@LoveTheBard Thanks- S has research that can’t adequately be described in the activities section. He had to use acronyms to fit it all in, so it needs explanation. The question was whether to use bullet points or a paragraph style–He ended up with a short paragraph that works pretty well.
@4beardolls we found it in the help section, basically had to determine there wasn’t a canned answer to the question and then submit through there. I chose to do it through the app so it linked to the account (for easy fixing on their end, which worked).
But it was appsupport @ commonapp . net (remove spaces)
Thank you so much, @eandesmom.
No homecoming activities for my kids. They have no interest football. Our team usually stinks too. There is no school dance, cancelled it due to lack of interest. No floats or parades or whatever. Basically a non event at our school. Fine with me and my kids.
No school today, Jewish holiday. So son27 is planning to submit must of his apps today. 5 schools early action. Finally! Then we can just relax until holidays He should get into at least a few of the schools. He might not even apply to the other schools on his regular decision dates.
2 schools of interest only offer early decision and then regular decision, no early action. Kind of stinks.
S’s school has a homecoming game and dance, neither of which he has ever gone to. He says that he might this year just to see what it’s about.
He made progress on his essays and apps over the weekend, but can’t submit a thing until he has his official GPA. Still waiting on that. Once he gets that he’ll be ready to go with a few EA schools.
Our school has a game on a Friday night D17 went once, said never again, and semi-formal dance Saturday night, she goes every year, with friends, no date.
I have never been to a h.s. football game in my life.
D20 planned to not go to game and go to dance with friends, same as sister.
We may have to change our ways as D20 has been nominated for Freshman Princess. In which case she has to go to the game and ride around in a car with the Freshman Prince and take a bunch of pics and such. Our family is kind of in shock. We are not homecoming court kind of people. We’ll see how the vote goes.
OK… those mums are just a waste of $$ if they are $500. If they were say homemade maybe I could get it. But what teen has time to make anything like that.
Personally I don’t understand all this pageantry. I have a problem with popularity contest & sexism I seen in the whole spectacle. D12 went to homecoming & prom though and never any other dances. S17 doesn’t really care. I think was interested just to see what’s up & he could have probably easily found a date this year. Mostly it’s a time to hand out with friends who would be going. Our homecoming dance is dressy but not prom dressy except for those on the court. S17 is annoyed that he’s has to sit around and watch the homecoming half time show, marching band performs before the game not at half time.
The teachers nominate the kids at our school, so getting on the ballot is not a popularity contest (at least not with other students) I was a little surprised my freshman was nominated as she’s not usually one the teachers choose for various awards. It’s a big school, 700-800 kids per class, so I wonder how many of the kids even know who they are voting for? No one campaigns, D17 says that’s frowned on. Weird, and so not something any of us is familiar with.
We have 1 prince and princess from F/S/J class
3 princes and 3 princesses from Senior class with King/Queen announced at game.
So gender balanced.
@curiositycat333 … Lots of kids do homemade ones and they are relatively low cost (less than 100) AND tasteful. But the larger massive ones go up towards $500. Some of the girls can’t even wear them more than a few hours.
I’m all about a bit of fun— but I think they are so incredibly ugly (the bigger ones).
So I completed my son’s FAFSA form.
Our EFC came out to, well, let’s just say we’re “full pay.”
Hopefully this makes him a stronger candidate!
After the acceptances come in I’ll start the begging process. 
The kids are nominated and voted on by the kids. This year some mean guys thought it would be funny to nominate a transgender student. The only reason I know it was a joke was that the whole thing ended up being posted on FB by other kids who were standing up for her. I don’t think they have announced who is on the court but I think she has a good chance of winning.
@STEM2017 Do you still want to submit FAFSA to schools then? I ran through our numbers using the official formular yesterday. There is no way we get any help if we don’t have several kids attending colleges at the same time. So with this knowledge, I rather D just click on “not applying need based” on CA…
@STEM2017 Good job putting hard work! to arrive at Why Bother. :((
If that is the case, are you checking “No” for “Do you intend to pursue (apply for) need based financial aid?” on Common App?
