounts etc.
good luck to all of you who will actually qualify for some $$$!
I have been on a business trip and am now catching up. Funny thing is that my trip took me to a college town where I did NOT do an info session or a campus tour with a backward stepping student guide. I don’t know how to act!
QOTD: EA - D is doing EA when available partly because it’s linked to eligibility for merit scholarships, partly because she wants to be done with the process, and partly because early confirmation somewhere, anywhere, would ease her stress level. The goal is to have all apps done by Nov. 1, EA or not. I suspect (but have no proof whatsoever) that getting an app in early “might” be seen as a form of demonstrated interest as compared to the app that gets at 11:59 just under the deadline.
I tried to keep up with the thread but this past few weeks have been very stressful in this house due to DD having a difficult time with her CA main essay. It’s finally done. 650 words in WORD document. BUT, when she cut and pasted it into Common App, the word count became 660! What happened? I know sometimes between software programs, there are differences but they are usually 2 or 3, not going from 650 to 660, right? Have you heard of this issue? Does DD need to take out 10 words? Somehow, CA took all 660 words and when we looked at the print preview it had all 660 words.
@4beardolls Look at the essay for certain punctuation that is counted as a word. One my daughter had to remove was the dash and use a comma instead. Things like that cause a difference in word count.
We are doing 6 schools EA, believe it or not. 8-| DS said yeah, we will be all done in a month, which probably won’t happen but that is the spirit. :)) I also like to get this all done sooner than later so am aiming to submit all before EA outcomes come out. I am not worried about ruining holidays (after rejections.) Having essays hanging over head would be worse than any rejection. Besides, he has a happy safety although I do not know how he would feel about it in a year or in 20 years. :-/ Still it is a happy safety.
Everyone needs a happy safety – a 100% guaranteed acceptance, affordable and willing to attend. :x :)>-
@LoveTheBard, hope you heal well and no lasting effects.
I can relate because it is family thing to wager exactly where I will trip during the campus tour. So far I’ve avoided the emergency room, but my best spills have been on the steps of the Rotunda at Virginia and on the sidewalk on Wisconsin’s Bascom Hill.
DS 14 attends Pitt. The family is surprised that I am still alive:
http://www.communitywalk.com/pittsburgh/pa/pittsburgh_stairs/map/444504
Next visit is Kentucky. Shall we start a pool where the ‘trip of destiny’ will be?
Good morning all. I just created a FAFSA Q&A thread for the clueless (me). Hope it becomes helpful.
Yay @kac425! I won’t be touching FAFSA (mind you, I’m an old pro at it after 2 kids) until I get all my homeschooling-related app stuff done and submitted.
Good luck to the SATers today 
D is done, done, done until APs.
@LoveTheBard Ouch! Does a shoulder dislocation have lasting effects? I have suffered through two frozen shoulders post-injury (1) and post-horrible-biceps-tendonitis (2). I was in PT for months each time. I hope you don’t have to do that!
My first computer class in high school used punch cards. We had to run them at the local GTE plant computing center :)) Fortan, Basic, and Cobol were the languages I learned in high school. My dad spent an entire winter building the family’s computer and then painstakingly typing in DOS commands from a book 
Anyone else get a dinner invite from IU-B?
EA/ED/RD D is applying early, either officially EA or “priority”, to all schools without ED because of automatic, rolling, and/or competitive scholarships. She has only two RD schools left on the list.
Comparing degree requirements We’ve been looking into these for more than a year (my first printouts in the binder are from early Aug 2015). D at first was trying to combine IR with high-level Arabic and studying abroad (thus the Arabic Flagship schools on the list). Then she added a security studies interest that is either a standalone minor or concentration in the IR major. Now she has added Chinese to the mix after discovering that it comes as easily as Arabic (seriously, where did this child come from??).
We’ve been looking into the textbooks used for different levels of Arabic (and now Chinese). You can infer a lot about the strength of programs by seeing that the same book is used during the 3rd semester at one university but during the 5th semester at another. How many professors are in the department? How many are obviously native speakers? What dialects are taught? Are all profs from the same area so the students end up with the same type of accent (Beijing vs Shanghai, for example)?
How deep is the IR program? Is it truly interdisciplinary or focused more on politics? Is there a regular program of outside speakers?
Four-year planning Our older kids attend/ed a university with online interactive degree planning sheets. So helpful! We looked for similar all-in-one planners, even just PDFs, while building D’s list. With very careful planning and AP credit, D should be able to meet her multiple language plus IR plus security studies plus multiple study abroad goals.
The key is having AP credit fulfill core/gen ed requirements. She would only need to take 3 gen ed classes at one school! Two other would require 5 but it looks like 1-2 could overlap with major course choices. The fourth EA school would require 8 gen ed courses, including 2 lit surveys (only American, Brit, and World as choices so the Arabic lit courses would not count), the idea of which makes D want to poke her eyes out. And of course, it’s the most affordable school. Sigh.
