Parents of the HS Class of 2017 (Part 1)

Parents of HS Class of 20xx
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D is way over extended and completely overwhelmed.

Last home game is tonight so it will be her last half-time show for marching band. It will be very tough on W and me, but D desperately needs the 15 - 20 hours a week she spends on band to be used for school work and sleep. She has an away game next week which means she will not be home until after 11 PM followed by the the district marching competition the next day (which will have her away from home at least 14 hours). After that she turns in her marching uniform for the last time.

Her most import college app is due Nov 1 and her essay is in shambles. Hope some magic happens this weekend. It seems she is a little tentative to expose too much of her personality in the essay. I am hoping with her back against the wall she will open up and deliver.

Last standardized test was in-school SAT on 10/19, that pressure is gone.

Being a parent is HARD, being a senior is HARD too.

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I’ve been AWOL due to work, but I wanted to give a quick status update. D2 is applying to UMD, and at the moment it’s her first choice. The app is due Tuesday, and she still has only one (very rough) first draft of her essay, and only two of the five short-answer questions completed. I think I may go 'splody into little mom-shaped pieces from sheer stress!

Her essay is well below the quality of writing she usually produces. When she showed it to me and I pointed out corrections and suggestions, she told me that many of the things I’d noted were deliberate stylistic choices. I can understand that because I know how she usually writes, but a CA won’t. Ah, well, maybe her sister’s review will improve the situation. (D1 is an English major, as I was.)

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Me too. College email has also been turned over to me to monitor. Additionally I have been promoted to Project Manager for all applications, including honors programs, until further notice.

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I’m thinking more and more, @CaucAsianDad, that you were right a couple weeks ago, and you and I are the same person, and our children are, too. :slight_smile:

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@NerdMom88 I feel your pain with the essay. My D17 has some crappy ‘stylistic choices’ in her CA essay too and it doesn’t help that her english teacher thought it was brilliant and the only friend she showed it to said she cried and was shaking when she read it (the drama!). Yeah, I was crying and shaking too, with fear that she wouldn’t listen to me and leave it that way. She had a great idea for her essay, how do I convince her to take out the overdramatic language so the AO can get through it in one read?!

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@BlueAFMom Wow, her friend cried and was shaking when she read your D’s essay? What kind of an epic drama did she write under 650 words? (If it involves family dog’s death, I would be crying and shaking, too, though!)

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@hadmeathello I’d love to have a life. Instead I have work deadlines. Ack. Finish one big project a couple days early but the scope of the 2nd project has grown/changed (as software does…) Anyway, I haven’t had a chance to post here much lately. I’ve been reading quickly, so just caught up about 1 1/2 days worth of postings. Congrats for all the apps in, admits, improved scores, etc. <:-P

Welcome back @Agentninetynine and so sorry about your loss of dear relatives.

Like @NerdMom88, here’s my status update. DS17 has his MIT app plus research and maker supplements ready to go, but is afraid to push submit for fear he might think of something to change. He has friends from his summer program who have pushes the dreaded Submit button, so I told him to ask them how they got over nerves. I checked in the Google Doc, and this one application was about 3700 words total. Last night was video filming and video editing night for the Maker supplement.

DS does this too. He goes over and over the essays, and stresses that his editing is making parts worse. One time, he’ll say, “OK, this one is good.” The next day he’ll mark up every other sentence as “awkward and awful” in the same essay. I’ve mostly been able to talk him down from these panics, and food or caffeine seems to help.

Empathizing will all those stressing about LoRs. His physics teacher LoR is turned in everywhere, but it doesn’t seem like his History teacher or research mentor have opened the forms. Ack. I’m bugging him to bug them. Research mentor has a letter he wrote last spring, so that should only need a bit of updating. History teacher seems responsible, so I’m hoping he’s writing it but just hasn’t opened DS’s form to pour it in. All the school materials, transcripts, and scores appear to be in for the one portal we have so far, so that’s a relief.

QOTD, Portals: I guess I will be the one checking more. He’ll still have more essays to write for the foreseeable future, and I want him to be able to focus on that. So far, he only has the MIT portal, which he has to go through to edit the parts of the application, so it is open a lot. DS is happy with me being the Project Manager, and occasionally I get a thanks for the nagging.

Tomorrow he and I are going down to the Pasadena area for an interview at Mudd in the morning and an alumni dinner for his summer program in the evening near Caltech. He says the middle of the day is writing essays. I told him maybe writing the Caltech essays on the Caltech campus would help.

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I usurped power over portals and project management as well. Probably too much, but hey, she’s going somewhere now.

Speaking of which, she has now answered the ‘what are your top picks now?’ question with several answers over the last few weeks. I was surprised to hear her latest, yesterday. Her top 2 did not include her #1 from 3 weeks ago. And her #1 before that is totally off the list.

