@my2caligirls I’m guessing some of those direct apps are for the Canadian schools. In theory, those should be fairly simple (no essays, no LORs), but I’m nervous that there may be issues filling them out as a dual citizen. I’m going to encourage D to email admissions with any uncertainties. I’d hate for any of those apps to be invalidated because she didn’t check the correct box.
D is in no hurry to get started on her CA essay. Her 2-3 schools that use CA are at the bottom of her list, so the urgency just isn’t there. I’m stressing about this way more than she is!
@ShrimpBurrito yes I’m sure Canadian schools will fall on the direct app list as well - that makes 5 + Canada for us. I am pretty sure my friend’s son at McGill applied following the process for US applicants and once admitted showed proof of citizenship to get the Canadian tuition rate - hopefully will be the same at others as well. I hear you though that it’s very easy to miss something which only complicates things.
We really don’t have too many Common App schools on our list either, and like you, I stress more about all this than D.
My daughter is traveling pretty much all summer, so not a lot of college stuff is going to get done. She has IB homework that has to be done, so she will focus on that for the little time that she is home. But we have a friend who runs a college essay workshop, so she is signed up for that. It’s 90 minutes a day for 4 days in July. I’m hoping she’ll pretty much get her common app essay done then. The other thing I’d like her to get done over the summer is finalize the list of schools. The list is too long right now, so she needs to do more research and eliminate a bunch.
Like others here, my D18’s AP BC teacher asked for an essay from my D, her parents and also a classmate on why my D should deserves and LOR from him. He only does 10-20 of them, but she finished like #3 in his classes of about 68 kids. Arrgh!
S and I sat down and played college schedule Tetris with the interlocking blocks of pre-med, core requirements, and majors vs. minors in psychology, bio and theatre.
The short version is that if he uses all four years, he can do two majors and a minor, but it will be tight. If he does two majors and no minor, or one major and one minor, he’ll have some nice wiggle room in his schedule.
At the moment, he’s leaning toward a major in psych, a possible double major in theatre, and he’s not sure what to do with bio. Only the pre-med reqs, a bio minor, or make bio a double major and bump theatre to a minor?
He’s interested in the intersection of bio and psych, and not certain how much of each he’ll need. This area will be one of his pre-med backups, and the other will be teaching high school drama, hence the possible theatre major.
He’s got loads of time to figure it out, but working our way through the various requirements gave both of us a good overview of possibilities, potential bottlenecks, etc.
@DiotimaDM FUN! DS18 and I just did this too! He’s interested in a the Fast Track program at UTD and figured out that he can do a major (CS) and minor (Asian Studies) and Masters in four years with one summer abroad. Boy, was it a maze to figure out with all the various requirements, prerequisites and co-requisites. I found a chart to help out he’ll have almost all the core requirements completed with AP and DE credits and he’ll use his “free electives” towards his minor and guided electives toward the Fast Track program. There are are so many required classes that’s there’s not much choice until then. so it was more a matter of shifting things around so they still stayed in sequence. It was a real jigsaw puzzle! https://engineering.utdallas.edu/files/4YEAR-CS-2015.pdf
S18 has an early fall essay class, so the goal is to have a draft going into that. New contenders in the ever shifting list of college apps! At a recent music related college fair our warm weather seeking son and his mom were impressed by South Carolina and Furman.
No I don’t see that as a problem, he’ll likely be in their honor’s college and have priority registration and the current plan only has him taking one class over a summer (the summer he plans to go abroad to do an exchange program for his minor) so he could go summers if he had to. Also all the CS majors have the same requirements so they have several sections of these classes, UTD unlike UT Austin has a history of opening more classes when needed instead of capping them.
No neurosci major at UNM, and that the one we were working with today, Maybe at Tech.
Re: chemistry - S says it’s easy for him, but he finds it boring. He says “it’s just math.” Psych and bio are more his thing. I’ve been trying to get him to look at Cognitive Science.
My D may do Cognitive Science (with Linguistics emphasis–most colleges will allow you to choose a track). It’s a good springboard for lots of careers and future studies.
My H was CogSci as well! He’s a computer guy (his official term for his career) but he loved the interdisciplinary nature of his major, and at the time he was really into artificial intelligence so it fed right into all his interests!