Essay update All eighty bazillion essays for one scholarship are either complete or in decent rough form. The two that are still roughish will be smoothed out this weekend. D discovered last night that her Common App essay can be tweaked to fit UMD’s prompt and to fit one of the Ole Miss special programs essays. Another scholarship essay can be adjusted for a second special programs essay. A third scholarship essay can be lengthened for an OkU Honors essay. She only has 10 essays, ranging from 100 to 700 words, to start from scratch. And there was much rejoicing <:-P
That would be ideal, but in some states like CA it is really hard to find something with much guarantee that a high stats kid will be happy with that is more than just “likely”, at least in-state. You can go 4 notches down the pecking order from UCLA and still not be guaranteed. We may end up deciding a bunch of likelys is close enough to having a safety.
@youcee Yup, none of the UCs nor CSUs (I do not know that well…not from CA) are “true” safeties – no guarantee. So it will have to be an Out of State school with guaranteed acceptance and guaranteed scholarships (or WUE) based on stats.
My oldest computer was my father bought one of the Radio Shack Model I level II. I was in junior high. There was no floppy you used a cassette tape player instead of a disk. Mostly my older brother & father used more than I. But I learned how to write Basic on the thing. Enough I could code circles around the teacher when the school decided we all needed to learn Basic as a H.S. freshman. I remember playing that D&D style game “You are in a room with 4 doors E/W/N/S?” (Don’t remember it’s name) I did end up taking that computer to school one year in college (it has a floppy drive by then) and a printer. And used it mostly for typing essays.
First computer I ever bought was an AT&T dos with one of those green & black screens. My main memory was the entire package cost me $1,500. (Which was a large portion of my college fee’s) It was great because I could do my programming for the C class I took that fall in my bedroom at my off campus apartment rather than haunting the computer labs way into the night.
@WhereIsMyKindle What is the IUB dinner for? D went to a nice reception here recently but it wasn’t like the formal dinners we’ve attended. It was during the afternoon at a hotel. Lots of food and nicely done.
“aiming to submit all before EA outcomes come out.”
There is no way my son will ever have all the apps finished. This will be down to the wire with every submission. He spends a ridiculous amount of time THINKING about writing. LONG weekend here…hope something is complete by Monday.
Test Optional question.
Ok, I’m going to throw this out there as I trust this group to be kind and honest,far more so than if I put this out on a main admission thread. The reality is the schools in questions forums simply don’t get enough traction to get decent input there. I realize that retesting and attempting to get them up would be ideal. It’s not going to happen.
S17 has, (for this thread anyway), low test scores and gpa and does not plan to retest. He has planned to last June, fractured that stupid wrist and all momentum was lost. ADHD, terrible test taker, and horrid self confidence when it comes to standardized tests etc. All but one of his colleges superscore and in his case my thinking had been every little bit helps. Almost all of them are Test Optional as well.
ACT, 2 sittings
23/24 C 25 Superscore
23/28 E
24/24 M
23/23 R
22/24 S
UW GPA 3.45. School does not weight or rank
6/18 AP’s that are offered
3/5 Honors classes that are offered
1/3 “College in the classroom” classes that are offered.
Decent EC’s but not a ton of actual leadership.
I am not sure that he will get the “most demanding” but will definitely get “very demanding” if not. Given that it is based on his peers/classmates it could go either way as his schedule is pretty standard for that upper group with not many taking much more as it’s pretty impossible to do that and music, which he does. We do know one 2016 girl that managed 11 AP’s, the most in school history but in general he seems to be in the range of the upper end of the class which is in a 5-9 AP total range.
So. My feeling has been that his test scores pretty much match his GPA and neither help nor hurt him for the most part as long as the schools have been chosen appropriately. We’ve already sent scores to 5 of the 7 but I find myself debating whether I should for the remaining two.
Those schools CDS looks like this.
Ithaca: GPA is not reported, ACT middle 50 is 24-29 with a 27 average
Allegheny: Average GPA is 3.69, he is just barely out of the bottom quartile here. ACT scores are 22-29 for the middle 50 with an average of 25.
If I send, I need to send all scores and well, $98 bucks is $98 bucks. Does anyone think we gain anything by not sending??? Ithaca is impossible to tell with no GPA data. We have 3 total data points in Naviance there and based on that S would have 100% chance of acceptance at his stats. But 3 data points don’t count for much. We have zero data points for Allegheny. I get results all over the map between systems like Cappex, Parchment and Niche
For Allegheny it kind of seems like we have to, that the app is stronger with them. I can’t read Ithaca at all though. I do know they make a big point of saying that optional is really optional and both schools note them as only “considered” versus important.
Thoughts? I guess I’m trying to see the benefit of not sending and am not. Other than the obvious which is that I’m over thinking a very middle/low stats kid situation and kind of trying to be cheap. Sigh.
@CT1417 Same here. Hoping to see something done by tomorrow night. He has some deadlines spread out so we will see what happens this weekend.
Also it seems like the 2-sentence short answers are the hardest to do, for some reason.