Is it possible to look at the PSAT questions and answer explanations. I was looking at our S’18’s PSAT Score Report and on the last page there is an access code with a link to studentscores.collegeboard.org. However on the collegeboard site I don’t see a place to key in the access code. Also all I see are the answers and not the questions. Thought it would help him to review the questions he got wrong.
@ak200008 at my school they passed back the test booklets with the paper score report.
I’m curious if other kids are getting more mailings from certain colleges. My D is getting the repeat mailings from Dickinson and the University of Rochester. U or R also called according to caller ID. She’s had mail and calls from other colleges but the ones I mentioned are hitting hard.
Our son has gotten almost no snail mail, but plenty of emails.
mstomper, I haven’t been checking the emails, but D has talked about them since she’s not very interested. Now I’m curious if she’s also getting emails from the same places.
My D is definitely getting snail mail that runs the gamut of schools. I have no idea about email, but I imagine those are coming in as well.
@snoozn, I also agree about checking the AP schedule and scheduling accordingly.
Welcome @DiotimaDM!
We finally scheduled two and a half visits for spring break. One is about a 5 hour drive south, then we’ll come back home for a day and then drive 3 hours north to see another school. The .5 is a stop at older D’s college for a night. This school is also on D’s list, but I don’t think we’ll do a formal tour there.
@MACmiracle, About mail…one thing I’ve seen is this deluge of snail mail now from elite schools asking D to apply to their summer programs. I see this as money grubbing and not necessarily any kind of honor to be solicited. Emails have increased as well (some of them come to my email address for some reason, which is the only way I know).
Good luck to those planning visits!
Getting tired of Harvard asking my son to their summer school. Because he’s not anywhere near National Merit Commended, frankly I think it is pathetic for them to reach out to kids who would not have a chance to get in.
I know where I teach, the regular instructors do NOT teach the summer school, even though it is touted as a “pre-college program”. In many cases, they use an adjunct or a graduate student, or even a HS teacher.
We are thinking about visits but my father is really ill so don’t know how everything can be fit in.
Thanks @snowfairy137 The school did indeed provide the test questions and the individual answers. Our S’18 didn’t tell me until I specifically asked about it
OK, now UChicago’s admission recruiting has gone too far! I got email from their admissions, “Finding Your Ideal College Home”. I told D18 that we could be roomies 
PS. I hate to tell UChicago but I dropped/flunked out of college 30 years ago …
I went to the Harvard summer school program when I was in high school back in the dinosaur age. I’m not sure if this is still the case today, but back then they were actual college classes. Perhaps taught by adjunct or visiting professors, but full college credit nonetheless. I took the class alongside Harvard students there for the summer and I used to joke about my Harvard transcript. That class was a lot of work but it got me one year of lab science credit.
Whatever the credit was worth, the true value of that summer was the 8 weeks of semi-independent living thousands of miles away from my parents. I lived in Northern California in a very liberal area and spending time on the east coast and meeting people from everywhere was a true learning experience.
We also had much more freedom than I imagine kids today would get. We had no curfew or restrictions on where we could go so my friends and I would often be out at night in Boston having fun. Nothing out of bounds, but just without chaperones, which I’m sure would not be allowed today.
I still think of that summer fondly and encouraged my kids to do something similar, and not because of the college credit! I wanted them to have memories like mine.
How bad is it to apply ED and turn down an acceptance? For some families, finances are complicated and may not align with what the school thinks you can/should pay.
@kayak3 Depends on your definition of “bad.” The colleges really can’t legally force your kid to attend, even though you did sign a contract you would. They can tank your kid’s admission to other schools though, through various channels. If you’re in doubt about being able to pay, it’s not a 100% match and probably shouldn’t apply there ED.
@odannyboySF, Thank you for the confirmation. I was afraid of that. It’s a bummer for some kids to miss out on the higher acceptance rates when some of the financial aid decisions are unknown but it’s not worth being “blacklisted” for other acceptances. Seems in some ways you have to be either very rich or very poor, and the rest of the kids need not apply ED. :-/
H has been checking the CC statements and found a recurring charge for UK-based site “Marked by Teachers” going back several months. No one has signed up for anything like this, and why would we use a UK service for an American student preparing for US college admissions? We bought all the books off Amazon/Barnes & Noble and never gave the CC number to any prep sites. I did use it for SAT registration…
Hmmmm, I’m not sure that there is truly evidence of schools blacklisting a student because he or she turned down ED for financial reasons. I have heard people on here say that students in later years may be negatively impacted, but I don’t know if that’s been substantiated either. If a school’s policy is that a student may decline an ED acceptance if the financial aid is insufficient, I take them at their word.
However, if a student was accepted somewhere ED but continues to apply to more schools, or fails to pull existing applications in order to compare financial aid offers, well that’s shady and I think if a college found out about that, they might give the other school(s) a heads-up about that student. But this is directly in violation of the ED contract, whereas declining an acceptance because the FA offered is inadequate is a scenario that was always contemplated by the ED agreement.
@Kayak3, if your financials are straight forward (i.e., parents married, do not own a business or rental property) then I think the particular’s school’s Net Price Calculator should be fairly accurate - at least within a few thousand dollars. Have you run those at the ED school?
@suzy100 , Our financials were straightforward until recently when I inherited non-voting shares in a family business. Very long story short, I earn no money at all from this but my taxes report that I made 4x what I did (s corp business flows the profit to the shareholders for tax purposes but keeps the actual profit instead of distributing it). I cannot sell the shares bc my uncles run the business and won’t pay any money for them. The only thing I receive is a larger tax bill and a loss of financial aid eligibility for my kids, when prior to this we would have qualified for a lot of aid. 
Oh that sucks @kayak3! Whoever left you the shares probably thought they were doing a nice thing but instead it’s just a burden. Good luck.
Oh that is rough, @Kayak3. In that situation, I think I might call the Financial Aid office at the school to see if you could get some type of “pre-read” under those circumstances. I imagine (but don’t know) that the corporation’s books will show that you received no distribution. Maybe if you could show that, they might take that into consideration? I really don’t know, but I’d give it a shot. Can’t hurt.
@suzy100, That is a great idea. It can’t hurt, right? My uncles said they can try to get their accountant to write a letter explaining that we don’t receive the distributions, but I did contact a few Financial Aid officers and they said that the income will still count against us (though they said we can write a letter in the special circumstances section, no guarantee it will help). I really like the idea of a pre-read, especially if they know an ED app is contingent upon it. Thank you!