@eandesmom, just throwing out a piece of info on Allegheny–they calculate GPA using all classes (electives + core), unweighted. Is the GPA you have reported for your S based just on core courses or all courses?
@dfbdfb I’ll see you you’re Muhlenburg info session dude, and raise you one Pitt info session dude. I wonder if maybe he just tours around doing PA school info sessions? If so, I’m gonna be a little upset!
@carachel2, congrats on your D’s Pitt admit!! I know you have been waiting for that.
I don’t know about your Texas schools, but I think it’s only important to pay housing deposit early for UA, because those who do can pick earlier.
For Pitt you can’t even pay housing deposit until you pay enrollment deposit, and you don’t need to do that until the spring.
@mommdc …THANKS! Her regional Pitt admissions officer was fantastic and helpful over the past few weeks. Her application had been placed in a “hold” pile because she had indicated she was taking the ACT again in September.
I LIKE that Pitt does housing that way. No pressure to to throw $$ into the process before you really know.
For both A&M and UT you DO need to get that housing deposit in ASAP. In fact, in the nice admissions offer packet from A&M there is a huge separate postcard that says “THE CLOCK IS TICKING: You have less than 30 days to register for priority freshman housing on campus. The SOONER you register the better chance of getting assigned to one of your top choices of residence halls…” = there goes $200 to hold a spot for a place we don’t know yet if we are going to want or not.
@klinska sadly, that is his UW for all classes. UW core only is lower (darn Spanish!). Junior GPA is much better with a 3.67 UW for all and a 3.52 for the core, but 9/10 were rollercoasters before he started the ADHD meds. I hope the trendline and increased rigor helps. Allegheny is probably the reachiest of his schools…and has the strongest program for his major (in my opinion anyway). Depending on the data I look at it’s either a high match, or a low reach. His test scores are in line with the middle 50 (although his reading is on the low side), it is the GPA that isn’t.
Congrats @carachel2!
Congratulations @carachel2! <:-P <:-P <:-P
Home from the Univ of South Carolina Top Scholars lunch. It didn’t sway DDd’s opinion of the school but the steak was good. And I have to say that I have much appreciation for a college that recognizes that students should be recruited for academics just like athletes are recruited. Certainly helps the ego a little.
@eandesmom
Ithaca (all years to 2016) - 55% (98/177) - Average ACT of kids applied was 27, so the same goes below. Lowest accepted ACT was 19 (regular), 20 (early) - often times hooked kids
Average Accepted (regular- 82/157 students) 3.92 (W) | 1228/1600 | 1838/2400 | 27/36
Average Accepted (early- 15/19 students) 3.85 (W) | 1168/1600 | 1719/2400 | 27/36
Allegheny (all years to 2016) - 83% (72/80) - Average ACT of kids applied wa 28, so the same goes below. Lowest accepted ACT was 20 (regular), 22 (early)
Average Accepted (regular- 60/68 students) 4.1 (W) | 1208/1600 | 1799/2400 | 28/36
Average Accepted (early- 12/12 students) 4.01 (W) | 1093/1600 | 1703/2400 | 28/36
@curiositycat333 wrote
I think it might have been Mines of Moria.
@carachel2 wrote
Wow, thank you for reminding me of that. I need to put the deposit down for UA’s housing so on the chance she goes there, she doesn’t end up in the Tower O’ Women dorm that we drove by and instead gets the sweet suites…
She’s back from the sat 2’s. Said math was ok, missed three for sure, bio was harder, missed 4. She liked that there were a lot of genetics on the bio one. Testing done, booyah!
@eandesmom I would send your son’s ACT to Allegheny as it sounds like it’s solidly within their mid range. Ithaca, I don’t know as it’s on the lower end of the middle 50% However, I always wonder if you don’t send it if they imagine that it’s worse than it is? That is by no means a bad score. And I think that they will look at the essay score %, even if officially it’s not required. Bottom line, your son sounds like a capable, hardworking young man and I’m sure that many colleges and universities will appreciate what he has to offer.