Leads me to a QOTD2 (I’ll forget if I wait until tomorrow): Is your kid excited about attending college? My D is soooooooo excited to go. She likes all of her choices so far, it seems, and can’t wait to choose and get going. She has a few RD apps, so I’m not sure how she is going to wait for a March/April decision.

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QOTD2: D2 is excited about the idea of studying her chosen field, but not yet excited about the idea of actually going to college. I think after this whole process, when she has accepted one of the offers, she’ll be able to look forward with anticipation.

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Essays: DH and I had a difference of opinion on 2 short essays DS wrote recently. Awkward trying not to confuse DS with too many people involved. For both of them, DH wanted the news up front, not waiting until the middle or end of a 100 word essay (short!) to get the answer. I thought they were creative and visual.

DS ended up going with his version of the first essay (what do you do for fun; the most visual one) after sending it to a (girl)friend from his summer program, who liked it.

He ended up rewriting the 2nd essay (what major do you want?) and made it stronger than his original or what DH suggested.

@NerdMom88 He does include some informal language that he says is “one of my voice lines.” (I don’t know where that term came from.) It may depend on which college the essay is going to and who at the college reads it. I’m also a writer, so informal language can bug me, but I understand its place when he’s trying to get across how he fits the culture of the college.

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@ hadmeathello Let’s keep it rolling!!
@ eandesmom - Thanks, that’s what I’m thinking, it won’t show up

@MotherOfDragons so is “college” chat once per week? I’m afraid I can empathize with @phoenixmomof2 and I’m way too involved, I can’t help but wanting to know where everything is in the process :-w

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QOTD2: D is sooooooo excited about moving out and be independent in a (supposedly) cool city hanging out with her new friends. I don’t think she is actually excited about studying itself.

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Oh, the essay drama! I have that too, plus the fact I think my D wrote a risky topic and that really worries me but it’s a really good essay and I think it’s luck of the draw as to who actually reads it!

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@Ynotgo – getting close!! Wow - 3700 word submission to MIT - research paper perhaps? Hoping DS finishes his maker portfolio this weekend - no research paper done but he has a lot of info about his projects collected on a website he made. I hope if he refers to it in the Maker Portfolio that is ok.

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@Ynotgo

“I told him maybe writing the Caltech essays on the Caltech campus would help.”

A family friend toured Cal Tech and returned with a story from their tour guide. Apparently they have some sort of system where students can take exams wherever they want (honor code??? I may be wrong with details here), so this guy decided to sit in a tree while taking his exam.

We have never visited, but that story has remained with me. I know there are quirky students at all of these tech campuses we have visited.

Re: Portal, LORs, & email…still waiting for physics teacher to write LOR. He is aware of the 11/1 deadline and has a fair # of LORs to write for this cohort he has taught AP C to for two years. Fingers crossed.

The school is completely on top of submitting their pieces (or so it appears). My only worry is UMD-CP as I thought I read that nothing will be accepted after 11/1, but son may not access to their portal until after 11/1, so who knows how that one will turn out.

My prior experience with private universities is that there is wiggle room on all parts of app other than the app itself and payment of the app fee.

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@Ynotgo and @CA1543 --I suppose I should go an look at this MIT app, but I just assume that it will be beyond me. I think I have heard him mumble something about GitHub, but knowing son, he will need to spend HOURS updating whatever is already on GitHub. I don’t think he has plans to videotape anything?

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I’m surprised MIT’s acceptance rate is so low as it appears that the application itself is a huge filter.

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QOTD- I use to check the portals daily, now it is not very often. I know everything has been submitted.

QOTD- D is so excited to go to college. She is already planning her dorm room decorations and sorority rush outfits!

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@CA1543 Nope, that doesn’t count the research paper, which had several co-authors. But the research supplement has 3 x 1500 character essays. Maker supplement has 3 x 900 character plus 1000 characters per image/video and he had 8.

@CT1417 Yes, test taking in a tree sounds very Caltech. You wouldn’t do that in Boston this time of year! Honor code is a big thing there. Is is addressed in one of the essays. I really did see numerous unlocked bicycles on the campus. You would never see that at UCSB.

Yes, DS did spend several hours updating some project on GitHub, but that was for the Maker supplement, not for the main application. There is no GitHub use on the main application.

@youcee I agree. But, it would only be about 1800 words without the 2 supplements and less than that without the “additional information.” Caltech will be 2600 words (because he hasn’t gotten past draft 1 of the Common App essay yet.

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@jeepgirl – does she know where she is going to college? What if sorority rush is not a big deal? (As a former social chair, I fully support sorority life, but just amused that she is already considering the outfits!)