Same thing at our house, @glido. (But D did not take the January SAT.)
My D got another wave of mail last week as well, almost exclusively from elite schools. (That has not been the norm.) She did not take the Jan SAT though.
Also, today she received a big fat envelope from OU’s National Scholars Program. I’m really curious about that one (she hasn’t been home yet to open it). D did well on the PSAT but obviously NMSFs are far from being announced.
Okay - could just be a January thing.
@ShrimpBurrito you may know this but Montreal is a hilly city including McGill. Hope your leg heals well.
Thanks @MA2012. Yes, sigh. And months ago I made reservations at an adorable little hotel that I love, but has no elevator. I plan to take it slow. Kids can go on ahead without me. Good bonding time for them.
The mail here was dead late December through January. D18 is getting bigger envelopes from the big merit money schools now, so I think there was a release of PSAT scores in January. D is rolling her eyes everytime H says “Boomer Sooner” or “Roll Tide”.
We are doing Trinity, Oklahoma and Tulsa for spring break. Should be interesting–hopefully it will give S18 some options.
We’ve been getting the same emails and mailings we’ve gotten since she took the PSAT as a sophomore. Her PSAT was pretty average, so a few of them feel like rejection bait.
We are not visiting any colleges over spring break. Instead, we are splurging on a vacation with my sister that is a birthday/anniversary/family reunion/graduation/“welcome home from Afghanistan” trip. Part of me would rather be looking at schools, lol.
Over the summer we hope to hit at least the 6 or 7 that are in serious contention. There are 10 on the list, but a couple are just there because they have the program she wants. One is an overnight, the others are day trips of varying lengths.
Got a Spring Break college trip planned as well, though down here we call it Mardi Gras Break. 
Seeing Rhodes, Vandy and Alabama, with a side trip to Lexington KY for Southeast Theatre Conf auditions. ACT did not seem to go well as S18 says he did not finish most sections. At least he has a great SAT score in the bank already. Happy Valentine’s Day to all!
I’m starting to wonder if the ACT is worth trying since I’m hearing so much about the time pressure.
One of the biggest reasons I’d have D try the ACT to see if the math suits her better. But her problem with math is time.
@MACmiracle – get one of the ACT prep books and have your D take a timed practice test in it. The books have strategies for getting to the correct answers quickly. The math problems on the ACT are easier but there are more of them.
However, if you’re happy with her SAT scores (because they’re good enough to get into the desired colleges) then there’s no reason to take the ACT.
Our D18’s AP Chem teacher is the worst! D18 went from liking chemistry after H-Chem last year to hating the entire subject this year. Most recent example: teacher gives her a grade of 68 on a lab. Labs are one of the “summatives” which make up 75% of the overall grade in a class. D got notified by the online grade system during lunch, right before an important AP Calc AB test. That Calc test was also a summative and there are only three this semester so it was an important one. She was upset and didn’t know why her lab grade was so low. DW told her to concentrate on the math test and worry about AP-Chem later.
Well, guess what. The following day D18 asks her teacher about the low score and it runs out that 68 was only a portion of the lab grade (it was 68 out of 70). D18 got 25 out of 30 on the other part of the lab. Her actual grade was a 93. Her teacher forgot to include the extra 25 points when entering the score into the system.
If this was a one-time oopsie it would be one thing but it has been one thing after another with AP Chem. Now it’s threatening to spill over into other classes. We have never complained about a teacher to her school before … but we’re this close to doing it now. Ridiculous!
College mail is a daily occurrence around here. I just toss it in the ever growing pile in my office. No college tours for spring break. We’ve seen so many already and she is pretty focused so she didn’t feel the need to schlep around. We’ll spend the week lounging on a beach and ordering umbrella drinks instead ha ha ha.
Also, I posted this before, but it’s worth posting again. Common App has a nifty chart with each member college’s requirements:
https://apply.commonapp.org/ApplicationRequirements/PublicFile?fn=ReqGrid.pdf
It obviously doesn’t help if the college isn’t a member, but it’s really useful for the many who are.
We toured Drexel on Monday. It was COLD! Son was unimpressed. Music Industry program - RMAP concentration and a performance minor would be his path. He feels it would not be creative enough for him.
I don’t agree I like the practical side of the Drexel program. Philly is a good place to be a musician. too.
95% of the marketing junk we get from colleges doesn’t even make it into my house
Tip - have a small garbage can close to the path from your mailbox to your front door.
@2014novamom I’m not sure if that spreadsheet is correct. I just glanced at a few schools and I’m pretty sure Brown, Northwestern, and University of Wisconsin all have writing supplements. The spreadsheet says they do not. Maybe that just means you can’t submit those supplements through the Common App?
@2014novamom - I was looking at that chart awhile ago and liked having all that data in one place. Do you understand what the Recommendations columns on the far right are referring to? TE, OE, MR, CR? The footnotes seem to be outdated, and I couldn’t figure it out.
Last year during April break S18 visited
Georgia Tech
Duke
John’s Hopkins
Virginia Tech
UVA
This year during Feb break we had the same motion as a previous poster - if he wants to look at schools in the Midwest, he’ll be going in the winter to truly experience it. So next week he is off to visit
Purdue
University of Illinois Urbana Champaign
Northwestern
University of Michigan Ann Arbor
University of Wisconsin Madison
He had to take University of Minnesota Twin Cities off his list because he won’t have time and their scheduling doesn’t work with his travel plans.
He also took a quick overnight to Stanford a couple weeks ago and loved it.
He’s trying to narrow his list of 25 schools to 10-ish to start work on applications this summer.
As for college mail, he has been receiving lots of email, but only in the past two weeks has he gotten regular mail. Some schools the same and some different from last year. His PSAT was much higher this year and the schools do appear to be a higher caliber for the out of state ones (CalTech, etc), but we haven’t received anything from big merit schools . . . I wonder why.
The 2016-17 grid looks inaccurate in some cases so buyer beware I suppose. The older versions used to clearly list when there was a school specific supplement, and also explained the footnotes for the teacher recommendations.
My old version of the grid says the abbreviations are as follows: (TE) Teacher Evaluation, (MR) Mid Year Report, (CR) Counselor Report.