@payn4ward, we need those tiny defined benefit plans for milk and bread when we retire. I didn’t count that at all in ours. I thought the main purpose of CSS is to demonstrate our ability and “willingness” to pay. My heart and my wallet was broken when I committed to that number, which will surely be too low in 2 years, judging from the rapid increase in tuitions!!
DS had his MIT interview - was an hour. He said there were a few tough questions but interviewer was nice and he felt good about it - glad it is over. Hopefully he can focus and get some homework done - calc test soon & several other things. !st qtr ends in about 2 weeks so we anticipate tests ramping up. I feel for all the students stressing over grades & really hope things work out well. Still we have to take it all one day at a time.
I didn’t include my husband’s pension in our profile filing either. Quite frankly it actually didn’t occur to me to do so but to your point that’s a difficult thing to measure.
Don’t understand why retirement accounts are to be included in any education related calculations. People can’t take retirement $ out to pay for colleges without penalties right?
Ok, then I’ll too accidentally forget about it. :-/ ;
Since we are never going to retire (paying college loans,) I may never end up collecting it. :))
Regarding market value of our house, zestimate is quite high. DH says considering all the work that our house needs we should discount $$$ since no work on the house will get done once we start paying for college. :-S Our 20-yr-young refrigerator is dying. No ice cream since summer. Aren’t those supposed to last 40 years? :))
@SincererLove Yes, it will be just enough for milk and bread in a few decades 
@whataboutcollege I agree. You can take out contribution part of Roth IRA for college tuition without penalty, which we will probably end up doing.
@CA1543 awesome! Was he nervous? So what kind of questions did they ask? (MIT is not on our list, I’m just interested in the process!)
@carachel2 – he was very nervous but did some practice school and on car ride over was enjoying reading about famous MIT hacks & pranks. Questions included - what is your biggest weakness, who inspires you, why MIT. He felt fairly good about it & the interviewer said they enjoyed talked with him - polite at least, right? He got to show something he is working on. He is NOT a natural conversationalist but he can certainly talk about things he loves. Thankfully had a fresh haircut, clean clothes & was on time. It was an hour so they must have been able to talk about a number of things thankfully. MIT does “train” their alum interviewers so that’s somewhat helpful - you do not typically get crazy questions though they can certainly require reflection.
Progress!!! D submitted her 1st (and 2nd, 3rd, 4th, & 5th) app on the CA today. 4 early action and one rolling decision school. WooHoo, I finally feel like she completed something.
Of course I still need to complete the CSS profile and send it, and I need to still order ACT scores to be sent. But I know I can get that done in the morning.
Her teacher LOR were also incomplete in the CA…but she promised to talk to them in person tomorrow. I hope I am correct in assuming that submitting the CA won’t prevent them from uploaded them LOR. I assume it wouldn’t let us submit if that was true.
She only has one early action left due 11/10 and then 4-5 reg/rolling decision schools that really are just missing short writing supplements. She and I both feel good about getting them completed before Thanksgiving break.
@carachel2 – my son will not be applying to MIT until the RD round, but he says that the one local MIT interviewer has been conducting these interviews for years and he is the only one in our area. I have heard that the MIT alum interviewers are, as you said, trained in a way alum interviewers from other schools are not. (As in, they allowed 24 year old me to conduct alum interviews!! That should not have been allowed.)
Love the line about fresh haircut and clean clothes!
@payn4ward – for house estimate…do you have any realtor neighbors or friends? Our town is overrun with them. A realtor may be able to pull a comp listing for you. The trick would be to save the listing (screen shots perhaps) b/c the ones I have seen expire after 30 days. (The electronic link stops working.) I agree that Zillow listings can be inaccurate, and you certainly do not want to overstate your home’s value.
Does no ice cream since summer mean no ice? I start every morning with soda over a ton of ice, so that would be a problem.
CSS Profile submitted! :D/ :D/
at least for the schools applications went in. :x
@stlarenas Woohoo! <:-P <:-P
Now CASPer and Slackerville population is decreasing.
They moved on to Drop-dead Sprinter (DDS) village. =))
We are done with 6 Apps, 1 safety acceptance, still have 1 EA and 3 RD to go.
10 even in the List. DS may drop 1 or 2 if he gets reaaaally tired. 
We still have Honors and Scholarship apps left. [-(
@CA1543 Glad to hear that the interview went well. :x :D/
@CT1417 No ice and no ice cream since September, I think. I have sensitive teeth, so lack of ice doesn’t bother me. ; Also I got used to filling fridge only up to 1/4. No more Costco shopping. [-X
Perhaps I should have waited to purchase a fridge before doing CSS! :))
Yes, it seems that every other person in the county is a realtor. 
We get biweekly fliers from realtors listing neighborhood home sales. So we know recent sale prices, which is crazy high up. Oh well. DH was saying even tonight we should sell our house, but we love our neighborhood. :-/ :-/
FINALLY, (pita) application to MIT was submitted tonight. I had to laugh, for probably the most tech savvy school by reputation, they have the absolute worst application process (loads of restrictions on the arts supplements and wanting oodles of extra stuff) and worst looking finished product. After all the discussion today about ragged edges, fonts, spaces, and commas (yes I do the Oxford!)…this application looked like a piece of crap…mismatched fonts, mixes of upper and lower cases…it looked terrible. It made us really appreciate the CA, and I guess that pretty much says it all, or at least enough.
So glad it’s in the rear view mirror. :-h
Good news: D has now applied to seven schools, including the five due Nov 1!
Bad news: GC LoR is supposed to be done TOMORROW, although it was also supposed to be done in September and then supposed to be done two days ago. :-w
Weird news (okay, it’s not really “news”): I don’t know if anyone else is applying to Rose-Hulman, but D found one section of their app pretty off-putting. The section is called “locus of control” and claims it is “just one way in which we learn about our students.” Thanks to my otherwise useless psych degree, I remember this basic psychological concept. Those with an internal locus of control think that they primarily control the outcomes of their lives. Those with an external locus of control think their lives are primarily controlled by outside forces.
It’s an optional section, but D had already started filling it out before she realized that, and couldn’t get it to “unfill.” :-??
It had over 20 questions, but I thought I’d share some a few that I found really odd (answers were five choices ranging from “strongly agree” to “strongly disagree.”):
I think it’s pretty strange to have a mini psych evaluation in a college app. And the wording of the questions…“kinda creepy” was D’s thought. But she applied! Free app and we’d already sent scores.
@snoozn —eww…I don’t like that (above).
@snoozn It’s really clear what they want to know - are you a positive person or negative person? Like I don’t want a student who answer “strongly agree” to the last question!!
@snoozn creepy is right, or at least cringe worthy.
@snoozn How odd! UKy also has done odd questions, but nothing so clearly psychological.
@snoozn, what did your DC see in the Rorschach ink-blots?
Me thinks some idle data scientist was able to overfit some of the answers to the admission yield rate.
@panyward What I would do is use the house valuation on my property taxes. Not sure if that’s a good suggestion or not, I haven’t ever filled out the CSS and I won’t have to since S17 is only applying to state schools. The CSS is only for some private school’s correct?? But valuation of my house is odd, so that’s the most straightforward way for me.