@my2caligirls Yet another connection…I am an SDSU grad. I absolutely loved it and got a great education IMO. My D wants to tour the campus while in SD in Oct, she says just for fun. It doesn’t make much sense for OOS. It is (or at least was, years ago!) a fantastic place to be a college student.
Also, for sons turning 18, don’t forget they need to sign up for selective service.
We are trying to make the instate schools (that have music education) affordable. None are in commutable distance, so will cost about $20k. We will have 2 in college for a few years. S is hoping to get some merit and maybe music scholarship.
@ShrimpBurrito lol - we keep crossing paths!
Now I know where to go with all my SDSU questions. Agree that SDSU does not work well for OOS especially with all the other great options your D has available. Since it’s just an hour away we have toured it twice and it just feels good - easy on the eyes, good vibe, solid programs. My D has 9 AP’s and 2 DE’s and they will give her close to 1.5 yrs of credit which overlay well with her degree choice there. Also nice that it’s an hr away on the train - we are in San Juan Capistrano.
BTW - we will be in Montreal Friday and having a look at McGill. Of course I am travelling 2000 miles and my main motivation is to go to Schwartz’s Deli!
Occasional reminder that the average SAT score is 1080 and average GPA is 3.0. 
CC is deeply atypical.
@my2caligirls I was thinking about you this morning, wondering if you had left yet for Montreal. Have a fantastic time!
I’m afraid my input on SDSU would be rather dated. 
Plus I was there for a graduate program in Speech Path so I can’t comment much on the undergrad experience. But, to this day, I say that my two years there was my favorite season of life.
Because my D did well on the SATs, her counselors are nudging her to look at a few more (reach) schools Oy. Reminder: we’ve already visited 17 schools. Now we have five more on the list, and she’s probably going to take the SAT subject tests now. Silly me, I thought we were done with tests and school visits. :((
@droppedit For something in the middle, has she considered Tulane? It looks like she wants warm weather. Tulane is “fun,” like USC. She’d likely be in line for substantial merit. She would need to demonstrate interest, though.
Really? Around here it seems the average is 1,600 SAT and 4.0 GPA. :((
@odannyboySF You’ve visited 17 schools? Wow, we’re lazy butts. Honestly, I have very little idea where my D wants to go and thus we have very little idea of where to visit. In September we will be visiting CalPolySLO, but mainly because she’ll have a friend playing football against them. I think CalPolySLO will be a safety, unless they practice that “Tufts Syndrome.”
We’ve visited about ten schools, and I purposely picked a broad range in order to compare generalities - large/small, urban/rural, etc. I received very little feedback, so now I will just wait to see if D is accepted and then make the trip, if necessary.
Although H loves Florida and is hinting they will take a trip out there “just to see”
I feel like a fraud. I have no explination for nor do I feel at all responsible in any quantifiable way for my kids test scores. They probably feel the exact same way, as they did no more than take a practice test and flip through a Barrons guide or whatever before any of their exams. They are good test takers and are certainly smart but can be aggrevatingly unmotivated, lazy, apathetic, etc… i looked through old Iowa standardized tests the other day from my childhood and while Word Analysis was pretty universally below average, my scores would not give anyone any hint that my progeny would consistently score well on such exams. (How’s that for word choice!) My ACT (29) and SAT (1250) were ok but not crazy. I did ok in school, but not otherworldly. I married a wonderful woman with a similar background, so it isnt just a “her side of the family” thing. And our kids went to good schools but just good public schools. No magnets, no gifted programs, etc.
So really, I say all that to say, I strongly believe that scores are largely a poor indicator of future performance by themselves and really only are one factor. They do matter, but it’s not something to hide one way or another. I certainly won’t judge as long as you promise not to judge me either I also don’t intend to hide the warts because that doesn’t help others who are in the same boat.
@ShrimpBurrito – it’s funny you mentioned Tulane because it has been on my mind recently. D18 also brought up Wake Forest (we’ve been asking her about schools in NC) but they don’t have many stats available, so it’s tough to figure out where it would sit in the hierarchy of schools. If we don’t get a better handle on this by August I’ll probably do one of those dreaded “Help me find schools for my daughter” posts.