People said one can do FAFSA later (after acceptance?) for federal loans only.
Does the order matter? CSS vs FAFSA? Anyone doing CSS recommend doing FASFA first? Or does the order not matter?
@whataboutcollege and @payn4ward I have to fill out FAFSA and send it to schools because I will be following up to beg for money. I had a dramatic downward change in income from 2015 to 2016 and beyond. In 2015 I had a one time spike because I withdrew from my IRA to deal some living and home repair expenses (mistake). So my 2015 income makes me look like a big hitter, but unfortunately most of it came from my life savings.
In any case, there’s no doubt that from this year to next, we will go from “full pay” to “full need.”
Homecoming: My oldest two go to a school with no sports, because it’s a “zone-exemption” school (that is, it can admit from anywhere in the district), and district rules prohibit extramural sports for those schools, for fear they’d cherry-pick the best athletes. (Doesn’t keep the neighborhood high schools from granting “academic” admission exemptions to athletes from other schools’ zones, though…) They have a homecoming dance each year in conjunction with one of the other zone-exemption secondary schools, with the host alternating. (This year it was at my daughters’ school.) The past few years, there’s been an informal homecoming soccer game associated with it, always hosted by the other school; the other school takes it very seriously, my daughters’ school not so much (leading to scores like 27–1 last year—haven’t heard what this year’s was). In any event, though D19 was required to help set up for the dance due to a student government thing, neither of them went.
Homecoming mums: I simply thought the original reference was a typo for “homecoming moms” or something like that. After reading the link, I’d like to think there’s a rebellious Texan couple out there right now who are planning a simple chrysanthemum blossom, just to mess with everyone.
Undermatching: Somebody upthread mention “undermatching”. I’d argue that overmatching can be an issue if the student is unable to pick up the pace and hang with it, but undermatching is generally not so much an issue. In fact, for the right student—in particular, one who isn’t afraid to make connections with professors—an undermatch is, I think, a better situation than an overmatch, at least at schools where faculty have a research component to their workload, because those students are more likely to get high-quality attention and opportunities they might not at “higher-end” (whatever that means) institutions because they’d just be one among the sea of faces. (Really, I’d argue that concerns about undermatching are driven by higher-end institutions who realize they’re missing out on good students who could provide reputation and donations down the road—but it’s a completely self-serving concern.)
@dfbdfb re:undermatching I agree 100%. It is also the experience my kids have had. Professors step up and offer to mentor them, offer research opportunities, and go out of their way to make recommendations for them.
@payn4ward, @STEM2017 we are full pay in most scenarios, however in a few cases, having 2 in college does provide a small boost, either in increased grant or in the offered student loans being a combo of subsidized and unsubsidized (versus all unsubsidized). Should S choose anything other than his in state financial safety, he will have to have skin in the game and to the extent we can minimize that, it’s worth it. And given that he may likely need to take the loans, we might as well get the FAFSA set up now.
I am doing FAFSA first. One EA school requires it by 11/1 for merit consideration. Only one school has PROFILE (3 used to but 2 dropped it this year, really wish they all had lol) and in theory I have until 2/1 on that but plan to do it shortly after FAFSA just to get it over with.
It is complete other than waiting until the brokest day of the month to file. Well that and S17 needs to actually get his FAFSA ID first. He doesn’t need to, we can do it at completion but I’d rather he did.
That said, the one school that requires PROFILE doesn’t (appear to) give us a boost for having 2 kids it just adjusts the subsidized portion to magically meet the “need” differential, versus showing that as meeting any need on top of a loan being offered. Which of course is better than nothing but that’s a lot of paperwork for that. LOL!
Just finished paying the UA housing deposit. For some reason I thought it was $200… but it was $300… I wouldn’t want to have to do that at very many schools.
@MichiganGeorgia I’m afraid I’d feel held hostage by that.
@VickiSoCal …nah, but I would if it was at every school! yikes!