Sophomore daughter took PSAT today at public school. Last year, school had freshman, sophomores, and juniors take it, but this year just sophs and juniors.
DS has 3 applications submitted, but he still has to do complete scholarship essays for 2 of them so doesn’t fully count.
I once posted on my FB that I was at the 10 year anniversary ceremony of DS’s charter school. It was formed around 14 years ago.
A FB friend responded that his “high” school where his daughter just enrolled was 500 years old (in UK.) 
^:)^
Just checked my D’s college-related email address, and she has over 2300 emails since last year. Several of those contained app fee waivers and other nuggets.
My D17’s college-only email account has 1,748 emails, and this after she started aggressively unsubscribing from lists six months or so ago.
D’s inbox is pretty much empty. She only saved a minimal amount (absolutely-need, such as portal ids) to a separate archive folder. Same is S’20. They delete everything the moment they read them.
Re: college email accounts. Is there something that tracks how many were received? I delete and unsubscribe constantly and then empty trash periodically. I guess what I don’t know is if the emails deleted from my computer are also deleted from his Archive account, or if they will remain since they are not in his inbox but were sent to Archive?
But I don’t really care all that much!
@CaucAsianDad – here is hoping that the randomness of test scoring combined with super scoring may just result in that magic 10 point bump she needs! My older son took the SAT for a third time Oct of Sr year, only attempting to increase the math, but his W score went up a fair bit, resulting in a better super score than he had been hoping for. So here’s hoping for unintended consequences!
Re: PSAT—I thought the CB was trying to move students to almost annual testing and billing it as some sort of standardized test, but I have not been paying close attention as I do not have a younger child.
I commute 40 miles each way to school. It’s not too bad, against traffic. I’m sitting in the parking lot right now waiting for d18 to finish her gov honors program interview, and I’m on my tablet so typing is laborious.
The commute gives me great opportunities to listen to audio books,and right now I’m listening to Condoleezza Rice’s autobiography, read by her. It is delightful! Really a fascinating woman.
D18 said she felt good about the PSAT and was able to answer all the questions. Fingers crossed for good results. She said today’s memes on the questions are hilarious.
@youcee I totally got that you were being funny, and I laughed about it. Sriouly, start a thread and see how many wig out 
We have all email to the college-account forwarded to both of our normal email accounts (based on filters that have changed throughout the year). That’s how I know when D gets an email, often before she does. So, we don’t actually end up ‘deleting’ anything from the college account. Most of them are never even ‘read’ since we don’t often log into that account, except to manage filters, and send email out/reply.
So, @CT1417 we just look at the total email count in the bogus account.
@hadmeathello – son does not look at the email unless I send one to him. Having said that, I think he will be a bit more territorial about the portal log-ins!
So smart to have created a separate email address. Wish had thought of that!
I did, however, keep all of the mailings in a big basket. If I could upload a photo, I would. I’ve kept every piece in a large, plant basket and it’s almost full. It’s an incredible amount of paper. Many schools I’ve never heard of!
We didn’t know about setting up a separate email address for D17. S20 has one, and he deployed it for the first time on today’s PSAT. Great idea to set up filters to automatically forward to our personal emails!
D17 has a large rubbermaid tote filled with college junk mail. We want to have a celebratory bonfire when her college choice is 100% official.
@eandesmom Oh, wow, thanks for the info on the alumni interview, good to know! Well, my D17 just got two apps done for EA (ones that didn’t require extra supplements) and I finished the FAFSA and CSS Profile, what a pain that one was!!! I can’t tell you the sense of relief that SOMETHING is done. Talked to the school counselor today and she is going to submit everything through naviance tomorrow, so I also feel a little better about that.
@IBviolamom I think she’s ok with 2 safeties! Mine only has two on her list right now. I like that mine is applying EA to a few (2 safeties, 2 high match/low reach) so that we’ll have answers early and she can always apply to more RD if needed… She’s actually waiting to apply to her #1 school RD so she can increase her SAT scores a bit.
@vandyeyes OH JOY!!!
@Ynotgo I didn’t’ know you could get an interview before submitting an application… how does that come about?
@mamaedefamilia sorry your D is not feeling well
@WhereIsMyKindle I feel your pain, my D puts a ton of pressure on herself. Sometimes I try to help/organize and sometimes it helps and sometimes it makes it worse. It’s tricky.
EA application to George Mason (including the honors college) submitted!
Next up: Macalester EA (and Alabama’s Blount Initiative, though that one doesn’t seem to have a firm deadline).
@dfbdfb I thought Mac was ED only - has something changed in their admissions process?
Question on UMD app, for anyone who has progressed passed the demographic info page…
Do they enforce the 500 word limit on the essay or is it liberalized to 650 words as it is on the CA? If not, there will be a lot of rewriting this weekend.
Also, does anyone know if teacher LORs can still be uploaded via Naviance? I am thinking not.
Thanks!
@mamaedefamilia, no, you’re right—they’re ED only, not EA. I just had it mixed up in my mind because the deadline for an automatic fee waiver is 15 November (and since I knew there were no ED apps in the mix, anything that early must have been EA, by ultimately false logic).
QOTN Not going to say how old the oldest school in the district, it’s as older than the city. But it will identify my city too closely. @mtrosemom Our H.S. Also always had PSAT on Saturday except last year when it was only offered on Wed.
@VickiSoCal Yup commuting 40 miles would be misserable and we wouldn’t have considered it, but the question did get brought up. It was a small LAC which required staying in the dorms all 4 years.
** PSAT ** Our H.S. not only doesn’t have all students take the PSAT but would only let juniors take the test. I heard of students taking it as freshman or sophomores and and I did try and get S to take if his sophomore year. (They were pushing a pre ACT test instead, that turned out to be a epic fail all around.) Our H.S. has an award winning number of students who get NM, so not allowing it doesn’t affect their chances.
Don’t understand why so many schools push freshman & sophomores to take it. Or all students? What do the schools get out of making every student take the test, or take it every year? I’m honestly curious.
Personally I’m someone who finds too many standardized tests just anxiety producing for the amount of benefit they give. Now I’ll admit from where I sit with one kid who is a one-and-done kid, and the other who was so bad at test taking that we gave her private test prep, had her take the ACT twice and used the no-so-great score to get her into a school she was happy in. It reflected her ability and was an honest score.
@CT1417 Tbe word count is strict. In fact, we’ve found that to be the case with every essay that had a word count, and the count was often different than we got from Word, so done minor tweaking was usually required.
Teacher LORs can be uploaded through Naviance.
@curiositycat333. Son’s HS requires kids to take PSATs freshmen, sophomore and junior year. They justify this approach by saying it helps the kids get more comfortable with timed, standardized tests so that they don’t get as stressed out junior year.