@labegg There is a lot of pressure/expectation here to apply to California public schools. My daughter is focused on LACs but I thought she’d probably apply to a UC or two, why not. Way back when I was applying the essay prompts were such that you could use the same essay for UCs and the Common App. We recently looked at the UC application and it turns out that’s not the case now.
So I’m not sure whether it’s worth writing 4 additional short essays to apply to UCs when she has no plan to go to one of them.
The volume of essays and supplemental essays can be overwhelming, compounded by essays for scholarships etc. DD has precious few Common App schools on her list and is finding the number of essays for the independant schools may just be a deterrant in her application process. She enjoys writing an essay but the sheer volume is less than appealing.
Just a word about Tulane: demonstrating interest really is necessary. D15 was a high stats kid who did not, and she was deferred early action. She had planned to write essays for the full-tuition scholarships but once she got that deferral, she withdrew her app.
We might just go all common app, since that’s the majority of what she’s looking at. So there’s one main app and then however much more school by school. Some have no additional, and some have a lot. You have to dig a bit to find out just how much more. The common app highlights some as writing supplements, but it seems quite a few schools have “other questions” which are also writing supplements. They just don’t get listed on the dashboard as such.
@daffodilpetunia are we the same person? Ds doing IB in CA who prefer LACs? I could’ve written your previous (#4011) post! :))
D feels a lot of pressure on the “apply to a UC” front, higher stats kids are expected to apply to UCLA or Berkeley if not both. She has no interest. At all. However, her budget comes in at about the cost of a UC, so she needs merit at an LAC and I am encouraging (demanding ) she apply to at least UC Riverside as a financial and location safety since it’s pretty close to home.
But, yeah, I haven’t mentioned the 4 extra essays to her yet. She’s going to be very annoyed by that, as am I honestly. But it is what it is. If she had a major picked out, she could go for SDSU or CalPoly, with no essays, but she’s as undecided as they come so she needs a bit more flexibility. We’ll be picking our battles carefully.
I might get vilified, but I think the conventional" Target,Safety,Reach" names are incorrect and incomplete to the point they are meaningless for some folks that have spent lot of time analyzing a comprehensive list. Essentially I have pared ours down to Reach and Match instead, and those categories have as much to do with financial constraints as anything else.
For example, I could argue for you, @droppedit , that UA is a Target, even though you (understandably) have it slated in the safety category. If it offers, for example, a strong program or programs in likely studies, that makes it a target, despite the relative “safety” of the admittance process for you. Likewise, there are several LACs that my S18 would be likely to be admitted to, but the $$$ probably make so little sense that they would have to be considered a reach for that reason.
I also want my S to understand that if he ultimately selects a “Safety” school, that it does not mean the applications were a failure. All our “Safeties” have real plusses to them. So they are matches to us.
My point is to worry less about slotting your silos, but it would make sense to have a few more schools on that list, even if they are “Safeties”. If you need to add a couple names for the sake of the Target curve, add Tulane, Trinity U, and Richmond.
As it stands now, we have roughly 5 of what you would call a reach, 12 safeties, and 2 targets. We hope to end up closer to 3 and 7 (in our reach and match language) in the next month or so. (But THAT’s another post alltogether!)
We’re using Naviance to determine safeties, targets and reaches. The scattergrams are great! The stats from the previous 3 years are loaded in there from D18’s school and it gives you a lot of great information. What would be nice if it would identify trends (i.e., predict) for this year’s application process, based upon the historical data and maybe have some predictive value.
Once we have D’s grades from the 2nd semester, then the results will become a bit more accurate.
on the subject of Naviance, last time I looked in there it appears our school uses a very limited portion of it: They don’t upload scores and they can’t be added manually for example. It’s irritating.
Poking around Naviance is interesting, but for us the schools on the list average 2-3 dots per scattergram.