@carachel2 Congrats on all of those acceptances!!! Wow!
@LoveTheBard Hope you recover quickly. I had a shoulder sprain a few years back - it was not pleasant and slow to heal. Hope a dislocation is a faster recovery time.
And … drum roll please … FOUR applications submitted today, including the dream school and the love-thy-likely (we try not to use safety in this house)! Five down, four to go, plus additional supplements for merit scholarships after she gets into their systems.
@carachel2 So, that’s $200 for TX school deposit, and another $200+ for UA (non-refundable portion). Yikes! I thought the application was the expensive part! I DO need a spreadsheet.
@disshar So, what IS your D’s opinion of UofSC/USCaro? 
@eandesmom Happy to throw my Naviance’s Ithaca and Allegheny info your way, but it may not be much help bc it is the Northeast and ACT is less popular.
These are for 2008-2016.
Allegheny
12/12 accepted
Av GPA 4.15 Weighted
1244 av SAT
Ithaca
194/234 admitted [83%]
Av GPA 3.95 weighted
1170 av SAT
25 av ACT
Hope that’s helpful!
Congratulations @carachel2 !!
It’s got to feel great making so much progress by October 1st!
I agree that it’s really great to get so many apps out this early. The internet tends to slow down/crash at 11:59 pm on October 31.
@curiositycat333, I’m pretty sure the game you mean is Colossal Cave Adventure. Does the phrase “You are in a maze of twisty little passages all alike” ring a bell? When I was in Junior High my Dad had a teletype-style workstation at home that could dial in to his company’s mainfraime which had the game. Yes, I was tying up the phone line at our house playing computer games before there even was an internet! (He did make me learn Fortran, so it wasn’t all fun and games…)
Thanks to all for the kind thoughts and shared experiences!
I had dislocated the other shoulder in a cycling accident before D17 was born and it’s still fresh in my memory (shoulder dislocations are a special kind of pain.) And this is from someone who has had bad orthopedic karma from birth necessitating ca. 7 surgeries and two joint replacements to date; I know from joint pain. I’m hoping that this will recover well and that there’s no permanent damage (right now I have some nerve damage affecting the hand…hopefully it will go away in time. I know that I’m looking at lots of PT in the coming weeks/months.
I never addressed the computer thing…my first exposure to programming was in 1979 when a friend of mine was visiting me at Georgetown where I was a language major (she had been one too, but couldn’t find a job). She showed up with a stack of punch cards consisting of a program she had written and made arrangement to run it at a computer lab. Fast forward years…Like my friend, I couldn’t figure out what to do with a language degree, so I decided to follow in her footsteps and learn programming languages. Took a semester-long “diploma program” in programming and systems design through NYU. It was basically a course in “how-to-get-an-entry-level-job-as-a-computer-programmer.” In it, we learned COBOL and Assembler (BAL). I worked for nearly two decades in various programming and system design jobs – everything from being an IBM Systems 370 mainframe systems programmer to a video game programmer for the Children’s Television Workshop (Sesame Street) where I designed an programmed “educational software activities” for a Commodore 64 in 6502 Assembler (thanks for the memories, @MotherOfDragons) to a software designer and project leader for a geographic informations system for a large metropolitan area.
xyzzy :-B
@eandesmom My experience with test optional scores is that they want something extra for not getting the tests. One of D12’s schools who was test option got back to her and said her scores weren’t high enough, and to send in the writing sample they took instead of SAT/ACT. For that school it was putting together a sample of her writing. I would take a look at what test optional means at each school. Do they ask for extra “other” material?
** Worst thing at a college visit ** It’s not at the visit. But when D12 @ I went to visit a school in Western Penn. We had the second leg of our flight into Erie canceled because of a snow storm. So I rented a car & drove through the storm instead. (It wasn’t really that bad of a storm, the flights just couldn’t get through to the small airport.) We made it fine, but it did turn a CA girl off from the school because it was so hard to get to… Although it was very pretty the next day.